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Singapore Management University

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An Integrative Review Of Management Research On Caste: Broadening Our Horizons, Hari Bapuji, Snehanjali Chrispal, Pardeep Singh Attri, Gokhan Ertug, Vivek Soundararajan Feb 2024

An Integrative Review Of Management Research On Caste: Broadening Our Horizons, Hari Bapuji, Snehanjali Chrispal, Pardeep Singh Attri, Gokhan Ertug, Vivek Soundararajan

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Even though management research on caste is growing, it is not yet on a clear trajectory to realize its vast potential due to varying terminology and framing of caste, the limited incorporation of directly relevant work from proximate disciplines, and the narrow and selective usage of the attributes of caste. To remove these obstacles, we review 259 scholarly works on caste (216 articles and 43 books and research reports) and develop an integrative framework to i) clarify the contemporary manifestations of caste as being a graded hierarchy, an inherited membership, and a set of socially enforced practices, and ii) summarize …


On The Trajectory Of Discrimination: A Meta-Analysis And Forecasting Survey Capturing 44 Years Of Field Experiments On Gender And Hiring Decisions, Michael Schaerer, Christilene Du Plessis, My Hoang Nguyen, Robbie C. M. Van Aert, Leo Tiokkin, Daniel Lakens, Elena G. Clemente, Thomas Pfeiffer, Anna Dreber, Magnus Johannesson, Cory J. Clark Nov 2023

On The Trajectory Of Discrimination: A Meta-Analysis And Forecasting Survey Capturing 44 Years Of Field Experiments On Gender And Hiring Decisions, Michael Schaerer, Christilene Du Plessis, My Hoang Nguyen, Robbie C. M. Van Aert, Leo Tiokkin, Daniel Lakens, Elena G. Clemente, Thomas Pfeiffer, Anna Dreber, Magnus Johannesson, Cory J. Clark

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

A preregistered meta-analysis, including 244 effect sizes from 85 field audits and 361,645 individual job applications, tested for gender bias in hiring practices in female-stereotypical and gender-balanced as well as male-stereotypical jobs from 1976 to 2020. A “red team” of independent experts was recruited to increase the rigor and robustness of our meta-analytic approach. A forecasting survey further examined whether laypeople (n = 499 nationally representative adults) and scientists (n = 312) could predict the results. Forecasters correctly anticipated reductions in discrimination against female candidates over time. However, both scientists and laypeople overestimated the continuation of bias against female candidates. …


Why Do Farmers’ Cooperatives Fail In A Market Economy? Rediscovering Chayanov With The Chinese Experience, Zhanping Hu, Qian Forrest Zhang, John A. Donaldson Oct 2023

Why Do Farmers’ Cooperatives Fail In A Market Economy? Rediscovering Chayanov With The Chinese Experience, Zhanping Hu, Qian Forrest Zhang, John A. Donaldson

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

In The Theory of Peasant Cooperatives, Chayanov develops the theories of differential optima and vertical integration, which stress the vulnerability of peasant farming in capitalist markets, and argues that cooperatives can support smallholders only if they operate as ‘a cooperative movement’, are buttressed by a strong ‘cooperative culture’, and achieve ‘vertical integration’. Based on extensive fieldwork in China, we identify six major obstacles that explain the failure of most cooperatives. Chayanov’s arguments caution us to not only the vital importance of cooperatives to the resilience of peasant farming, but also the apparently insurmountable obstacles that cooperatives face in market economies.


Public Sentiments And The Influence Of Information-Seeking Preferences On Knowledge, Attitudes, Death Conversation And Receptiveness Towards Palliative Care: Results From A Nationwide Survey In Singapore, Su Lin Yeo, Raymond Han Lip Ng, Tan Ying Peh, May O. Lwin, Poh Heng Chong, Patricia Soek Hui Neo, Jamie Xuelian Zhou, Angel Lee Sep 2023

