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- Creators: Department of Finance
- Member of: Barrett, The Honors College Thesis/Creative Project Collection
Description
Each year, a select few minor league baseball players are chosen to attend the Arizona Fall League, a development league within Major League Baseball that hones the next generation of players, coaches, managers, and even umpires. These players make up the top talent currently in the minor leagues from each of Major League Baseball's 30 organizations. Of the thousands in the minors, just seven players from each organization can go to this extra six-week season, and learn to play alongside the best future talent the sport has to offer. On Deck: Inside the Arizona Fall League is a short documentary that looks at some of these players, as they continue their baseball journey that they hope leads them one day to the Majors. The documentary can be viewed online at https://youtu.be/jkggYiDtn14 or nicolesheraefox.com
ContributorsFox, Nicole Sherae (Author) / Lodato, Mark (Thesis director) / Kurland, Brett (Committee member) / Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2016-05
Description
History shows that baseball and media have a very close relationship, but the advantages of social media are proving to come at a cost to traditional media (The Business Insider). Baseball was invented around the same time the the penny press brought newspapers to a larger audience in the 1830s (Brazeal 405), followed by radio entering its discovery years as it carried games to people who lived far away from ballparks. Radio also brought games to life to women and children, as well as those who owned cars (Walker, 7). In 1939, baseball was aired on television for the first time (Koppett). By 1991 when the World Wide Web was brought to the public, baseball was ready to take on digital media. Take it to Twitter, Baseball studies the relationship between baseball and social media, focusing specifically on Twitter. Working with social media presents unique opportunities to reach, interact and engage with younger demographics. Using 2,683 Tweets collected through a history provided by 4 MLB teams, insights like Tweet interactions, Tweet success, media type, and categorized Tweet types are used to understand what it means to use social media well, and why it would come at a cost to traditional media. Content containing promotional material, specifically with giveaways, was found to be more successful in comparison to player and team focused Tweets. Levels of activity were determined and factored into how it relates to Tweet Success. Average Retweets per Retweet were also calculated to determine what results an average Tweet of a specific type should expect to receive. Overall, baseball will continue using any form of media that benefits their conglomerate looking for profits. With so many sponsors to satisfy, baseball will want to keep every tool at their disposal. However, with social media providing deeper analytics and insights into who their fanbase is, as well as allowing them to reach who they want their fanbase to be, it could come at a cost to traditional media.
ContributorsRex, Stevi Danielle (Author) / Doig, Steve (Thesis director) / Dawson, Clifton (Committee member) / Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2016-05
Description
https://mendotadrought.wordpress.com/
Beginning in 2011, California’s most recent drought has brought four years of some of the warmest and driest seasons on record. Mendota, California in the San Joaquin Valley is a microcosm of the struggles many agriculture communities face when water resources are scarce. Known as the “cantaloupe capital of the world,” agriculture represents over half of Mendota’s economy, making unemployment one of the many challenges they face. However, community members are working to move forward and preserve the place they call home.
Medota has a population of about eleven thousand people with over 96 percent of them being Hispanic. The stories of elected officials, field workers, farmers, police, school leaders and local business owners give testament to a mounting fear for future water allocation. But their voices also give way to a shared belief—the community’s resilience will persevere through California’s drought. Mendota is presented through a multi-media piece that uses photos, videos and descriptive articles to showcase both their hardship and hope.
Beginning in 2011, California’s most recent drought has brought four years of some of the warmest and driest seasons on record. Mendota, California in the San Joaquin Valley is a microcosm of the struggles many agriculture communities face when water resources are scarce. Known as the “cantaloupe capital of the world,” agriculture represents over half of Mendota’s economy, making unemployment one of the many challenges they face. However, community members are working to move forward and preserve the place they call home.
Medota has a population of about eleven thousand people with over 96 percent of them being Hispanic. The stories of elected officials, field workers, farmers, police, school leaders and local business owners give testament to a mounting fear for future water allocation. But their voices also give way to a shared belief—the community’s resilience will persevere through California’s drought. Mendota is presented through a multi-media piece that uses photos, videos and descriptive articles to showcase both their hardship and hope.
