Business Commons^™

The Relevance Of Sleep And Circadian Misalignment For Procrastination Among Shift Workers, Jana Kuhnel, Sabine Sonnentag, Ronald Bledow, Klaus G. Melchers

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

This daily diary study contributes to current research uncovering the role of sleep for employees' effective self-regulation at work. We focus on shift workers' effective self-regulation in terms of their general and day-specific inclination to procrastinate, that is, their tendency to delay the initiation or completion of work activities. We hypothesized that transitory sleep characteristics (day-specific sleep quality and sleep duration) and chronic sleep characteristics in terms of circadian misalignment are relevant for procrastination. Sixty-six shift workers completed two daily questionnaires over the course of one work week, resulting in 332 days ofanalysis. Results of multilevel regression analyses showed that …

Technologies For Ageing-In-Place: The Singapore Context, Nadee Goonawardene, Pius Lee, Hwee Xian Tan, Alvin C. Valera, Hwee-Pink Tan

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

The number of elderly citizens aged 65 and above in Singapore, is expected to double from 440,000in 2015, to 900,000 by 2030. Along with this “Silver Tsunami” is the upward trend of the numberof elderly who are living alone — which is estimated to increase from 35,000 in 2012 to 83,000 by2030. These exclude elderly who are alone at home when their family members are working.Elderly who are staying alone are at higher risk of social isolation and tend to have poorer accessto healthcare. In addition, the general elderly population is typically more susceptible to deteriorating health conditions, which can …

Smart Cities And Urban Management, Singapore Management University

Research Collection Office of Research

In this booklet, read about SMU’s research and initiatives related to smart cities and urban management, and how we strive to make meaningful impact on business, government and society for Singapore and beyond.

Contents:

Liveability and quality of life

• Community participation through mobile crowdsourcing
• Smarter, healthier eating with Food AI
• Data-driven community eldercare platform for sustainable ageing-in-place
• A date with AI
• Smart mobility accessibility for barrier-free access
• Food security

Optimisation and resource management

• Collaborative urban delivery optimisation
• Seat occupancy detection through capacitance sensing
• Large-scale crowd simulation based on real-world data
• Gaining insights through Wi-Fi technology
• Taxi driver guidance system
• Efficiency …

Real-World Large-Scale Iot Systems For Community Eldercare: A Comparative Study On System Dependability, Hwee-Pink Tan, Austin Zhang

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

The paradigm of aging-in-place — where the elderly live and age in their own homes, independently and safely, with care provided by the community — is compelling, especially in societies that face both shortages in institutionalized eldercare resources, and rapidly-aging populations. Internet-of-Things (IoT) technologies, particularly in-home monitoring solutions, are commercially available, and can be a fundamental enabler of smart community eldercare, if they are dependable. In this paper, we present our findings on system performance of solutions from two vendors, which we have deployed at scale for technology-enabled community care. In particular, we highlight the importance of quantifying actual system …

We’Re Less Likely To Collaborate In Bad Economic Times, Nina Sirola

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

In the fall of 1930, the U.S. economy was on a path to recovery following a contraction that occurred the year before. However, worries about the state of the economy, and the banking system in particular, prompted an increasing number of bank customers to attempt to withdraw their funds, an event known as a bank run. Because banks normally keep only a small proportion of deposits in cash, bank runs create a self-fulfilling prophecy such that initial concerns about banks’ possible insolvency ultimately cause insolvency. The bank run of 1930 resulted in the worst economic downturn in the modern history, …

Motives Of Corporate Political Donations: Industry Regulation, Subjective Judgement And The Origins Of Pragmatic And Ideological Corporations, Nicholas M. Harrigan

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

What motivates corporate political action? Are corporations motivated by their own narrow economic self-interest; are they committed to pursuing larger class interests; or are corporations instruments for status groups to pursue their own agendas? Sociologists have been divided over this question for much of the last century. This paper introduces a novel case - that of Australia - and an extensive dataset of over 1,500 corporations and 7,500 directors. The paper attempts to understand the motives of corporate political action by examining patterns of corporate political donations. Using statistical modelling, supported by qualitative evidence, the paper argues that, in the …

Creating A Great Workplace For All Singapore: First Steps For Business Leaders, Richard R. Smith, Benjamin Ho

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

In a highly competitive business world, the pressure for bottom-line results can be intense – sometimes at the expense of a positive workplace environment. Yet, it seems there are organizations that not only do well, but also have people who trust their leaders, possess deep pride in their work and organizations, and take genuine pleasure in working with their colleagues.