Public Sentiments And The Influence Of Information-Seeking Preferences On Knowledge, Attitudes, Death Conversation And Receptiveness Towards Palliative Care: Results From A Nationwide Survey In Singapore, Su Lin Yeo, Raymond Han Lip Ng, Tan Ying Peh, May O. Lwin, Poh Heng Chong, Patricia Soek Hui Neo, Jamie Xuelian Zhou, Angel Lee

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Background: Low awareness about palliative care among the global public and healthcare communities has been frequently cited as a persistent barrier to palliative care acceptance. Given that knowledge shapes attitudes and encourages receptiveness, it is critical to examine factors that influence the motivation to increase knowledge. Health information-seeking from individuals and media has been identified as a key factor, as the process of accessing and interpreting information to enhance knowledge has been shown to positively impact health behaviours. Objective: Our study aimed to uncover public sentiments toward palliative care in Singapore. A conceptual framework was additionally developed to investigate the …


3 Groundless Myths That Get In The Way Of Workforce Inclusivity, Kenneth T. Goh Aug 2023

3 Groundless Myths That Get In The Way Of Workforce Inclusivity, Kenneth T. Goh

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

In a commentary, SMU Associate Professor of Strategy & Entrepreneurship (Education) Kenneth Goh discussed and debunked three groundless myths that get in the way of workforce inclusivity. He also called for companies to seek expert advice from relevant agencies and explore partnerships with institutions of higher learning, such as SMU, to pursue inclusivity in a sustainable manner. He added that SMU provides its students opportunities to work with companies and examine the feasibility of their inclusivity initiatives as part of their coursework.


Gender Bias In Cultural Tightness Across The 50 U.S. States And Its Links To Gender Inequality In Leadership And Innovation, Xin Qin, Roy Y. J. Chua, Ling Tan, Wanlu Li, Chen Chen Aug 2023

Gender Bias In Cultural Tightness Across The 50 U.S. States And Its Links To Gender Inequality In Leadership And Innovation, Xin Qin, Roy Y. J. Chua, Ling Tan, Wanlu Li, Chen Chen

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Cultural tightness theory, which holds that “tight” cultures have rigid norms and sanctions, provides unique insights into cultural variations. However, current theorizing has not analyzed gender differences in cultural tightness. Addressing this gap, this research shows that women are more constrained than men by norms within the same society. By recruiting 15,425 respondents, we mapped state-level gender bias in cultural tightness across the United States. Variability in gender bias in cultural tightness was associated with state-level socio-political factors (religion and political ideology) and gender-related threats. Gender bias in cultural tightness was positively associated with state-level gender inequality in (business and …


Care Labour Shortage Needs A Cure, Not More Band-Aids, Yasmin Y. Ortiga Jul 2023

Care Labour Shortage Needs A Cure, Not More Band-Aids, Yasmin Y. Ortiga

Asian Management Insights

Retaining care workers will become more difficult for Asia’s ageing economies.


Mindfully Outraged: Mindfulness Increases Deontic Retribution For Third-Party Injustice, Adam A. Kay, Theodore Charles Masters-Waage, Jochen Reb, Pavlos A. Vlachos Jun 2023

Mindfully Outraged: Mindfulness Increases Deontic Retribution For Third-Party Injustice, Adam A. Kay, Theodore Charles Masters-Waage, Jochen Reb, Pavlos A. Vlachos

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Mindfulness is known to temper negative reactions by both victims and perpetrators of injustice. Accordingly, critics claim that mindfulness numbs people to injustice, raising concerns about its moral implications. Exam-ining how mindful observers respond to third-party injustice, we integrate mindfulness with deontic justice theory to propose that mindfulness does not numb but rather enlivens people to injustice committed by others against others. Results from three studies show that mindfulness heightens moral outrage in witnesses of injustice, particularly when the injustice is only moderate. Although these findings did not replicate with a mindfulness induction, post-hoc analysis in a fourth study reveals …


Digital Literacy Among Older Adults In Singapore, Mindy Eiko Tadai, Micah Tan May 2023

