Robert H. Smith School of Business

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Start date: 2010Subject: search.filters.subject.Business administration

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    PROMOTING SAFETY IN FOOD SUPPLY CHAINS: NAVIGATING REGULATIONS, INSPECTOR SCHEDULES, AND INCENTIVE STRUCTURES
    (2024) Grover, Abhay Kumar; Dresner, Martin E; Business and Management: Logistics, Business & Public Policy; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
    The dissertation examines different aspects around safety in U.S. food supply chains, using the context of regulatory policy implementation and inspections. The first essay explores the impact of supply chain accountability regulations on firm level inventory performance within the context of global sourcing. Using the case of the Food Safety Modernization Act, the study suggests that regulatory policies have the potential to negatively impact a firm’s inventory performance by increasing regulatory stress. Using the stress-coping theory, the study finds that sourcing from developed markets exacerbates the regulatory stress, while sourcing from emerging markets alleviates it, thus altering the firm’s coping response as reflected by its inventory leanness performance. The essay has implications for safety in food supply chains. The second essay investigates the impact of work-break schedules on task performance of field staff. Using the context of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s regulatory inspections, the study explores different work-break regimes and their impact on food inspectors’ quality assessments of food facilities. The study finds that temporal pacing of inspections increases task performance, but at a diminishing rate. Multi-tasking and non-standard schedules negatively affect performance, while intermittent breaks and start-day of inspections may have a positive effect on inspection outcomes. Strategic scheduling of inspections may increase violation detection. The third essay investigates the impact of incentive design on task performance of field staff. Using the context of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s regulatory inspections, the study explores how salary differences relative to multiple referent groups impact food inspectors’ quality assessment of food facilities. Grounded in equity theory, the study finds that a higher salary as compared to previous year, internal peers, and operational interface referents, leads to work withdrawals due to complacency. Conversely, a higher salary as compared to industry referents enhances inspector task performance. A strategic incentive design for inspectors may increase the detection of violations. These studies contribute to the literature at the intersection of supply chain and operations management, public policy, and public sector operations. They do so by advancing our understanding of the factors affecting safety in food supply chains.
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    THREE ESSAYS IN HUMANITARIAN OPERATIONS: PREPARATION AND RESPONSE TO DISASTERS
    (2024) Sabol, Matthew; Dresner, Martin; Evers, Philip; Business and Management: Logistics, Business & Public Policy; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
    Three essays related to humanitarian operations are examined. The first essay addresses the impact of humanitarian operations on recovery from disasters. Event study methodology is used to demonstrate the economic impact of Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) disaster recovery operations on economic recovery. The second essay examines how political considerations can impact government response to natural disasters. Based on theories of public choice and congressional dominance, models are formulated and fixed-effects regressions are used to examine the impact of political alignment and control on government-led humanitarian response. The third essay provides a comparative analysis among four inventory management methods used to prepare for humanitarian operations, under conditions of uncertain demand. Demands for key materials are simulated, based on data from the Defense Logistics Agency (DLA), relevant to humanitarian operations. General propositions are formulated for inventory managers in preparation for humanitarian operations.
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    DELIVERY PLATFORMS: DO THEY DELIVER RESULTS?
    (2022) PARK, HYOSOO Kevin; Dresner, Martin; Pan, Xiaodan; Business and Management: Logistics, Business & Public Policy; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
    Over the past decade, direct-to-consumer retail deliveries have increased significantly, bolstered by the development of dedicated restaurant and retailer delivery platforms. This dissertation, composed of three essays, examines topics related to the performance of delivery platforms and their retail partners.The first essay compares the impact of delivery partnerships and in-house delivery capabilities on the direct channel sales of restaurant chains. Furthermore, the moderating effects of containment and health measures imposed during the COVID-19 pandemic are examined. I find that delivery platform partnerships and in-house deliveries both positively impact restaurant sales. However, as containment and health measures increase, impacts from delivery platforms wane. Conversely, in-house delivery becomes more beneficial at impacting restaurant sales as containment and health measures increase. In the second essay, I analyze how delivery platform partnerships affect the sales of both grocery retailers and delivery platforms. Two distinct partnerships stages are assessed: 1) platform access, where a grocery retailer’s same-day delivery is only offered through a partner platform’s website, and 2) usage integration, where the platform’s same-day delivery services are integrated into the retailer’s website. I find that platform access provides positive impacts for online sales of both the retailer and the delivery platform. However, usage integration, the second level of the partnership integration, provides benefits to the retailer’s online channel but not to the platform channel. The third essay analyzes how delivery platform partnerships impact retailer and delivery platform sales and how vertical integration between the two partners moderates these relationships. I find that delivery platform partnerships have a positive effect on both retailer and delivery platform sales. However, these positive impacts depend on whether the two partners are vertically integrated. Without a common ownership structure, delivery platform sales crowd out retailer store sales. Likewise, retailer sales crowd out delivery platform sales without vertical integration.
