Matching Items (6)
Filtering by
- All Subjects: Business Administration
- All Subjects: Social Enterprise
Description
This research examines the experiences and perceptions of immigrant and refugee women social entrepreneurs located within a context of economic instability, as well as the strategies that they develop to cope with such crises and volatility. To conduct this research I used a mixed-method, qualitative approach to data collection, including semi-structured, open-ended interviews and a focus group. I used feminist theory and a grounded theory approach to inform the design of my study; as such I acknowledge the participants as knowledge producers and allow for them to add in questions to the interviews and focus group and to comment on drafts of the written portion of the dissertation. The findings have indicated that these women are surviving the economic crisis by combining different income streams, including social entrepreneurship, traditional jobs and state and non-profit-aid. Moreover, the participants have found that besides monetary value, social entrepreneurship also provides alternative benefits such as personal sovereignty in their work environment, work-life balance and well-being. Also, personal history, and family and community embeddedness contribute to women's decisions to pursue social entrepreneurship. This research contributes to the growing body of research on gender and work and fills the gaps in literature currently existing in social entrepreneurship.
ContributorsBauer, Carrie (Author) / Jurik, Nancy (Thesis advisor) / Leong, Karen (Committee member) / Kerlin, Janelle (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2015
Description
This dissertation offers three essays that investigate consumers’ health-related food choices and behaviors from three different, yet complementary, angles. The first essay uses an eye-tracking experiment to examine consumers’ visual attention to the Nutrition Facts Panels for healthy and unhealthy products. In this essay, I focus on how involvement and familiarity affect consumers’ attention toward the Nutrition Facts panel and how these two psychological factors interact with new label format changes in attracting consumers’ attention. In the second essay, I demonstrate using individual-level scanner data that nutritional attributes interact with marketing mix elements to affect consumers’ nutrition intake profiles and their intra-category substitution patterns. My findings suggest that marketing-mix sensitivities are correlated with consumers’ preferences for nutrient attributes in ways that depend on the “healthiness” of the nutrient. For instance, featuring promotes is positively correlated with “healthy” nutritional characteristics such as high-protein, low-fat, or low-carbohydrates, whereas promotion and display are positively correlated with preferences for “unhealthy” characteristics such as high-fat, or high-carbohydrates. I use model simulations to show that some marketing-mix elements are able to induce consumers to purchase items with higher maximum-content levels than others. The fourth chapter shows that dieters are not all the same. I develop and validate a new scale that measures lay theories about abstinence vs. moderation. My findings from a series of experiments indicate that dieters’ recovery from recalled vs. actual indulgences depend on whether they favor abstinence or moderation. However, compensatory coping strategies provide paths for people with both lay theories to recover after an indulgence, in their own ways. The three essays provide insights into individual differences that determine approaches of purchase behaviors, and consumption patterns, and life style that people choose, and these insights have potential policy implications to aid in designing the food-related interventions and policies to improve the healthiness of consumers’ consumption profiles and more general food well-being.
ContributorsXie, Yi (Author) / Richards, Timothy (Thesis advisor) / Mandel, Naomi (Committee member) / Grebitus, Carola (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2018
Description
Social enterprises strive to tackle social problems, improve the lives of the people around them and help create a sustainable environment. Three specific enterprises will be analyzed to illustrate the differences between management styles, mission, financials and overall successes. There are numerous social enterprises in the southwest of the United States of America, some show more success than others, but what separates them? What commonalities do some of these enterprises share that allow them to be more successful than the rest? Is there a common denominator for enterprises to follow that will allow them to have success financially as well as accomplish their goals to better the community around them? Free Arts for Abused Children or Arizona, Seed Spot and Goodmans, we are able to better distinguish what factors allow enterprises to succeed. Due to the nature of social enterprises being able to be qualified as different types of organizations, i.e., company with shareholders, nonprofit organizations, etc. it is difficult to pin point a concrete model social enterprises should follow today. However, a finding that made all three of these social enterprises successful were their governance and ownership structures. Each enterprise consisted of a board that helped the enterprise stay on track with their given mission. Boards are also responsible for making major decisions that can impact the organization as well as being responsible for fundraising and making various financial decisions. After analyzing their structures, it was evident that all three enterprises consisted of strong governance structures. Although enterprises may not be able to follow a distinct model in order to be successful, they are able to place a board in control that aligns with the social enterprises mission and has a variety of knowledge that allows the board to make sound decisions. Keywords: social enterprise, management, governance, success, mission, financials
ContributorsButzbach, Jennifer Lauren (Author) / Shockley, Gordon (Thesis director) / Foroughi-Mobarakeh, Behrang (Committee member) / School of Community Resources and Development (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2016-12
Description
While scan-based trading (SBT) is a growing trend in the retail industry, evidence suggests that many SBT initiatives have contributed only to the retailers’ bottom line at the suppliers’ expense. This research attempts to disclose some of the causes of SBT failure as a collaborative inventory management initiative and identify SBT’s integrative potential using both positivistic and normative research methodologies.