Digital Literacy Among Older Adults In Singapore, Mindy Eiko Tadai, Micah Tan

ROSA Research Briefs

Singapore stands as the fourth most digitally competitive country, after Denmark, USA, and Sweden, in the latest edition of the IMD World Digital Competitiveness Ranking (IMD World Competitiveness Center, 2022). This global ranking measures the capacities of 63 nations to adopt and explore digitally transformative practices across government, industry, and wider society. Among households in Singapore, an astounding 99% have Internet access and 92% have computer access (Infocomm Media Development Authority, 2023). Even within the eldest surveyed cohort, proportions of smartphone usage have risen from 28% in 2017 to 48% in 2021 among resident Singaporeans aged 75 and above, and …


Asset-Rich And Cash-Poor: Which Older Adults Value Reverse Mortgages?, Joelle H. Fong, Olivia S. Mitchell, Benedict S. K. Koh May 2023

Asset-Rich And Cash-Poor: Which Older Adults Value Reverse Mortgages?, Joelle H. Fong, Olivia S. Mitchell, Benedict S. K. Koh

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Home equity represents a substantial share of retirement wealth for many older persons, particularly in Asia where national housing policies have encouraged home-ownership. This paper explored the potential for reverse mortgages to help 'asset-rich and cash-poor' older Singaporeans unlock their home equity while ageing in place. The empirical analysis was based on a nationally representative survey of home-owners age 50+ in the 2018 Singapore Life Panel (N = 6,258). Our analyses showed that the average older home-owner holds some 60 per cent of total net wealth in housing equity, suggestive of high demand potential for reverse mortgage products. Nevertheless, actual …


Covid Time: How Quarantine Affects Feelings Of Elapsed Time, Minju Han, Guy Voichek, Gal Zauberman Apr 2023

Covid Time: How Quarantine Affects Feelings Of Elapsed Time, Minju Han, Guy Voichek, Gal Zauberman

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

The lockdowns imposed in response to the COVID-19 pandemic abruptly upended people's lives and daily structure. In this survey of 1,506 Americans conducted in June 2020, we test how quarantine affects feelings of elapsed time (the subjective temporal distance from an event). We find that feelings of elapsed time are determined either by how people spent their time in quarantine or by how much time since an event was spent in quarantine, depending on whether people are still in quarantine at the time of evaluation. Specifically, whether people quarantined alone and the extent to which they maintained a temporal structure …


Local, Yet Global: Implications Of Caste For Mnes And International Business, Hari Bapuji, Snehanjali Chrispal, Balagopal Vissa, Gokhan Ertug Oct 2022

Local, Yet Global: Implications Of Caste For Mnes And International Business, Hari Bapuji, Snehanjali Chrispal, Balagopal Vissa, Gokhan Ertug

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Caste is an informal institution that influences socioeconomic action in many contexts. It is becoming increasingly evident that international business research, practice, and policy need to programmatically address caste. To facilitate this endeavour, we review the limited research in IB that has addressed caste, and theorize caste as a distinct informal institution by distinguishing it from systems of stratification like race, class, and gender. In addition, we propose a parsimonious framework to highlight the implications of caste for Indian and non-Indian MNEsin their Indian and global operations. In doing this, we focus on implications with respect to the internal organization …


Building Up A Culture Of Respect, Siow-Heng Ong Oct 2022

Building Up A Culture Of Respect, Siow-Heng Ong

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Recently, we have become more acutely aware of a variety of undesirable workplace circumstances and practices in Singapore. personal time; discriminatory workplace practices against members of various categories of minority groups; and bias against women staff.


“No More Uncle” And Gender-Neutral Marketing, Singapore Management University Sep 2022

“No More Uncle” And Gender-Neutral Marketing, Singapore Management University

Perspectives@SMU

How Asian men’s beauty care is shaping conception of masculinity and gender-neutral marketing


Property In Whose Name? Intrahousehold Bargaining Over Homeownership In China, Jia Yu, Cheng Cheng Sep 2022

Property In Whose Name? Intrahousehold Bargaining Over Homeownership In China, Jia Yu, Cheng Cheng