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    The Competition on Online Marketplaces
    (2022) Su, Hao; Dresner, Martin E.; Business and Management: Logistics, Business & Public Policy; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
    This dissertation examines competition in online marketplaces using data from the largest online marketplace in the U.S., Amazon.com. The first essay studies direct sales competition between a marketplace operator and third parties that sell their products on the marketplace and examines factors that third-party sellers may use to avoid direct competition with the marketplace operator. I find that third-party sellers can best avoid competing directly with Amazon by selling unbranded products and by marketing products that are fulfilled by Amazon. The second essay investigates competitive results between the marketplace operator and third-party sellers. I find that despite inherent competitive disadvantages, third-party sellers may increase their likelihood of winning the sales competition against the marketplace operator when they offer a lower price than the marketplace operator and when they use the marketplace operator’s fulfillment services. In addition, a third-party seller using direct fulfillment is less likely to outcompete a seller using operator-managed fulfillment services, but it can be more competitive when it offers lower prices and when it sells low-priced products. The third essay investigates how employment of the marketplace’s store banner impacts sales performance for both private label products and non-private label products on an online marketplace. I find that directly branding private labels and using store banners on non-private label products are both associated with greater sales performance. In addition, lower-priced products and non-private label products may achieve greater benefits from store banners. The findings contribute to the online marketplace literature by empirically testing the impact of direct sales, fulfillment services, and store banner use on competition between a marketplace operator and third-party sellers. The findings also contribute to important antitrust considerations.
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    ON THE IMPLICATIONS OF NEW POLICIES, MARQUEE SELLERS, AND GREEN NUDGES IN ONLINE SECONDARY MARKETS FOR DURABLE IT PRODUCTS: EVIDENCE FROM EMPIRICAL STUDIES
    (2021) Alhauli, Abdullah; Gopal, Anandasivam; Business and Management: Decision & Information Technologies; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
    The rapid pace of product development in the IT sector has led to a volume surge of product returns, giving rise to critical environmental threats that can potentially have significantly adverse ecological effects. One possible avenue to mitigate these negative effects pertains to the establishment of robust secondary markets for these products, so that their useful life can be enhanced. My dissertation seeks to study multiple aspects aimed at enhancing the efficiency of online secondary markets for durable IT products, using economic and behavioral theories. The first essay examines the extent to which firm policies in the primary market mitigate inefficiencies caused by adverse selection in the secondary market for IT products. I find that policies implemented by firms in the primary market with respect to their products can have beneficial effects in addressing adverse selection in the secondary markets. The second essay studies how adding a marquee seller to a B2B secondary market platform for IT products affects other sellers, in terms of the prices they obtain for comparable products. I show that the entry of a marquee seller has a positive effect on the prices obtained by other sellers on the platform. I further show that this positive effect on final prices is moderated by bidders multi-homing activity, and their level of involvement in the marquee seller’s site. Finally, through behavioral experiments performed on Amazon MTurk, my third essay examines the extent to which the use of behavioral interventions, in the form of green nudges, can enhance the propensity of used IT products being purchased in the secondary market, thereby increasing the lifetime of these products. I find that the efficacy of using green nudges to impact consumer behavior depends on the kind of motivation (i.e., internal versus external motivation) the nudge is delivering. I further find that the effectiveness of green nudges can vary based upon product price and perceived quality, and consumer demographics and latent personalities. Collectively, the findings from these studies in my dissertation provide valuable theoretical as well as practical insights about the effectiveness of different mechanisms for enhancing the efficiency of online secondary markets for durable IT products.
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    The Impact of Earnings Manipulation on the Science and Practice of Strategic Management
    (2021) Gibbs, Ralph Anthony; Waguespack, David; Agarwal, Rajshree; Business and Management: Management & Organization; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
    Strategic management research frequently seeks to explain variation in organizational performance using metrics such as accounting profits scaled by firm assets (ROA). Essay 1 addresses a concern with such accrual-based accounting methods—perhaps best illustrated by a large discontinuity in the distribution of ROA around zero for U.S. public firms—that operational and accounting practices will artificially inflate/deflate accounting profit. The essay establishes that such earnings management is common, introduces non-classical noise, and distorts our understanding of broad drivers of firm performance. It concludes with an analysis showing that an alternative performance measure, Cash Flows from Operations on Assets (OCFOA), offers a robust vehicle for checking results using accounting profits. Essay 2 addresses a core prediction of the behavioral theory of the firm—that a firm is more likely to engage in strategic change when its performance falls short of its aspirations. If a firm manipulates income to report above aspirations when otherwise it would have fallen short, this creates a theoretical tension—does the firm engage in strategic change or not? This study utilizes two instrumental variables for a firm’s capability to smooth earnings to analyze the linkage between earnings smoothing and strategic change. The results suggest that public firms actively smoothing earnings have a lower propensity to subsequently change the firm’s major resource allocations, and that avoiding reporting performance below aspirations is a mechanism through which this may occur.
