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Open Access
Platform Governance: A Study of Governance Mechanisms and Their Impact on Ecosystem Outcomes
(2024-11-07) Mahmood, Nudrat; Madhok, Anoop
While governance has long been fundamental to strategic management research, its nature has shifted in today’s digital economy. In this dissertation I study governance in the context of digital platforms, drawing together both theory and practice in three distinct and interrelated essays. In essay 1, I conduct a systematic literature review of platform governance to synthesize extant scholarship. In doing so, I uncover the conceptual structure of the literature, clarify the conceptual contours of the construct, develop an organizing framework, and identify areas for future research. In the next two essays, I conduct empirical investigations using the e-commerce landscape to address some of the salient gaps identified in the review. Specifically, in essay 2, I examine the effectiveness of revenue-sharing, a prominent pecuniary mechanism used by platform firms to govern ecosystem activity. In essay 3, I develop a better understanding of how governance mechanisms combine to shape platform participation. Specifically, I undertake a configurational examination of both user- and complementor- oriented governance mechanisms and study their impact on platform adoption. Together, the essays offer insight into how platform firms manage their ecosystems and as such advance a more nuanced understanding of platform governance, the development of which is increasingly important as digital platforms continue to integrate further into the economic fabric.
Open Access
Investing in a Digital Asset Environment: The Effects of Staff Accounting Bulletin 121 and the Fear of Missing Out
(2024-11-07) Epelbaum, Nicolas Ezequiel; Thorne, Linda
In recent years, regulators have become concerned that investors will be misled in the largely unregulated crypto-asset environment. Particularly, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has become concerned about the effects that the Fear of Missing Out (FoMO) could have on investors in the crypto-asset space (SEC, 2021a). This dissertation investigates, in an experimental setting, whether Staff Accounting Bulletin 121 (SAB 121) - recently issued financial reporting guidance by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) - protects investors with higher levels of FoMO in the crypto-asset environment. Two experiments were carried out online through Prolific using a sample of 95 retail investors (Experiment 1) and 412 retail investors (Experiment 2). In Experiment 1, consistent with social psychology theory, I find that investors with higher levels of FoMO experience more negative emotions at the thought of missing out on future financial gains as they exhibit a higher propensity to invest in the crypto-asset market as compared to investors with lower levels of FoMO. I also find that exposure to SAB 121 decreases investors propensity to invest in the digital asset market with the effects being more pronounced for investors with higher levels of FoMO as compared to investors with lower levels of FoMO. Experiment 2 shows that SAB 121 decreases investors propensity to invest in the crypto-asset market by heightening their risk perception. I conclude the dissertation with a discussion of the implications of the findings for regulators, investors, and for accounting research.
Open Access
A Dyadic Understanding of Trust in Negotiations: The Role of Congruent and Asymmetric Trust States
(2024-07-18) Ji, Mingshuang; Tasa, Kevin
This dissertation examines the role of trust congruence and asymmetry in negotiation using a dyadic perspective. Based on theories of trust congruence and social balance, I hypothesize that negotiation dyads are more likely to achieve favorable subjective outcomes when their trust levels are aligned rather than divergent, and this relationship will be mediated by integrative and distributive behaviors. Two studies were conducted to test the research model, and polynomial regression with surface analysis was used for data analyses. In Study 1, data was collected from 120 MBA students (60 dyads) using a conflict resolution exercise. Findings of this study provide preliminary evidence for the role of different dyadic trust states on negotiation, suggesting a positive effect of trust congruence and a negative impact of trust incongruence on subjective negotiation outcomes. With an enhanced research design, Study 2 manipulated different states of dyadic trust among 242 undergraduate students (121 dyads) using a negotiation exercise in which negotiators must overcome an apparent negative bargaining zone by sharing information. Results of Study 2 re-confirm the positive impact of trust congruence and the negative impact of trust asymmetry on negotiation outcomes, and these impacts are partially mediated by integrative behaviors. In general, findings of this dissertation enhance our understanding of the role of trust in negotiation, by suggesting that it is more about the dyadic ‘balance’ between two negotiators within the dyad, besides the absolute level of individual trust, which makes trust favorable in negotiation contexts. This dissertation fills a critical gap in the literature by empirically assessing the role of different dyadic states of trust in negotiation and validating the theory of trust congruence. Practically, findings of this dissertation inform negotiators of the temporal and interactive nature of trust and highlight the importance of adaptivity and alignment during negotiations.