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Previous research typically examined homeownership inequality across individuals or households, overlooking the intrahousehold allocation of homeownership. Using couple-level data of the 2016 China Family Panel Studies, our study addresses the gap by examining the bargaining over homeownership between husbands and wives in China. Descriptive results reveal a large gender gap in homeownership: only about one-quarter of couples listed the wife as an owner on the Housing Ownership Certificate, whereas about 92% listed the husband. The gender gap in ownership, however, has narrowed among couples married after 2000. Multivariate analyses show that economic autonomy, relative resources, housing purchase conditions, and modernization …


Where We Are From Matters: Assessing The Impact Of Immigrants On Firm Environmental Performance, Narae Lee Aug 2022

Where We Are From Matters: Assessing The Impact Of Immigrants On Firm Environmental Performance, Narae Lee

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

This study examines the impact of immigrant populations on firm environmental performance. Leveraging a longitudinal dataset of more than 11,000 manufacturing facilities in the US in which I match the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) facility toxic emissions data with the location’s census immigration data, I document the negative impact of local immigrant populations on a facility’s environmental performance, which strengthens as heterogeneity among immigrant increases. I argue that this is because a more heterogeneous community is less cohesive and hence less capable of organizing effective pressures against pollution. Further, I show that because co-nationality links create unique bonds between the …


Gender, Bottom-Line Mentality, And Workplace Mistreatment: The Roles Of Gender Norm Violation And Team Gender Composition, Kenneth Tai, Kiyoung Lee, Eugene Kim, Tiffany D. Johnson, Wei Wang, Michelle K. Duffy, Seongsu Kim May 2022

Gender, Bottom-Line Mentality, And Workplace Mistreatment: The Roles Of Gender Norm Violation And Team Gender Composition, Kenneth Tai, Kiyoung Lee, Eugene Kim, Tiffany D. Johnson, Wei Wang, Michelle K. Duffy, Seongsu Kim

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Although gender has been identified as an important antecedent in workplace mistreatment research, empirical research has shown mixed results. Drawing on role congruity theory, we propose an interactive effect of gender and bottom-line mentality on being the target of mistreatment. Across two field studies, our results showed that whereas women experienced more mistreatment when they had higher levels of bottom-line mentality, men experienced more mistreatment when they had lower levels of bottom-line mentality. In another field study, using round-robin survey data, we found that team gender composition influenced the degree to which the adoption of a bottom-line mentality by female …


The Vigilante Identity And Organizations, Fan Xuan Chen, Maja Graso, Karl Aquino, Lily Lin, Joey T. Cheng, Katherine Decelles, Abhijeet K. Vadera May 2022

The Vigilante Identity And Organizations, Fan Xuan Chen, Maja Graso, Karl Aquino, Lily Lin, Joey T. Cheng, Katherine Decelles, Abhijeet K. Vadera

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

We test the theoretical and practical utility of the vigilante identity, a self-perception of being the kind of person who monitors their environment for signs of norm violations, and who punishes the perceived norm violator, without formal authority. We develop and validate a measure of the vigilante identity scale (VIS) and demonstrate the scale’s incremental predictive validity above and beyond seemingly related constructs (Studies 1 – 2e). We show that the VIS predicts hypervigilance towards organizational wrongdoing (Studies 2 and 4), punishment intentions and behavior in and of organizations (Studies 3 and 4) as well as in the wider community …


Nonprofits As Socially Responsible Actors: Neoliberalism, Institutional Structures, And Empowerment In The United Nations Global Compact, Alwyn Lim May 2022

Nonprofits As Socially Responsible Actors: Neoliberalism, Institutional Structures, And Empowerment In The United Nations Global Compact, Alwyn Lim

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Nonprofit and nongovernmental organizations have become prominent participants in a global organizational responsibility movement. This trend of nonprofit responsibility is puzzling because nonprofits are presumably already dedicated to the pursuit of collective well-being objectives. This article examines the nonprofit responsibility movement from a cultural perspective, whereby broader cultural changes at the level of international organizations have constructed nonprofit entities as empowered and socially responsible actors. Using the case of the United Nations Global Compact, a global framework for corporate social responsibility, the author shows how (1) the construction of cultural meanings of autonomy and decentralization in the neoliberal context, (2) …