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    EMPIRICAL INVESTIGATION OF USERS’ SUCCESSFUL STRATEGIES IN ONLINE PLATFORMS - EVIDENCE FROM CROWD-SOURCING AND SOCIAL MEDIA PLATFORMS
    (2021) Lysyakov, Mikhail; Viswanathan, Siva; Business and Management: Decision & Information Technologies; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
    With the proliferation and constant growth of online platforms, there has been an increasing interest among academicians and practitioners to understand various aspects of these platforms, including the effective design of platforms, their governance and user engagement. This dissertation seeks to add to this stream of research by leveraging large-scale unstructured data and corresponding data analytics and econometric techniques to examine users’ strategies in online social media and crowdsourcing platforms and gain insights into factors that lead to successful outcomes. The first essay examines the content strategies of closely competing firms on Twitter with a focus on how the similarity/dissimilarity of their content strategies impacts their online outcomes. I find that firms that are more adept at leveraging higher-level social media affordances, such as interactivity, collaboration, and online contests to differentiate their content strategies experience better outcomes as compared to their closest rivals that only leverage the basic technological affordances of social media. The second essay examines successful strategies of users (designers) in a crowdsourcing platform wherein clients post contests to solicit design solutions for a monetary reward. This study uses state-of-the-art deep learning and image analysis techniques to examine the strategies of experienced and less-experienced designers in open contests where later-entrants can potentially leverage information spillovers from earlier design submissions within a contest. I find that while later-entrants typically leverage information spillovers from earlier submissions in a contest, only experienced designers who are able to integrate information from multiple highly-rated early submissions are more likely to be successful. The third essay examines users’ strategies in response to the introduction of an Artificial Intelligence system for logo design in an online crowdsourcing design platform. In analyzing what differentiates successful contestants from the others, I find that the successful contestants significantly increase focus (i.e., the number of re-submissions per contest) and increase the emotional content as well as the complexity of their designs, in response to the introduction of the AI system. Collectively, the findings from these studies add to our understanding of successful strategies in online platforms and provide valuable insights to theory and practice.
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    SUPPLY CHAIN DISRUPTIONS: IMPACT ON COMPETITOR FIRMS AND THE INFLUENCE OF SUPPLY CHAIN COMPLEXITY ON DISRUPTION LIKELIHOOD AND RECOVERY TIME
    (2021) Guntuka, Laharish; Corsi, Thomas; Business and Management: Logistics, Business & Public Policy; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
    The two essays of this dissertation focus on supply chain disruptions, with first essay studying the impact of supply chain disruptions on the disrupted firm competitors and the second essay, examining the impact of supply chain complexity on the manufacturing plant’s recovery time from disruption. In Essay 1 of my dissertation, I investigate the horizontal spillover effects of supply chain disruptions to the disrupted firm’s competitors, anecdotal evidence for the relationship between bystander competitor firms’ financial performance and supply chain disruptions (SCDs) of a focal firm is equivocal. Past studies on this relationship have revealed mixed findings. I consider two potential sources of this ambiguity by examining a multitude of SCDs over a 13-year period (2003–2015). I examine the vertical interdependence among competitor firms, along with the visibilities of the disrupted firm, the undisrupted competitor firm, and the SCD event. I investigate the stock market reaction to bystander competitor firms after a focal firm SCD announcement. In addition, I measure operational performance of the bystander competitor firm measured through return on assets (ROA) in the period following a focal firm’s SCD announcement. I find that both performance measures show that bystander competitor firms are positively impacted when their competitor experiences an SCD. I also find that both measures are less positive when there is vertical interdependence between the competitors. These insights help firms to better assess the complexities of their supply chains as well as the connectivity to their competitors as sources of disruption risks. I also find that the stock market reaction is more positive when the event is visible, which suggests that high coverage of a disruptive event should signal a shifting momentum toward the undisrupted competitors. Finally, I find that the operational performance is less positive for very visible undisrupted competitor firms. The Essay 2 of my dissertation examines how supply chain complexity, an important structural characteristic of a supply chain structure, can impact a firm’s supply chain resiliency to a disruption. Many firms continue to struggle to proactively manage the potential sources of supply chain complexity associated with the sourcing, manufacturing, and logistics activities needed to meet customer demand. The purpose of this study, then, is to first, examine the impact of the uncertain environment of the focal site on the likelihood of a site experiencing a disruption. Specifically, I study the peer-to-peer learning from the environment in which the focal site is located. Then, I explore how structural characteristics of the focal site can affect its proactive strategies to avoid disruption along with reactive strategies that aid the site in its recovery process after the disruption. Because firms are increasingly exposed to multiple dimensions of complexity in their supply chain, I theorize on how internal and external structural characteristics impact the likelihood of disruption along with the recovery time if the site goes down due to disruption. Indeed, some firms may have a stronger ability to manage the complexity and risk present at their plant locations compared to the abilities of other firms to manage their complexity. Likewise, I closely look into the role of business continuity management (BCM) plans in the recovery process after disruption. In doing so, I examine the role of strategic, operational, and supplier orientation of BCM plans on the recovery time of the focal site.
