Overall my dissertation work tries to capture a holistic view of the various complex interactions that occur in technology development, implementation, adoption and diffusion, in the context of three industries by examining issues that arise due to regulation of technology. Essay 1 focuses on the social media industry, which is in the early stage of the industrial life cycle, and is the foci of government attention for its ill effect on society. Results from the study (N= 647 employed adults in the US) supported hypotheses related to the antecedents and outcomes of platform utilization in the context of the three regulation dimensions. Essay 2 focuses on the automotive industry, which is in the growth stage of the industrial life cycle. Here the focus is on electric vehicles (EV) transitioning from the niches to the main market. Results from the longitudinal study (N = 429) support the moderating role of political activism on innovation capability of manufacturers and presence of ancillary services in the diffusion of different types of electric vehicles in the US market. Essay 3 focuses on the US healthcare industry, reflecting mature stage of industrial life cycle, yet also characterized with high cost and fragmentation of service. The …

Non-deal roadshows (NDR) are privately held one-on-one meetings between the buy-side of financial institutions and firm management. Using a novel dataset of these meetings, I examine the effects that NDR meetings have on the outcomes of two important corporate events: seasoned equity offerings (SEOs) and mergers and acquisitions (M&As). I also study the potential implications of the information content in NDRs on the behavior of stock returns following earnings announcements, which has been the subject of much academic work. I structure the dissertation in three essays. In the first essay, I examine the relationship between NDR activity and the underpricing of SEOs. I find that NDRs are associated with lower SEO underpricing. This association is stronger for firms with infrequent NDR activity, for smaller firms, and for firms with higher analysts' forecast errors. These findings suggest that NDRs reduce the level of asymmetric information between firms and investors, which results in a lower cost of raising equity. In Essay 2, I investigate whether the occurrence of NDR meetings affects post-earnings-announcement drift (PEAD). I find that PEAD declines after NDR activity when the most recent NDR meeting occurs within one month before the earnings announcement. This decline is most pronounced among …

Autonomous mobile robots (AMRs) use decentralized, AI-driven decision-making processes to providing material handling capabilities in industrial settings. Essay 1 examines how firms organize and engage to mitigate uncertainty during external technology integration (ETI), using an abductive approach with dyadic customer-supplier data to extend prior ETI models by exploring firm engagement, organizational adaptation, and distinct uncertainty types in AMR ETI projects. Essay 2 applies a grounded theory approach to examine AMR integration, using constant comparison and theoretical sampling to develop core categories explaining how suppliers, customers, and users exchange knowledge impacting AMR integration and project performance. Finally, Essay 3 is a conceptual paper examining the importance of end-user adoption by integrating ETI and technology acceptance model (TAM) frameworks, exploring important relationships between managerial interventions, cognitive constructs, user acceptance, and project success in AMR ETIs. As a whole, these essays contribute to the body of knowledge by extending the breadth and depth of current ETI models, emerging a substantive theory of AMR AIU, and extending TAM by grounding managerial interventions and individual cognitive constructs in an AMR context. Managers can use these frameworks to differentiate AMRs and other autonomous collaborative technology from traditional automation, and develop strategies enabling timely and effective AMR …

The purpose of our research is to empirically test how system attributes of blockchain build trust through system and information components in blockchain food traceability systems. Findings showed that system attributes of blockchain are strong predictors of trust leading to intention to purchase. A sample of 358 responses were collected from college students through online survey. SmartPLS 3.0 is adopted for data analysis. We made contributions by building a new research model to guide future studies on trust formation in blockchain based systems as well as informing practice to adopt proven features of blockchain to create and capture values for customers.