Examining The Paradox Of Part-Time Employees Working Overtime, Hsin Ning Yong, Jochen Reb

Asian Management Insights

Examining the paradox of part-time employees working overtime. Many studies have revealed that employees on part-time work arrangements are voluntarily working either longer hours or more intensively than what they had contracted for. So why do part-time employees work overtime? And why is it important for organisations to understand the rationale for such behaviour? Despite the increasing relevance of part-time employment, there is little research on how to structure the work, engage, develop or retain part-time employees. For organisations to effectively manage these relationships, they need to first understand what drives part-timers to work above and beyond their contracted capacity

Gender And Connections Among Wall Street Analysts, Lily Hua Fang, Sterling Huang

Research Collection School Of Accountancy

We examine how alumni ties with corporate boards differentially affect male and female analysts’ job performance and career outcomes. Connection improves men’s job performance — forecasting accuracy and recommendation impact — significantly more than women’s. Controlling for performance, connection further contributes to men’s, but not women’s, likelihood of being voted by institutional investors as “star” analysts, a marker of career success. These asymmetric effects are stronger in more opaque firms and among younger analysts, but is absent from a placebo test. Our evidence indicates that men reap higher benefits from social networks than women in both job performance and subjective …

Farmers' Cooperatives In China: A Typology Of Fraud And Failure, Zhanping Hu, Qian Forrest Zhang, John A. Donaldson

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Since the 1990s, agricultural cooperatives—particularly what China calls Farmers’ Specialized Cooperatives—have experienced rapid expansion in China. After more than two decades of growth and policy support, what is the overall performance of the ever-increasing numbers of these cooperatives? We visited 50 cooperatives across the country, most of which had officially been lauded as successful, to make a first-hand evaluation of their overall status and performance. We argue that, judging by either international or Chinese standards, the vast majority of these agricultural cooperatives are not authentic and fail to deliver expected benefits to smallholders. We categorize them into five types: genuine …

Neighborhood Segregation And Black Entrepreneurship, Eric Fesselmeyer, Kiat Ying Seah

Research Collection College of Integrative Studies

We examine the causal effect of neighborhood segregation on black entrepreneurship. We address neighborhood sorting by analyzing city averages and omitted variable bias by instrumenting for segregation using historical railroad configurations. We find that segregation has a significant positive effect: a 10 percentage point increase in the dissimilarity index decreases the racial gap by about 3.3 percentage points. To minimize the effect of cross-city sorting, we use a narrower sample constructed from outcomes of young adults and find a similar effect. Our findings are importantbecause historically, entrepreneurship has been an avenue out of poverty, and entrepreneurship has been promoted as …

A Study Of Innovating And Non-Innovating Firms’ Perception Of Environmental Dynamism And Innovation In A Mature Regulated Industry, Patrick Siong Kuan Tan

Dissertations and Theses Collection

Can large firms be innovative in an industry that is mature and regulated?”

Business managers in mature regulated industries, like new and unregulated industries, operate under very challenging conditions, albeit a bit different, and need to create competitive advantages. One potential route to do this is through innovations.

The strategic direction and choices which the firm takes and whether to innovate or not innovate are largely influenced by its environment. And, in mature regulated industries, large incumbents face a triple challenge. Its size, the maturity of the industry and regulations governing the industry are three conditions that are generally deemed …

Neighborhood Segregation And Black Entrepreneurship, Eric Fesselmeyer, Kiat Ying Seah

Research Collection College of Integrative Studies

We examine the causal effect of neighborhood segregation on black entrepreneurship. We address neighborhood sorting by analyzing city averages and omitted variable bias by instrumenting for segregation using historical railroad configurations. We find that segregation has a significant positive effect: a 10 percentage point increase in the dissimilarity index decreases the racial gap by about 3.3 percentage points. To minimize the effect of cross-city sorting, we use a narrower sample constructed from outcomes of young adults and find a similar effect. Our findings are importantbecause historically, entrepreneurship has been an avenue out of poverty, and entrepreneurship has been promoted as …

