Honors Theses, Ohio Dominican University, 2023, Honors Theses

In January of 2020, the Center for Disease Control and Protection (CDC ) reported its first case of a new virus that quickly spread through the United States, as well as all other countries around the world. It caused a massive slowdown of our economy and the whole country. It made businesses adapt to strict rules and standards just to be able to operate. Because of that, Congress passed The CARES Act. In that relief program was a subset called the Restaurant Revitalization Fund. It aimed to help restaurants navigate the pandemic by providing financial assistance. To help answer the research question, “Is there a link between the Restaurant Revitalization Fund and restaurant survival?” a meta-analysis was used. In doing so, eight different research studies were examined to come up with three trends to help answer the research question. The three themes were the impact of the Restaurant Revitalization Fund on restaurant sales and employment, the effectiveness of the RRF in supporting restaurants, and the unique challenges faced by the restaurant industry. The findings suggest a link between the Restaurant Revitalization Fund and restaurant survival.

Committee: Thomas Eveland (Advisor); Arlene Ramkissoon (Committee Member); Douglas Ruml (Committee Member) Subjects: Business Administration

Doctor of Business Administration, Cleveland State University, 2019, Monte Ahuja College of Business

For decades, research has shown the importance of ethics in the business environment. With the increased internationalization of corporations, the need for a focus on international business ethics has also increased. To date, research has predominantly focused on business ethics in large firms and the factors that affect the ethical decision-making processes of the managers and executives in these firms. What appears to be limited in literature is ethics and ethical decision-making as it relates to small businesses. With the economic importance of small businesses, this area of research needs to be explored especially from a cross-cultural basis. This dissertation helps to fill that gap. Building on existing research, this study seeks to explore the factors that contribute to and influence the ethical decisions of small business owners and managers in an emerging market, specifically India. The methodology and tests used in this study will provide a foundation to better understand how these ethical factors affect the ethical decisions of small business owners and managers in emerging markets.

Committee: Ashutosh Dixit (Committee Chair); Rajshekhar Javalgi (Committee Co-Chair); Kimberley Neuendorf (Committee Member); Jieun Park (Committee Member) Subjects: Business Administration

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 1966, Graduate School

Committee: Not Provided (Other) Subjects: Economics

Master of Business Administration, The Ohio State University, 1965, Graduate School

Committee: Not Provided (Other) Subjects:

Master of Business Administration, The Ohio State University, 1964, Graduate School

Committee: Not Provided (Other) Subjects:

Master of Science, The Ohio State University, 1970, Graduate School

Committee: Not Provided (Other) Subjects:

Master of Business Administration, The Ohio State University, 1971, Graduate School

Committee: Not Provided (Other) Subjects:

Master of Business Administration, The Ohio State University, 1967, Graduate School

Committee: Not Provided (Other) Subjects:

Master of Business Administration, The Ohio State University, 1967, Graduate School

Committee: Not Provided (Other) Subjects:

Master of Science, The Ohio State University, 1965, Graduate School

Committee: Not Provided (Other) Subjects:

Doctor of Management, Case Western Reserve University, 2022, Weatherhead School of Management

Latinos are the largest minority group in the United States. The number of Latino-owned firms has grown from 2.3 million in 2007 to 3.3 million in 2012, highlighting a 46.3% growth rate. Reports from 2017 estimate that Latino-owned firms create nearly 3.2 million American jobs and drive more than $2 trillion in GDP in the U.S. Despite their strong growth rates and growing contribution to the U.S. economy, only 3% of Latino-owned firms exceed $1 million in annual gross revenues—less than half the rate of White, non-Latino-owned firms. Much of the literature on Latino and ethnic entrepreneurs focuses on the barriers to growth the individual entrepreneurs and their firm's experience or their lack of resources such as economic or social capital. Our mixed-methods study—integrating qualitative and quantitative research findings—highlights differences in how Latino entrepreneurs of large, scaled firms differ in their approach when compared to Latino business owners of smaller firms. Moreover, we find differences in how Latino entrepreneurs approach sense of community, belongingness, and humility when operating their businesses, which differs from non-Latino, Anglo entrepreneurs in the U.S. While our qualitative findings highlight the salient traits—sense of community, belongingness, and humility—with Latino business owners of scaled firms, our quantitative findings show trends that highlight clear differences between Latinos and Anglo business owners. Also noted in our findings is that Anglos continue to financially outperform minority entrepreneurs, including Latinos.

