Turner Business

TSYS School associate professor Alfredo Perez and colleagues from the University of Kentucky and Dalton State College recently reviewed the privacy policies of six popular electronic devices, including two voice-activated intelligent assistant devices, namely the Amazon Echo Dot and Google Home.  The results, published in their study forthcoming in Security and Privacy , indicate that both of the voice-activated intelligent assistant devices adhere to the manufacturers’ privacy policies when the user’s voice is collected through the devices.  However, the researchers also found that future policy changes, along with the use of user consent agreements, may adversely affect consumers’ privacy when the manufacturers fail to provide users with an avenue to opt out of their data collection practices.  This particular issue is most likely to occur in situations where a company’s Internet of Things (IoT) policies are embedded within its general privacy policies, or where the Io...

Columbus State University's Center for Commerce and Technology became the Synovus Center of Commerce and Technology in November of 2018.   “This naming is recognition of the long role that Synovus has had in supporting and shaping both the community of Columbus and the campus and curriculum of Columbus State University,” said CSU President Chris Markwood. “It is especially appropriate that the highly-respected Synovus name be tied to the home of our innovative business and computer science programs, which Synovus has so generously supported.” Synovus has contributed or pledged more than $6 million to Columbus State University over the last two decades. The company's leaders have led recent capital campaigns, and their support has gone directly to help women's athletics, student scholarships, the music program, the TSYS Department of Computer Science and the university's financial success program. Synovus has also been a strong supporter of CSU internships, hired CSU gra...

In their study forthcoming in Simulation Modelling Practice and Theory , TSYS School assistant professor Anastasia Angelopoulou and colleagues from St. Thomas University and the University of Central Florida point out that firms in the entertainment industry, energy and financial sectors, military, and video gaming have turned to high performance computing (HPC) in order to support interactive training through the use of game-based and virtual software simulators .  In response to this trend, these researchers explore the feasibility of extending a traditional HPC environment into a cloud-based service that is capable of supporting multiple simultaneous interactive simulations, while continuing to solve compute-intensive tasks.  To do so, they investigate four HPC load-balancing techniques through virtualization, software containers, and clustering to simultaneously and optimally analyze, schedule, and execute game-based simulation applications.   They conclude that the ...

Turner College faculty are continuing to excel in terms of garnering citations to their published research.  As the accompanying table indicates, the College’s 46 faculty have combined to exceed 15,000 Google Scholar citations for the first time in the organization’s history.  In fact, the College’s 46 faculty have garnered a cumulative total of 15,192 Google Scholar citations, for an average of 330 per faculty. Turner College Department Google Scholar Citations No. of Faculty Cites per Faculty Accounting & Finance 4,896 14 350 Management & Marketing 7,274 17 428 TSYS School 3,022 15 201 All 15,192 46 330 The Department of Accounting and Finance, which also includes economics faculty, has produced a total of 4,896 Google Scholar citations.  Wi...

Recent research by Turner College management professor Kirk Heriot and colleagues from the College of Charleston and Fresno State University examines the City of Columbus’ lawsuit (in 2006) over uncollected accommodation taxes against online travel agencies, such as Expedia and Orbitz.   As a result of the lawsuit, the companies delisted Columbus hotels from their websites, a situation that existed until the lawsuit was settled (after a few years).   As Heriot and his colleagues indicate in their 2018 publication in Cornell Hospitality Quarterly , the episode provided for a non-experimental “real life” exploration of the power balance between online travel agencies and municipalities.   That exploration indicates that online travel agencies have less power than is generally assumed, as the City of Columbus emerged victorious in their claim to associated accommodation taxes, while local hoteliers experienced an increase in revenues.   According to the authors, an impo...

In their research study appearing in IEEE Transactions on Fuzzy Systems , the TSYS School’s Javier Livio and Rania Hodhod describe "cupping" is the process of sensorial evaluation, using a numerical score, of coffee beans, which is done to determine the actual sensory differences between coffee samples, to describe the flavors of the samples, and to determine preference of product.   Cupping is typically done by expert judges who record individual components’ scores and rank their intensities for reference.   In their study, Livio and Hodhod introduce a fuzzy expert (logic) system that linguistically models a cupper’s perception of coffee bean attributes through sensorial evaluation and is capable of learning as new cupping data flow through it.   Based on tests indicating that the fuzzy system matches experts’ ratings at a 95 percent rate, the researchers assert that their fuzzy expert system is capable of training expert cuppers, especially in cases where coffees from...

Turner College associate professor of management Phillip Bryant was recently named editor of Compensation & Benefits Review , the leading journal for senior executives and professionals who design, implement, evaluate and communicate compensation and benefits policies and programs. Published six times per year by SAGE Publications, CBR supports human resources and compensation and benefits specialists with up-to-date analyses on salary and wage trends, labor markets, pay plans, incentive compensation, retirement programs, and health care benefits. CBR , which has been in print since 1969, boasts an impressive editorial board, with management scholars from the University of Chicago, University of Wisconsin, Ohio State University, Rutgers University, University of Toronto and Arizona State University, to name a few.