Trust Building Within And Across Cultures: A Study Of Guinea, Xiushun Sun Apr 2022

Trust Building Within And Across Cultures: A Study Of Guinea, Xiushun Sun

Dissertations and Theses Collection (Open Access)

With the development of African economy and the increasing Chinese MNCs operating in Africa, there is a need to have a better understanding of the trust relationships between Chinese expatriates and African HCNs in the organizational environment. We adopt both qualitative and quantitative approaches to understand the trust relationships between Chinese supervisors, Guinea supervisors and Guinea subordinates in a Chinese MNC’s subsidiary in Guinea, compare the difference within culture and across culture, and examine how the interpersonal trust and the trust in the organization affect employees’ job performance. In study 1, semi-structured interviews were conducted with 19 Chinese supervisors, 20 …


The Resilience Of Diversified Clusters: Reconfiguring Commodity Networks In Rural China During The Covid-19 Pandemic, Zhanping Hu, Qian Forrest Zhang Mar 2022

The Resilience Of Diversified Clusters: Reconfiguring Commodity Networks In Rural China During The Covid-19 Pandemic, Zhanping Hu, Qian Forrest Zhang

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

We conceptualize typical rural communities in China as diversified economic clusters. In normal times, economic actors in these communities rarely cooperate with each other, but are integrated into separate commodity chains. These “diversified clusters”, however, show resilience and flexibility when an external shock—the COVID-19 pandemic—disrupts the spatial connections throughout the existing commodity chains. In this study, we use primary field data collected from one typical rural community in Northern China to show how economic diversity, aided by social networks and space-shrinking technologies, allowed for the vertical commodity chains to be reconfigured temporarily into localized horizontal commodity networks to cope with …


Race And Hedge Funds, Yan Lu, Narayan Y. Naik, Melvyn Teo Feb 2022

Race And Hedge Funds, Yan Lu, Narayan Y. Naik, Melvyn Teo

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

We find that minority operated funds deliver higher alphas, Sharpe ratios, and information ratios than do non-minority operated funds. Moreover, minority fund managers attended more selective schools, worked at higher status investment banks, and are more likely to hold post-graduate degrees. Yet, minority managers raise less start-up capital and attract lower investor flows. Racial homophily fuels investors' appetite for non-minority funds. To address endogeneity, we leverage on an event study of minority manager fund transitions and an instrumental variable analysis that exploits racial imprinting during childhood. The results suggest that minorities face significant barriers to entry in the hedge fund …


The Moderating Effect Of Solar Radiation On The Association Between Human Mobility And Covid-19 Infection In Europe, Wenyu Zhao, Yongjian Zhu, Jingui Xie, Zhichao Zheng, Haidong Luo, Oon Cheong Ooi Jan 2022

The Moderating Effect Of Solar Radiation On The Association Between Human Mobility And Covid-19 Infection In Europe, Wenyu Zhao, Yongjian Zhu, Jingui Xie, Zhichao Zheng, Haidong Luo, Oon Cheong Ooi

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

The novel coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has caused a global pandemic. Some studies have suggested a negative association between sunlight intensity and COVID-19 infection, alluding to the belief that it might be safe to go out on sunny days. This paper examined whether solar radiation mitigated the association between human mobility and COVID-19 infection in Europe using a dynamic panel data model to investigate the effect of human mobility, solar radiation, and their interaction on COVID-19 infection. The results revealed that outgoing mobility was positively correlated and solar radiation was negatively correlated with COVID-19 infection at lag levels of 1, …


Why Companies Practice Corporate Social Responsibility, Shawn Pope, Alwyn Lim Jan 2022

Why Companies Practice Corporate Social Responsibility, Shawn Pope, Alwyn Lim

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

The article discussed why companies practice corporate social responsibility (CSR) and their meta-analysis of 200 surveys over 20 years found that CSR is often embraced as a “halo” strategy.


