Business Commons^™

Digital Banking: Overcoming Barriers To Entry, Alan Megargel

Dissertations and Theses Collection

This dissertation examines digital banking from the perspective of two types of industry participants; non-bank FinTech alternative [substitute] financial service providers whom are intent on disrupting the market, and [incumbent] traditional banks whom are urgently pursing digital strategies in order to counteract the FinTech threat. This study is motivated by five main research questions: (1) Are FinTech firms disrupting traditional banks, and if so, what are the modes of disruption? (2) Do tradition banks view FinTech firms as a threat, and if so, what are they doing about it? (3) What are the various digital banking strategies, and how are …

Purposeful Building Of Social Capital And The Adoption Of Essential Tools And Technologies In Impoverished Communities In The Philippines, Chon Phung Lim

Dissertations and Theses Collection

Despite its popularity and a wide range of applications, social capital is a contested concept. There is also no agreement on whether social capital responds well to external interventions. Many scholars found no or, at most, mixed impacts that social capital can be purposefully developed. However, Burt and Ranchi (2007) and Janicik and Larrick (2005) provided compelling evidence that simple network training can significantly improve participants’ ability to see gaps in their network and develop social capital.

The manifestations of social capital are context-dependent and complex, and rarely map into a single discipline or methodology (Jones and Woolcock, 2007). Hence, …

Multinationals In Emerging Markets: A Test Case Of The Banking Industry In India, Havovi Joshi

Dissertations and Theses Collection

Multinational firms play a significant role in the world economy, accounting for over 30% of the world stock market value. In the past decade or two, these firms have demonstrated a renewed wave of interest in the Emerging Asian markets. This is not surprising, given the attractive demographics, growing middle class and leapfrogging technology of these markets. But the optimism of these western firms heading eastward often gets quickly subdued by the realisation that these emerging Asian markets are far more complex—or at the very least, different—than western ones. They are more volatile, there is frequently a lack of institutional …

Towards An Effective Design Of The Business Intelligence & Analytics Function Within An Organisation, Eric Sandosham

Dissertations and Theses Collection

This dissertation is about the organisational considerations in setting up a successful business intelligence and analytics (BI&A) function. It addresses a gap in academic literature by presenting a theoretical framework on organisational attributes that impacts the BI&A function’s ability to improve the completeness and relevance of their data-driven solutions.

BI&A is a subset of information processing, and as such, subject to the phenomenon of uncertainty and equivocality. Most BI&A functions do not explicitly address this phenomenon in their organisation design, leading to suboptimal BI&A outcomes as widely publicised in both academic and practice literature.

This dissertation contributes to theory by …

How Technology Is Reshaping Financial Services: Essays On Consumer Behavior In Card, Channel And Cryptocurrency Services, Dan Geng

Dissertations and Theses Collection

The financial services sector has seen dramatic technological innovations in the last several years associated with the “fintech revolution.” Major changes have taken place in channel management, credit card rewards marketing, cryptocurren-cy, and wealth management, and have influenced consumers’ banking behavior in different ways. As a consequence, there has been a growing demand for banks to rethink their business models and operations to adapt to changing consumer be-havior and counter the competitive pressure from other banks and non-bank play-ers. In this dissertation, I study consumer behavior related to different aspects of financial innovation by addressing research questions that are motivated …

Social Network Impact On Corporate Performance And Governance, Jonathan Chew Hoe Khoo

Dissertations and Theses Collection

Motivated by the centrality measures constructed in Larcker, So and Wang (2013), I affirm that board connectedness positively affect firm performance in Singapore, and even if we were to measure firm performance by Tobin's Q. The impact on firm performance persists over at least four years. Controlling for Corporate Governance using a proprietary database, the Singapore Corporate Governance Index, only the Eigenvector centrality under simple-weighted and hyperbolic-weighted projections survives the robustness test, suggesting that firstly, the local proxy of Corporate Governance based on OECD principles possibly controls for what is proxied by the Betweenness, Closeness and Degree centrality measures, and …

The Differential Identity Activation & Integration Mechanism (Diaim): A Model Linking Female Businesspersons’ Identity Integration And Identity Activation To Negotiation, Yi Wen Tan

Dissertations and Theses Collection

Women play an important role in business management (female businesspersons) but yet they face constraints in the workplace, such as in negotiations. As female businesspersons seem to be facing seemingly conflicting gender and business identities, the level of the integration between these identities, as captured by the construct gender-professional identity integration (G-PII), can be a critical factor that influences female businesspersons in negotiations. It is expected that the level of G-PII influences female businesspersons’ negotiation behaviors when their different identities (i.e., female identity, business identity or dual identities) are activated. Hence, a DIAIM model that depicts how female businesspersons with …

Essays On Corporate Finance, Sili Zhou

Dissertations and Theses Collection

Economic, Policy uncertainty under political opaqueness imposes great impact in the capital market. I construct ex ante cross-section of firm sensitivity to China Economic Policy Uncertainty (CEPU) index from Baker, Bloom and Davis (2013). This measure of policy sensitivity is significantly negatively predictive of a firm’s market value and Tobin’s Q. Cross sectional tests show that the negative effects are stronger in SOEs= for firms with higher agency problems, and for firms operating in market with lower degree of competition or market disciplining. The evidence suggests that high level of policy influence causes significant value destruction in the capital market.