This dissertation provides empirical and theoretical support for the antecedents and consequences of cyber resilience via three essays on cyber resilience. Essay 1 comprises 2 studies using a multi-method empirical research effort to determine whether emphasizing suppliers' implementation and use of business continuity management (S-BCM) is actually beneficial to buyers. In Study 1, data from 150 managers was collected via a survey-based questionnaire to determine whether buyers' adoption of monitoring supplier operational performance (MS-OP) and monitoring S-BCM (MS-BCM) enhances S-BCM implementation and use. Evidence from Study 1 suggests that MS-BCM is more effective than MS-OP. Moreover, the results suggest that while buyer power positively augments the effectiveness of MS-BCM, it actually has a diminishing effect on the effectiveness of MS-OP. Study 2 uses the data of 114 managers from a vignette-based experiment to determine whether S-BCM leads to improved buyer operational and financial performance. Study 2 offers evidence that confirms the positive link between S-BCM and buyer operational and financial performance. The results also suggest that the use of reward power further enhances the association between S-BCM and buyer performance. Using two studies, Essay 2 examines how supply chain power and learning can be related to cyber resilience capability. Study …

Location-based ads are defined as any ads that are sent by an identified source to consumers' mobile devices when they are around the advertised product/store. Although mobile ad spending is said to have accounted for 68% of all digital ad spending in 2020, knowledge of how businesses can use mobile and location-based technology to reach their customers effectively is limited. Thus, the purpose of this three-essay format dissertation is to review the literature on LBA and identify the gaps in the literature and attempt to address a few of these gaps in the remaining two essays. The second essay tests an integrated model by examining the effects of the various retailer and consumer-controlled factors on two retail performances. In the third essay, we explore how LBA affects different dimensions of consumer-brand engagement. The results and findings provide important implications for retailers and brands to increase their performances.

This dissertation consists of three studies that collectively investigate the factors influencing the consumer adoption intention towards emerging healthcare technologies. Essay 1 systematically reviews the extent literature on healthcare technology adoption and serves as the theoretical foundation of the dissertation. It investigates different models that have been previously applied to study healthcare technology acceptance. Meta-analysis method is used to quantitatively synthesize the findings from prior empirical studies. Essay 2 posits, develops, and tests a comprehensive biotechnology acceptance model from the end-user's perspective. Two new constructs, namely, perceived risk and trust in technology, are integrated into the unified theory of acceptance and use of technology. Research hypotheses are tested using survey data and partial least square – structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM). Essay 3 extends the findings from the Essay 2 and further investigates the consumer's trust initiation and its effect on behavioral adoption intention. To achieve this purpose, Essay 3 posits and develops a trust model. Survey data allows testing the model using PLS-SEM. The models developed in this dissertation reflect significant modifications specific to the healthcare context. The findings provide value for academia, practitioners, and policymakers.

This dissertation consists of three studies that investigate the information privacy & security associated with healthcare technology use. Essay 1 PRISMA-style systematically reviews the existing literature on privacy information disclosure in IoT technology and serves as the theoretical foundation of the current research. It is crucial to comprehend why, how, and under what consequences individuals choose to disclose their personal and health information since doing so is beneficial to the company. This SLR method allows us to find those factors that significantly impact individuals' behavioral intention to disclose personal information while using IoT technologies. Essay 2 posits, develops, and tests a comprehensive theoretical framework built upon the theory of planned behavior and the health belief model to examine factors affecting willingness to disclose PHI in order to use WFDs. A research survey is designed and distributed to a crowdsourcing platform, Mechanical Turk (M-Turk). Research hypotheses are tested using partial least square – structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM). To achieve this purpose, Essay 3 extends the findings from the previous essay and further investigates the caregiver context. Therefore, we developed a novel theoretical model utilizing privacy calculus theory and the technology acceptance model to investigate the willingness of the elderly to disclose …

