Business Commons^™

Using Community Service Projects To Teach Leadership And Team-Building: Theoretical Foundations, Students' Reactions And Practical Considerations, Gilbert Tan

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

This paper discusses the theoretical foundations of utilizing Community Service Project (CSP) or service-learning to teach Leadership and Team-Building. It examines the students’ reactions to this innovative method of instruction. This is done through conducting a content analysis of students’ learning journals, in which students reflect on their CSP learning experiences. Two themes emerged from the data: (a) variety of learning experiences, and (b) impact of CSP experience. The data suggested that students derived a variety of learning experiences from the CSP. In addition, there were attitudinal and learning impacts associated with the CSP experiences. The paper also outlines some …

Experiential Learning Process: Exploring Teaching And Learning Of Strategic Management Framework Through The Winter Survival Exercise, Maheshkumar P. Joshi, Elizabeth B. Davis, Ravi Kathuria, C. Ken Weidner Ii

Business Faculty Articles and Research

This article examines an attempt to introduce experiential learning methods in a business strategy course. In organizational behavior and industrial/organizational psychology, experiential teaching methods have been so widely adopted that some authors have suggested dropping the distinction between experiential and traditional teaching. Although intuitively appealing, experiential methods have not yet become popular among professors teaching strategy to traditional-age undergraduate students. It seems that heavy reliance on case-based teaching has resulted in a lack of emphasis on experiential learning tools for strategic management. In this study, the Winter Survival Exercise was used to introduce, concisely and effectively, the strategic management framework …

Looking Beyond The Shipyard: Economic Development Challenges Of Southern Maine And Seacoast New Hampshire, Charles S. Colgan

Regional Studies

The threatened closure of the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard has spurred an intense examination of the future economic prospects for York County, Maine and Rockingham County, New Hampshire. This report provides the first integrated analysis of the shipyard’s effects on both the Maine and New Hampshire economies. The shipyard accounts for more than 10,000 direct and indirect jobs across the two-state region. Over 80% of these jobs are in York County, with an additional 10% in Rockingham County and the balance spread through the rest of Maine and New Hampshire. The total jobs associated with the shipyard account for 3.5% of …

Defining The 'Social' In 'Social Entrepreneurship': Altruism And Entrepreneurship, Wee Liang Tan, John N. Williams, Teck Meng Tan

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

What is social entrepreneurship? In, particular, what’s so social about it? Understanding what social entrepreneurship is enables researchers to study the phenomenon and policy-makers to design measures to encourage it. However, such an understanding is lacking partly because there is no universally accepted definition of entrepreneurship as yet. In this paper, we suggest a definition of social entrepreneurship that intuitively accords with what is generally accepted as entrepreneurship and that captures the way in which entrepreneurship may be altruistic. Based on this we provide a taxonomy of social entrepreneurship and identify a number of real cases from Asia illustrating the …

Too Little Or Too Much? Reexamining The Relationship Between Corporate Charitable Giving And Corporate Financial Performance, Heli Wang, Jaepil Choi, Jiatao Li

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

How do corporate charitable contributions affect corporate financial performance? Instrumental stakeholder theory posits that corporate giving can lead to high levels of corporate financial performance through improved stakeholder relations. In contrast, agency theory suggests that corporate giving diverts valuable corporate resources and inhibits corporate financial performance. Extant empirical studies that have examined the relationship found inconclusive results. We depart from and extend the existing literature in two main aspects. First, building upon the instrumental stakeholder argument and agency perspective, we develop the argument that there is an inverse U-shaped relationship between corporate charitable giving and corporate financial performance. Second, we …

Introducing The Balanced Scorecard: Creating Metrics To Measure Performance, Andra Gumbus

WCBT Faculty Publications

This experiential exercise presents the concept of the Balanced Scorecard (BSC) and applies it in a university setting. The Balanced Scorecard was developed 12 years ago and has grown in popularity and is used by more than 50% of the Fortune 500 companies as a performance measurement and strategic management tool. The BSC expands the traditional financial measures into three other dimensions to capture a balanced approach to measure performance in an organization. These additional dimensions are as follows: Customer Focus, Competence/Employee Learning and Growth, and Operational Efficiency. The exercise uses an analogy of a race car driver who relies …

Slack Resources And The Performance Of Privately Held Firms, Gerard George

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Empirical findings from publicly traded firms and behavioral arguments suggest a positive influence of resource slack on financial performance. While this area has remained unexplored in privately held firms, conceptual arguments indicate that resource constraints may enhance performance. Longitudinal data on 900 privately held firms confirm the differing influences of forms of slack on performance. Results indicate that a combination of behavioral and resource constraints arguments are necessary to explain the slack-performance relationship in privately held firms. The implications of these findings for theories of resources and entrepreneurship are discussed.