ContributorsLang, Erica Lynn (Author) / Rodriguez, Rick (Thesis director) / Fergus, Tom (Committee member) / Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication (Contributor) / School of Transborder Studies (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2016-05
Description
This thesis examines youth with mental health disorders in the juvenile justice system, and when their stories intersect with media coverage. In addition to exploring the history of juvenile justice in the United States, it reviews the relationship with youths who have a mental health disorder within the system, criticism of media’s coverage on these topics, and expert opinion on how this can be improved. Typically, both print and broadcast media have utilized these stories for sensationalism: slapping these crimes across the front page of the paper, or leading in a broadcast news show. Yet the journalistic responsibility of educating the community is tragically over looked, with these stories adding to the stigma of mental health. With this research, I aim to gather insight on how word choices, details, and story structure can improve daily reporting in a world of tight deadlines and competing interests—moving into a higher-quality news product.
ContributorsClark, Lauren Louise (Author) / McGuire, Tim (Thesis director) / Griller-Clark, Heather (Committee member) / School of Politics and Global Studies (Contributor) / Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2016-05
Description
This thesis looks into the current method a particular company uses to value its inventory carrying costs (ICC). By identifying costs incurred during all stages of production, along with incorporating industry standards and academic research while avoiding the shortcomings of the company's current method, this thesis was able to derive a more comprehensive and manageable tool for measuring ICC. Our findings led to concrete recommendations, which will provide real value to company managers by improving the accuracy of project finance calculations, supply chain optimization modeling, and numerous other decisions relying on accurate inventory data inputs.
ContributorsDougherty, Mitch (Co-author) / Marshall, Jeffrey (Co-author) / Zieler, Jason (Co-author) / Gilmore, Eric (Co-author) / Hertzel, Michael (Thesis director) / Simonson, Mark (Committee member) / Yarn, James (Committee member) / Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication (Contributor) / Department of Finance (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2014-05
Description
The 2010s have seen video games rise to prominence as platforms for game developers, entertainers and advertisers to broadcast their ideas. This paper looks at the major steps in gaming history that led to games as a global mass communication tool, the way the Internet has created an industry built around broadcasting games and the potential future ramifications competitive gaming, emerging technology and intellectual property law hold on the world of video games.
ContributorsChesler, Jayson Daniel (Author) / Hill, Retha (Thesis director) / Amresh, Ashish (Committee member) / Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2016-05
Description
Company X is one of the world's largest manufacturer of semiconductors. The company relies on various suppliers in the U.S. and around the globe for its manufacturing process. The financial health of these suppliers is vital to the continuation of Company X's business without any material interruption. Therefore, it is in Company X's interest to monitor its supplier's financial performance. Company X has a supplier financial health model currently in use. Having been developed prior to watershed events like the Great Recession, the current model may not reflect the significant changes in the economic environment due to these events. Company X wants to know if there is a more accurate model for evaluating supplier health that better indicates business risk. The scope of this project will be limited to a sample of 24 suppliers representative of Company X's supplier base that are public companies. While Company X's suppliers consist of both private and public companies, the used of exclusively public companies ensures that we will have sufficient and appropriate data for the necessary analysis. The goal of this project is to discover if there is a more accurate model for evaluating the financial health of publicly traded suppliers that better indicates business risk. Analyzing this problem will require a comprehensive understanding of various financial health models available and their components. The team will study best practice and academia. This comprehension will allow us to customize a model by incorporating metrics that allows greater accuracy in evaluating supplier financial health in accordance with Company X's values.
ContributorsLi, Tong (Co-author) / Gonzalez, Alexandra (Co-author) / Park, Zoon Beom (Co-author) / Vogelsang, Meridith (Co-author) / Simonson, Mark (Thesis director) / Hertzel, Mike (Committee member) / Department of Finance (Contributor) / Department of Information Systems (Contributor) / School of Accountancy (Contributor) / WPC Graduate Programs (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2016-05
Description
In the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis, banking regulators have been taking a more active role in pursing greater financial stability. One area of focus has been on Wall Street banks' leverage lending practices which include leveraged lending activities to fund leveraged buyouts. In March 2013, the Federal Reserve and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency issued guidance urging banks to avoid financing leveraged buyouts in most industries that would put total debt on a company of more than six times its earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization, or Ebitda. Our research, using data on all leveraged buyouts (with EBITDA >$20 million) issued after the guidance, sets out to explain the elements banks consider when exceeding leverage limitations. Initially, we hypothesized that since deals over 6x leverage had higher amounts of debt, they were riskier deals, which would carry over to other risk measures such as yield to maturity on debt and company credit ratings. To analyze this, we obtained a large data set with all LBO deals in the past three years and ran difference-in-means tests on a number of variables such as deal size, credit rating and yield to maturity to determine if deals over 6x leverage had significantly different risk characteristics than deals under 6x leverage. Contrary to our hypothesis, we found that deals over 6x leverage had significantly less risk, mainly demonstrated by lower average YTMs, than deals under 6x. One possible explanation of this might be that banks, wanting to ensure they are not fined, will only go through with a deal over 6x leverage if other risk metrics such as yield to maturity are well below average.