Open Access
Distinct outside forces influencing firm outcomes: Social media and city crime
(2024-07-18) Ahmed, Tahmina; Saxton, Gregory
Business entities face a multitude of external influences such as social, economic, and environmental factors. These outside forces have the capacity to instigate meaningful financial outcomes, emphasizing their importance for both the firms themselves and external stakeholders, namely, investors and regulatory authorities. In my dissertation, I explore two such outside yet discrete forces – social media engagement and city crime. Building on the concept of “online firestorms” that tweets can entice, I investigate a set of tweets sent by the S&P500 firms and their CEOs that the Twitterverse considers controversial. Consistent with social media’s cancel culture, I find evidence that the perceived controversial CEO tweets are associated with significant negative stock market reactions. The detrimental impact of CEOs’ controversial tweets is intensified for firms with “Star CEOs” and reversed for firms with high individual ownership. Using the same concept of “controversy” in firm tweets, I find contrasting outcomes that imply a positive significant reaction of controversial tweets on the stock market. This evidence complements inferences from previous studies that documented price-distortion behavior of social media messages firms post. Sentiment analyses of these firm-tweets reveal when the tweet contents are positively oriented, the market reacts more optimistically no matter the perceived controversy in the tweets. My dissertation expands the influence of outside forces by investigating crime rate in the city in which firms are headquartered. Using the Accounting and Auditing Enforcement Releases issued by the SEC to firms for fraudulent financial reporting and the city crime rates in the USA, I show evidence that indicates the higher the crime rate in the city in which firms are headquartered, the higher the likelihood of fraudulent reporting. Further, with subsample analysis, I demonstrate a nuanced influence of CEO compensation and of proximity to the SEC’s headquarter, on the relationship between crime and fraudulent financial reporting.
Open Access
Essays on Corporate Finance
(2024-03-16) Hosein Hamisheh Bahar; Ng, Lilian; Foroughi, Pouyan
In the first chapter, I study how corporations leverage voluntary disclosure to illuminate the murk arising from business complexity. I find that conglomerates compensate for their business complexity by strategically disclosing more information voluntarily. This finding becomes more pronounced under heightened information demands from stakeholders and analysts or when the pay-performance sensitivity is higher. The enhanced transparency serves as a strategic move, yielding tangible benefits in the form of improved firm valuation and decreased capital costs. Overall, my study illustrates that multi-segment firms tactically deploy voluntary disclosure to offset the potential detriments of their business complexity. In the second chapter, I study the efficacy of environmental enforcement in powering down pollution and investigate how management in the US electricity sector navigates such enforcement. Analyzing data from power plants, I find that facilities targeted by the EPA tend to reduce pollution emissions and electricity production. Managerial responses to these challenges involve strategies, including installing scrubbers, enhancing pollution abatement efforts, investing in energy-efficient generators, and reducing coal-fired electricity production. These changes are facilitated by the organizational structure of utility firms and the economies of scale in fuel acquisition, the availability of financial resources, environmental agencies undertaking enforcement, and utility firms' regulatory status. While heightened regulatory compliance costs do not significantly impact the financial performance of firms, they ultimately result in higher electricity prices for consumers, reflecting a transfer of the financial burden. In the third chapter, I aim to unveil the role of lobbying activities in creating a nexus between corporations and their institutional shareholders and trace the footprints of lobbyists in mutual funds voting. This chapter investigates whether mutual funds exhibit a preference for portfolio companies with which they have shared lobbyists and assesses how this preference impacts their voting behavior. I uncover that connected institutional shareholders exhibit a higher propensity to vote in concurrence with company management—especially when such votes carry significant managerial value. Following these voting events, I observe that higher connected mutual fund support is negatively associated with abnormal return. Overall, my findings indicate that management might strategically leverage shared lobbying relationships to influence shareholder voting patterns.