Ricardo Semler: Creating Organizational Change, Christopher York, Peter A. Maresco

WCBT Faculty Publications

A review of "Creating Organizational Change" by Ricardo Semler.

Why Is Management A Cliché?, Stefano Harney

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

This article introduces the term demotics of management by asking why so much management literature reads like a cliché. Typically this question has been approached by seeing the cliché as strategic. This article instead views the cliché as symptomatic. It marks a growing problem—how can management track labor out of the workplace and into the realm of social reproduction, a realm that is increasingly, with the tendency of immaterial labor, directly productive. This problem has produced not only the explosion of popular management literature, particularly in the United States, in the last 20 years, but also what might be called …

Session Code: Eh The 21st Century Ideal Supply Management Organizational Format, At Least For 2005, Peter O'Reilly

Publications

The Problem:

What organizational format for the supply management function makes sense in your firm?

Why do we have a problem in the first place?

• The ever popular Silos
• Corporate culture
• Lack of senior management’s understanding of the supply management function
• The absence of a strong core procurement organization
• The dynamics of the ever changing world of mergers and acquisitions

Achieving Growth In The Luxury Market, Peter A. Maresco, Bridget M. Lyons

WCBT Faculty Publications

Founded in 1928 as a luxury hotel-reservation processing company, The Leading Hotels of the World, Ltd, which is headquartered in New York City, has evolved into a highly recognizable luxury brand within the luxury hotel market. The company has spent the last decade transforming itself from a reservation-processing company into a luxury powerhouse. Leading Hotels provides a compelling lesson in how to effectively achieve growth in the luxury market and today has positioned itself to meet its vision: To become the preeminent provider of products and services to luxury hotels and to the luxury marketplace. This article looks at how …

Strategic Partnerships In Public Service, Christine G. Springer

Public Policy and Leadership Faculty Publications

Presents the process to a successful strategic partnership in public service. Importance of trust between the partners; Definition of mission, goals and objectives in the partnership; Establishment of relationship boundaries.

The Singapore Edge In India's Silicon Valley: New Insights?, Caroline Yeoh, David David

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

No abstract provided.

The Impact Of Ownership Structure On Wage Intensity In Japanese Corporations, Toru Yoshikawa, Phillip H. Phan, Parthiban David

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

The authors studied the effect of ownership structure on human capital investments as indicated by wage intensity, defined as the ratio of expenditure on employee wages to sales, in a sample of 996 Japanese manufacturing firms during their economic recession of 1998-2002. They found that domestic shareholders, with interests beyond financial considerations, enhance wage intensity, especially when performance is low, and thereby safeguard human capital investments. Foreign shareholders with sole interest in financial returns have an opposite effect; they reduce wage intensity when firm performance is low.

The Effects Of Ownership And Capital Structure On Board Composition And Strategic Diversification In Japanese Corporations, Toru Yoshikawa, Phillip H. Phan

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

The board of directors plays an important role in solving the agency problem between shareholders and management. This paper investigates the relationships between ownership and board structure with the diversification strategy of large Japanese firms. The results show that corporate nominee directors are associated with lower levels of product diversification of their investee firms. This suggests that nominee directors in large Japanese corporations see themselves representing specific interests and therefore investors should pay attention to board composition in order to assess the level of protection they can expect to receive. Even without any apparent agency problem with management, there remains …

Operational, Economic And Mission Elements In Not-For-Profit Organizations: The Case Of The Chicago Symphony Orchestra, James Belohlav

Publications – Dreihaus College of Business

No abstract provided.

Outsourcing The Human Resource Function: Environmental And Organizational Characteristics That Affect Hr Performance, J. D. Lilly, D. A. Gray, Meghna Virick

Faculty Publications

A theoretical model is presented that identifies environmental and organizational characteristics that affect human resource (HR) performance in an organization. Specifically, we address the issue of when and under what circumstances does HR outsourcing contribute value to the firm by attempting to identify environmental and organizational characteristics that affect HR department performance and how HR outsourcing mediates that relationship. We propose that supplier competition in the HR provider market has a direct effect on the amount of HR outsourcing which in turn has a direct effect on HR performance. Environmental uncertainty (primary, competitive, and supplier) is proposed to moderate the …

Stakeholders, Michael Johnson-Cramer, Robert A. Phillips

Management Faculty Publications

The stakeholder concept derives from a simple premise: organizations and technologies exist in constellations of relationships. Organizations operate in a network of market and nonmarket relationships with other organizations, groups, and individuals. Likewise technologies emerge and exist in a network of suppliers, end users, and others who bear the impact of the technology. Generally with reference to both organizations and technologies, these related parties are termed stakeholders, meaning that they hold a stake in the outcomes of the organization or technology.

