This paper conducts an analysis of the short-term Firm Value Enhancement that companies experience during large-scale advertising campaigns, such as the Super Bowl. The findings suggest that these firms may experience a positive or negative return during the days after a large event, by signaling to investors and consumers the value of their firm through their advertisements. Some of the highlights include an approximately – 5% return for Super Bowl Advertisers on the Monday after the event, and underperformance during the two weeks surrounding the event.

A presente dissertação trata de um estudo exploratório que visa identificar os principais fatores que levam os estudantes a decidirem sobre um curso de nível superior (3º grau). A amostra foi composta dentre quatro Instituições de Ensino Superior da cidade de Caxias do Sul/RS e totalizou 655 estudantes regularmente matriculados e de ambos os sexos, focando, preferencialmente, alunos do 1º ou do 2º semestre de seus cursos. As questões empregadas visaram identificar conclusões para o tema central da pesquisa – o processo de escolha de um curso de graduação. O instrumental teórico baseia-se na Teoria do Capital Humano e na Teoria da Sinalização. Os resultados revelaram que os fatores que determinam as escolhas são: a realização pessoal, aptidão ou vocação para o curso pretendido; as oportunidades no mercado de trabalho; a qualidade e o prestígio da Instituição e a possibilidade de ascensão financeira. Identificou-se também que a maioria dos estudantes escolheu o curso no último ano do ensino médio e às vésperas do vestibular e, além disso, eles têm certeza de que fizeram a escolha certa. / The present dissertation deals with an exploratory study that aims to identify the main factors that take the students to decide on a course of a college. The sample was chosen among four institutions from the city of Caxias do Sul/RS and totalized 655 students regularly registered and of both genders, focusing, preferentially, on students that were attending the 1st or 2nd semester of their courses. The employed questions were directed to identify conclusions to the central subject of the research – the process of choice of a graduation course. The theoretical instrument is based on the Human Capital Theory and the Signaling Theory. The results revealed that the factors that determine the choices are: the personal realization, aptitude or vocation for the intended course; the job opportunities; the prestige of the institution and the income perspectives. There was also identified that the major part of the students has chosen the course in the last year of the high school and very close to the vestibular and, furthermore, they are sure that they have made the right choice.

Doctor of Philosophy / Department of Psychological Sciences / Patrick Knight / Recruiters and recruitment materials can signal to job seekers certain aspects of the organization which may affect how attractive the organization appears as a potential employer (signaling theory; Rynes, Bretz, & Gerhart, 1991). Some signals received during recruitment can indicate that social-based inequalities and hierarchies may exist (social dominance theory; Sidanius & Pratto, 1999). It is possible that women might perceive themselves as part of a subordinate group in fields where they are underrepresented, such as the areas of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). The current research examines participant gender and the effects of using traditionally feminine words, masculine words, or neutral words in recruitment material on participants’ ratings of STEM program attractiveness and perceptions of institutional belonging. Furthermore, one’s goal orientation can influence the type of goal one is attracted to and whether it will be adopted; the current research looks at the effects of one’s goal orientation and how that is related to the person’s efficacy regarding STEM recruitment materials (Elliott & Dweck, 1988). Additionally, a goal orientation intervention was conducted in an attempt to influence participants’ situational learning goal orientations and measured efficacy. While the gendered wording of the recruitment material did not influence participants’ ratings of attraction and perceived belongingness, women rated the STEM recruitment material as more attractive than men. Additionally, participants’ learning goal orientation was found to have a significant influence on their measured efficacy. The results of this research have implications for recruiting female applicants to STEM programs/careers and suggestions for organizational interventions and best practices in order to positively affect job outcomes.