Open Access
Essays in Corporate Finance and Corporate Innovation
(2023-12-08) Khan, Aman; Tian, Yisong
In the first chapter I investigate whether firms grant stock options to rank-and-file employees (RFOs) for retention purposes. I find that it depends on their level of investment in intellectual property. Firms grant more RFOs if they have more knowledge capital, more patents awarded, more citations received by these patents, and more patents for “breakthrough” innovations. After the risk of poaching by rival firms is diminished by the adoption of the Inevitable Disclosure Doctrine, I find that firms with above median level of knowledge capital reduce their RFO grants by 32% relative to control firms; the reduction is minimal for firms with below median level of knowledge capital. In the second chapter I investigate how effective are RFO grants in retaining employees. Previous studies find that while there is an initial reduction in employee turnover, the effect is temporary and quickly reversed within three years of the grant. In this chapter, I show that the impact of RFOs is permanent. I find that there is a 36% reduction in inventor turnover in the year of grant and the impact remains over the next three years. Importantly, there is no reversal suggesting that the benefit is permanent instead of transitory. I also find that the importance of RFOs to reduce inventor turnover increases following the implementation of FAS123R when firms reduce the use of RFO. In the final chapter I study the behavior of firms with respect to their patent applications. I find that firms engage in window dressing by timing the date of their patent applications. I find that almost 40% of firms’ yearly patents are filed in the last quarter of the calendar year accompanied by a reduction in the quality of these patents. The behavior is more prevalent among firms subject to lower external and internal monitoring, supporting the incentive to window dress as the underlying channel. To establish window dressing as the key mechanism, I use the adoption of America Invents Act as a quasi-natural experiment that has increased the costs of window dressing. Following the adoption of the Act, the window dressing behavior become less prevalent.
Open Access
Topics in Empirical Corporate Finance
(2023-12-08) Naderi Khorshidi, Hossein; Bae, Kee-Hong; Kecskes, Ambrus
In the first chapter of my dissertation, I study firm innovation as a transmission channel for monetary policy. Analyzing the impact of unanticipated changes to monetary policy on the cross-section of U.S. equity returns, I show that the sensitivity of firms’ equity prices to changes in monetary policy may depend on firms’ innovation characteristics. I find that the more the firm employs an exploratory search in its innovation strategy, the higher the sensitivity of its stock price to monetary policy. Further, I present evidence suggesting that variables capturing exploratory and exploitative innovation characteristics of firms may explain the relative sensitivity of firms’ future earnings, capital expenditures, and R&D spending to monetary shocks. In the second chapter of my dissertation, I define a novel measure to capture the timing of the future cash flow generated by the firm’s investment in innovation. I call this measure “the duration of firm innovation”. I show evidence suggesting that my measure of the duration of firm innovation is a significant channel for the transmission of monetary policy to equity prices. In the third chapter, I study the effect of work-from-home on employee performance and teamwork in the context of the sell-side analyst industry. Using a difference-in-difference setting utilizing the exogenous adoption of work-from-home following the start of the Coronavirus pandemic, I find that the performances of analysts working both individually and in teams are negatively affected following the adoption of work-from-home. Moreover, I find that following the adoption of pandemic-induced work-from-home, team size becomes negatively related to team performance, supporting the higher coordination costs hypothesis in work-from-home settings. I also find a negative impact of working from home on teams led by female analysts. These findings are in line with the findings of the prior literature which document an unequal impact of work-from-home on female employees due to the unequal burden of household responsibilities.
