Digital Commons Network^™

Displaying Group Cohesiveness: Humour And Laughter In The Public Lectures Of Management Gurus, David Greatbatch, Timothy Adrian Robert Clark

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

As perhaps the highest profile group of management speakers in the world, so-called management gurus use their appearances on the international management lecture circuit todisseminate their ideas and to build their personal reputations with audiences of managers. This article examines the use of humour by management gurus during these public performances. Focusing on video recordings of lectures conducted by four leading management gurus (Tom Peters, Rosabeth Moss Kanter, Peter Senge and Gary Hamel), the article explicates the verbal and nonverbal practices that the gurus use when they evoke audience laughter. These practices allow the gurus to project clear message completion …

Nurse Rostering Problems: A Bibliographic Survey, Brenda Cheang, Haibing Li, Andrew Lim, Brian Rodrigues

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Hospitals need to repeatedly produce duty rosters for its nursing staff. The good scheduling of nurses has impact on the quality of health care, the recruitment of nurses, the development of budgets and other nursing functions. The nurse rostering problem (NRP) has been the subject of much study. This paper presents a brief overview, in the form of a bibliographic survey, of the many models and methodologies available to solve the NRP.

The Demand And Supply-Side Impact Of The Kimberly-Clark, Scott Paper Products Merger In The Facial Tissues Category, Andre Bonfrer, Jagmohan S. Raju

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

We investigate how market behavior changed in the facial tissues category, following the 1995/1996 Kimberly-Clark merger with Scott Paper Products in the paper products industry. The facial tissues category is of interest because the US Department of Justice (DOJ), anticipating reduced competition after the merger, imposed a consent decree, requiring that Scotts’ facial tissues brands be licensed out to a third party. We utilize a two-stage budgeting demand system developed by Deaton and Muellbauer (1980a), coupled with general form supply-side first order conditions to compare demand and competitive behavior before and after the merger. Our findings indicate that the merger …

The Structure Of Affect: Reconsidering The Relationship Between Negative And Positive Affectivity, Russell Cropanzano, Howard M. Weiss, Jeff M. S. Hale, Jochen Reb

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

During the past decade organizational scientists have devoted considerable research attention to the topic of workplace affect. Despite important advances, continued progress depends on a better understanding of the structure of affective experience. The goal of this paper is to review progress to date. In particular, we review evidence pertaining to four constructs that have been widely used to organize research on affect: positive affectivity, negative affectivity, hedonic tone, and affect intensity. We review various structural models pertaining to these four constructs, devoting special attention to integrative frameworks and future research needs. Corresponding au

An Investigation Of Consumer Online Trust And Purchase-Repurchase Intentions, Dan J. Kim, Donald Ferrin, Raghav Rao

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

There is little research on trust and satisfaction in the electronic commerce from a longitudinal (pre- and postpurchase) perspective. Based on previous frameworks and theories, this study developed a combined model of consumer trust and satisfaction in the context of Internet shopping. From the valance framework and expectation-confirmation theory, several prepurchase and post-purchase factors such as risk, benefit, consumer trust, expectation, confirmation, and satisfaction are investigated as research variables affecting consumer repurchase intention.

The results of the study show that trust is the strongest predictor of the consumer’s purchase intention. In addition, as in traditional consumer satisfaction studies, it holds …

Design And Analysis Of Cylindrical Antiresonant Reflecting Optical Waveguide, Chyng Wen Tee, S. F. Yu

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

A field-transfer matrix method is developed to analyze the modal characteristics of cylindrical multilayered waveguides with axis-symmetric geometry. A new design rule for cylindrical antiresonant reflecting optical waveguides (ARROWs), based on a three-step design process, is also proposed to minimize the radiation loss of the fundamental leaky mode. In addition, a simple approach is suggested to estimate the optimum core diameter of the cylindrical ARROWs for optimum radiation loss and radiation loss margin. Hence, it can be shown that an extra high index cladding layer is good enough to reduce the radiation loss as well as to maintain a reasonably …

Modularity And The Product Lifecycle, Peter Cebon, Oscar Hauptman, Chander Shekhar

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Product lifecycle theory, which underlies theories of technical innovation in economics, strategy, marketing, and operations management, is based implicitly on the assumption that products are integrated wholes. The modularization of products undermines the specific synergies which drive the product lifecycle, and this undermining has impacts spanning from the structure of individual organizations to the structure of economies and the definition of industries.