AI-enabled information systems (AI-enabled IS) offer enhanced utility and efficiency due to their knowledge-based endowments, enabling human agents to assign and receive tasks from AI-enabled IS. As a result, this leads to improved decision-making, ability to manage laborious jobs, and a decrease in human errors. Despite the performance-based endowments and efficiencies, there are significant ethical concerns regarding the use of and delegation to AI-enabled IS, which have been extensively addressed in the literature on the dark side of artificial intelligence (AI). Notable concerns include bias and discrimination, fairness, transparency, privacy, accountability, and autonomy. However, the Information Systems (IS) literature does not have a delegation framework that incorporates ethics in the delegation mechanism. This work seeks to integrate a mixed deontological-teleological ethical system into the delegation mechanism to (and from) AI-enabled IS. To that end, I present a testable model to ethically appraise various AI-enabled IS as well as ethically evaluate delegation to (and from) AI-enabled IS in various settings and situations.

Extant research on technology adoption provides limited insights into the extent of technology penetration into an organization's work routines, especially in collaborative efforts across supply chains. Further research is required to delve into the broader scope of permanent technology-based solutions that effectively tackle specific issues within the supply chain. This dissertation examines blockchain through three essays to fill these research gaps and contributes to blockchain-based supply chain collaboration and performance literature. Essay 1 examines supply chain behavioral drivers of blockchain assimilation by grounding the hypotheses on social network theory. Findings indicate that supply chain learning, collaboration, and network prominence will affect blockchain assimilation through a cross-sectional survey of supply chain professionals familiar with blockchain. It provides psychometrically validated scales for blockchain assimilation and network prominence, adding to the blockchain literature. Essay 2 builds on institutional theory to argue that peripheral organizations in the blockchain-based network will succumb to institutional pressures and that blockchain principles will require them to play crucial roles in supply chain collaboration efforts to gain legitimacy. By adopting a multi-method approach of a vignette-based experiment and a survey, the findings help supply chain collaboration practitioners manage institutional pressures across emerging blockchain-based systems, particularly for organizations in the …

Linguistic racism is faced by non-native customers due to their different language style when they go through the service exchange process. Despite its prevalence and importance, there is a dearth of research about linguistic racism in the marketing literature, especially from consumers' perspectives. This dissertation thus aims to address this gap by focusing on consumers' cognitive and affective responses as a result to their linguistic racism experiences when they interact with service employees (native speakers) from the host country. Toward this goal, first (Essay 1), a qualitative study is performed to anchor the dissertation in the customers' real-life experiences and to help identify key associated themes which are further empirically examined (Essay 2 & 3) in this three-essay format dissertation. Essay 2 empirically investigates if the identity assignment through ones' language style makes customers feel stigmatized and influence their psychological well-being. In addition, how these experiences subsequently influence their inclination to use technology-mediated interfaces. Similarly, the main objective of Essay 3 was to employ a sociological perspective to examine the impact of language-based chronic social exclusion on non-native customers' psychological and behavioral responses in the marketplace. Moreover, their intention to pay higher tip as a refocusing strategy when these customers …

As the workplace has evolved over the past few years, several studies have documented perceived differences in personalities, values, and preferences between generations in the workplace, including in public accounting. In this study, I examine whether exposure to a negative preconceived belief about a staff auditor's generation (generational stereotype) influences the affective state of staff auditors and ultimately causes them to reduce the extent to which they communicate with a client manager to gather the necessary information to perform an audit adequately. I also investigate whether attribute affirmation from a work buddy helps elicit positive affect to mitigate the effects that exposure to negative generational stereotypes may have on audit evidence collection. I conducted a 2 x 2 experiment using graduate auditing students as a proxy for staff auditors. I find that general affect (i.e., mood) rather than interpersonal affect (i.e., likability), drives the negative effect of exposure to generational stereotypes on willingness to collect more audit evidence. I also find that high levels of negative mood can negatively impact participants' self-efficacy. I, however, failed to find evidence of a moderated mediation. The presence of an attribute affirmation results in an insignificant increase in positive affect. When staff auditors are …