Open Access
Impacts of Post-Truth Conditions on a Susceptible Market: The Case of Nicotine Vaping
(2023-12-08) El-Bialy, Rowan; Fischer, Eileen; Veresiu, Ela
The post-truth era is characterized by widespread mistrust, competing truth claims, and polarization that impact some markets to a greater degree than others. This study introduces the concept of post-truth markets as those which are highly susceptible to being impacted by post-truth conditions. Three research questions guide this study: Why are some markets susceptible to the impacts of post-truth conditions? What is the impact of post-truth conditions on susceptible markets? And, how do consumers navigate post-truth markets? Taking the nicotine vaping market as an exemplar of post-truth markets, this study uses critical discourse analysis to examine qualitative data, including archival data (legal, news media, industry, and advocacy texts), in-depth interviews with consumers and advocates, and observational data. The theoretical insights generated indicate that markets affected by historical stigma, restrictive authority interventions, and changing expert opinions are susceptible to becoming post-truth markets. Further, the data analysis suggests that post-truth conditions lead to contestation in such markets, including moral contestation which has been noted in prior literature, and epistemic contestation which this study introduces. Consumers develop various strategies based on a post-truth subjectivity to navigate post-truth markets, including alternate truth-seeking (through relational and embodied knowledge), entrepreneurship, and activism. This research introduces several new concepts to consumer research, including the concepts of post-truth markets, post-truth subjectivity, and epistemic contestation. The findings also contribute to the growing literatures on marketplace contestation, activism, stigma, and the role of emotions in consumption. Finally, the findings have implications for various stakeholders in the nicotine vaping market, as well as other post-truth markets.
Open Access
Accounting, Accountability, and Open Data
(2023-12-08) Walsh, Leigh Ellen; Saxton, Gregory
Widely accepted as central components of good governance, accountability and transparency underpin calls for ‘open’ approaches to organization, including ‘open data’ (OD). But rhetorical use of these catchwords tends to blur important distinctions – and tensions – between them. This dissertation examines the relationships between open data and accountability in democratic governance, specifically as mobilized within public financial management (PFM) systems. The chapters build on one another to answer two overarching questions. First, how does OD combine with and/or extend existing arrangements for public financial management? And second, (how) does OD deliver on its promise to increase accountability? A combination of qualitative research methods including literature review, theory development, and empirical analysis are employed. The theoretical development draws on accountability and transparency literature to propose a framework that situates OD as both an object and instrument of accountability. This framework provides a theoretical lens through which organizational practices can be studied from an accountability perspective and guides the empirical study of OD in local government presented in this dissertation. Empirical materials including documents, interviews, and observations were gathered following a case study method and analysed to offer two distinct yet complementary views of OD in PFM. First, by adopting a data ‘producer’ perspective and theorizing OD as an informing practice, the study finds that OD has been adopted as a new type of informing practice and constitutes an aspect of conduct for which organizational actors are accountable. Two transparency orientations – usability and understandability – are identified and used to explain tensions and/or barriers that arise in OD implementation. Second, data ‘user’ perspectives are considered by theorizing OD as an instrument of accountability used in debating processes. The findings suggest that while there is a clear alignment between ‘open’ and ‘dialogic’ principles, OD is at best considered a partial tool that, used dialogically and in combination with other information sources, may encourage dialogic forms of engagement and accountability. Drawing attention to the absence of accounting in the burgeoning field of ‘open’ practice and research, this dissertation encourages Further research at the intersection of accounting, accountability, and open data.
Open Access
Essays in Asset Pricing
(2023-12-08) Celik, Batur; Dong, Ming
This dissertation includes three essays in asset pricing. The first two essays explain the role of investor trust on mutual fund investor behavior and private fund capital raising, respectively. The third essay proposes a valuation model for bitcoin options. In the first essay, I investigate the impact of investment adviser disciplinary actions on mutual fund performance and investor redemption behavior. After a regulatory disciplinary action initiation, funds experience a transitory performance loss in the next month. In contrast, I observe persistent fund outflows starting two months after the regulatory action disclosure and persisting for over one year. My evidence suggests that investors reduce investments in affected funds mainly because they lose trust in fund integrity rather than because they observe fund performance deterioration. In the second essay, I examine the role of investor trust in the capital raising process of private funds by analyzing the impact of third-party service providers and investment adviser disciplinary actions in the US. Using private fund’s initial filings, I document that fund managers that use third party marketers raise less capital and have reduced shares of sophisticated investors even though these marketers can bring more investors. This finding indicates that investors do not trust third party marketers and prefer fund managers to be directly involved in the capital raising process. On the other hand, service providers such as auditors and bookkeepers that help regulate private funds’ financials and increase investor trust are associated with more capital raised and investor ownership. Furthermore, I observe persistent decline in total assets managed, number of investors and sophisticated investor ownership following a criminal action, suggesting that investors place a significant value on trust and more likely to respond specific disciplinary actions by withdrawing their assets. In the final essay, I propose an equilibrium valuation model for bitcoin options traded on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange. Numerical analysis shows that, among other things, all risks lead to a positive premium in option prices relative to the benchmark Black-Scholes model, and the diffusive and/or jump risks of money supply accounts for a large portion of the bitcoin return volatility.