In the first chapter, SBT contracts are analyzed through the lens of Agency Theory. By focusing on unique inventory ownership and risks considerations resulting from retailers managing supplier-owned inventory without bearing the cost of inventory shrinkage, the effect of SBT on inventory shrinkage is examined empirically using a data set from a packaged bakery manufacturer. The results show that inventory shrinkage tends to be higher under SBT contracts compared to traditional vendor-managed inventory (VMI) contracts. The study highlights a potential loss in efficiency in food supply chains reflected in higher shrinkage under SBT contracts.
The second chapter aims to identify conditions under which SBT contracts could be mutually beneficial for retailers and suppliers. Using stylized game theoretic models involving a retailer and a supplier of a product with limited shelf life, the study finds that, while inventory shrinkage may be amplified under SBT contracts compared to VMI contracts due to the decreased retailer’s incentive to manage inventory at the store, SBT could help suppliers minimize inventory overage and underage under high demand uncertainty. The integrative potential for SBT contracts, thus, lies in the trade-off between inventory shrinkage and forecasting accuracy.
In the third paper, the role of bargaining power on the performance of SBT contracts is examined. Based on the bargaining literature, it is hypothesized that perceptions of bargaining power can be reshaped in the bargaining process through concession tactics. The results of a negotiation experiment show that, while powerful retailers do tend to have the upper hand in negotiating SBT contracts, weak suppliers could ameliorate or even overcome retailer power by offering services as a concession in a way that the product-service bundle improves the value of their offerings in the eyes of the retailers.
In the first chapter, SBT contracts are analyzed through the lens of Agency Theory. By focusing on unique inventory ownership and risks considerations resulting from retailers managing supplier-owned inventory without bearing the cost of inventory shrinkage, the effect of SBT on inventory shrinkage is examined empirically using a data set from a packaged bakery manufacturer. The results show that inventory shrinkage tends to be higher under SBT contracts compared to traditional vendor-managed inventory (VMI) contracts. The study highlights a potential loss in efficiency in food supply chains reflected in higher shrinkage under SBT contracts.
The second chapter aims to identify conditions under which SBT contracts could be mutually beneficial for retailers and suppliers. Using stylized game theoretic models involving a retailer and a supplier of a product with limited shelf life, the study finds that, while inventory shrinkage may be amplified under SBT contracts compared to VMI contracts due to the decreased retailer’s incentive to manage inventory at the store, SBT could help suppliers minimize inventory overage and underage under high demand uncertainty. The integrative potential for SBT contracts, thus, lies in the trade-off between inventory shrinkage and forecasting accuracy.
In the third paper, the role of bargaining power on the performance of SBT contracts is examined. Based on the bargaining literature, it is hypothesized that perceptions of bargaining power can be reshaped in the bargaining process through concession tactics. The results of a negotiation experiment show that, while powerful retailers do tend to have the upper hand in negotiating SBT contracts, weak suppliers could ameliorate or even overcome retailer power by offering services as a concession in a way that the product-service bundle improves the value of their offerings in the eyes of the retailers.