The dissertation analyzes three issues related to corporate environmental performance. In the first essay, I analyze the stock price reactions of the defendant firms and their peer firms to environmental lawsuits. Empirical evidence finds that the defendant and their peer firms experience negative and significant cumulative abnormal returns to the announcement of environmental lawsuits. Additionally, cross-sectional analyses find certain firm characteristics, such as profitability, growth opportunities and leverage can influence the market reaction. Furthermore, if the plaintiffs are government agencies or corporations instead of individual citizens, the defendant and peer firms experience higher negative market reactions. The second essay examines if a firm's environmental, social, and governance (ESG) performance can moderate the negative market response to environmental lawsuits. The results are mixed. The overall sample of the defendant and their peer firms show that ESG performance is not a significant factor in mitigating the negative market response. However, an interesting finding shows, for defendant and peer firms in the environmentally sensitive industries, better ESG ratings help reduce the adverse market reactions. The final essay investigates whether the defendant and peer firms improve their ESG performance in the next two years following the lawsuits. The results indicates that firms generally experience …

Limited literature examines the impact of the displacement of boundary-spanning employees artificial intelligence (AI). Scholars and practitioners appear focused on tangible benefits of AI adoption, and do not seem concerned by any less tangible and possibly untoward implications of worker (particularly boundary-spanning worker) displacement. My dissertation addresses this gap in the literature. In Essay 1, a qualitative study is performed to anchor the research on the appropriate ethnographic setting, the firms where this displacement phenomenon is taking place, by utilizing the Straussian grounded theory approach. The outcome of iterative coding of the first order data collected from the interviews and content analysis is a conceptual framework which amongst other findings shows how the unique competences of boundary-spanning employees and those of AI are best suited for different spectra of interorganizational collaborative activities. In Essays 2 and 3, I investigate major themes that emerged from Essay 1 utilizing quantitative and qualitative research methods in both studies. Initially I test research models using structural equation modelling on practitioner survey data, after which I probe further via focused interviews to better understand the survey results. The two papers allow us to put forth several theoretical and managerial contributions, specifically emphasizing the positive essential …

In this dissertation, I theorize on how gaslighting manifests in managerial and organizational settings. I discuss the process of gaslighting and how the use of various manipulation tactics manifests between people in organizations over time. I take three distinctive approaches to study this complex phenomenon. First, using a rich case study, I develop new theory to explain how one notorious child molester was able to sustain a career for decades while assaulting hundreds of children and young women. In doing so, I introduce the concept of gaslighting which previously has only been rigorously applied to intimate interpersonal relationships in domestic (e.g., at home) settings. In essay 2, I expand on the individual level theory developed in essay 1 to develop a more generalized theory of gaslighting in organizations. I situate gaslighting within a nomological net of related constructs and illustrate how gaslighting is a unique construct with different antecedents and consequences that occurs in organizations more often than it should. In my final essay, I build on one of the propositions developed in essay 2 and empirically test what antecedents are likely to influence whether or not a firm is accused of gaslighting on Twitter. Through doing so, I find …

In Essay 1, we seek to expand the insights on an individual's decision to share group content. Social networking sites (SNS) have become a ubiquitous means of socializing in the digital age. Using a survey, we collected data from 520 respondents with corporate work experience to test our research model. Our analysis highlights the complex interplay between individual and group factors that shape users' risk-benefit analysis of sharing group content on social networking sites. Furthermore, the results of this study have important implications for social networking site design and policy, particularly with regard to providing granular control over the privacy settings of group content and clear and concise information about the potential risks and benefits of sharing group content. Essay 2 aims to extend the knowledge of information security policy (ISP) compliance. Using a comprehensive approach, we extended the perspective of control mechanisms in the context of ISPs. It is evident that maintaining information security is an important concern for organizations of all sizes and industries. Organizations can establish policies and procedures to regulate and ensure compliance with information security policies, and various control mechanisms can be employed to ensure compliance. Among these control mechanisms, enforcement, punishment, evaluation, and recognition …

