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Online photos as a form of media have risen to prominence in e-commerce and online travel booking contexts. Photos possess superior power in attracting attention and communicating experiences; however, the elements of a hotel photo that render a hotel attractive, and how this initial attraction can translate into consumers’ booking-related behavior, remain largely ambiguous. By addressing these research gaps and building upon existing evidence, this study links the visual elements of hotel photos to customers’ booking-related behavior through individuals’ environmental perceptions. More specifically, this study examines relationships among local content objects and their features and global graphic features of hotel photos, individuals’ induced environmental perceptions, and actual consumer behavior in the browsing stage (i.e., hotel property page visitation) and deliberation stage (i.e., clicking on a third-party site for booking). Findings extend Bitner’s theoretical servicescape framework to mediated contexts and provide practical implications regarding the curation of hotels’ online marketing photos. / Tourism and Sport

This dissertation includes two chapters. In Chapter 1, “Information Risk and the Cost of Equity Capital Revisited: Evidence from the U.S. Property-Casualty Insurance Industry”, I revisit the relationship between information risk and the cost of equity capital in the U.S. property-casualty (P-C) insurance industry. Eckles, Halek and Zhang (2014) find that information risk has no effect on the cost of equity using a sample of U.S. P-C insurers. Following their approach, we decompose information risk into innate and discretionary components. I find that innate information risk affects the cost of equity capital through two opposing channels. On the one hand, innate information risk directly increases an insurer’s cost of equity capital by increasing investors’ assessment of the riskiness of the insurer’s future cash flows. On the other hand, innate information risk indirectly decreases the insurer’s cost of equity capital by changing its production so that the assessed riskiness of the firm’s future cash flows are reduced. This (negative) indirect effect depends on factors that influence the insurer’s underwriting decisions. My empirical results provide supporting evidence for a significant, positive direct effect of innate information risk, while the magnitude of the (negative) indirect effect increases with the insurer’s proportion of long-tail business and decreases with its affiliated reinsurance usage. As to the impact of discretionary information risk, my results are mixed. I also find that, on average, the overall effect of information risk on the cost of equity capital for property-casualty insurers is significant and negative. In Chapter 2, “Coordination of Capital, Earnings, and Taxes in the U.S. Property-Casualty Insurance Industry”, I investigate how property-casualty (P-C) insurers manage discretionary tools to achieve regulatory capital, earnings, and tax planning goals. I examine one accrual tool, loss reserve errors, together with two real transaction tools: realized capital gains (losses) from investment sales, and capital contributions. I find that when P-C insurers have lower pre-managed capital levels, managers will report income-increasing loss reserve errors, recognize more realized capital gains and receive more capital contributions. When P-C insurers have lower pre-managed earnings, managers will report income-increasing loss reserve errors. When P-C insurers have higher marginal tax rates, managers will report income-decreasing loss reserve errors and recognize more realized capital losses. Moreover, I analyze the effect of ownership structures on the degree of managerial discretion for various reporting goals. My analysis includes three different types of ownership structures: public, private stock and mutual firms. I find that, through the use of capital contributions, public firms are more aggressive in capital management, while mutual firms are less aggressive in capital management than private stock firms. In terms of using the other two tools, compared to private stock firms, public firms do not manage capital less aggressively; they do not manage earnings more aggressively; they do not manage taxes less aggressively. Compared to private stock firms, mutual firms are less aggressive in capital management; they are more aggressive in earnings management; they are less aggressive in tax management. / Business Administration/Risk Management and Insurance

The knowledge base of an academic medical center is elaborate and far-reaching as the sources of expertise can be found in multiple networks of learning and management within the organization. Therefore, it is incumbent for professionals within a healthcare ecosystem to utilize external collaboration. This research explored open innovation processes between different academic medical centers with biomedical and genomic research institutions and biopharmaceutical companies with the intention to develop new insights that would maximize the probability of successful collaborative academic-industry knowledge creation. Through exploratory research consisting of a literature review and semi-structured interviews of senior-level managers and top-of-field researchers, it became evident that both individuals and organizations employed critical success strategies for open innovation orchestration by fostering trust, identifying motivating factors, continuously developing collaborative knowledge sharing with top-management support and lowering barriers to collaboration through project-level processes and procedures, but not without experiencing scientist-manager tension in the process. This study provided a relatively rare series of insights into the senior-level collaboration views and issues between those scientists and managers within several major academic-industry strategic alliances. / Business Administration/Strategic Management

This study investigates the concept of lifecycle stage and how, specifically in New Technology Base Firms (NTBFs), lifecycle stage can provide a more refined understanding of many of the relationships people have investigated, and would like to investigate, around NTBFs. This paper is broken up into a series of studies looking at specific areas of existing research of NTBFs, namely the attributes of a CEO and their relationship with firm success as well as previously discovered determinants of innovation within NTBFs, and provides an understanding of how the lifecycle phase of a firm impacts the conclusions within this existing research. The objective of this research is to demonstrate the importance of lifecycle stage as a key variable to be considered when studying NTBFs, and to help increase the predictiveness and generalizability of existing research to enable it to be more effectively translated into best practices used by practitioners. / Business Administration/Strategic Management