ContributorsChoi, Min (Author) / Rabinovich, Elliot (Thesis advisor) / Richards, Timothy (Committee member) / Grebitus, Carola (Committee member) / Dooley, Kevin (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2016
Description
Platform business models have become pervasive in many aspects of the economy,particularly in the areas experiencing rapid growth such as retailing (e.g., Amazon and
eBay) and last-mile transportation (e.g., Instacart and Amazon Flex). The popularity
of platform business models is, in part, due to the asset-light prospect which allows
businesses to maintain flexibility while scaling up their operations. Yet, this ease of
growth may not necessarily be conducive to viable outcomes. Because scalability in a
platform depends on the intermediary’s role it plays in facilitating matching between
users on each side of the platform, the efficiency of matching could be eroded as growth
increases search frictions and matching costs. This phenomenon is demonstrated in
recent studies on platform growth (e.g. Fradkin, 2017; Lian and Van Ryzin, 2021; Li
and Netessine, 2020). To sustain scalability during growth, platforms must rely on effective platformdesign to mitigate challenges arising in facilitating efficient matching. Market design
differs in its focus between retail and last-mile transportation platforms. In retail
platforms, platform design’s emphasis is on helping consumers navigate through
a variety of product offerings to match their needs while connecting vendors to a
large consumer base (Dinerstein et al., 2018; Bimpikis et al., 2020). Because these
platforms exist to manage two-sided demand, scalability depends on the realization of
indirect network economies where benefits for users to participate on the platforms
are commensurate with the size of users on the other side (Parker and Van Alstyne,
2005; Armstrong, 2006; Rysman, 2009). Thus, platform design plays a critical role in
the realization of indirect network economies on retail platforms. Last-mile transportation platforms manage independent drivers on one side andretailers on the other, both parties holding flexibility in switching between platforms.
High demand for independent drivers along with their flexibility in work participation induces platforms to use subsidies to incentivize retention. This leads to short-term
improvements in retention at the expense of significant increases in platforms’
compensation costs. Acute challenges to driver retention call for effective compensation
strategies to better coordinate labor participation from these drivers (Nikzad, 2017;
Liu et al., 2019; Guda and Subramanian, 2019). In addition to driver turnover,
retailers’ withdrawal can undermine the operating efficiency of last-mile transportation
platforms (Borsenberger et al., 2018). This dissertation studies platforms’ scalability
and operational challenges faced by platforms in the growth.
ContributorsWang, Lina (Author) / Rabinovich, Elliot (Thesis advisor) / Richards, Timothy (Committee member) / Webster, Scott (Committee member) / Guda, Harish (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2021
Description
The goal of this project is to improve the efficiency of operations for Quincea Social Enterprise. I aim to achieve this goal by interviewing market participants to make recommendations for how Quincea Social Enterprise can best utilize resources to deliver vegetables, fruits and herbs to their key institutional customers (schools, churches, hospitals, group homes and corporate cafeterias). This thesis views Quincea through the lens of the Social Enterprise Business Model and compares its organization to serve underemployed groups including veterans and adults with intellectual and/or developmental disabilities (IDD Adults) 1. Throughout my research, I use supply chain theory and network structure to inform supply chain strategy, optimize logistics, and integrate the supply chain organization, processes and technology. My insights are grounded in the supply chain literature, and a comparison with other non-profit operations. This thesis identifies the resources, capabilities, and partnerships needed for a successful social enterprise. The key findings include: a) Quincea’s unique business model exhibits promising potential for cost-effectively creations of jobs for adults with intellectual and/or developmental disabilities; b) an important strength is the depth of its public and private sector strategic partnerships; c) another important organizational advantage is its emphasis on operational efficiencies and being price competitive, rather than having its social mission drive sales d) its efforts to document its strategies and operating plans, along with securing many partnerships with national corporations, should facilitate program geographic expansion; e) the emphasis on social impact metrics should make it easier to measure program effectiveness and to attract additional strategic partners; and f) the economic self-sustaining business model exhibits promising potential to expand operations, while having reduced dependency on government, foundation and individual donor subsidies to scale operations.
ContributorsStephens, Natalie (Author) / Richards, Timothy (Thesis director) / Hall, Jonathan (Committee member) / Department of Supply Chain Management (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2019-05