In 2018, global gross domestic product (GDP) was US$86.3 trillion, and almost a quarter of that value was due to international trade with a value of US$19.6 trillion. Air cargo accounts for about 35 percent of that trade value (approximately US$6.86 trillion). Moreover, from the perspective of the airport sector, air cargo revenue contributes between 20 to 70 percent of airport revenue. The global airport revenue for freight in 2018 was US$250 billion. Despite the interest and research activities surrounding competition and competitiveness of airports and specifically among airlines and passengers, it appears scholars have overlooked research concerning the competitiveness of airports when it comes to air cargo. This study attempts to fill the gap in the supply chain and logistics literature by putting forward a framework and ultimately operationalizing the framework highlighting the pivotal role of air cargo in the supply chain domain and within the global economy. Specifically, the framework is operationalized within the freight forwarding air cargo supply chain domain – providing insight into this important yet understudied phenomenon. The population of interest is freight forwarders from the Dubai International Airport, United Arab Emirates. The Middle East represents 18 percent of the world's air cargo volume and …

The purpose of my dissertation is to examine jurors' evaluation of auditor negligence in response to auditors' use of natural language processing (NLP). To test my research objective, I conducted a 2x2 between-subjects experiment with 175 jury-eligible individuals. In the online experiment, I manipulated whether the audit team analyzes contracts with NLP software or by having human auditors read the contracts. I also manipulated task complexity as complex or simple. The dependent variables include a binary verdict variable and a scaled assessment of negligence. This dissertation makes several contributions to the accounting literature and practice. First, it contributes to the recent juror literature on emerging technologies by providing evidence that jurors attribute higher negligence assessments to auditors when auditors use NLP to examine contracts than when human auditors examine contracts. I also find that auditors' use of NLP leads to jurors' higher perceived causation, which, in turn, increases jurors' assessments of auditor liability. Second, this study answers the call of other researchers to examine the relationship between task complexity and negligence in different settings. I also find a marginally significant interaction effect of the use of NLP compared to human auditors to perform audit testing that is greater for complex …

Managers rely on analytics to make decisions and the choice of the analytical method can influence their decision-making. This dissertation considers three cases and examines how the choice of analytical methods influence interpretations and implications. These areas are communication for health-related information in social media, health information technology investment by hospitals as it relates to patient satisfaction, and health related expenditure policies of countries. These studies develop theoretical models and empirically test them on primary or secondary data, comparing the performance of popular analytical methods. The conduct of these three studies contributes to a better understanding about the choice of analytical methods and allow development of a heuristic approach by offering guidelines for selecting an appropriate methodology. They demonstrate the value of heuristic approaches for use with non-traditional and traditional statistical methods, as the information gained from non-traditional methods (NNs) provides insights into traditional statistical methods, similar to insights gained from exploratory data analysis. The studies also show the value in examining any dataset with multiple methods because they either confirm each other or fail to confirm, providing insights.

Drawing attention to an under-examined process during organizational socialization, we develop theory to explain how newcomers' new organizational roles and social identities become embedded. The process of identities becoming embedded is influenced by how an individual's preexisting identities interact with new organizational identities during socialization. Perceived harmony relationships among identities indicate if newcomers experience identities interacting in a positive or negative manner generally. Using a network perspective, we suggest that the identity embeddedness of new roles and identities are indicated by: degree centrality in an intrapersonal identity harmony network, perceived harmony with the network itself, and the perceived cost of lacking harmony with a focal identity. Newcomers are likely to be more satisfied and engaged with identities with greater embeddedness as well as find such identities more salient. Organizations can work to embed their employees' new identities through initiating identity work directed towards increasing harmony perceptions among the newcomers' new organizational identities and preexisting identities. Through helping individuals create harmony relationships among identities, organizations can improve socialization outcomes.