Committee: Philip Cola Ph.D. (Advisor); Stephan Liozu Ph.D. (Advisor); Mike Stull DBA (Advisor); Corinne Coen Ph.D. (Advisor) Subjects: Business Administration; Business Community; Entrepreneurship; Ethnic Studies; Hispanic Americans; Management; Social Psychology; Social Research

Doctor of Business Administration, Cleveland State University, 2020, Monte Ahuja College of Business

Business analytics (BA) continues to be one of the top technology trends in recent years as well as one of the top priorities for CIO's in many large enterprises. Business analytic tools can significantly help small businesses in quickly responding to changing market conditions and improving their organizational performance. However, prior studies report that the adoption rate of business analytics in small businesses is extremely low such that only 32 percent small businesses have adopted Business Intelligence (BI) and analytics solutions till now (SMB Group, 2018). As small businesses constitute a major force in the US economy, a slow rate of adoption of significant technological innovations, such as BA, may be a critical concern that can affect the economy in the longer run. Despite this, the extant small business literature as well as the information systems literature fails to provide an understanding of why small businesses are not receptive to current BA trends. Therefore, drawing upon the theoretical underpinnings of organizing vision theory, strategic orientation literature, and theory of upper echelon, this study investigates the willingness of small businesses to adopt newer innovations in BA. More specifically, this study investigates the impact of the reception of organizing vision of BA by owner-managers, learning orientation of small businesses, analytics orientation of small businesses, and personal characteristics of owner-mangers on small businesses' willingness to adopt BA. By drawing its motivation from prior strategic orientation and BA literature, this study is also among the first one to propose, formally develop, and validate the measurement construct of analytics orientation.

Committee: Radha Appan Dr. (Committee Chair); Raymond Henry Dr. (Committee Member); Sreedhar Madhavaram Dr. (Committee Member); Chieh-Chen Bowen Dr. (Committee Member) Subjects: Information Systems

Doctor of Management, Case Western Reserve University, 2013, Weatherhead School of Management

This dissertation explores the effects of personal traits that affect socially responsible behavior in small and medium companies in the United States. The initial study uses qualitative semi-structured interviews of owners or CEOs to build a picture of their mental models of how social responsibility affects their companies. These models indicate that personal traits such as values and beliefs developed over their lives and influenced by their parents, education, and personal events influence their decisions on social responsibility. It identifies self-efficacy and conscientiousness as additional trait based precursors to social responsibility. In several cases, disruptive events caused personal reflection and change of the mental models leading to heightened levels of social responsibility within or external to the firm. It suggests that emotional responses create a shared bond between the owners/CEOs and their employees or with other stakeholders outside the organization. It implies that reflection can heighten the opportunities for an owner or CEO to emotionally connect with others demonstrating compassion. The second study uses a random sample of individuals in small businesses to assess how their individual traits influence social responsibility behavior at a corporate level when mediated by emotional relationships within the company. The study found that shared positive emotions (compassion, vision and positive mood) had significant positive relationships with social responsibility behaviors for both conscientiousness and general self-efficacy. Additionally, we found evidence that the frequency of volunteering behavior during an individual's formative years had a strong positive influence on discretionary social responsibility and a slight positive influence on economic social responsibility. Philosophical orientation was used to assess personal values and traits and showed a positive relationship with economic social responsibility. The relationships s (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Richard Boyatzis, Ph.D. (Advisor); Gary Hunter, Ph.D. (Advisor); Kalle Lyytinen, Ph.D. (Advisor) Subjects: Organizational Behavior

Doctor of Management, Case Western Reserve University, 2016, Weatherhead School of Management

