Business Commons^™

Achieving Success In Silicon Valley, Desmond Lim

Asian Management Insights

Desmond Lim tried, failed, and finally succeeded with Workstream, an app that helps businesses hire and manage hourly workers.

Reducing Spatial Labeling Redundancy For Active Semi-Supervised Crowd Counting, Yongtuo Liu, Sucheng Ren, Liangyu Chai, Hanjie Wu, Dan Xu, Jing Qin, Shengfeng He

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Labeling is onerous for crowd counting as it should annotate each individual in crowd images. Recently, several methods have been proposed for semi-supervised crowd counting to reduce the labeling efforts. Given a limited labeling budget, they typically select a few crowd images and densely label all individuals in each of them. Despite the promising results, we argue the None-or-All labeling strategy is suboptimal as the densely labeled individuals in each crowd image usually appear similar while the massive unlabeled crowd images may contain entirely diverse individuals. To this end, we propose to break the labeling chain of previous methods and …

Product Question Answering In E-Commerce: A Survey, Yang Deng, Wenxuan Zhang, Qian Yu, Wai Lam

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Product question answering (PQA), aiming to automatically provide instant responses to customer’s questions in E-Commerce platforms, has drawn increasing attention in recent years. Compared with typical QA problems, PQA exhibits unique challenges such as the subjectivity and reliability of user-generated contents in E-commerce platforms. Therefore, various problem settings and novel methods have been proposed to capture these special characteristics. In this paper, we aim to systematically review existing research efforts on PQA. Specifically, we categorize PQA studies into four problem settings in terms of the form of provided answers. We analyze the pros and cons, as well as present existing …

Effect Of Leader-Member Exchange Social Comparison On Co-Worker’S Envy And Work Behavior Moderated By Perceived Deservingness Of Star Workers, Ronnie Ng

Dissertations and Theses Collection (Open Access)

The extant leader-member exchange (LMX) literature suggests that leaders establish and develop different quality dyadic relationships with members in the same workgroup. High-quality LMX is argued as beneficial to employees. However, studies have overlooked the emotions and behaviors of low-quality LMX employees to determine how they differ from high-quality LMX employees. This study integrates LMX differentiation literature, social comparison theory and attributional theory to examine the role of LMX social comparison (LMXSC) perceptions in triggering help-seeking and knowledge hiding from star co-workers in the workplace. This study also explores the mediating role of dual envy, that is, benign and malicious …

Expressed Humility In Inter-Organization Interactions: Why And When Boundary-Spanning Leaders’ Expressed Humility Can Promote Partner Cooperation Commitment, Wenhao Yang

Dissertations and Theses Collection (Open Access)

In an organization, expressing humility can promote more meaningful and satisfying relationships with others. Given its potentially positive effects, researchers have been interested in studying the promotion and management of expressed humility for decades. Although there is some literature on the mechanism of expressing humility within an organization, none of them has pointed out the positive effects of expressed humility between organizations represented by their boundary-spanning leaders. Specially, no research efforts have been devoted to understanding how expressed humility between partners affects the economic behavior and outcomes of organizations and when it is effective for positive effects.

In this paper, …

Board Governance Of Strategic Change: An Assessment Of The Literature And Avenues For Future Research, Patricia Klamer, Qiwen Yu, Toru Yoshikawa, Michael Hitt

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Boards of directors play a central role in governing corporate strategic change. We systematically review corporate governance research on strategic change published over the past 40 years, differentiating between strategic change types and board characteristics. We identify three developments: a focus on specific strategic change types, board composition and structure, and North American listed firms as a dominant study context. Yet, our analysis of the literature shows that research on board governance of interrelated strategic changes, on different board roles and behaviour, and on the governance of strategic changes across different contexts remains underdeveloped. To address these research gaps, we …

Business Schools Should Be Schools Of Management: An Evolutionary Perspective, Kai Peters, Howard Thomas

