Edward J. Lusk

On the Use of Cell Phones and Other Electronic Devices in the Classroom: Evidence From a Survey of Faculty and Students

The authors investigated faculty and student perceptions regarding the use of cell phones and other electronic devices in the classroom. Students differed markedly from faculty, with students exhibiting much greater acceptance of in-class use of technology. Among students, the authors found that gender affected perceptions. Specifically, male students were more accepting of in-class use of technology than were female students. Also, graduate students were more disturbed by off-task use of laptop computers in class than their undergraduate counterparts. This research should be of interest to postsecondary educators and administrators in attempting to bridge the student-faculty generation gap, and in formulating policies regarding the use of electronic devices in the classroom.

Confiança dentro das organizações da Nova Economia: uma análise empírica sobre as conseqüências da incerteza institucional

This study investigates the effects of different institutional frameworks on the levels of trust within hierarchies. Following the insight into the changing of labour contracts provided by New Economy theorists and International Labour Organization [ILO] reports, this study investigates the possible differences in the levels of trust between two paradigms: the Old Economy and the New Economy. We argue that singular institutional changes which better characterize the New Economy in the form of environmental uncertainty set considerable constrains on trust development. By approaching trust as a dependent variable in a cross-industrial comparison, a questionnaire survey was carried out in Brazil accessing the levels of trust within seven Brazilian private companies. From the literature review and empirical observation of the reality of these organizations, companies were identified and classified into different groups. The study concludes that relative high institutional uncertainty considerably limits the development of trust levels within those companies operating in the New Economy.

A Two-Staged Benchmarked Decision Support System Using DEA Profiles of Efficiency

Abstract Using the BvD BankScopeTM database through Wharton Research Data ServicesTM, we identified for 2002 through 2005 all of the US national banks listed on the NY or NASDAQ stock exchanges. This yielded for each year about 120 banks. For each year, we categorized these banks into three size groups based upon total assets. We then: (1) developed for each year using the standard CCR DEA analysis those banks that were CCR efficient, (2) using variables suggested in the literature as being important in characterizing the relative performance of banks, we developed profiles of the differences between the efficient and relatively non-efficient banks for each of the three size categories by year. This was the first stage in the DEA profiling. For the second stage, again for each year by size grouping, we: (1) calculated the Super-Efficiency [SE] scores as proposed by Andersen and Petersen (1993) for the set of CCR efficient banks, (2) developed High and Low SE groups using a median-split of these Super-Efficiency scores, and (3) profiled these SE-High and SE-Low groups. Results: we: (1) developed and illustrated a simple DEA DSS heuristic that could be used by decision makers to identify the driver variables that may be acted upon to manage their risk by moving their banks into their target efficiency group, (2) demonstrated that size is an important category variable in understanding the profiled performance of banks, (3) determined that the Super-Efficiency profiles are refinements of the CCR categorization, and (4) found that there are size-related stationarity differences among the banks which have risk implications for the various size groupings.

Comparing the Rankings of MBA Curricula: Do Methodologies Matter?

We created a matrix of rankings of MBA curricula by six publishers and used a standard SAS program to supply missing data. We then examined the resulting construct to assess the publishers’ ranking similarity and their change over a four year period.

Events and EVENTUS: Understanding and Facilitating Event Studies

Event studies and the techniques they employ are a standard form of business analysis. The authors examine a widely used event study software program EVENTUS to demonstrate the mechanics of data description and to analyze the programs output. In addition, the authors describe a useful source of information for capturing news of specific business events.

Trust within Brazilian new economy organizations: an empirical investigation of gender effects benchmarked on Brazilian old economy organizations

It has been suggested that one of the negative aspects of the New Economy has been growing organizational survival-risk both at the firm and the sector levels. This precarious positioning of the firm has profoundly changed the work environment resulting in the dissolution of job-definition-boundaries, thereby raising the intensity of work and finally affecting the level and nature of trust in the workplace. This is the starting point for our study. Using a questionnaire developed by Gillespie, we investigated gender profiles concerning trust in Supervisors, Peers, and Team in the New and the Old Economies for Brazilian managers. The results show that, for the New Economy, Brazilian women are more willing to give trust to Supervisors whereas Brazilian men expressed higher levels of trust when dealing with Team members. The Peer results are mixed. For the Old Economy, men uniformly express higher levels of trust compared to women over all three reference groups. Finally, for gender matched comparisons, those working in the Brazilian Old Economy firms express higher levels of trust compared to their counterparts in the New Economy independent of gender or time worked. We conclude by discussing the control implications of the above results.