Small to Medium Sized Enterprises (SME) are a significant contributor to USA employment and GDP but are disappointingly understudied. Small firms may often carry a label of “entrepreneur” yet it is now commonly understood that not all small firms are necessarily entrepreneurial nor does lacking that orientation mean that SMEs uniquely fail to innovate. We conducted two sequential studies to identify what other factors besides entrepreneurial orientation (EO) contributed to small firm innovation and whether those constructs could stand on their own in the absence of EO. What we found in our qualitative study was that firm-wide culture—namely empowerment, play, and organizational learning (OL)—were more prevalent in our 29 successful SME than EO. When we tested those firm- wide cultural factors' effects on innovation in the absence of EO, we found that small firms did innovate without EO, but more surprising was the substantive increase in predicting innovation in small firms when BOTH EO and OL were present. These studies are important for scholars in that we have added to the literature concepts of small firm innovation that eschew EO as a requisite for innovation. For practitioners, this is even more important in that small firm owners and senior leaders need not be entrepreneurially inclined to innovate but when they are and also support certain internal culture development, they are more likely to innovate than when only EO or OL exist on its own.

Committee: Kalle Lyytinen, Ph.D. (Advisor); Kathleen Buse, Ph.D. (Advisor) Subjects: Entrepreneurship

Doctor of Philosophy, University of Toledo, 2018, Manufacturing and Technology Management

Today's small-market and mid-market sized manufacturers, competitively face increasing pressure to capture, integrate, operationalize, and manage diverse sources of digitized data. Many have made significant investments in data technologies with the objective to improve on organization performance yet not all have realized demonstrable benefits that create organization value. One simple question arises, do business-analytics make a difference on company performance in today's information intensive environment? The research purpose, to explore this question by looking through the lens of data-centric pressure placed on management driving the invested use of data-technologies; how these drivers impact on management influence to adopt a digitized organization mindset, effecting data practices, shaping key processes and strategies and leading to capabilities growth that impact on performance and culture. The terms `Big Data' and `Small Data' are two of the most prolific used phrases in today's world when discussing business analytics and the value data provides on organization performance. Big Data, being strategic to organization decision-making, and Small Data, operational; is captured from a host of internal and external sources. Studying how leveraging business-analytics into organizational value is of research benefit to both academic and practioner audiences alike. The research on `Big and Small Data, and business analytics' is both varied and deep and originating from a host of academic and non-academic sources; however, few empirical studies deeply examine the phenomena as experienced in the manufacturing environment. Exploring the pressures managers face in adopting data-centric managing beliefs, applied practices, understanding key value-creating process strategy mechanisms impacting on the organization, thus provides generalizable insights contributing to the pool of knowledge on the importance of data-technology investments impacting on organizational cul (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Paul Hong (Committee Chair); Thomas Sharkey (Committee Member); Wallace Steven (Committee Member); Cheng An Chung (Committee Member) Subjects: Information Systems; Information Technology; Management; Organization Theory; Organizational Behavior

Ph.D., Antioch University, 2018, Leadership and Change

This study explored open innovation activities in small and medium-sized enterprises. Most open innovation research to date has focused on large organizations; however, how large organizations engage in open innovation is very different from that of small and medium-size enterprises. The embedded design, mixed methods study utilized a survey delivered to owners or other organizational executives and employees of small and medium-size enterprises to solicit information regarding whether small and medium-size enterprises are actively engaging in inbound open innovation activities, their motivation for engaging in open innovation, and the sources they are utilizing to obtain new ideas for products and services. The survey also solicited the perception of executives and employees as to organizational processes for open innovation and their organization's receptiveness to open innovation and employee ideas and compared the responses. Qualitative questions elicited employees' experiences with regards to idea sharing within their organization. The majority of the 320 participants, almost evenly split between executives and employees, were recruited using Amazon's® Mechanical Turk® platform. Results were analyzed using independent-samples t-tests and Chi-Square analysis. The study found that 91.2% of small and medium-size enterprises engaged in some level of open innovation activity. Executives from small and medium-size enterprises engaging in open innovation reported that 97.6% had open innovation formally or informally as part of their organization's business model and that they utilized employees as an important source of ideas. The results of this study exploring the presence of processes to facilitate open innovation and receptiveness to employee ideas in small and medium-size enterprises, found a clear disconnect between executive and employee perception of what organizations are communicating and doing with executives perceiving a greater level of support for open i (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Lize Booysen DBL (Committee Chair); Carol Baron Ph.D. (Committee Member); Joseph P. Lakatos LL.M. (Committee Member) Subjects: Entrepreneurship; Management; Organization Theory; Organizational Behavior