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

This chapter looks at the original driving forces which led to the creation of institutions, particularly in the US, including the vision of their founders which would support our perspective in favour of schools of management. It looks at the years following the Second World War and how the Ford and Carnegie ‘Foundation Reports’ as well as the Cold War led to further evolution away from a school of management to a business school mission. The chapter looks at the period roughly from 1970 to 2000 during which US business school funding, which had been largely provided by the foundations, …

Inventory-Responsive Donor-Management Policy: A Tandem Queueing Network Model, Taozeng Zhu, Nicholas Teck Boon Yeo, Sarah Yini Gao, Gar Goei Loke

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Problem definition: In the blood-donor-management problem, the blood bank incentivizes donors to donate, given blood inventory levels. We propose a model to optimize such incentivization schemes under the context of random demand, blood perishability, observation period between donations, and variability in donor arrivals and dropouts. Methodology/results: We propose an optimization model that simultaneously accounts for the dynamics in the blood inventory and the donor’s donation process, as a coupled queueing network. We adopt the Pipeline Queue paradigm, which leads us to a tractable convex reformulation. The coupled setting requires new methodologies to be developed upon the existing Pipeline Queue framework. …

Managing The Creative Frontier Of Generative Ai: The Novelty-Usefulness Tradeoff, Anirban. Mukherjee, Hannah H. Chang

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

In this paper, drawing inspiration from the human creativity literature, we explore the optimal balance between novelty and usefulness in generative Artificial Intelligence (AI) systems. We posit that overemphasizing either aspect can lead to limitations such as hallucinations and memorization. Hallucinations, characterized by AI responses containing random inaccuracies or falsehoods, emerge when models prioritize novelty over usefulness. Memorization, where AI models reproduce content from their training data, results from an excessive focus on usefulness, potentially limiting creativity. To address these challenges, we propose a framework that includes domain-specific analysis, data and transfer learning, user preferences and customization, custom evaluation metrics, …

The Impact Of Upzoning On Housing Construction In Auckland*, Ryan Greenaway-Mcgrevy, Peter C. B. Phillips

Research Collection School Of Economics

There is a growing debate about whether upzoning is an effective policy response to housing shortages and unaffordable housing. This paper provides empirical evidence to further inform debate by examining the various impacts of recently implemented zoning reforms on housing construction in Auckland, the largest metropolitan area in New Zealand. In 2016, the city upzoned approximately three quarters of its residential land to facilitate construction of more intensive housing. We use a quasi-experimental approach to analyze the short-run impacts of the reform on construction, allowing for potential shifts in construction from non-upzoned to upzoned areas (displacement effects) that would, if …

Not A Box Of Nuts And Bolts: Distribution Channels For Specialty Drugs?, Liang Xu, Vidya Mani, Hui Zhao

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

One of the most important trends in the pharmaceutical industry is the rapid growth of specialty drugs. Specialty drugs, mostly bio based, tend to be high risk, high priced, and more regulated than traditional drugs, resulting in unprecedented challenges in distribution. Such challenges lead to the emergence of specialty distributors (SDs), which, compared with traditional wholesalers (WSs), represent a more controlled channel and carry a smaller variety of drugs. Due to the risky nature of specialty drugs, manufacturers must consider the trade-off between access and control in determining whether to use SDs (partially or exclusively). Using a unique dataset assembled …

Perspectives On The Impact, Mission And Purpose Of The Business School, Howard Thomas

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

The business school has been an important success story in the evolution of the modern university. The concept of how the impact, mission, purpose, and value of a management school should be formulated is often delegated to the dean, faculty and advisory committees in most schools. The British Academy has contributed significantly to the emerging debate on the purpose of a business school by both examining the concept of a purposeful business school in business and management education and, more recently, investigating what, and how, business schools should teach, grow and develop. Greater attention has been directed towards developing more …

