Professor: Theodore Bolema
Dr. Theodore R. Bolema, Executive Director of the Barton School's Institute for the
Study of Economic Growth, recently published an article about internet throttling.
He explored whether recent reports of increased throttling indicate the need for additional
federal mandates.
"Throttling" is the degrading of Internet traffic based on source, destination, or
content. One criticism of the ban on throttling contained in the 2015 Open Internet Order was that it was based on very little evidence that any anticompetitive throttling
had ever occurred
Ted suggests that not all throttling is anticompetitive or harmful to consumers. He
finds that even the 2015 Open Internet Order recognized that certain broad categories of throttling were necessary and offered
benefits to Internet consumers. Merely measuring variations in speeds for different
applications cannot, in and of itself, definitively establish whether any so-called
"throttling" occurred that would have violated the Open Internet Order's ban. Ted writes that a federal mandate banning all throttling would not solve that
problem and, if anything, would make the problem worse.
This is an economic problem best addressed by market signals guiding future investment.
Investment decisions made solely to comply with regulatory mandates will inevitably
be suboptimal and, therefore, will eventually result in the need for even more throttling
based on source, destination, or content to reasonably manage the network.
This article appeared in a recent edition of Perspectives of Free State Foundation Scholars.
Drs. Khawaja Saeed and Sue Abdinnour of the Barton School FREDS Department explore
agility of supply chains in a research study partially funded by the Kansas Manufacturers
Network. Contemporary business landscape is characterized by extreme volatility in
demand and resource availability. Sustainability in such an environment requires execution
of multiple strategies. But in order to achieve this objective, it is important to
understand how organizations can generate value through complementariness among initiatives
in different domain areas. Dr. Saeed and Dr. Abdinnour explored this subject with
Manoj K. Malhotra of Case Western Reserve University. The study offers some guidance
on this issue with respect to supply chain agility and product modularity, and provides
the impetus to conduct further research on this topic.
For this practitioner-oriented research, the authors analyzed the subject using data
collected from 103 manufacturing firms. Results show that supply chain agility and
product modularity directly enhance responsiveness and enable organizations to reduce
cost.
Dr. Masud Chand continues his research on the migration of business professionals
in this recently published article. The article investigates the immigration of people
born in Africa to the U.S. and analyzes their backgrounds, the reasons for their move,
and their activities in engaging with their countries of origin. It uses the theoretical
lens of brain drain and brain circulation to analyze how these take place in the context
of recent African immigration to the U.S. It proposes some ways in which African countries
can best engage with their diasporas in the U.S. in a manner that is beneficial to
all the three parties involved – the country of origin, the U.S., and the diaspora
itself. 
Management Professors Drs. David Yoon and Steven Farmer examine the roles of positional
and personal power on altruism and incivility in workplace dyads. Results from a field
study in daycare centers showed that legitimate power (a dimension of positional power)
was positively associated with incivility. In contrast, personal power—referent power
and expert power—was positively associated altruism and was negatively associated
with incivility. Referent power was a stronger predictor of both altruism and incivility
for individuals with low humility than those with high humility. Coercive power was
a stronger predictor of incivility for individuals with high humility than those with
low humility.
From a leadership development standpoint, it is important to consider that when pairing
particular supervisors to subordinates, supervisors' positional power—whether that
involves occupying a position in the hierarchy or having the ability to administer
to other feelings of obligation or responsibility will predict how likely they will
engage in incivility. When pairing supervisors to recently hired or struggling subordinates,
organizations can also consider how supervisors previously rated on personal power—aspiring
others' confidence and approval, providing technical knowledge—by their coworkers
as these supervisors will most likely help these subordinates in their times of need
and not provoke them with rude behavior. 
Dr. Atul Rai of the Barton School Accounting Department and his colleague Joseph Kerstein
of Yeshiva University recently published their research exploring the impact of the
Security and Exchange Commission's Staff Accounting Bulletins (SABs) 99-100 in the
year 2000 following their passage in late 1999. As a result, some of the reductions
in earnings management that prior research attributes to Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX)
may have been due to these two SABs. They found only mixed evidence that SOX provided
an incremental impact to that of the SABs, which occurs mainly in the quarterly distribution
of EPS rather than in scaled quarterly earnings. They also found evidence that the
passage of the SABs significantly reduced the practice where firms take write-offs
in the fourth quarter that turn a profit for the year into a loss. Overall, the findings
suggest that the decline in quarterly earnings management started well before SOX
due to the SEC's initiatives.