Master of Sciences, Case Western Reserve University, 2018, Physics

Boundary Labs, LLC is an early-stage company composed of three students at Case Western Reserve University which aimed to evaluate the feasibility of commercialization of a novel dielectric barrier discharge (DBD) plasma actuator as an active flow control (AFC) method in wind turbines. The hypothesized benefits of DBD plasma actuators for AFC include improved energy capture from wind, low cost, and ease of implementation. This thesis is a two-part case study. The first part emulates a Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase I Proposal for the technology and includes discussions arguing that a strong commercial potential for the proposed technology exists in the United States and that technical development is feasible. The second part includes miscellaneous sections outside the scope of an SBIR proposal, leading to a discussion of the Boundary Labs team decision to discontinue development of this technology.

Committee: Edward Caner (Committee Chair); Robert Brown (Committee Member); Michael Martens (Committee Member) Subjects: Alternative Energy; Energy; Entrepreneurship; Physics

MDES, University of Cincinnati, 2017, Design, Architecture, Art and Planning: Design

This thesis proposes to deal with the problem small businesses have of following the retail omnichannel trend by providing them with a digital platform. Omnichannel retailing means creating a seamless shopping experience by integrating online and offline retail channels. The type of small business in this thesis particularly refers to clothing and clothing accessories stores that have one physical location and a store website. I conducted primary research to find out which omnichannel features would be effective to small businesses. Based on the results, I selected the top five omnichannel features for my digital platform. They are “Buy online, pickup in store,” “Online live chat button to contact sales assistant,” “Buy in store, ship to home/other locations,” “In store access to product information online” and “Back in stock email.” Then based on multichannel service provided by an existing commerce service named Shopify, I developed my omnichannel platform for small businesses.

Committee: Craig Vogel M.I.D. (Committee Chair); Steven Doehler M.A. (Committee Member); Dianne Hardin M.S. M.Des. (Committee Member); Gerald Michaud M.A. (Committee Member) Subjects: Design

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2017, Business Administration

Small firms, a crucial segment of the US economy, face internal resource constraints that hinder their ability to survive and grow. Access to external resources through collaborations with external parties can be a viable way for small firms to overcome such constraints. While there is an abundance of literature examining vertical collaborations with customers or suppliers, non-vertical collaborations with external organizations have been under-investigated. In this dissertation, I investigate two types of non-vertical collaborations to generate insights for small firms trying to leverage external resources from non-vertical partners. The first type is collaboration with non-profit research institutions for research and development (R&D). While accessing outside resources through external R&D initiatives paves the path to commercialization, such external collaborations heighten the risk of intellectual property (IP) leaks as proprietary knowledge becomes shared. I examine how the decision to conduct R&D projects internally or externally is determined and the factors that affect subsequent commercialization success. My analyses suggest a small firm's R&D path decision depends on its previous success, as well as its competitors' success, but in opposite ways. I also find that possessing formal IP rights is not always beneficial. This counter-intuitive finding suggests an IP lockup problem during external R&D initiatives. The second type is collaborations with non-profit Business Membership Organizations (BMOs) to enable sales growth. Through a survey of 113 minority suppliers affiliated with a BMO, I find that minority suppliers can expand social networks with other minority-owned firms through participation in BMO-sponsored activities. Such participation in turn leads to greater sales growth. Moreover, participation in connect-oriented activities is more effective in expanding social networks with other minority-owned firms than participation in develop-oriented (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: James Hill (Advisor); Johnny Rungtusanatham (Advisor); Aravind Chandrasekaran (Committee Member) Subjects: Business Administration

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 1986, Graduate School

Committee: Not Provided (Other) Subjects: Business Administration