Open Access
Three Essays on the Economic Impact of FinTech Lending
(2023-03) Jia, Xiaoran; Kanagaretnam, Kiridaran
This dissertation consists of three independent papers with a related theme focusing on the economic and capital market impacts of FinTech lending. In specific, this dissertation explores the influence of FinTech penetration on traditional banks’ risk-taking, the influence of non-traditional information on lending discrimination in P2P lending, and whether digital inclusion is a potential determinant of P2P penetration. In Chapter 1, based on a sample of U.S. community banks and FinTech loans data from LendingClub and Prosper, I find a positive association between banks' future change in risk-taking and their current exposure to FinTech penetration. Path analysis reveals that FinTech penetration influences bank risk-taking through the erosion of bank charter value. Cross-sectional analysis suggests that banks with the lowest ex-ante charter values increase risk-taking the most. Additionally, I document that the risk-increasing effect of FinTech penetration is less pronounced for banks with more conservative loan loss provisioning and less reliance on hard information. My findings suggest that regulators may need to pay more attention to smaller banks with lower or deteriorating charter values. Chapter 2 hypothesizes that racial discrimination can exist in P2P lending even when race-related information is not directly observable, and that the degree of racial discrimination decreases in the precision of credit quality signals generated from both traditional and non-traditional information. I document that loan listings in counties with a greater proportion of minority populations are associated with higher lending rates and higher loan denial rates. Cross-sectional tests indicate that racial discrimination is less pronounced when the availability of both traditional and non-traditional information is greater. Chapter 3 investigates the influence of digital inclusion on financial inclusion. I document that digital inclusion is positively associated with P2P lending penetration, with such relation more pronounced in county-years with more vulnerable/excluded populations. The results are robust to the use of instrumental variable (2SLS) approach, alternative measurements, weighted least squares regression, additional controls, and single-year analysis. In addition, I document that higher-risk borrowing is less likely to be denied in county-years with higher digital inclusion.
Open Access
Beyond Backlash: Reducing Resistance and Generating Support in Response to Diversity Initiatives Through Opening Identity Tactics
(2023-08-04) Bryan, Camellia Sison; Lyons, Brent
Although researchers are recognizing that dominant social identity threat towards diversity initiatives can result in backlash, researchers have paid limited attention to how dominant social identity threat can be in service of support for diversity. This dissertation considers how identity exploration after dominant social identity threat can facilitate responses that move members of dominant social identity groups towards diversity support rather than diversity resistance. First, I I bridge theory on identity threat and uncertainty regulation to birth a comprehensive model of how identity threat can lead employees belonging to dominant social identity groups to engage in closing and opening identity tactics. Closing identity tactics re-affirm one’s hierarchy-maintaining knowledge about membership to dominant social identity groups, while opening identity tactics transform one’s understanding of membership to dominant social identity groups, so that the focus becomes one that is less about maintaining hierarchy and more about challenging inequalities. Then, I document in Study 1 that participants show greater engagement in opening identity tactics after reading about an organization’s diversity initiatives when they complete an opening identity tactics intervention, which in turn, came to explain why participants were more likely to report valuing of diversity and organizational identification toward the organization. Finally, I further document in Study 2 that White employees of organizations with existing diversity initiatives showed a stronger relationship between their engagement in opening identity tactics and valuing of diversity after completing a six-week opening identity tactics intervention (versus a control condition). Overall, my dissertation challenges a widely held assumption that dominant social identity threat is only a roadblock to the advancement of diversity and inclusion in organizations. Rather, I show how dominant social identity threat can also trigger positive identity changes that translate into support for diversity. In doing so, my research has implications for understanding the benefits and costs of diversity initiatives and dominant social identity threat.