A presente dissertação trata de um estudo exploratório que visa identificar os principais fatores que levam os estudantes a decidirem sobre um curso de nível superior (3º grau). A amostra foi composta dentre quatro Instituições de Ensino Superior da cidade de Caxias do Sul/RS e totalizou 655 estudantes regularmente matriculados e de ambos os sexos, focando, preferencialmente, alunos do 1º ou do 2º semestre de seus cursos. As questões empregadas visaram identificar conclusões para o tema central da pesquisa – o processo de escolha de um curso de graduação. O instrumental teórico baseia-se na Teoria do Capital Humano e na Teoria da Sinalização. Os resultados revelaram que os fatores que determinam as escolhas são: a realização pessoal, aptidão ou vocação para o curso pretendido; as oportunidades no mercado de trabalho; a qualidade e o prestígio da Instituição e a possibilidade de ascensão financeira. Identificou-se também que a maioria dos estudantes escolheu o curso no último ano do ensino médio e às vésperas do vestibular e, além disso, eles têm certeza de que fizeram a escolha certa. / The present dissertation deals with an exploratory study that aims to identify the main factors that take the students to decide on a course of a college. The sample was chosen among four institutions from the city of Caxias do Sul/RS and totalized 655 students regularly registered and of both genders, focusing, preferentially, on students that were attending the 1st or 2nd semester of their courses. The employed questions were directed to identify conclusions to the central subject of the research – the process of choice of a graduation course. The theoretical instrument is based on the Human Capital Theory and the Signaling Theory. The results revealed that the factors that determine the choices are: the personal realization, aptitude or vocation for the intended course; the job opportunities; the prestige of the institution and the income perspectives. There was also identified that the major part of the students has chosen the course in the last year of the high school and very close to the vestibular and, furthermore, they are sure that they have made the right choice.

Uppsatsen undersöker studenters åsikter om CSR, misstanke om grönmålning och dess påverkan på studenters benägenhet att söka arbete hos ett företag som arbetar med CSR i Sverige. Grönmålning adderades till undersökningen då det inte undersökts inom forskningsområdet tidigare men har uppmärksammats inom andra områden. En kvantitativ undersökning i form av en enkät genomfördes och kompletterades med kvalitativa intervjuer. Resultaten visade att studenter som tycker att CSR är viktigt kommer vara mer benägna att söka arbete hos företaget som arbetar med CSR. Enkätundersökningen visade att det fanns en skillnad mellan könen där kvinnor var mer benägna jämfört med övriga. Misstanke om grönmålning hade en negativ påverkan på benägenheten att söka arbete hos företag som arbetar med CSR. Vid fortsatt forskning är intressant att undersöka misstanke om grönmålning och dess påverkan i exempelvis en mer experimentell miljö.

A presente dissertação trata de um estudo exploratório que visa identificar os principais fatores que levam os estudantes a decidirem sobre um curso de nível superior (3º grau). A amostra foi composta dentre quatro Instituições de Ensino Superior da cidade de Caxias do Sul/RS e totalizou 655 estudantes regularmente matriculados e de ambos os sexos, focando, preferencialmente, alunos do 1º ou do 2º semestre de seus cursos. As questões empregadas visaram identificar conclusões para o tema central da pesquisa – o processo de escolha de um curso de graduação. O instrumental teórico baseia-se na Teoria do Capital Humano e na Teoria da Sinalização. Os resultados revelaram que os fatores que determinam as escolhas são: a realização pessoal, aptidão ou vocação para o curso pretendido; as oportunidades no mercado de trabalho; a qualidade e o prestígio da Instituição e a possibilidade de ascensão financeira. Identificou-se também que a maioria dos estudantes escolheu o curso no último ano do ensino médio e às vésperas do vestibular e, além disso, eles têm certeza de que fizeram a escolha certa. / The present dissertation deals with an exploratory study that aims to identify the main factors that take the students to decide on a course of a college. The sample was chosen among four institutions from the city of Caxias do Sul/RS and totalized 655 students regularly registered and of both genders, focusing, preferentially, on students that were attending the 1st or 2nd semester of their courses. The employed questions were directed to identify conclusions to the central subject of the research – the process of choice of a graduation course. The theoretical instrument is based on the Human Capital Theory and the Signaling Theory. The results revealed that the factors that determine the choices are: the personal realization, aptitude or vocation for the intended course; the job opportunities; the prestige of the institution and the income perspectives. There was also identified that the major part of the students has chosen the course in the last year of the high school and very close to the vestibular and, furthermore, they are sure that they have made the right choice.

