Wheat is the most common cereal crop grown by farmers in Western Canada and is mainly used for export. The marketing structure for wheat in Western Canada is unique. The Canadian Wheat Board (CWB), a statutory marketing board, is mandated to sell all wheat grown by farmers for human consumption in Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Alberta and the Peace River region of British Columbia. Using historical price and basis data, this research attempts to quantify the economics of the current marketing structure for wheat in Western Canada. Simulations are developed to determine the economic profits and risk that could have been realized in an open market considering scenarios for three potential changes in the grain handling and transportation system (GHTS) and four alternative marketing strategies. Each are evaluated using a utility-based risk model to ascertain the most preferred marketing environment in terms of expected profit and risk.

Wheat is the most common cereal crop grown by farmers in Western Canada and is mainly used for export. The marketing structure for wheat in Western Canada is unique. The Canadian Wheat Board (CWB), a statutory marketing board, is mandated to sell all wheat grown by farmers for human consumption in Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Alberta and the Peace River region of British Columbia. Using historical price and basis data, this research attempts to quantify the economics of the current marketing structure for wheat in Western Canada. Simulations are developed to determine the economic profits and risk that could have been realized in an open market considering scenarios for three potential changes in the grain handling and transportation system (GHTS) and four alternative marketing strategies. Each are evaluated using a utility-based risk model to ascertain the most preferred marketing environment in terms of expected profit and risk.

Discretionary behaviors such as counterproductive work behaviors (CWBs) and organizational citizenship behaviors (OCBs) exist outside of the job description, but these behaviors nevertheless have profound influence on the organization and its members. Using Spector and Fox’s (2002) General OCB-CWB emotion centered model as the conceptual framework, I tested a specific model with personality, perceptions of the workplace, and emotional processes as antecedents of both OCB and CWB. The proposed model fit the data well and the results indicated that the emotional processes of burnout and engagement partially mediate the individual and organizational antecedents.

The CWB has the stated objective of increasing producer returns through maximizing sales revenue and minimizing operating costs. To maximize producer returns the CWB derives value from single-desk selling, price pooling and the initial price guarantee.<p> The initial price allows the CWB to offer a price floor to producers which is guaranteed by the Federal government. This guarantee has come under review in recent World Trade Organization (WTO) negotiations with opponents stating that the Federal government is unfairly subsidizing producers. Therefore developing methods to hedge the initial payment and remove the CWB dependency on the Federal government guarantee has taken on considerable importance.<p> Hedging the initial price has two components, the first is commodity risk, and the second is currency risk. Commodity risk basically consists of the risk that wheat prices decrease significantly from the announcement of the initial payment resulting in a wheat pool account deficit. Currency risk relates to the risk of the Canadian dollar (CAD) increasing vis-à-vis the United States dollar (USD) resulting in lower wheat prices. This is due to the fact most sales are made in USD, necessitating the conversion of USD for CAD in order to pay Canadian producers. Given recent increases in exchange rate volatility this later risk is important. <p> The goal of this study is to evaluate the currency risk present in the initial payment and to examine alternate means of mitigating this risk. A number of call option strategies will be evaluated to determine its ability to reduce the probability of a wheat pool account deficit by offsetting the effect of a rising CAD.<p> The policy variables analyzed in the thesis are the initial payment as a percentage of the Pool Return Outlook for wheat and the strike price of the call options purchased. Therefore the study will examine the effect of inputting varying initial payment levels and different strike prices for the call options in the model. This will allow for quantifiable insight into cost versus risk reduction comparisons. These comparisons will be useful in determining the most efficient mode of action for the CWB.