The Performance Implications Of Ownership Driven Governance Reform, Toru Yoshikawa, Phillip H. Phan

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

This paper explores the performance impact of recent changes in foreign shareholdings and boardroom reforms in Japan. Empirical research on the impact of reform on the Japanese corporate governance system could provide useful lessons for their European counterparts who are themselves facing similar pressures to reform. We found that although participation of outside directors in strategic decision-making was associated with positive stock returns, the increase in the ratio of outside directors, the separation of the board members and executive officers, and the reduction of board size were not related to firm performance.

Performance Of High And Low Book-To-Market Stocks With Strong Financial Signals: Evidence In Asia Markets 1991-2002, Choong Seok Joseph Kang, Kuan Yong David Ding

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Motivated by striking findings in recent US studies on return enhancing role in financial signals, we examine in the context of Asian stock markets if we can improve one- and two-year returns of high and low book-to-market (BTM) portfolios by retaining in the portfolios only the stocks whose current accounting/financial information indicates strong financial performance in the prior year. We find that doing so can substantially improve the future returns of such portfolios in all markets except Malaysia. We also find that a zero-investment winner-loser strategy on high BTM stocks (a strategy of longing the value stocks with strong financial …

Measuring Attraction To Organizations, Scott Highhouse, Filip Lievens, Evan F. Sinar

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Organizational attraction measures are commonly used as surrogate assessments of organizational pursuit. Despite the range in content often encompassed by such instruments, no research has systematically examined the assumptions underlying their use. The authors address this issue by empirically distinguishing items assessing attractiveness, prestige, and behavioral intentions and by modeling their effects on organization pursuit. Undergraduates (N = 305) were randomly assigned to recruitment literature from one of five well-known companies and were asked to respond to a series of items commonly used in past research. Analyses of the item responses suggested that three components of organizational attraction can be …

Kill A Brand, Keep A Customer, Nirmalya Kumar

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Kill a Brand, Keep a CustomerMost brands don't make much money. Year after year, businesses generate 80% to 90% of their profits from less than 20% of their brands. Yet most companies tend to ignore loss-making brands, unaware of the hidden costs they incur.That's because executives believe it's easy to erase a brand; they have only to stop investing in it, they assume, and it will die a natural death. But they're wrong. When companies drop brands clumsily, they antagonize loyal customers: Research shows that seven times out of eight, when firms merge two brands, the market share of the …

To Pester Or Leave Alone: Lifetime Value Maximization Through Optimal Communication Timing, Xavier Dreze, Andre Bonfrer

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

The marketing literature has long acknowledged the importance of a customer’s lifetime value in customer relationship management. More recently, researchers have turned their attention to the links between satisfaction and both customer acquisition and retention strategies. In this paper, we are interested in understanding the impact of communication frequency on customer retention and ultimately on lifetime value. We develop a theoretical framework for managing a customer database and addressing the tradeoffs between value extraction and customer retention. An empirical application of this framework is conducted for permission-based email marketing in the entertainment industry. This application recognizes the customization ability underlying …

Manpower Allocation With Time Windows And Job Teaming Constraints, Xi Li, Yan Zhi Li, Andrew Lim, Brian Rodrigues

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

In the Manpower Allocation Problem with Time Windows and Job-Teaming Constraints (MAPTWTC), we have a set of jobs located at various locations where each job requires a team of workers. Each job has a time window and a job duration, during which everyone on the team has to be present. The job requirement is satisfied if and only if the required composite team works for long enough duration within the job's time window. The objective of the problem is find a schedule to minimize a weighted sum of the total number of workers, the total travelling distances of all workers …

Prospect Theory And Institutional Investors, Melvyn Teo, Paul G. J. O'Connell

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

There is ample evidence that past performance affects the trading decisions of individual investors. This paper looks at this issue using a detailed database of currency trading decisions of institutional investors. Past performance manifestly affects currency risk-taking in this group, but the sign and magnitude of the effect runs counter to much of the existing theory and evidence. There is no evidence whatsoever of disposition effects; rather, the dominant characteristic is aggressive risk reduction in the wake of losses. This effect is more prominent later in the year, and among older and more experienced funds. A modified version of the …

Incorporating Diversification Into Risk Management, Mitchell Craig Warachka, A. Purnanandam, Y. Zhao, W.T. Ziemba

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

No abstract provided.