Insider Trading And Corporate Spinoffs, Charlie Charoenwong, Kuan Yong David Ding, Jing Pan

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

This paper studies insider trading to examine undervaluation as a motive behind corporate spinoffs. We show an unmistakable increase (decrease) in the number of insider purchases (sales) and net purchases (sales) in the four quarters prior to a spinoff announcement. In addition, relative to a benchmark period, insider selling is significantly lower, and their net purchases significantly higher, in the three quarters prior to a spinoff announcement compared to other periods. We find that announcement period excess returns for abnormal net insider purchases are significantly higher than excess returns for abnormal net insider sales. Moreover, only firms with abnormal net …

Why Employees Accept Lower Pay At Mission-Oriented Companies, Insiya Hussain, Marko Pitesa, Stefan Thau, Michael Schaerer

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Today’s companies are likely to tout how their work benefits human welfare or “makes the world a better place.” Recent research suggests that this may come with a potential financial drawback for workers, as it can inhibit them from negotiating for higher pay. Over five studies, job candidates consistently reported that they worried asking for higher pay from these companies would be seen as greedy or inappropriate. This suggests they are aware of a common bias, known as motivation purity bias, where managers believe employees interested in material rewards of work (such as pay) are less motivated than those motivated …

Seeking Better Sharpe Ratio Via Bayesian Optimization, Peng Liu

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Developing an excellent quantitative trading strategy to obtain a high Sharpe ratio requires optimizing several parameters at the same time. Example parameters include the window length of a moving average sequence, the choice of trading instruments, and the thresholds used to generate trading signals. Simultaneously optimizing all these parameters to seek a high Sharpe ratio is a daunting and time-consuming task, partly because of the unknown mechanism determining the Sharpe ratio. This article proposes using Bayesian optimization to systematically search for the optimal parameter configuration that leads to a high Sharpe ratio. The author shows that the proposed intelligent search …

Beyond Anthropomorphism: Unraveling The True Priorities Of Chatbot Usage In Smes, Tamas Makany, Sungjong Roh, Kotaro Hara, Jie Min Hua, Felicia Si Ying Goh, Wilson Yang Jie Teh

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

This study examined business communication practices with chatbots among various Small and Medium Enterprise (SME) stakeholders in Singapore, including business owners/employees, customers, and developers. Through qualitative interviews and chatbot transcript analysis, we investigated two research questions: (1) How do the expectations of SME stakeholders compare to the conversational design of SME chatbots? and (2) What are the business reasons for SMEs to add human-like features to their chatbots? Our findings revealed that functionality is more crucial than anthropomorphic characteristics, such as personality and name. Stakeholders preferred chatbots that explicitly identified themselves as machines to set appropriate expectations. Customers prioritized efficiency, …

Human Capital Effects In The Job Search Process For New Labor Market Entrants: A Double-Edged Sword?, Jomel Wei Xuan Ng, Zhaoli Song, Filip Lievens

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Although traditional research on human capital shows that it enhances employment success, its role in the job search process is unclear. To explain its weak effects in previous studies, this study draws on goal system theory to propose that human capital may act as a double-edged sword: On one hand it facilitates the ease of gaining employment, on the other hand it may compromise the frequency of job search behaviors. We conducted a bi-weekly repeated survey study on new labor market entrants and measured human capital using academic achievement scores. Results confirmed that human capital, though instrumental for proximal job …

Workplace Culture Must Emphasise Mutual Respect [In Chinese], Siow-Heng Ong

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

In a commentary, SMU Professor of Communication Management (Education) Ong Siow Heng discussed the importance of having a respectful culture in the workplace. He opined that one way to appreciate employees is to provide equitable pay and career advancement opportunities for staff, so that workers will know that their employer respects their contribution. Even though more forms of disrespect for workers are being addressed by law, Prof Ong opined that improving respect for the workers’ dignity is best managed by those in workplace leadership even before relevant laws are passed, especially in areas that cannot be covered by law. He …