This study examines the determinant and consequences of having a chief operating officer (COO). Specifically, we investigate chief executive officer (CEO) related factors that affect the choice to employ a COO and look into the impact of having a COO on firm operational efficiency using a data envelopment analysis (DEA)-based measure. Although prior literature has extensively investigated the role of CEOs and chief finance officers (CFOs) on firm outcomes, few studies focus on the impact of COOs. Thus, this study explores characteristics associated with the likelihood that a firm will have a COO. This research also sheds light on the effect of COOs on firm operational efficiency because the core duties of COOs include optimizing operational performance and improving cost efficiency. Our results imply that CEO busyness, CEO ability, CEO demographic characteristics, and CEO network size have a significant impact on the decision to employ a COO. We also find that firms that have a COO have a lower level of operational efficiency than firms that do not. This result implies that the cost of having a COO outweighs the benefit of having one. The effects last for three years on average. Further, we find that firms with a COO …

Traditional portfolio theory suggests that, in equilibrium, only the market risk is priced in the cross-section of expected stock returns. However, if the market is not perfect and investors are constantly changing investing behaviors based on their perceptions about future market outlook, then non-traditional risk factors could potentially provide significant power of describing the expected stock returns. This dissertation has two essays on the pricing of volatility, in which the market is not assumed to be frictionless or perfect. Essay 1 focuses on the pricing of individual volatility in penny stocks. Empirical results show that individual volatility plays an important role in describing the average cross-sectional returns of penny stocks. Resorting to the rolling portfolio approach, evidences indicate that portfolios consisting of penny stocks with high individual volatilities, on average, earned much higher returns than portfolios consisting of penny stocks with low individual volatilities. This effect is statistically significant when multiple factors are controlled simultaneously. Essay 2 focuses on the pricing of the market volatility among individual stocks. Following the rolling portfolio method, Essay 2 constructs portfolios that consist of individual stocks with various market volatility exposures. Traditional risk factors such as market beta, size, book-to-market, and momentum are controlled …

This dissertation examines whether managers influence corporate boards of directors in their auditor selection, change, and compensation decisions. This topic is important because it addresses concerns that the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 (SOX) is not effective in eliminating managerial influence over auditor engagement decisions and that it may provide a false sense of security to investors. These concerns are based on the implicit assumption that managers prefer weaker governance oversight and lower audit quality. However, empirical research testing associations between managerial influence and audit-related decisions post-SOX is scarce and generally guided by agency theory. Incorporating agency, stewardship, and resource dependence perspectives, I find that managerial preferences for auditor selection are not aligned. Specifically, CEOs positively influence the selection of higher quality auditors, whereas CFOs have the opposite effect. Further, CEOs who hold powerful roles as chairs of their companies' boards of directors appear to mitigate the negative influence of CFOs and inside directors on audit quality. CEOs serving in dual roles also oppose auditor turnover when lower earnings quality prompt higher demand for audit effort. Finally, my study provides some evidence that management exercises downward pressures on audit fees, suggesting that managers utilize their authority beyond the regulations established by …

This research introduces the unique context of immoral inaction—situations in which consumers have the opportunity to engage in virtuous behaviors but opt against doing so. Through five studies I demonstrate that in such contexts, embarrassment—a negatively valenced self-conscious moral emotion evoked by the perception that one's behavior is worthy of judgment by others—interacts with the use of approach-motivated coping strategies to lead consumers to engage in prosocial compensatory behaviors. Though extant literature suggests that marketers seeking to evoke prosocial behaviors should employ communications and promotions framed to elicit consumers' guilt, such studies are based in contexts whereby individuals feel guilty and/or embarrassed because of something they have done, not for something they did not do. This research suggests that that the condition of immoral inaction serves to evoke a contrasting psychological mechanism that reverses these findings, making embarrassment a more effective driver of desired outcomes when marketers seek to promote overcoming past inactions. These findings are discussed in light of their implications for research and application.