Corporate Social Responsibility Reputation Effects On Mba Job Choice: Controlling For Region Of Origin, David B. Montgomery, Catherine A. Ramus

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

In a preliminary study with 279 MBA’s from two European and three North American business schools we find that reputation-related attributes of caring about employees, environmental sustainability, community/stakeholder relations, and ethical products and services are important in job choice decisions. We use an adaptive conjoint analysis survey tool to discover the relative weighting of a new set of social responsibility job search criteria, including these attributes with traditional job search criteria like financial package, geographical location, etc. In addition, our results show that more than ninety percent of the MBAs in the sample were willing to forgo financial benefits in …

A Note On The Numerical Solution Of High-Order Differential Equations, Y. Wang, Yibao Zhao, G. W. Wei

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Numerical solution of high-order differential equations with multi-boundary conditions is discussed in this paper. Motivated by the discrete singular convolution algorithm, the use of fictitious points as additional unknowns is proposed in the implementation of locally supported Lagrange polynomials. The proposed method can be regarded as a local adaptive differential quadrature method. Two examples, an eigenvalue problem and a boundary-value problem, which are governed by a sixth-order differential equation and an eighth-order differential equation, respectively, are employed to illustrate the proposed method.

The Enhancement Bias In Consumer Decisions To Adopt And Utilize Product Innovations, Shenghui Zhao, Robert J. Meyer, Jin K. Han

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

The ability of consumers to anticipate the value they will draw from new product generations that expand the capabilities of incumbent goods is explored. Drawing on previous research in affective forecasting, the work explores a hypothesis that consumers will frequently overestimate the benefits they envision drawing from new added product features and underestimate the learning costs required to realize those benefits. This hypothesis is tested using a computer simulation in which subjects are trained to play a Pacman-like arcade game where icons are moved over a screen by different forms of tactile controls. Respondents are then given the option to …

Store Brands: Who Buys Them And What Happens To Retail Prices When They Are Introduced?, Andre Bonfrer, Pradeep K. Chintagunta

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

In this paper we study store brand demand behavior by examining a panel of household level and store-level data in five stores located in a competing market area. We seek to address three fundamental questions from this data. First, is there a link between store loyalty and brand loyalty? Second, does store loyalty raise store brand choice probabilities? Third, if a store brand is introduced into a category, what happens to the retail prices of the incumbent brands in the category? We find that store loyalty is negatively associated with brand loyalty, and that store loyalty increases the likelihood of …

A Renewable-Resource Approach To Database Valuation, Xavier Dreze, Andre Bonfrer

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

We demonstrate in this paper that firms should view customers in a database as a renewable resource when valuating them. Indeed, customer names flow in and out of the firm’s databases, and the goal of the firm is to optimize the overall customer acquisition/cultivation/attrition process. The renewable resource approach to the problem of maximizing the profits generated by a flow of customer names is more appropriate than the traditional Customer Lifetime Value (CLV) approach. We show that CLV underestimates the true value of names (by more than 400% in some cases) and leads to sub-optimal customer relationship management and acquisition …

Entrepreneurship And Social Endeavours In Singapore, Wee Liang Tan

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Many people would confine entrepreneurship to the business arena and entrepreneurs to profit enterprises. In truth, entrepreneurship can extend to all aspects of human activity as defined by Raymond Kao as “the process of doing something new and/or different to create wealth for oneself and to add value to the society” (Kao, 1993). Apart from entrepreneurship that is solely “for profit” and in the business sphere, there is social entrepreneurship. Social entrepreneurship spans a continuum of community-based enterprises and entrepreneurial activities by volunteers for the good of their communities. It also includes philanthropic acts by successful individuals. While many may …

Stock Exchange Governance And Market Quality, Chandrasekhar Krishnamurti, John M. Sequeira, Fangjian Fu

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

We show that organization structure of a stock exchange matters by utilizing the unique setting prevailing in India. India has two major stock markets, the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) and the National Stock Exchange (NSE). These two exchanges adopt similar trading systems, trade essentially identical stocks, and follow the same trading hours. However, these exchanges have different organizational structures: BSE is mutualized whereas NSE is demutualized. Using the Hasbrouck [Review of Financial Studies 6 (1993) 191] measure of market quality we show that NSE provides a better quality market than BSE. This result is consistent with the work of Domowitz …

Asymptotic Dynamics And Value-At-Risk Of Large Diversified Portfolios In A Jump-Diffusion Market, Kian Guan Lim, Xiaoqing Liu, Kai Chong Tsui

