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Thesis (Ph.D.)--Drexel University, 2010. / Includes abstract and vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 90-95).

How can people's risk preferences be understood? Work from prospect theory (Kahneman & Tversky, 1979) claimed that not only are people risk averse in the gain domain, but people are also risk seeking in the loss domain. Nonetheless, different opinions have appeared (e.g. March & Shapira, 1987; Sitkin & Pablo, 1992) casting doubt on the claim that people seek risk only in the loss domain; this is considered a fundamental disagreement about prospect theory. In order to bridge this gap, theoretical justification was examined in this study and it was found this disagreement originated from the arbitrary criterion of evaluating utility that was from an assumption on which prospect theory relied. Therefore, risk taking also exists in the gain domain. Based on this argument, three studies were developed to investigate risk preference when the decision making is framed in the gain domain. In order to predict people's risk preference in the gain domain, an Affect Venture Decision Making Model was proposed and examined in study one and two. On the basic of a dynamic learning experiment design, the third study found that not only are people able to be risk taking in the gain domain, risk preference even is reversed (most of people select to taking a risk) under some conditions of when individual's prior experience and knowledge are controlled for. The Affect Venture Decision Making Model was also systematically supported by the three studies. This suggests potential theoretical advances and presents new empirical evidence in this domain. / In study one, the decision of new venture creation is framed in the gain domain. 217 undergraduate students at The Chinese University of Hong Kong undertook the study. As a result, 30 percent of participants selected to create new venture, the risky choice. Further, in order to predict rather than describe people's risk preference between creating new venture and working in a stable firm, an affect venture decision making model was proposed. The results support the affect venture decision making model. It is found that subjective probability moderates the association between subjective value and risk preference; the association between the intensity of immediate anxiety and risk preference is also moderated. / In study three, the theoretical question arises to justify whether emotions are rational or irrational in explaining the decision making and judgment. The decision making performance does not draw a convincing conclusion in judging emotion as rational and irrational. Therefore, different accounts of rationality were reviewed in this conceptual work. With the fading of instrumental rationality in understanding people's rationality, bounded rationality, adaptive rationality, and game rationality have appeared in the literature. After reviewing the terminology of rationality, this study proposed that emotions are able to be rational since it holds expressive rationality and functional rationality. Cognition can not solve the issue of uncertainty completely. In order to examine the proposed argument, 206 undergraduate students at The University of Queensland were recruited to take part in the online experiment. Three conditions were manipulated. The results replicated the findings in study one and two, which examine that the proposed affect venture decision making model can be generalized into different decision scenarios and different samples. / Keywords. Risk preference, gain domain, affect, new venture creation, rationality / Study two examines emotional process in predicting the decision parameters proposed in the affect venture decision making model. Multiple expected emotions on the possible success or failure of creating new venture are studied to address (1) How much influence do the discrete multiple emotions have on the decision making process of creating new venture? (2) How is subjective judgment affected by these emotions? The empirical results support the affect decision making model. It is found that hope, regret, and surprise significantly predict the judgment of the subjective value and subjective probability. The study found that value judgment is more tasks specific. Probability judgment is influenced by both trait emotions and expected emotions elicited by the possible outcome of starting-up. / Li, Yan. / Adviser: David Ahlstrom. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 70-06, Section: A, page: 2134. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2008. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 137-142). / Electronic reproduction. Hong Kong : Chinese University of Hong Kong, [2012] System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader. Available via World Wide Web. / Electronic reproduction. [Ann Arbor, MI] : ProQuest Information and Learning, [200-] System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader. Available via World Wide Web. / Electronic reproduction. Ann Arbor, MI : ProQuest dissertations and theses, [201-] System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader. Available via World Wide Web. / Abstracts in English and Chinese. / School code: 1307.

Thesis (M.A.)--Royal Roads University (Canada), 2007. / Includes bibliographical references.