ContributorsKing, Adam (Co-author) / Lukemire, Sean (Co-author) / McAleer, Stephen (Co-author) / Simonson, Mark (Thesis director) / Bonadurer, Werner (Committee member) / Department of Finance (Contributor) / Department of Economics (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2016-05
Description
For our collaborative thesis we explored the US electric utility market and how the Internet of Things technology movement could capture a possible advancement of the current existing grid. Our objective of this project was to successfully understand the market trends in the utility space and identify where a semiconductor manufacturing company, with a focus on IoT technology, could penetrate the market using their products. The methodology used for our research was to conduct industry interviews to formulate common trends in the utility and industrial hardware manufacturer industries. From there, we composed various strategies that The Company should explore. These strategies were backed up using qualitative reasoning and forecasted discounted cash flow and net present value analysis. We confirmed that The Company should use specific silicon microprocessors and microcontrollers that pertained to each of the four devices analytics demand. Along with a silicon strategy, our group believes that there is a strong argument for a data analytics software package by forming strategic partnerships in this space.
ContributorsLlazani, Loris (Co-author) / Ruland, Matthew (Co-author) / Medl, Jordan (Co-author) / Crowe, David (Co-author) / Simonson, Mark (Thesis director) / Hertzel, Mike (Committee member) / Department of Economics (Contributor) / Department of Finance (Contributor) / Department of Supply Chain Management (Contributor) / Department of Information Systems (Contributor) / Hugh Downs School of Human Communication (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2016-05
Description
It is important to examine training programs for in-store associates in the specialty retail industry. The retail industry is strong right now, and growth is expected to be at 7% over the next 10 years. In the retail industry, the Internet poses a credible threat to brick and mortar stores, as many customers now prefer to shop online. To compensate for this, storefronts need to provide an increasingly exceptional in-store experience to drive sales and maintain customer relationships. Creating excellent training programs for in-store associates is the best way in which to improve the relationship between the customer and the associate and create an excellent store experience. Strong associate training programs have numerous benefits to the overarching organization. An employee that feels confident and competent in their job is more engaged at work. Engaged employees are less likely to quit than average, which means a strong training program can save a company turnover costs and loss of institutional knowledge. Additionally, an engaged associate is more likely to exert extra discretionary effort, which increases operational efficiency. Ultimately, an engaged employee will strengthen the service profit chain and create a better overall experience for the customer. When creating a training program it is important to take into account the learning preferences of the company's associates. Millennial learners prefer working in groups, integrated technology, and lessons that are applicable to real life. Generation X learners are self-sufficient and view time as a luxury. They expect material to be straightforward and concise. Additionally, when creating a training program it is important to benchmark programs within and outside of the operating industry. REI has a comprehensive training program that focuses on connecting employees to the mission of the company as well as in-depth product knowledge. Macy's recently overhauled its training program to include more face time with managers and semi-annual refresher trainings. Ritz-Carlton, a step outside of the retail industry, provides legendary training where employees receive over 250 hours of training in the first year alone. Ritz-Carlton employees are highly engaged and autonomous in their work, which leads to an excellent hotel experience. Using my internship as a field study, I share some important results from work with a Fortune 400 specialty retailer headquartered in the Phoenix Valley. Here I examine the associate and customer relationship with the aim of improving the in-store experience. Through benchmarking, associate interviews, and data analysis I am able to recommend a long-term vision for training at the organization where up-to-date product information is accessible in the aisle and overall knowledge well rounded through buddy shift programs and cross-training. My overall recommendation for the specialty retail industry is to take a holistic approach to training. I advocate looking at training programs from multiple perspectives including learning preferences, employee motivations, and corporate culture. Additionally, holistic training means that a company educates and trains associates in all areas of the business through cross-training and buddy shifts. Holistic training will create an engaged work force and improve the customer experience.
ContributorsHouts, Madeline Kirby (Author) / Mokwa, Michael (Thesis director) / Eaton, John (Committee member) / Department of Management (Contributor) / Department of Marketing (Contributor) / Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication (Contributor) / W. P. Carey School of Business (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2016-05