Open Access
Essays on Innovation
(2023-08-04) Mahalati Rayeni, Alireza; Larkin, Yelena
Innovation is the engine of economic growth for developed countries. In my dissertation, I study three different factors that affect firms’ innovation outcome. The first chapter of my dissertation shows that when courts systematically favor plaintiffs over defendants, their biased attitudes stifle innovation and reduce the financial value of innovative firms under their jurisdiction. The second chapter of my dissertation looks at another aspect of innovation output, namely the inventors. I show that inventors who work in cities with higher level of labor market concentration produce more patents while compensating that with lower quality of innovation. The third chapter of my paper shows that in firms where the extensive monitoring is absent; innovation output could also be the outcome of firms’ attempt to time the market.
Open Access
Citizen Use and Comprehension of Government Accounting Information: Applications of Design Science Research Methodology
(2023-08-04) Kurpierz, John Richard; Everett, Jeffery S.
This dissertation seeks to explore how accounting can alleviate, but also aggravate, the tensions of informed democratic participation. The behavior of accountants and the format of disclosures in governmental accounting have a powerful effect upon how citizens perceive and make decisions about their community. Because accounting research has only recently begun considering citizens as a central actor, there has been limited synthesis of this knowledge between researchers and practitioners. This dissertation seeks to bridge the gap between governmental accounting practitioners and researchers, and employs the theoretical lens of design science to do so. Design science, originally developed by accounting researchers, is used in other disciplines to bridge similar gaps. This dissertation provides three contributions to the existing literature. First, this dissertation contributes an epistemological innovation by using a design science perspective to examine this research topic and show how design science remains a valuable tool for accounting research. Second, this dissertation finds evidence supporting Baber & Gore’s (2008) supposition of governmental GAAP compliance in a novel context. Third, this dissertation uses design science methodology to become the first research that shows how practitioners developed and implemented Citizen-Centric Reporting (CCR) and how this has negatively impacted CCR effectiveness. These contributions begin in Chapter II with a genealogical literature review to show how the earliest uses of design science involved synthesizing the governmental accounting knowledge of both researchers and practitioners. In Chapter III, a design science paradigm synthesizes practitioner behavior around disclosures with correlational evidence from Washington State that school districts may be forced to choose between GAAP compliance and better performance on citizen-salient metrics, in keeping with Baber and Gore’s (2008) resource-constraint prediction. Finally, in Chapter IV, the design science DAGS Framework is used to analyze the CCR and its creators’ design goals. The CCR was deployed based on practitioner experience rather than an explicit design model, and there has been limited study of the CCR’s intent or effectiveness. Chapter IV involves interviewing the surviving creators of the CCR to determine the implicit design decisions, and judging whether the CCR fulfills its intended purpose under the constraints of those design decisions.
Open Access
The Influence of Affect Regulation on Professional Skepticism
(2023-03-28) Osecki, Errol David; Thorne, Linda
Variances in professional skepticism are a primary cause of audit deficiencies, and thus understanding how these variations happen is of keen interest to practitioners, standard-setter, and regulators so that they can better manage professional skepticism. To this end, academics have created successively more explanatory professional skepticism models. One factor known to cause variations in professional skepticism is affect, yet how it causes these variations is still not understood as the most current models cannot explain why negative affect has been found to both increase and decrease professional skepticism. The purpose of this dissertation is to build a more explanatory model of professional skepticism with respect to affect by asking and answering the question, how does affect produce variations in professional skepticism? To answer the question, I first conduct a review of professional skepticism literature and relevant affect literature to identify affect regulation as a notable theory currently excluded from professional skepticism models. Affect regulation predicts people anticipate affect as it is being generated and change their behaviour to either up- or down-regulate the affect in service of some goal. This is notable as it can explain the contradictory results with respect to negative affect and professional skepticism observed in the literature. I further investigate this with an interview study, the results of which further support the inclusion of affect regulation into a new model of professional skepticism. Then, these insights are combined to create a new model of professional skepticism. Finally, I calibrate the model with an online experiment, the results of which fail to find significant results. Taken together, the new model of professional skepticism developed herein better explains how variations in professional skepticism occur and is of use to those looking to better manage affect to optimize professional skepticism.
