Business Commons^™

Social Networks And The Desire To Save Face: A Case From Singapore, Michael A. Netzley, Akanksha Rath

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

For five years, corporate communication undergraduates have maintained a wiki as a final course and community service project. Using Web 2.0 platforms to crowdsource and curate content, they learn to employ online communications for work purposes. When the course was launched in 2007, the dominant social media narrative invited educators to embrace a technological optimism with sub-themes of open communication, sharing, and co-creation. By 2011, student feedback had compelled the instructor to consider the limits of technological optimism and revise the course. Specifically, Singaporean students have displayed a need to save face online, which has led to a localized teaching …

The Agency Problem, Corporate Governance, And The Asymmetrical Behavior Of Selling, General, And Administrative Costs, Hai Lu, Hai Lu, Theodore Sougiannis

Research Collection School Of Accountancy

Selling, general, and administrative (SG&A) costs represent a significant proportion of thecosts of business operations. On average, the SG&A costs to total assets ratio is 27 percent,compared to the research and development (R&D) to total assets ratio of 3 percent(Banker, Huang, and Natarajan 2011). Due to the importance of SG&A costs, practitionerspay close attention to controlling SG&A spending. Understanding SG&A cost behaviorand the role of managers in adjusting the costs is thus important to researchers andpractitioners. Recent empirical research indicates that SG&A costs behave asymmetrically,that is, they increase more rapidly when demand increases than they decline when demanddecreases (Anderson, Banker, …

Examining The Chinese Approach To Crisis Management: Cover-Ups, Saving Face, And Taking The “Upper Level Line”, Lan Ye, Augustine Pang

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

In 2008, the Sanlu Group, a former giant in the Chinese dairy industry and a quintessential Chinese organization, was confronted with the melamine-contaminated milk crisis. Its products were blamed for causing at least six babies' deaths and damaging the kidneys of about 294,000 babies. Sanlu was criticized for its crisis handling, which resulted in its collapse several months later. Using the contingency theory of strategic conflict management and Coombs' typology of crisis communication strategies, this study explored Sanlu's crisis management as a mirror to understanding the Chinese approach to crisis management. Findings showed that influenced by political, social, and cultural …

Communication, Organizing And Organization: An Overview And Introduction To The Special Issue, Francois Cooren, Timothy Kuhn, Joep P. Cornelissen, Timothy Adrian Robert Clark

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

This paper provides an overview of previous work that has explored the processes and mechanisms by which communication constitutes organizing (as ongoing efforts at coordination and control of activity and knowledge) and organizations (as collective actors that are 'talked' into existence). We highlight differences between existing theories and analyses grounded in communication-as-constitutive (CCO) perspectives and describe six overarching premises for such perspectives; in so doing, we sharpen and bound the explanatory power of CCO perspectives for organization studies more generally. Building on these premises, we develop an agenda for further research, call for greater cross-fertilization between the communication and organization …

Communicating Crisis: How Culture Influences Image Repair In Western And Asian Governments, Yvonne Siew‐Yoong Low, Jeni Varughese, Augustine Pang

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to seek to understand the differences in image repair strategies adopted by two governments that operate in the Western and Asian societies when faced with similar crises. Design/methodology/approach: Textual analyses are presented of communication of Hurricane Katrina and Typhoon Morakot by the Taiwanese and US governments, respectively. Findings: Faced with similar accusations of slow response, the Asian culture, represented by the Taiwanese Government, used predominantly mortification and corrective action strategies. The Western culture, represented by the US Government, used predominantly bolstering and defeasibility and a mixed bag of other strategies such as shifting …

Firm Structure And Corporate Cash Holdings, Venkat Subramaniam, Tony Tang, Heng Yue, Xin Zhou