Managing School Success: A Case Study From Pakistan, John Retallick

Institute for Educational Development, Karachi

This article reports on case study research into the management of successful schools in a developing country, Pakistan. In Pakistan there are attempts being made to improve school education through decentralisation and involving school communities through School Management Committees. Whilst serious problems remain in the provision of quality school education, there are nevertheless, some successful schools and the research sought to identify three such schools and investigate how and to what extent the management of the schools was contributing to their success. In the article a case study of one of the schools is reported along with the findings from …

“Can You See The Real Me?” A Self-Based Model Of Authentic Leader And Follower Development, William L. Gardner, Bruce J. Avolio, Fred Luthans, Douglas R. May, Fred Walumbwa

Department of Management: Faculty Publications

To address present and future leadership needs, a model of authentic leader and follower development is proposed and examined with respect to its relationship to veritable, sustainable follower performance. The developmental processes of leader and follower self-awareness and self-regulation are emphasized. The influence of the leader’s and followers’ personal histories and trigger events are considered as antecedents of authentic leadership and followership, as well as the reciprocal effects with an inclusive, ethical, caring and strength-based organizational climate. Positive modeling is viewed as a primary means whereby leaders develop authentic followers. Posited outcomes of authentic leader–follower relationships include heightened levels of …

The Psychological Capital Of Chinese Workers: Exploring The Relationship With Performance, Fred Luthans, Bruce Avolio, Fred Walumbwa, Weixing Li

Department of Management: Faculty Publications

Everyone knows about China’s huge population and the fast-growing economy. Although macro-level sociological and economic analyses have given some attention to the linkage between the two, at the micro level, the relationship between human resources and, more specifically, psychological capital of Chinese workers and their performance has been largely ignored. Within the context of three factories (two private and one state-owned) in the People’s Republic of China, this exploratory study examined the relationship of a sample (n=422) of Chinese workers’ positive psychological capital states and their performance. Results indicated the workers’ positive states of hope, optimism, and resiliency, separately and …

The Systematic Evaluation Of A Strategic Management Program In An Irish Institute Of Technology, Deirdre Lillis

Conference papers

Higher Education Institutes (HEIs) worldwide are investing significant resources in strategic planning and self-evaluation programs to improve institutional performance and to meet external stakeholder demands. Little empirical evidence exists however which demonstrates that these programs are effective in leading to improvements in institutional performance, let alone shed light on the reasons why. This paper reports on the systematic evaluation of the effectiveness of a Strategic Management program in an Irish HEI over a five year period in leading to improvements in institutional performance.

Ownership Structure, Investment Behaviour And Firm Performance In Japanese Manufacturing Industries, Eric Gedajlovic, Toru Yoshikawa, Motomi Hashimoto

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Using data spanning the 1996-98 fiscal years of 247 of Japan's largest manufacturers, we empirically evaluate the extent to which a firm's investment behaviour and financial performance are influenced by its ownership structure. To do so, we examine six distinct categories of Japanese shareholders: foreign investors, investment funds, pension funds, banks and insurance companies, affiliated companies and insiders. Our findings strongly indicate that the relationship between the equity stakes of a particular category of investor and a firm' s financial performance and investment behaviour is considerably more complex than is depicted in simple principal-agent representations. Such a result emphasizes the …

Strategic Management For Economic Development: Remaking The Singapore 'Model', Caroline Yeoh, Wilfred Pow Ngee How

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

The dynamics of international economic competition have far-reaching policy implications for both developing and developed countries. Established industrial and trade policy regimes in most countries are under tremendous strain, and this applies even to the dynamic Newly Industrialising Economies (NIEs). The outward-oriented development strategies of the Asian NIEs, which once seemed unbeatable, have run up against protectionist barriers in the developed countries, and increasingly, against competitive pressures from other up and coming developing countries. Governments in these NIEs have had to re-examine accustomed policies and strategies, and search for alternative strategies and programs, in order to re-position their economies for …