What Drives Companies To Do Good? A “Universal” Ordering Of Corporate Social Responsibility Motivation, Alwyn Lim, Shawn Pope Jan 2022

What Drives Companies To Do Good? A “Universal” Ordering Of Corporate Social Responsibility Motivation, Alwyn Lim, Shawn Pope

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

The classic question of why companies do corporate social responsibility (CSR) is central to much theoretical, regression-based, and experimental research. Guiding research into this question is a tripartite schema of normative, instrumental, and political CSR motivations that has become increasingly established in the CSR literature. This paper challenges the schema’s status as a typology of equally plausible alternatives through an integration and analysis of a worldwide literature of 120 existing academic surveys on CSR motivation. Rather, the paper reformulates the schema into a surveyed ordering of CSR motivations that might be called “universal” in having remarkable stability across time periods, …


Accounting For A Hopeful World, Themin Suwardy Nov 2021

Accounting For A Hopeful World, Themin Suwardy

Research Collection School Of Accountancy

In a commentary, SMU Associate Provost for Postgraduate Professional Education and Associate Professor of Accounting (Practice) Themin Suwardy noted that environmental reporting has become more common in the last 10 years and that companies are embracing sustainability reporting despite the challenging myriad of seemingly different models, frameworks and regulations. He opined that the IFRS Sustainability Disclosure Standards to be issued by the International Sustainability Standards Board (ISSB) will enable companies to provide comprehensive sustainability information for the global financial markets. He urged accounting professionals to embrace the development wholeheartedly and to help organisations do and report good.


Design Thinking As A Means Of Citizen Science For Social Innovation, Hoe Chin Goi, Wee Liang Tan May 2021

Design Thinking As A Means Of Citizen Science For Social Innovation, Hoe Chin Goi, Wee Liang Tan

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Members of the public or community can play a significant role in the development of social innovations. When a social innovation is developed involving a scientific approach and the community, there is the confluence of two fields-citizen science and social innovation. Social innovations can be developed through the employment of design-thinking. In this paper, we advocate design thinking as an approach to marry the two fields for a desired outcome of improved community life in ageing housing estates in Tokyo. The two fields, citizen science and social innovation, are described in brief before the design thinking method is introduced and …


Are Native Plants Green? Assessing Environmental Performances Of Locally-Owned Facilities, Narae Lee, Jiao Luo Apr 2021

Are Native Plants Green? Assessing Environmental Performances Of Locally-Owned Facilities, Narae Lee, Jiao Luo

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

We study the impact of corporate ownership and community conditions on firm environmental pollution. While the existing literature often thinks of environmental pollution as a unitary construct, we emphasize the distinction between toxic emissions, which have immediate but locally bounded impact, and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions which have gradual but global impact, producing climate change. Using a facility-level panel of all manufacturing facilities in the US from 2010-2018, and leveraging within-facility changes in ownership status, we show that locally owned firms have lower levels of toxic emissions, but they are also less likely to report GHG emissions, and have higher …


Haptic Heritage And The Paradox Of Provenance Within Singapore's Cottage Food Businesses, Orlando Woods, John A. Donaldson Mar 2021

Haptic Heritage And The Paradox Of Provenance Within Singapore's Cottage Food Businesses, Orlando Woods, John A. Donaldson

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

This paper offers a “more-than-representational” understanding of how heritage value is reproduced by cottage food businesses in Singapore. It advances the notion of haptic heritage to highlight the importance of touch and feel in inculcating food with a sense of heritage value. Haptic heritage is reproduced through the physical handling of ingredients in ways that contribute to more “authentic” products. However, it also foregrounds food production processes that are more tactile, time-consuming and thus unscalable than their automated counterparts. Accordingly, the reproduction of haptic heritage is becoming increasingly unviable in Singapore’s competitive economic landscape. These ideas are explored through a …


Enabling Singapore's Youths To Adapt In An Era Of Climate Change, Thomas Menkhoff, Mark Chong, Benjamin Gan Feb 2021

Enabling Singapore's Youths To Adapt In An Era Of Climate Change, Thomas Menkhoff, Mark Chong, Benjamin Gan

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Nudging them towards more eco-friendly behavioural habits is arguably a feasible approach to build greater climate resilience.