One of the major challenges facing cricket unions today is getting adequate funding; on the other hand, one of the challenges facing businesses are the hundreds of unsolicited sponsorship proposals they receive annually. This study investigated the business decision-making process for selecting sponsorship proposals, specifically to contribute to the cricket unions’ understanding of the formal selection process that the sponsorship proposal goes through. The primary objective of the study was to determine the degree to which businesses follow the decision-making process when selecting a sponsorship opportunity. The research study was based on a descriptive research design. First, a theoretical discussion of sponsorship within the marketing communication mix was conducted to illustrate that a sponsorship is a product that the business must purchase, and therefore they use the decision-making process to choose among different sponsorship opportunities. The business decision-making process was discussed in further detail for selecting sponsorship proposals. Primary data was collected by means of a web-based questionnaire. A convenience sample was used to distribute the questionnaire to sponsors of the sixteen cricket unions in South Africa. The nature of a sponsorship relationship is rather sensitive; therefore a complete list of all the sponsors could not be compiled. A total of 39 respondents participated in the study. The sample was not representative, and therefore the results are only valid for those respondents who participated in the study. The results indicated that respondents were most likely to set product/brand/service objectives and media objectives for their sponsorships. All the sponsorship objectives are equally important to the respondents from the medium and large sponsors, except for guest hospitality objectives which are deemed more important by large sponsors than the respondents from medium sponsors. With regard to decision-making criteria, respondents found positioning/image criteria as very important during a sponsorship decision. The role-players identified by the respondents who most frequently participate in the decision-making process are the marketing manager, public relations manager, CEO or owner. With regard to the degree to which businesses follow the decisionmaking process, it was found that large sponsors are more likely to follow a fairly formal evaluation process than medium sponsors. It is recommended that cricket unions need to focus on the decision-making criteria and objectives that are deemed important by sponsors, and that they should also include these aspects in their sponsorship proposals. With regard to medium and large sponsors, cricket unions should focus on providing large sponsors with more guest hospitality opportunities; they must also prepare their proposals for a formal decision-making process as compared the less formal approach followed by medium sponsors when reviewing sponsorship applications. Recommendations for future research include that a similar study should be conducted with a large sample size, to be able to identify if statistical significant differences do exist for different size sponsors. A probability sample should be used, to be able to obtain data that is representative of the entire population. The limitations of the study, such as financial and time constraints, prevented from achieving all the recommendations for future research set out above. / Thesis (M.Com. (Marketing Management))--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2012

This dissertation is two essays in business decision-making. The first essay is motivated by recent field evidence suggesting significant reliance on conventional techniques (e.g. NPV and DCF) without assessment of the decision profile - its degree of uncertainty, ambiguity and knowledge distribution. However, without knowing the decision profile, the chosen decision might not be appropriate given the decision situation. Therefore, essay 1 develops a multi-faceted conceptualization of the decision profile and provides a prescriptive model for choosing appraisal methods based on this profile. Specifically, it prescribes the limited use of conventional methods to low ambiguity and uncertainty situations and using decision trees, real options, scenario planning and case-based methods as the level of uncertainty increases. In high ambiguity situations, however, the only viable approaches are case-based methods which do not have perfect information assumption that conventional alternative methods do. Case-based methods have been supported theoretically in case-based decisions and case-based reasoning literature but lags in its use in business decision-making. Possible reasons for this include a lack of concrete applications and developments of major concepts such as its case memory, similarity and prediction functions. Therefore, essay 2 proposes a model of case-based decisions called similarity-based forecasting (SBF) and applies it to a high uncertainty and ambiguity situation -- namely forecasting movie success. In doing so, it outlines operational definitions of the memory, similarity and prediction functions and, based on data from the entertainment industry, provides empirical support for the hypothesis that case-based methods can be more accurate than regression forecasting; both SBF and combined SBF-regression models were able to predict movie gross revenues with 40% and 50% greater accuracy than regression respectively. This essay concludes with a discussion of some possible directions for future research including applications using data from other domains and settings, testing the boundary conditions for which the SBF approach should be applied, experiments using SBF under uncertainty and complexity manipulations, and 'time stamped' comparisons with predictions made using information markets (e.g. Hollywood Stock Exchange).

This study investigates if companies that actively use export information have higher export growth rates or greater satisfaction with export performance measures than non-users. Organizational communication structures relating to information flow to decision makers is investigated to provide further insight into the role of export information. The study is based upon the knowledge utilization theory which states company/user characteristics are as important to information utilization as the characteristics of the specific piece of information. Bivariate analysis does not indicate a direct relationship between information use and reported higher export growth rates over the past four years. However, there are indications of divergence in how information users and non-users view and utilize information. One critical finding is that information users have a statistically significant relationship toward symbolic utilization of export information. Additional differences were observed in third-party information use versus monitoring world news to evaluate export operations. The study investigates company characteristics against the three components of knowledge utilization (instrumental, conceptual and symbolic use) and the five components of information use (competitive advantage, information acquisition/need, influence of information on decisionmaking, organizational learning and organizational knowledge/information processing).