One of the main challenges that modern software developers face is the coordination of dependent agents such as software projects and other developers. Transparent development environments that make low-level software development activities visible hold much promise for assisting developers in making coordination decisions. However, the wealth of information that transparent environments provide is potentially overwhelming when developers are wading through information from potentially millions of developers and millions of software repositories when making decisions around tasks that require coordination with projects or other developers. Overcoming the risk of overload and better assisting developers in these environments requires a principled understanding of what exactly developers need to know about dependencies to make their decisions. My approach to a principled understanding of how developers use information in transparent environments is to model the process using signaling theory as a theoretical lens. Developers making key coordination decisions often must determine qualities about projects and other developers that are not directly observable. Developers infer these unobservable qualities through interpreting information in their environment as signals and use this judgment about the project or developer to inform their decision. In contrast to current software engineering literature which focuses on technical coordination between modules or within projects such as modularity or task assignment mechanisms, this work aims to understand how developers use signals to information coordination decisions with dependencies such as other projects or developers. Through this understanding of the signaling process, I can create improved signals that more accurately represent desired unobservable qualities. My dissertation work examines the qualities and signals that developers use to inform specific coordination tasks through a series of three empirical studies. The specific key coordination tasks studied are evaluating code contributions, discussing problems around contributions, and evaluating projects. My results suggest that when project managers evaluate code contributions, they prefer social signals over technical signals. When project managers discuss contributions, I found that they attend to political signals regarding influence from stakeholders to prioritize which problems need solutions. I found that developers evaluating projects tend to use signals that are related to how the core team works and the potential utility a project provides. In a fourth study, using signaling theory and findings from the qualities and signals that developers use to evaluate projects, I create and evaluate an improved signal called “supportiveness” for community support in projects. I compare this signal against the current signal that developers use, stars count, and find evidence suggesting that my designed signal is more robust and is a stronger indicator of support. The findings of these studies inform the design of tools and environments that assist developers in coordination tasks through suggestions of what signals to show and potentially improving existing signals. My thesis as a whole also suggests opportunities for exploring useful signals for other coordination tasks or even in different transparent environments.

As social interactions increasingly become exclusively online, there is a need for research on the role of identity and social identity in online platforms. Drawing on Symbolic Interactionist approaches to identity, namely Social Identity Theory and Identity Theory, as well as Signaling Theory, this study argues that actors will selectively use religious language to signal their credentials to an audience for the purpose of garnering prosocial behavior in the form of donations to their fundraising campaign. Using latent semantic analysis topic models to analyze the self-presentations of crowdsourcing campaigners on GoFundMe.com, this study found evidence for the presence of signaling to a religious identity online as well as a significant difference in the presentation of need for campaigns originating in areas with high reported religiosity compared to campaigns from areas of low religiosity. In comparison to other campaigns, campaigners engaging in religious signaling were significantly increasing their donations. I suggest that strategically chosen religious topics in online crowdfunding is an example of low-cost identity signaling and provides insight into how signaling happens online and the potential outcomes resulting from this cultural work.