Emotional Labor And Discretionary Behaviors: Exploring The Mediating And Moderating Effects Of Felt Inauthenticity And Emotional Exhaustion, Yang Ting Ang

Dissertations and Theses Collection

The service industry is a growing sector in most countries and emotional labor is a major component of service employees’ jobs. As such, it is important to understand how emotional labor influences employee discretionary behaviors such as counter-productive workplace behaviors (CWBs) and organizational citizenship behaviors (OCBs), both of which affect the well-being of employees and organizations. This dissertation presents two studies that examined the mechanisms underlying, and boundary conditions surrounding, emotional labor and employee discretionary behaviors. Drawing on theories and research regarding ego depletion, inauthenticity, and behavior consistency, this paper proposed a theoretical model that hypothesized how two potential mechanisms …

Essays On Investor Sentiment In Asset Pricing, Liya Chu

Dissertations and Theses Collection

The dissertation addresses three topics on investor sentiment in asset pricing.

The first essay investigates the impact of market sentiment on the recent debate on equity premium forecasting. Particularly, market sentiment may break the link between fundamental economic predictors and equity premium. We find that economic predictors tend to lose their power and various remedies proposed in recent studies, such as non-negativity constraints, no longer work during high sentiment periods. In contrast, economic predictors actually do have strong performances even without using any such remedies, as long as the sentiment stays low enough so as not to distort the link. …

Essays In Corporate Cash Holdings, Chenxi Liu

Dissertations and Theses Collection

This dissertation addresses three topics in corporate cash holdings. The first paper provides a new determinant of cash holdings by examining the impact of earnings transparency on corporate cash holdings. Motivated by Barth et al. (2013), who show that firms with less earnings transparency tend to have higher cost of equity, this paper shows that the cross-section differences in earnings transparency cause variations in firm cash holdings because firms with less earnings transparency have more incentives to hold cash in order to avoid costly external financing. Using data of US firms from 1980 to 2013, it is found that earnings …

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 …

Building Trust Through The Dynamics Of Emotions And Moods: A Conceptual Framework And Empirical Investigations On The Role Of Affect In Interpersonal Trust Development, Changhong Serena Lu

Dissertations and Theses Collection

In this dissertation, I strived to understand the role of individuals’ affect in the development processes of interpersonal trust within organizations. To achieve the goal, I conducted two studies, one conceptual framework and one empirical investigation. Trust scholars have long recognized the affective component of trust experience. However, previous theoretical arguments and empirical findings are not well integrated to provide a cohesive understanding on various dynamic roles that emotions and moods can play in the trust development. Recognizing that the trustor and trustee may face diverse relational problems at various stages of their trust relationship, I first suggested a Phase …

Information Technology Prioritization, In Merger Integration: A Grounded Theory Approach, Sandesh Dayanand Raikar

Dissertations and Theses Collection

This exploratory study, examines the significance of Information Technology (IT) Prioritization during the due diligence phase, in a merger integration scenario. In a world where firms are becoming increasingly dependent on information systems and technology, IT continues to play a progressively significant role within organizations. There is growing literature, on the increasing importance of IT in the business environment. However, till date, neither has there been a study regarding the role and impact of IT prioritization and IT integration schedule on the overall synergy savings, nor is there a study on the relationship between IT prioritization and the achievement of …

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 …

Modeling Adoption Dynamics In Social Networks, Minh Duc Luu

Dissertations and Theses Collection

This dissertation studies the modeling of user-item adoption dynamics where an item can be an innovation, a piece of contagious information or a product. By “adoption dynamics” we refer to the process of users making decision choices to adopt items based on a variety of user and item factors. In the context of social networks, “adoption dynamics” is closely related to “item diffusion”. When a user in a social network adopts an item, she may influence her network neighbors to adopt the item. Those neighbors of her who adopt the item then continue to trigger more adoptions. As this progress …

Understanding The Depleting And Replenishing Effects Of Compassion On Resources And Stress Recovery, Samantha Su-Hsien Sim

Dissertations and Theses Collection

Existing literature on compassion in the workplace examines the antecedents of compassion and compassionate organizing with the underlying assumption that compassion for the suffering of others is a positive emotion and has desirable outcomes. I challenge this assumption by conceptualizing compassion as an ambivalent emotion and exploring the effects of compassion on individuals who feel compassion. Using an experience-sampling methodology, outcomes such as helping behaviour, regulatory resources, personal resources, and stress response are examined. Feeling compassion for others can be distressing and requires emotional regulation. At the same time, feeling compassion can also motivate behaviours to alleviate suffering. Thus feeling …

Essays On Asset Management, Lin Sun

Dissertations and Theses Collection

Hedge funds managed by listed firms significantly underperform funds managed by unlisted firms. We argue that since the new shareholders of a listed management company typically do not invest alongside the limited partners of the funds managed, the process of going public breaks the incentive alignment between ownership, control, and investment capital, thereby engendering agency problems. In line with the agency explanation, the underperformance is more severe for funds that have low manager total deltas, low governance scores, and no manager personal capital, or that are managed by firms whose stock prices are more sensitive to earnings news. Post IPO, …

Essays In Corporate Finance, Yiwei Yu

Dissertations and Theses Collection

Innovation is vital to companies’ competitive advantages and is an important driver of economic growth. However, innovation is costly, since the innovation process is long, idiosyncratic, and uncertain, often involving a very high failure probability and great positive externalities .We thus launch the investigation from the following three aspects to explore how to create a better environment for producing innovation: Financing of innovation; dual-class share structure of innovation; and regulation and policy (e.g. SOX Act.)'s impact on innovation.

First of all, we study the effect of firms’ real estate collateral on innovation. In the presence of financing frictions, firms can …