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    STUDYING THE IMPACT OF GOVERNMENT PROGRAMS ON HEALTHCARE EFFICIENCY USING ECONOMETRIC MODELS
    (2020) Ren, Ai; Golden, Bruce; Business and Management: Decision & Information Technologies; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
    In this dissertation, we evaluate certain government interventions in several ways. We investigate the impact of the Global Budget Revenue (GBR) program on Length of Stay (LOS) for inpatients in emergency departments (EDs) in Maryland. The GBR program was announced on January 1, 2014 and, as a government mandate, all Maryland hospitals that were not covered by the Total Patient Revenue program were required to participate. Around the same time, many states, including Maryland, adopted Medicaid expansion. To estimate the effect of GBR on LOS in Maryland hospitals, we conduct a difference-in-differences (DID) analysis and consider the impact of Medicaid expansion by using hospitals from West Virginia, Delaware, and Rhode Island, which also adopted Medicaid expansion at the same time, as the control group. We expand the GBR study by adding more controls and using a longer study period. We find that all results support the conclusion that GBR implementation has a negative impact on the time that Maryland inpatients spend in the ED and, the bigger the hospital, the longer the LOS. We conduct a DID analysis and investigate the impact of the GBR program on the wait time for inpatients from admit decision to the time of departure from the ED in Maryland using four control groups based on different assumptions. Our estimates imply that GBR has a negative impact on the wait time of inpatients in the ED. Finally, we provide a comprehensive literature review of articles that used a DID model and were published since 1990 in the top 30 emergency medicine journals listed by the Scimago Institutions Rankings. We show that the top journals in emergency medicine have become more likely to publish DID-related articles. In the sixth chapter, we examine the changes in the number of fatality reports before and after the implementation of the Severe Injury Reporting Program (SIRP) using a DID model. Our study suggests the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) should expand its approved state programs so as to increase implementation of the SIRP on the state level rather than the federal level. This could relieve pressure on OSHA’s limited resources while maintaining its commitment to national workplace safety.
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    The Impact of Omnichannel Operations on Firm Performance
    (2020) Ren, Xinyi; Evers, Philip T; Business and Management: Logistics, Business & Public Policy; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
    This dissertation examines the impact of two different omnichannel strategies that firms can undertake to maintain and expand their competitive positions. These strategies range from the integration of information provided across different channels to the establishment of a new brick-and-mortar (B&M) retail format. Specifically, my research questions center on how firms can benefit from omnichannel operations and the potential costs that come with these strategies. The underlying mechanisms between customer demand, order fulfillment, and inventory management are studied using econometric analysis and data analytics based on a large proprietary dataset collected from the retail industry. The first essay empirically examines the value of pop-up stores with respect to their ability to drive customer demand and fulfill orders. A comparison is also made between pop-up retailing and traditional “permanent” B&M retailing. Building on a quasi-field experiment, I find that having pop-up stores leads to an increase in the overall demand both during and after operations, indicating a spillover effect on demand that goes beyond the pop-up store's limited operational window. From a fulfillment perspective, customers shift from the online channel to pop-up stores when they have urgency in acquiring the purchase. Finally, the results reveal that pop-up stores are not as effective as permanent stores in generating demand; however, the trade-off between revenue and cost still makes pop-up stores an attractive retail format, especially when exploring markets with modest potential. The second essay demonstrates the impact of sharing B&M store product availability on a firm’s website. Specific attention is given to the scenario where a product assortment discrepancy exists across channels, which aligns with the trend of B&M stores getting smaller in order to reduce operational costs. Using a difference-in-differences approach, I find that this information integration strategy leads to an increase in overall sales. At a channel level, customers shift from the B&M channel to the online channel for a wider product selection, except when purchasing products that are associated with high uncertainty. I further evaluate whether the above effects are sensitive to customer-related characteristics and find that both customer distance to store and customer basket size affect the way one responds to the information about in-store product availability and the product assortment gap between channels.