The Working Paper Series at the Eberly College of Business and Information Technology started in the 1990s when IUP first sought AACSB accreditation. Since that time, there have been many years when the Working Paper Series had been a popular way for business faculty to exchange research ideas and methodologies.
After a hiatus of a couple of years, the WPS has been resurrected to coincide with the development of the PhD program at Eberly. The session on February 12, 2020, involved two presentations, nearly 30 faculty members in the audience, and a few PhD students videoconferencing by Zoom.
The first presenter was Kathy Baker, a doctoral student in the PhD in Business program at Pittsburgh East and an alumna from Eberly's Executive MBA program. Kathy has been in the nursing profession for nearly four decades.
She utilized her professional background, integrated her learning in the research methods classes in her doctoral program, and worked with James Rodger, one of the most prolific scholars in the Eberly College, to write her paper on "Assessing Causes of Alarm Fatigue in Long-Term Acute Care and Its Impact on Identifying Clinical Changes in Patient Conditions."
She conducted a survey of nursing staff and performed correlation and regression analysis to identify the potential causes for "alarm fatigue" among nurses. The authors are targeting their article to be published in the journal Informatics in Medicine Unlocked. Azad Ali served as the discussant for this article.
The second presenter was Lisa Sciulli, who summarized her article co-authored with her Marketing Department colleague, Charlene Bebko. Their research examined the perceptions regarding service print advertisements. They used a comprehensive questionnaire with 355 participants, who were asked about their emotions and attitudes towards advertisements. The 10 ads that were used in the research were for companies from a variety of industries such as restaurant, hotel, airline, insurance, healthcare, and banking.
Their research utilized ANOVA and factor analysis. It provided guidance for managers in advertising planning to analyze the importance and applicability of emotions and attitudes. Their article is targeted for publication in the Journal of Research in Marketing. Framarz Byramjee served as the discussant for this article.
Prashanth Bharadwaj, the dean's associate in the Eberly College and the coordinator of the WPS, said that: "The Working Paper Series is a great way to further enhance the already-strong research culture within the college since it provides an informal but in-depth way to engage with each other on scholarly endeavors. The doctoral students will also have an excellent forum to get their feet wet in disseminating their research findings. We will certainly see more faculty and doctoral students getting together to conduct more impactful research!"
The next WPS session will be in March.