Pay For Performance: What Type Of Pay Scheme Is Best For Achieving Business Results?, Fermin Augusto Diez

Dissertations and Theses Collection

Much has been written, for and against, about compensation as a driver of performance. Two main theoretical constructs deal with this subject: extrinsic theory, including agency theory, whereby money is a main motivator to performance, and intrinsic theory which proposes that money does not motivate, and in fact may hinder, performance. However, corporations spend considerable effort in designing compensation packages with the objective of linking remuneration to performance. Practitioners have developed a variety of mechanisms to deliver pay packages, but heretofore there has been no attempt to validate which, if any, of these various approaches is better able to drive …

Generation "P": Philippines' Millennial Impact Entrepreneurs, Jinky Tuliao, Zen Bin, Vivienne Zerrudo

Social Space

"Millennials"—broadly defined as those born between 1980 and 2000— are a dynamic driving force behind any country’s economic progress, but particularly so in the Philippines. Making up about 50 per cent of the national population, Philippine millennials are mainly employed in micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs), which in turn account for over 99 per cent of all local businesses.

Sofi 101: Understanding Social Finance, Christian Petroske, Florian Parzhuber, Haneol Jeong, John Kinsella, Maaya Murakami, Mitchell Laferriere, Remi Cordelle

Social Space

What is social finance? Rachel Kalbfleisch of the International Development Research Centre (IDRC) defines it as a collection of approaches to managing money that create value for society or the environment, often while producing a financial return,1 while the MaRS Centre for Impact Investing calls it “an approach to managing money to solve societal challenges”.2 In other words, social finance is a movement that covers various ways of using finance—via socially responsible investments, micro-loans, community investments, and so on—to achieve a social or environmental impact. Who is involved in this process? While charities, socially driven businesses and governments all work …

Investing In Impact: A Perspective On Social Impact Bonds, Rashika Ranchan

Social Space

Innovation is inherently risky: even if not all interventions work, social impact bonds can help to accelerate the rate of learning about which approaches work better than others.

Scaling Impact Investing Through Innovative Finance: A Focus On Women's Livelihoods, Durreen Shahnaz

Social Space

I embarked on a journey from the first steps of my career to utilise finance to do good for the world. This journey has now turned into a global movement that is taking the world by a storm, known as impact investing or social finance.

Providing Rural Public Services Through Land Commodification: Policy Innovations And Rural-Urban Integration In Chengdu, Qian Forrest Zhang, Jianling Wu

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Zhang and Wu offer a detailed account of the innovative local policies in Chengdu, China, where a national land-use policy that has created widespread problems in other trial areas has been turned into a positive, transformative force in rural reconstruction. There are three key innovations in this so-called ‘Chengdu model’: First, leveraging on the most important resource in rural area, land, and through the commodification of land development rights, creating a financial source that can fund rural public services provision; second, transforming traditional rural residential patterns and concentrating the rural population in newly built residential communities; and, finally, using both …

How Agribusiness Can Win In Partnership With Small Farms, John A. Donaldson

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Can large-scale agribusiness reduce costs and obtain less-expensive food while also reducing poverty and inequality by engaging small-scale farmers? Many conclude that such an attractive outcome is unimaginable, but innovative pilot projects hold promise that such a reality is within reach and replicable.

Bob’S Red Mill: For The Employees By The Employees, Singapore Management University

Perspectives@SMU

Putting people before profits is more important than accumulating ever-increasing amounts of possession

How Do We Adopt Multiple Cultural Identities? A Multidimensional Operationalization Of The Sources Of Culture, Badri Zolfaghari, Guido Mollering, Timothy Adrian Robert Clark, Graham Dietz

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Given the shortcomings of unidimensional accounts of culture that are based on nationality, this paper builds on and steps beyond current multidimensional conceptualizations of culture in order to provide first empirical evidence for a multidimensional operationalization of culture. It shows the multiple and simultaneous sources of cultural values (i.e., Family, Nationality, Urban/Rural Background, etc.) that individuals draw from in order to behave in accordance with their social setting. This contributes to our understanding of how and when individuals adopt multiple cultural identities. As the first attempt to operationalize the 'mosaic' framework of culture proposed by Chao and Moon (2005), this …