Millennials are entering the workforce in droves and quickly becoming dominant players in the workforce. However, this generation has a reputation for their lack of loyalty to their employers and their tendency to job hop from one role to the next. Given the cost to recruit, hire, and train their replacements, it’s imperative to understand what motivates this generation of workers and how to incentivize them to stay with their current employers. The focus of this research is to explore the relationship between employee generation and turnover intentions, and how employee generation interacts with predictors of employee turnover intentions. / Business Administration/Interdisciplinary

Business leaders have a fiduciary responsibility to act in the best interests of the organization and its shareholders. The decisions made by these leaders impact organizational performance. The power held by a CEO is not absolute because the board of directors has oversight responsibility. Depending on the level of governance, this creates a tension between the board and management. Beyond these two parties, there are a broad range of stakeholders who also exhibit influence and are increasingly socially conscious. This focus has made leaders more pressed to consider the need for initiatives related to corporate social responsibility (CSR), especially community engagement and diversity. As this study focused on CEO power and diversity, the research found support for the positive relationship between CEO power and select types of firm performance and the positive association between diversity and profitability. The second study continued to focus on organizations but focused on politics, organizational slack, and financial indicators. The research explored how political representation at the federal level is connected to the setting of organizational slack, which comes in various categories such as human, potential, and available. The slack resources are defined as excess capacity located within or outside of the firm and accessible immediately or in the future. The study aimed to determine if there was a connection between slack and financial outcomes, specifically returns on equity and assets, and credit risk ratings. An interaction effect of CEO power was also investigated on the relationship between slack and profitability. This research identified support for the positive relationship between politics and human slack and that of potential slack and profitability indicators with a moderation effect. / Business Administration/Human Resource Management

The aim of this research is to gather and analyze data to understand the impact that Human Resource Outsourcing (HRO) has on small businesses. For this research, small business is defined as a firm in any industry with more than 50 employees but fewer than 150 employees. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) 18% of small businesses will fail within their first year and of those 82% that do survive 50% will fail after five years. Business owners have cited cash flow problems, inadequate management personnel and lack of employee retention as the top reasons for failure. Human Resource Management (HRM) accounts for 67% of the reasons business owners give for failure of their business. Key indicators of small business success are employees and corporate culture, product and service growth, cash flow, and customer loyalty. Therefore, we aim to answer the research question: How does Human Resource Outsourcing impact small businesses?To investigate this question, the research used a mixed-methods approach: including a qualitative, grounded theory study and a positivist, quantitative study. Areas of study include identifying the knowledge base and skill set of small business owners when it comes to the subject of HRM; investigate the correlation between Organizational Support Theory (OST) and HRO and how it impacts the employee’s life cycle at a small business. The range of outcomes focused on both employee effects and corporate effects. Employee effects were engagement and retention that were concerns of the business owners. Corporate effects will include culture and organizational support. This research validates two new findings: 1) engagement can be fostered through HRO, and 2) the employee perspective of HRO establishing organizational support. Keywords: Human Resource Outsourcing, Human Resource Management, Small Businesses, Employee Engagement, Corporate Culture, Organizational Support Theory / Business Administration/Human Resource Management

The diversification strategy is a growth strategy commonly adopted by modern enterprises. Since the reform, the diversification process of Chinese enterprises has been ups and downs in over 30 years. It is started from 1980s, the diversification wave is at its peak in the 1990s, and the business occurred with obstruction in the late 1990s. Entering the 21st century, Chinese companies are still hovering at the fork between focusing on the main business and diversifying. It is still being determined which of the two is better for enhancing corporate value. Review past studies, the relationship between diversification and corporate value has mainly focused on a specific industry, and there are fewer studies on all A-shares companies. Based on that, our research revolves around the core issue: the relationship between diversified management and corporate value. After reviewing the related literature at domestic and abroad, we define the two key research concepts of diversification and corporate value. It summarizes the theoretical and empirical research results on the relationship between "diversification-corporate value". Based on existing research, this study first conducts a panel regression analysis on the companies in the A-share market. Then it conducts a heterogeneous analysis of the top 9 industries to compare the relationship between corporate diversification and corporate value among different industries. To clarify whether the influence relationship is consistent and which industries are suitable for diversification. In response to the above research questions, this study uses the ten-year data of China's A-share listed companies from 2012 to 2021. We use STATA software for panel data regression analysis. It shows a "diversification discount" relationship between the overall diversification of enterprises in China's A-share market and corporate value. The higher the degree of enterprise diversification, the lower the enterprise value. The reason for this may be that the resource allocation capabilities of most enterprises in China need to be optimized urgently. In addition, for most manufacturing industries, diversification negatively impacts corporate value enhancement, while for some service industries, diversification benefits corporate value enhancement. The practical enlightenment of this study to Chinese enterprises is that enterprises need to consider diversification strategies carefully and dialectically view the complex impact of diversification on corporate value. Enterprises should focus on building core competencies. Only by forming a good level of resources and market forces can they form solid support for implementing the diversification strategy to promote corporate value through diversified operations. / Business Administration/Finance