The CWB has the stated objective of increasing producer returns through maximizing sales revenue and minimizing operating costs. To maximize producer returns the CWB derives value from single-desk selling, price pooling and the initial price guarantee.<p> The initial price allows the CWB to offer a price floor to producers which is guaranteed by the Federal government. This guarantee has come under review in recent World Trade Organization (WTO) negotiations with opponents stating that the Federal government is unfairly subsidizing producers. Therefore developing methods to hedge the initial payment and remove the CWB dependency on the Federal government guarantee has taken on considerable importance.<p> Hedging the initial price has two components, the first is commodity risk, and the second is currency risk. Commodity risk basically consists of the risk that wheat prices decrease significantly from the announcement of the initial payment resulting in a wheat pool account deficit. Currency risk relates to the risk of the Canadian dollar (CAD) increasing vis-à-vis the United States dollar (USD) resulting in lower wheat prices. This is due to the fact most sales are made in USD, necessitating the conversion of USD for CAD in order to pay Canadian producers. Given recent increases in exchange rate volatility this later risk is important. <p> The goal of this study is to evaluate the currency risk present in the initial payment and to examine alternate means of mitigating this risk. A number of call option strategies will be evaluated to determine its ability to reduce the probability of a wheat pool account deficit by offsetting the effect of a rising CAD.<p> The policy variables analyzed in the thesis are the initial payment as a percentage of the Pool Return Outlook for wheat and the strike price of the call options purchased. Therefore the study will examine the effect of inputting varying initial payment levels and different strike prices for the call options in the model. This will allow for quantifiable insight into cost versus risk reduction comparisons. These comparisons will be useful in determining the most efficient mode of action for the CWB.

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Counterproductive work behaviors (CWBs) are an expensive phenomenon for organizations, costing billions of dollars collectively each year. Recent research has focused on justice perceptions as predictors of CWBs, but little research has been conducted on the specific types of counterproductive work behaviors (i.e., sabotage, withdrawal, production deviance, abuse, and theft) that result from specific organizational justice perceptions (i.e., distributive, procedural, interpersonal, and informational) and the mediating effect of state affect. The current paper meta-analyzed the relationships between justice, CWB, and state affect and found that justice was negatively related to dimensions of CWB and state positive/negative affect were negatively/positively related to CWB dimensions, respectively. However, mediation of the relationship between justice and CWB by state affect was inconsistent across justice types and CWB dimensions. These findings suggests that, while managers should maintain an awareness of justice and state affect as individual predictors of CWBs, the current study does not necessarily support the claim that state affect explains the relationship between justice and counterproductive work behavior dimensions.

The current study investigates how discrete negative emotions are related to specific facets of counterproductive work behaviors (CWB). The sample consisted of 241 employees who reported their frequency of experiencing negative emotions and their frequency of committing CWBs in the workplace. For 103 employees, supervisor reports of employee CWB were also obtained. The findings provide evidence that a wide range of negative emotions are related to most of the sub facets of CWB. There was also some evidence that supervisor reports differ systematically from employee reports of CWB. The theoretical, methodological, and organizational implications are discussed.

Cyberloafing is the nonsanctioned recreational use of the computers/internet during work hours. Although research is increasing, the processes related to cyberloafing are not well understood. In the current studies, I developed, tested, and evaluated a series of causal minor-cyberloafing models. In Study 1, I empirically compared four minor-cyberloafing taxonomies and selected two of these models as my working taxonomies for minor cyberloafing. In Study 2, I tested and evaluated eight causal minor-cyberloafing models using structural equation modeling techniques and various model-data fit indices. Results of Study 2 indicated that the models were not plausible, bringing into question the value of the proposed models. Despite the poor primary results, I did find a number of potentially important results in the subsequent exploratory analyses. First, I observed high correlations between minor cyberloafing and four of my exploratory variables. Second, I found that one’s perception of the descriptive cyberloafing norms predicted minor cyberloafing above and beyond one’s perception of the injunctive cyberloafing norms. Finally, I found that the predictors cyberloafing attitudes and perceived descriptive norms accounted for a substantial amount of variance in minor cyberloafing. I discuss the theoretical implications of the exploratory results and future directions for research in the discussion section.

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