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

This paper studies the modelling of large diversi ed portfolios in a nancial market with jump-di usion risks. The portfolios considered include three categories: equal money-weighted portfolios, risk minimizing portfolios, and market indices. Reduced-form dynamics driven jointly by one Brownian Motion and one Poisson process are derived for the asymptotics of such portfolios. We prove that derivatives written on a portfolio can be priced by treating the asymptotic dynamics as the underlying process if the number of assets in the portfolio is su ciently large. Analytical and Monte Carlo Value-at-Risk (VaR) can be computed for the portfolios based on their …

Reading The Voice Of The Customer: A Content Analysis Of Consumer Reviews, Seshan Ramaswami, Susheela Abraham Varghese

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Online consumer reviews are an increasingly prominent source of interpersonal influence on consumer preferences. We discuss similarities and differences between these reviews and conventional word-of- mouth sources. A content analysis of 180 online consumer reviews reveals important insights for both academics and managers into the consumer search and influence processes.

Design Of Antiresonant-Reflecting Optical Waveguide-Type Vertical-Coupled Surface-Emitting Lasers Using Transfer Matrix Method, Chyng Wen Tee, C. C. Tan, S. F. Yu

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

A simple transfer matrix method is proposed to calculate the radiation losses of a cylindrical antiresonant-reflecting optical waveguide (ARROW). It is found that the planar approximation underestimates the radiation losses but overestimates the design tolerance of the ARROW-type vertical-cavity surface-emitting lasers (VCSELs). An iteration technique, which is incorporated with the transfer matrix method, is also developed to design ARROW-type VCSELs for minimum radiation losses in a more effective manner.

Does Underwriter Reputation Affect The Performance Of Ipo Stocks?, Chunchi Wu, Sheen Liu, Junbo Wang

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

In this paper we examine the relationship between performance of the Chinese IPO firms and the reputation of investment bankers underwriting their stocks. Similar to previous studies on well-developed stock markets, we find that the initial return on the first day of trading is strongly positive for Chinese IPO stocks due to underpricing. This initial return is negatively related to the underwriter's reputation, suggesting that the better the reputation of the underwriter, the less underpricing and hence, the lower the initial return of the IPO stock. Extending the analysis to a ten-day window after the first trading day, we find …

Reasoning About Competitive Reactions: Evidence From Executives, David B. Montgomery, Marian Chapman Moore, Joel E. Urbany

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Much of the empirical research on competitive reactions describes how or why rivals react to a firm’s past actions, but stops short of examining whether managers attempt to predict such reactions, which we call strategic competitive reasoning. In three exploratory studies, we find evidence of managers’ thinking about competitors’ past and future behavior, but little incidence of strategic competitive reasoning. Competitive intelligence experts and other experienced managers assessment of the results suggests the relatively low incidence of strategic competitor reasoning is due to perceptions of low returns from anticipating competitor reactions more than to the high cost of doing so. …

Estimating Credit Risk Premia, Kian Guan Lim

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

This paper investigates the nature of the credit risk premium adjustments in the Jarrow-Lando-Turnbull model of credit risk spreads. The adjustments relate the equivalent martingale measures to the empirical measures of unconditional transition probabilities. We provide a modi ed version of the risk adjustment that allows a linear partition of the credit spread into an unconditional default component, a recovery component, and the risk premium adjustment. The risk adjustments are related to conditional default risk, illiquidity risk, and other factors not related to recovery e ects. The log-transform of these risk adjustments can be speci ed as linear regressions on …

Singapore's Regionalization Gambit: Insights Form The Suzhou-Wuxi Experiment, Caroline Yeoh, Jerel Chye Hock Lee, Clare Yenping Lee

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

No abstract provided.

The Effects Of Sexual Orientation On Hirability Ratings: An Experimental Study, Greet Van Hoye, Filip Lievens

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Despite its rising importance, empirical research about sexual orientation in the workplace is still scarce. This experimental study examined if gay candidates, with the same work-related qualities as heterosexual candidates, would be judged less favorably in a personnel selection context. Written candidate profiles were varied in a 3 x 3 between-subjects factorial design, with candidate quality and sexual orientation as experimental variables. Our results indicated that the hirability ratings of 135 selection professionals were based on candidate quality and that no discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation occurred. Implications of these findings and directions for future research are discussed.