Open Access
I'll Believe It When I See It: Widespread Use of Organizational Diversity Statements Undermines Perceived Sincerity and Organizational Attraction
(2022-12-14) Varty,Christianne; Hideg, Ivona
As diversity has become highly valued, organizational diversity statements as a means to attract prospective applicants have become widespread and normative. Consequently, it is critical to understand in this context whether they are effective at enhancing applicant attraction. Drawing on and integrating a signalling perspective of organizational initiatives (Bowen & Ostroff, 2004; Leslie, 2019) with the literature on authenticity (Lehman et al., 2019), I theorize that awareness of the prevalence of organizational diversity statements undermines a prospective applicant’s attraction to the organization because of lower perceived sincerity of the organization’s commitments. In Study 1 using qualitative methods and a sample of organizational diversity statements (i.e., Fortune 100), I establish that statements are indeed highly prevalent and sophisticated. I follow up on this finding with an experiment in Study 2 testing the negative effects of awareness of this prevalence on applicant attraction via decreased perceived sincerity. Next, I identify and test potential factors to mitigate this negative effect on applicant attraction to the organization by intervening on the proposed mediator of perceived sincerity. In Study 3, I appeal to values and particularly diversity as a social responsibility (vs. the business case for diversity) which I expect to be perceived as more sincere and which should thus increase applicant attraction even for those made aware of the prevalence of statements. Finally, in Study 4, I examine whether providing evidence of an organization’s accountability for making progress (i.e., workforce demographic data) can boost perceived sincerity by helping applicants see the organization as living up to its claims. Theoretical and practical implications of this work will be discussed.
Open Access
Governance and Responsibilities in the Context of Digital Platforms: Three Essays on the Interplay between Platform Governance and the Political Role of the Corporation
(2022-12-14) Fadlallah, Hussein; Phillips, Robert; Matten, Dirk
This dissertation sheds light on the critical research topic of platform governance defined broadly as the manner in which platform owners incentivize and influence the participation of autonomous users within their respective digital platforms. Platform governance – especially as it pertains to the exercise of voice – presents important challenges to traditional conceptions of the roles and responsibilities of private corporations. The dissertation comprises of three essays (chapters 2, 3, and 4) that collectively study (i) the political underpinnings of platform governance, (ii) the political roles and responsibilities that platform owners undertake within their respective platforms, and (iii) the intellectual structure that denotes extant research into the political role of the corporation. The first essay (chapter 2) reviews extant research into the political role of the corporation as a precursor for the study of platform governance. Using Web of Science to source a dataset of political articles published in management outlets and bibliometric techniques, I highlight the gaps and opportunities that denote extant research and propose a subsequent research agenda. The second essay (chapter 3) examines the limitations of underpowered conceptions of platform governance and proposes an alternative conception informed by political research within management. The study develops the arguments through invoking multiple literature strands coupled with three mini case studies that are leveraged for illustrative purposes. The third essay (chapter 4) examines the political mediator role of platforms owners through which they govern the engagement between platform communities and their respective political sphere. Using an inductive qualitative study of Twitter, I unpack the political practices and activities that denote platform governance. The practices are further contextualized by several factors that influence their adoption by platform owners. Collectively, the essays contribute to platform governance research through bringing fresh insights into extant understanding of the expansive roles and responsibilities of corporations in the digital age.