Understanding The Failure Of China’S Specialized Cooperatives In China, Zhanping Hu, Qian Forrest Zhang, John A. Donaldson

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

At first blush, contemporary China seems ripe for the rapid development of agricultural cooperatives. After all, cooperatives have not only enjoyed a long history in China, but the country’s recent experience with agricultural communes should make it more amenable to the reestablishment of joint production and spontaneous bottom-up cooperation. Agricultural cooperatives in China date to the 1930s, as Rural Reconstruction Movement advocates promoted cooperatives as a “third road” between capitalism and socialism. Although Mao’s regime disbanded most bottom-up cooperatives, rural cooperatives began to reemerge in rural China by the end of the 20th century, particularly after 1998, when farmer cooperatives …

Scenario-Based Simulation Game For Hospital Beds Capacity Planning In Singapore, Cheong, Michelle L. F., Li Siong Lim

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

A complete learning object with scenario-based simulation game and accompanying materials, which allows self-directed learners to learn and apply the theory, concepts and calculations for capacity planning, in the hospital beds capacity planning scenario in Singapore, was designed, developed and immplemented. It guides the learners through the key considerations for capacity planning, the computation of actual capacity needed, deciding the time for capacity increments, as well as the economies and diseconomies of scale when adding capacity. All the learnings are applied in a scenario where the learners make decision on how much and when to add hospital beds to existing …

Bp De Silva – Making A Family Business Last Through The Generations, Singapore Management University

Perspectives@SMU

How a Singaporean family business survived, and thrived, into a fifth generation

What Does Your Workplace Say About Your Company Culture?, Clarence Goh

Research Collection School Of Accountancy

Disengagementin the workplace can create toxic environments – research has linked suchdisengagement with decreased client interactions and reduced collaborativeperformance, increased absenteeism, and a rise in workplace harassment. Arecent State of the American Workplace study conducted byGallup estimated that active disengagement in the workplace costs the UnitedStates between US$450 billion and US$550 billion annually.

On The Social And Political Effects Of Opening In Rural China, Housi Cheng, Qian Forrest Zhang, John A. Donaldson

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

What are the economic, social and political effects when previously isolated villages are opened to the outside world? Scholars from different traditions expect different sorts of positive or negative affects to occur. Rural China presents an ideal environment to study this question empirically. Villages within rural China are in the process of being opened to the outside world in different forms, such as through being connected by road, the investment of agribusiness, or urbanization. Moreover this opening is being driven and shaped by different actors, including local residents, government and businesses. The different ways and actors that this opening occurs …

Gender Research In Amj: An Overview Of Five Decades Of Empirical Research And Calls To Action, Aparna Joshi, Brett Neely, Cynthia Emrich, Dorothy Griffiths, Gerard George

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Fifteen years into the 21st century, gender equality appears to be at the forefront of the global humanitarian agenda. As a co-recipient of the 2014 Nobel Peace Prize, Malala Yousafzai became a symbol for the rights of women and girls to obtain an education. In the same year, the United Nations launched the “HeForShe” campaign, which views men and boys as advocates and stakeholders in the campaign for gender equality around the world. Globally, equitable access to education and employment has been recognized as not only a “women’s issue” but as a human rights issue (UN Women, 2014).

State Political Identity And Meta-Governance: Comparative Analysis Of Governance Modes In Vegetable Retail In Urban China, Qian Forrest Zhang

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

A government's political identity is a key factor in meta-governance; it powerfully shapes a government's policy aims and implementation preferences at the most abstract level and forms a stable governance mode. Dissonance between a pre-existing governance mode and the government's evolved political identity will lead to governance failures and pose political challenges to the government. In the case of vegetable retail in Shanghai, the neoliberal developmental state transformed the hierarchical governance into market governance; but as it evolves into a corporatist welfare state, market imperfections come to be perceived as governance failures, and the government responds by reintroducing hierarchical measures.

Washing Hands, Saving Lives, Singapore Management University

Perspectives@SMU

Diarrhoea is a major cause of child mortality in rural Vietnam, caused by a lack of running water and poor handwashing habits. A handwashing station called the HappyTap could solve the problem