Issue 2
Synopsis: Predictive Power? Textual Analysis in Mergers and Acquisitions
Note from the editor: The following article was adapted from an honors thesis of the same name written by the author. The full text is available on the Marriott Student Review ScholarsArchive website.
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Synopsis: A Bit about Blockchain
Note from the editor: The following article was adapted from an honors thesis entitled The Digital Global Supply Chain: The Growing Case for Blockchain Technology Expansion Within Global Supply Chain written by the author. The full text is available on the ScholarsArchive website.
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Synopsis: A Digital Global Supply Chain
The Digital Global Supply Chain: The Growing Case for Blockchain Technology Expansion Within Global Supply Chain
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Book Review: Zero to One by Peter Thiel
Most startups fail. Unfortunately, that’s the bitter truth. Groundbreaking products and services fail to penetrate the world of the consumer. Those that do are quickly drowned out by a plethora of imitations and substitutions. Why do businesses fail so often?
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Book Review: Essentialism by Greg McKeown
“What did you do as a child that excited you? How can you recreate that today?” Greg McKeown, author of Essentialism, asks readers to rediscover their child-like behaviors. Why? To help them eliminate frivolity. This may seem counter-intuitive. However, in McKeown’s compelling book, he provides readers with a number of strategies to recognize what promotes their success and what merely distracts them. Reserving time for youthful play is just one example of what it takes to become an essentialist.
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Book Review of Resonate: Present Visual Stories that Transform Audiences by Nancy Duarte
Who doesn’t like a good story? From nursery rhymes to fairy tales to Star Wars, a good story becomes a part of our way of thinking. Stories take us to new ideas and places where we would never go. We fondly remember the first time we heard about Jack Sprat who ate no fat, the magical kiss that saved Snow White’s life, and the declaration of Darth Vader to the surprised Luke that he is his father, even if we heard the story years ago (or for some of us, decades).
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Industry Spotlight: Solar Energy
In recent decades, the human ability to leverage the sun has expanded well beyond tanning and frying ants on the sidewalk. Revolutionized technology and research has both illuminated sustainability issues and provided potential solutions, many of which are being successfully implemented. Within suburban neighborhoods, it is common to see solar panels on every other house, wind turbines on visits to the beach, and see cars pulling in to electric charging stations. Perhaps the most accessible, realistic and reliable source for the everyday American is solar energy.
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GDP and Refugees: An Economic Argument For Accepting Refugees
2018 Phi Kappa Phi MarriotT School of business Business Article WinnerOne year ago, the United Nations Refugee Agency announced there were 65.6 million displaced people worldwide (Edwards, 2017), meaning 1 in every 113 persons is a refugee. The world needs to find answers to two questions, where will all these people go, and how will we take care of them all?
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The Benefits and the Risks of Multi-Level Marketing
While the benefits of an MLM business model are indisputable, inherent risks exist that not only put in question the validity of direct sales interactions, but also can create ethical and legal dilemmas.
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Predictive Power? Textual Analysis In Mergers & Acquisitions
Note from the editor: The following article was adapted from an honors thesis of the same name written by the author. The full text is available on the Marriott Student Review ScholarsArchive website.According to data from Thomson Reuters, mergers & acquisitions (M&A) represent a vital mechanism for consolidation and restructuring within industries and carry significant influence over rapid changes in market prices. As such, any insight into the unique ability of investors to more successfully utilize publicly available information to identify firms in M&A that are likely to have large price movements is valuable. This paper seeks to answer the question, “How does a textual analysis of mergers & acquisitions SEC filings, segmented by industry, size, and time, predict longterm, cumulative abnormal post-merger-filings returns for an acquirer?” My hypothesis is built on the premise that the soft, qualitative text scribed by corporate boards into M&A proxy letters for shareholders can provide insight into the future success of acquirers’ stock that other quantitative data does not. I hypothesize that by using regression analyses with textual measures from the Diction software program, I can gain insights to answer this question.
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Executive Spotlight: Adam Chase, CEO Chase Marketing
Adam Chase has been CEO of Chase Marketing, a Utahbased marketing firm, for ten years. Chase Marketing was started by his father, Mike Chase, in 1992. “It’s a family business, but it works because we all have such different strengths.” Adam has worked with his father, brother, and now his sister to build Chase Marketing from the ground up. A career’s worth of ups and downs, roadblocks, and brilliant moments of success has shaped Adam into a grounded and people-centered CEO.
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Design Thinking And The Marriott School
Even though its origins extend back more than 50 years, interest in design thinking has grown exponentially over the last 15 to 20 years across multiple industries, corporations, and universities, including Brigham Young University. With broad applicability and a human-centered focus, educators, researchers, and business executives have been using design thinking to develop innovative concepts and solutions. In this paper, we will first explain what design thinking is, how it is being incorporated into BYU in general, and finally, how design thinking is gaining a space in the Marriott School of Business.
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A Bit About Blockchain
What is Blockchain?Blockchain is a decentralized and digitally distributed ledger or database of records and transactions that facilitates the process of recording transactions and tracking assets in a business network. Those assets can be hard assets like food goods, micro-chips or houses. They can also be digital assets like intellectual property, branding, copyrights and documentation. Blockchain’s distributed ledger encompasses a list of connected blocks stored on a distributed network that is secured through cryptography. Blockchain derives its name from the manner in which it stores transaction data, in blocks that link together to form a chain. Each “block” contains encrypted information and hashed pointers to a previous block of information. The blocks record and confirm the time and sequence of transactions within a network that is governed by rules created by the network participants. As the number of transaction grows, so does the blockchain (Gupta 2017). Figure 1 is a diagram that shows the transaction process on a blockchain network.
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The Digital Global Supply Chain: The Growing Case for Blockchain Technology Expansion Within Global Supply Chain
Case Study AnalysesThese four case studies were selected on the basis of showcasing the supply chain benefits of adopting blockchain that were of the greatest importance to each company and may slightly vary from the total importance scores for the industries in which they operate. We see this particularly with Walmart as well as in the study of time savings as a blockchain benefit to Maersk. Each of the seven supply chain benefits of blockchain adoption are represented in these case study analyses.
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Leadership Development: A Study of Elon Musk
“Nations hire him to get to outer space. His solar company is cash-flow positive. His electric supercars seat seven. Superheroes emulate him. He wants to die on Mars. He is… Elon Musk.”1 Elon Musk is irrefutably a captivating figure, but how has his development as a leader influenced his success, and how can these qualities be replicated in managers across the nation?
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Buzzwords
ASYLUM-SEEKER According to the United Nations Refugee Agency, an asylum-seeker is someone who has left his or her home country as a political refugee and whose request for sanctuary has yet to be processed. About one million people seek asylum each year across the globe.
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The Power Of Happiness
We all grew up hearing the cheesy line, “a smile is contagious.”
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Editor’s Letter – A Bright Future
The promise of a bright future is a theme endorsed by theologians, philosophers, politicians, lovers, and entrepreneurs. Looking forward to a better tomorrow is an enduring trait for the optimist who sees, even in tragedy, the bright future ahead.
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