Research Collection School Of Accountancy

We analyze whether the organizational structure of firms (i.e., whether a firm is diversified or focused) affects their cash holdings. Using Compustat firm level and segment-level data, we find that diversified firms hold significantly less cash than their focused counterparts. Our results are robust to industry adjustments at the segment level and to different factors previously found to be important determinants of cash holdings. Using time-series, cross-sectional, and additional robustness tests we are able to attribute the lower cash holdings among diversified firms to complementary growth opportunities across the different segments of these firms and the availability of active internal …

Digitisation's Impacts On Publics: Public Knowledge And Civic Conversation, Alessandro Lovari, Soojin Kim, Kelly Vibber, Jeong-Nam Kim

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

This paper proposes a new way of classifying publics in terms of their adoption and use of digitalised communication technologies. A CATI (computer aided telephone interview) survey of 1,014 citizens revealed that people in Siena, Italy, show different patterns and gaps in adopting new media and technologies as well as in using them in their civic participation and engagement. Based on the survey results, four types of publics are suggested (inactive, analogical, hybrid, and digital publics) and a demographic profile of each public including age, gender, and education is provided. The relationships among public types, level of education, and gender …

Different Means To The Same End: A Comparative Contingency Analyses Of Singapore And China’S Management Of The Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (Sars) Crisis, Yan Jin, Augustine Pang, Glen T. Cameron

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

For months in 2003, the world lay under siege by a strain of virus that masqueraded as pneumonia but inflicted a far more lethal effect. By all accounts, the mystery of how the severe respiratory acute syndrome (SARS) virus came to be has remained largely unsolved (Bradsher & Altman 2003). What began as routine fever and cough in a Chinese physician, later identified as a super-carrier, rapidly spread to people who had cursory contacts with him, spiralling into a worldwide crisis that spanned Asia and the North Americas (Rosenthal 2003).

Collective Intelligence Ratio: Measurement Of Real-Time Multimodal Interactions In Team Projects, Paul Kim, Donghwan Lee, Youngjo Lee, Chuan Huang, Tamas Makany

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

PurposeWith a team interaction analysis model, the authors sought to identify a varying range of individual and collective intellectual behaviors in a series of communicative intents particularly expressed with multimodal interaction methods. In this paper, the authors aim to present a new construct (i.e. collective intelligence ratio (CIR)) which refers to a numeric indicator representing the degree of intelligence of a team in which each team member demonstrates an individual intelligence ratio (IR) specific to a team goal.Design/methodology/approachThe authors analyzed multimodal team interaction data linked to communicative intents with a Poisson‐hierarchical generalized linear model (HGLM).FindingsThe study found evidence of a …

Audience Perceptions Of Charismatic And Non-Charismatic Oratory: The Case Of Management Gurus, Timothy Adrian Robert Clark, David Greatbatch

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

The purpose of the paper is to investigate whether people consider someone a charismatic speaker because they are deploying the generic features commonly identified as being associated with charismatic oratory in the literature, or whether the attribution of charisma is informed by factors which vary across different settings. Video-taped extracts from speeches given by seven people widely regarded as influential thought leaders – Kenneth Blanchard, Stephen Covey, Daniel Goleman, Gary Hamel, Rosabeth Moss Kanter, Tom Peters and Peter Senge – were shown to different audiences. After viewing each extract they rated the extent to which they found the speaker charismatic …

Optimal Advertisement Scheduling In Breaks Of Random Lengths, Ajay Srinivasan Aravamudhan

Dissertations and Theses Collection (Open Access)

Broadcasters generate a large part of their revenue through advertising, especially in live sports. Scheduling advertisements can be challenging in live broadcasting, however, for sports such as Cricket that have breaks of random lengths and number during which the ads are shown. This uncertainty, coupled with the high price of spots for major competitions, means that improving ad scheduling can add significant value to the broadcaster. This problem shares similarities with the stochastic cutting stock problem and the dynamic stochastic knapsack problem, with applications in the wood, steel and paper industry and the transportation industry respectively.

This dissertation adds to …

The Role Of Gender In Negotiation, Elizabeth Layne Paddock, L. J. Kray

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

No abstract provided.