One of the major challenges facing cricket unions today is getting adequate funding; on the other hand, one of the challenges facing businesses are the hundreds of unsolicited sponsorship proposals they receive annually. This study investigated the business decision-making process for selecting sponsorship proposals, specifically to contribute to the cricket unions’ understanding of the formal selection process that the sponsorship proposal goes through. The primary objective of the study was to determine the degree to which businesses follow the decision-making process when selecting a sponsorship opportunity. The research study was based on a descriptive research design. First, a theoretical discussion of sponsorship within the marketing communication mix was conducted to illustrate that a sponsorship is a product that the business must purchase, and therefore they use the decision-making process to choose among different sponsorship opportunities. The business decision-making process was discussed in further detail for selecting sponsorship proposals. Primary data was collected by means of a web-based questionnaire. A convenience sample was used to distribute the questionnaire to sponsors of the sixteen cricket unions in South Africa. The nature of a sponsorship relationship is rather sensitive; therefore a complete list of all the sponsors could not be compiled. A total of 39 respondents participated in the study. The sample was not representative, and therefore the results are only valid for those respondents who participated in the study. The results indicated that respondents were most likely to set product/brand/service objectives and media objectives for their sponsorships. All the sponsorship objectives are equally important to the respondents from the medium and large sponsors, except for guest hospitality objectives which are deemed more important by large sponsors than the respondents from medium sponsors. With regard to decision-making criteria, respondents found positioning/image criteria as very important during a sponsorship decision. The role-players identified by the respondents who most frequently participate in the decision-making process are the marketing manager, public relations manager, CEO or owner. With regard to the degree to which businesses follow the decisionmaking process, it was found that large sponsors are more likely to follow a fairly formal evaluation process than medium sponsors. It is recommended that cricket unions need to focus on the decision-making criteria and objectives that are deemed important by sponsors, and that they should also include these aspects in their sponsorship proposals. With regard to medium and large sponsors, cricket unions should focus on providing large sponsors with more guest hospitality opportunities; they must also prepare their proposals for a formal decision-making process as compared the less formal approach followed by medium sponsors when reviewing sponsorship applications. Recommendations for future research include that a similar study should be conducted with a large sample size, to be able to identify if statistical significant differences do exist for different size sponsors. A probability sample should be used, to be able to obtain data that is representative of the entire population. The limitations of the study, such as financial and time constraints, prevented from achieving all the recommendations for future research set out above. / Thesis (M.Com. (Marketing Management))--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2012

This dissertation is two essays in business decision-making. The first essay is motivated by recent field evidence suggesting significant reliance on conventional techniques (e.g. NPV and DCF) without assessment of the decision profile - its degree of uncertainty, ambiguity and knowledge distribution. However, without knowing the decision profile, the chosen decision might not be appropriate given the decision situation. Therefore, essay 1 develops a multi-faceted conceptualization of the decision profile and provides a prescriptive model for choosing appraisal methods based on this profile. Specifically, it prescribes the limited use of conventional methods to low ambiguity and uncertainty situations and using decision trees, real options, scenario planning and case-based methods as the level of uncertainty increases. In high ambiguity situations, however, the only viable approaches are case-based methods which do not have perfect information assumption that conventional alternative methods do. Case-based methods have been supported theoretically in case-based decisions and case-based reasoning literature but lags in its use in business decision-making. Possible reasons for this include a lack of concrete applications and developments of major concepts such as its case memory, similarity and prediction functions. Therefore, essay 2 proposes a model of case-based decisions called similarity-based forecasting (SBF) and applies it to a high uncertainty and ambiguity situation -- namely forecasting movie success. In doing so, it outlines operational definitions of the memory, similarity and prediction functions and, based on data from the entertainment industry, provides empirical support for the hypothesis that case-based methods can be more accurate than regression forecasting; both SBF and combined SBF-regression models were able to predict movie gross revenues with 40% and 50% greater accuracy than regression respectively. This essay concludes with a discussion of some possible directions for future research including applications using data from other domains and settings, testing the boundary conditions for which the SBF approach should be applied, experiments using SBF under uncertainty and complexity manipulations, and 'time stamped' comparisons with predictions made using information markets (e.g. Hollywood Stock Exchange).