While pursuing profits, modern firms begin to undertake corporate social responsibility (CSR). Different ways for firms to implement CSR have diverse impacts on consumer-based brand equity that reflects the meaning of the brand in consumers’ minds and is of considerable significance to corporate marketing strategy. However, previous research on CSR rarely uses signaling theory to explain the internal mechanism of generating consumer-based brand equity. It is also a gap of existing literature to study how to strengthen the impact of a firm’s CSR on consumer-based brand equity. This thesis, based on stakeholder theory and signaling theory, analyzes the effects of the degree of a firms’ CSR on consumer-based brand equity, including brand awareness, perceived quality, and brand loyalty, and how these effects are moderated by consumer involvement in CSR. This study adopts the quantitative approach and receives 201 valid questionnaires by taking Alipay (a Chinese firm providing online financial services) as the target of the survey. The results indicate that the degree of a firm’s CSR positively impacts brand awareness, perceived quality, and brand loyalty through empirical analysis. Meanwhile, as a moderator, consumer involvement in CSR positively moderates the relationship between the degree of a firm’s CSR and perceived quality but shows no significant moderating effects on the other two associations. By uncovering the relationship between CSR and consumer-based brand equity through the signaling theory and by introducing the variable of consumer involvement in CSR, this study advances CSR research. It extends the application of signaling theory in a new research area as well.

Global brands are increasingly expanding their footprint to developing countries, due to the promising opportunities that these countries hold; and as such, consumers are faced with the decision between global and local brands. In South Africa too, there has been an influx of global brands, which has placed pressure on the local retail landscape. Therefore, the main objective of this study was to determine whether there is a difference in perception among millennial consumers in South Africa between a global and a local fashion retail brand. Millennials are considered to be individuals born between the early 1980s and late 1990s. To understand consumers’ decision making process between global and local brands, the signaling theory was applied. The signaling theory is typically used to describe behaviour when multiple parties have access to different information – in this case it relates to consumers having access to the different signals sent out by both global and local brands. In addition to the signaling theory, the brand-analysis model was employed to measure these perceptions relating to brand-specific associations (perceived quality and emotional value), general brand impression (brand awareness and brand image) and brand commitment (brand loyalty and purchase intention). Therefore, the objectives and hypotheses for this study were directly derived from each of the brand-analysis constructs mentioned above. It is understood that researchers have not used the signaling theory and brand analysis model together. This study also considers them independently, however the brand analysis constructs are used as signals between brands and consumers. Using the two retail brands, H&M (global) and Mr Price (local) as stimuli, the data were collected through an online questionnaire. A non-probability sampling technique was implemented, which achieved a total sample size of n=263. The target population consisted of millennial consumers in South Africa, due to the significant spending power of this cohort. The findings were three-fold. Firstly, the hypotheses tests indicated that there are differences in consumer perception relating to each of the brand-analysis constructs, with higher ratings towards the global brand for perceived quality, emotional value, brand image, brand loyalty, and purchase intention. Local brands, however, appear to enjoy higher levels of brand awareness. Secondly, in order to gain deeper insights into these perceptions, this study also compared the difference in perceptions among the demographic subgroups. In contrast to the overall preference for global brands, certain groups, such as those with lower income levels and lower levels of education, had higher ratings for the local brand in terms of perceived quality, emotional value, brand loyalty and purchase intention. Lastly, the strength of the relationships between constructs was measured; and this showed that, for both brands, positive relationships exist among all of the brand-analysis constructs – with varying strength levels. The academic contributions of this study are as follows: In general, brand management literature in developing countries has been neglected. Previous research has shown that there are differences in brand perception between consumers from developed and those from developing countries. This study therefore aimed to add to the literature, not only towards a typical developing country, but towards a hybrid country, namely South Africa. In addition, the brand-analysis model and the signaling theory used in this study, serve as a basis for future research aiming to evaluate consumer choice. Practical contributions include the following: The findings yielded significant insights into the aspects to be emphasised by global and local brands, in order to be successful in capturing and maintaining the desire of consumers to purchase and use their brands. Thus, the findings provide an understanding of the drivers of global and local brand purchases for marketing practitioners – to improve or adjust their marketing strategies. On the basis of these findings, local brands are advised to invest in expanding their presence in other countries, and to advertise this as a signal of quality. Another strategy for local brands is to emphasise their authenticity and pride in the local culture as a signal of a deep connectedness with the local market. Global brands on the other hand, are advised to advertise their worldwide availability and acceptance as a signal of quality and prestige, and to offer an opportunity for consumers to be part of the global-consumer culture.