Open Access
Digitization of Financial Services and Firm Performance
(2022-12-14) Cao, Ting; Rungtusanatham, M. Johnny
This dissertation focuses on the digitization of financial services in financial institutions (FIs) and investigates whether and how digitization efforts can help firms improve their performance. We conduct two studies each answering key questions from a different angle. Study 1 starts with the increasing digital investments of FIs and investigates whether FIs can gain positive returns from their investment in emerging digital technologies. Given the lack of proper tools to measure how well FIs have utilized their digital investments, we propose a new approach using data envelopment analysis to capture returns on investment in digital technologies. Additionally, we adopt a two-stage analysis to further investigate the factors that could potentially improve the returns. Our findings show that FIs have had decreasing returns on investments in digital technologies over time. Particularly, it is the inefficient resource management, rather than the invested technologies themselves, that prevent FIs from realizing the benefits of digital investment. We suggest that it is essential for FIs to continuously assess and monitor the implementation of their digital investments and learn how to optimally deploy technological resources internally. Our study also shows that FIs can gain better performance by actively enhancing their innovation capability and collaborating with FinTech firms. Study 2 turns to the digitization of existing services that FIs provide to individual customers and examines whether elevating digitization capability would improve performance. We first define a new construct to capture the ability of FIs to actively utilize emerging digital technologies to digitize service offerings. We then propose a new theoretical model in which the drivers and outcomes of building digitization capability are linked together. To empirically test the model, we collect both primary data from a well-designed, web-based survey and secondary data from FI annual reports. We first show that elevating digitization capability is indeed beneficial for FIs to gain better performance. We also show that focusing on digital-savvy customers and aligning the front-office back-office process are two important drivers for FIs in the development of their digitization capability, and these efforts also indirectly help improve performance.
Open Access
Influencing a Field: The Role of Influencers in the Cosmetics Industry
(2022-12-14) Taltekin Guzel, Gulay; Fischer, Eileen Mary
The study explores the influx of influencers in the markets and how they change the practices of consumers by employing practice theoretics as enabling lens. It focuses on cosmetics industry by employing a multi-method qualitative approach including archival research, observational netnography and interview with consumers as well as professionals in the industry including influencers; brand owners and managers; marketing, talent and influencer agency professionals; makeup artists and lastly; a cosmetics magazine editor. Our preliminary findings consist of two level of change introduced by the influx of influencers to the market. The first one is practice entity changes including complexification of practice entities and valorization of new goals/meanings. Entity level changes are available to grasp or ignore by consumers and they are observed at the market level. On the other hand, consumer performance changes are the responses of consumers to practice entity changes. They are diversification, perfecting and rejecting strategies to plug and unplug changes into cosmetics practices. Therefore, the research aims to explain now only the institutional change brought by the influx of the influencers in the markets but also how consumption practices are shaped by consumers by responding to those changes in their daily routines. The study offers theoretical and practical implications as well as future research directions.
Open Access
When Your Outrage Is Not Mine: Consumer Responses to Expressions of Online Outrage towards Brands
(2022-12-14) Kermani, Mohammad Saeid; Darke, Peter R.
In the digital age, it is common for consumers to encounter expressions of moral condemnation towards brands and their marketing activities. These expressions of moral disapproval tend to have emotional overtones of outrage. Public expressions of outrage can serve to alert bystanders towards the presence of a norm violations and encourage others to also condemn the triggering event. Thus, outrage can serve as a tool for social influence. However, moral values can be held with deep conviction and consumers oftentimes encounter outrage that conflicts with personal values. In the present work, I explore situational factors in which outrage towards a brand can fail to influence observing-consumers to appraise the target brand negatively. Across eight studies (N = 2277), we address two questions: 1) How do consumers respond to outrage expressed towards a brand’s social value marketing campaign? 2) Is outrage effective in persuading observing-consumers to respond negatively towards potentially offensive advertisements? In examining the first research question, participants were presented social marketing campaigns with accompanying expressions of disapproval towards these campaigns that varied in terms of outrage. Across five studies, our findings suggest that outrage towards social value marketing campaigns can increase brand support among consumers who share the brand’s values. We find that this is because outrage (versus disapproval alone) is more threatening to those values. In examining the second research question, participants were presented potentially offensive advertisements with accompanying expressions of disapproval towards these advertisements that varied in terms of outrage. Across three studies, we provide evidence that the propensity of outrage in persuading observing-consumers to respond negatively towards potentially offensive advertisements is contingent on the severity of the ad’s norm violation. Furthermore, we demonstrate that expressions of disapproval without outrage can be more effective in persuading observers to evaluate brand’s negatively when the ad’s norm violation is perceived to be mild (versus more severe). This is because outrage in these instances can be perceived to be inappropriate reactions. Taken together, these findings suggest that outrage towards brands does not necessarily lead to negative brand consequences.