Blockchain And Regenerative Finance: Charting A Path Toward Regeneration, Marco Schletz, Axel Constant, Angel Hsu, Simon J.D. Schillebeeckx, Roman Beck, Martin Wainstein

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

The Regenerative Finance (ReFi) movement aims to fundamentally transform the governance of global common pool resources (CPRs), such as the atmosphere, which are being degraded despite international efforts. The ReFi movement seeks to achieve this by utilizing digital monitoring, reporting, and verification (D-MRV); tokenization of assets; and decentralized governance approaches. However, there is currently a lack of a clear path forward to create and implement models that actually drive the “Re-” in ReFi beyond perpetuating the existing extractive economics and toward actual regeneration. In addition, ReFi suffers from growing pains, lacking a common interoperability framework and definition for determining what …

Centralized Versus Decentralized Pricing Controls For Dynamic Matching Platforms, Aouad Ali, Omer Saritac, Chiwei Yan

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Online service platforms have transformed how customers and suppliers connect in real-time, using centralized dispatch and pricing systems. However, by acting as "central planners", platforms risk undermining the workers' flexibility endorsed by the gig economy. Hence, there has been significant scrutiny on the classification of gig workers as independent contractors and their freedom in decisions that directly influence their earnings, such as prices. To alleviate such concerns, several platforms in the ride-hailing industry have adopted or tested decentralized pricing schemes, where workers set prices flexibly. However, this approach presents a complex trade-off. On the one hand, platforms' pricing systems enable …

Purpose In The For-Profit Firm: A Review And Framework For Management Research, Gerard George, Martine R. Haas, Anita M. Mcgahan, Simon J.D. Schillebeeckx, Paul Tracey

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Purpose is a concept often used in managerial communities to signal and define a firm’s benevolent and pluralistic approach to its stakeholders beyond its focus on shareholders. While some evidence has linked purpose to positive organizational outcomes such as growth, employee satisfaction, innovation, and superior stock market performance, the definition and application of purpose in management research has been varied and frequently ambiguous. We review literature streams that invoke purpose in the for-profit firm and propose a unifying definition. Next, we develop a framework to study purpose that decouples its framing and formalization within firms from its realization, thus helping …

The Implications Of Firms' Derivative Usage On The Frequency And Usefulness Of Management Earnings Forecasts, John L. Campbell, Sean Shun Cao, Hye Sun Chang, Raluca Chiorean

Research Collection School Of Accountancy

We investigate how firms' use of derivatives impacts voluntary disclosure and offer four main findings. First, we find that when firms begin using derivative instruments, they increase the frequency of management earnings forecasts. Second, using path analysis, we find a direct link between derivative usage and forecast frequency, as well as an indirect link through reduced earnings volatility. Third, we find that CEOs with more pronounced career concerns increase forecast frequency only when derivatives make earnings easier to forecast and find no evidence that investor demand drives the decision to provide a forecast. These results suggest that the primary mechanism …

Beyond "Protected" And "Private": An Empirical Security Analysis Of Custom Function Modifiers In Smart Contracts, Yuzhou Fang, Daoyuan Wu, Xiao Yi, Shuai Wang, Yufan Chen, Mengjie Chen, Yang Liu, Lingxiao Jiang

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

A smart contract is a piece of application-layer code running on blockchain ledgers and it provides programmatic logic via transaction-based execution of pre-defined functions. Smart contract functions are by default invokable by any party. To safeguard them, the mainstream smart contract language, i.e., Solidity of the popular Ethereum blockchain, proposed a unique language-level keyword called “modifier,” which allows developers to define custom function access control policies beyond the traditional “protected” and “private” modifiers in classic programming languages.In this paper, we aim to conduct a large-scale security analysis of the modifiers used in real-world Ethereum smart contracts. To achieve this, we …

The Livingston Survey 2023, S. Anderson, B. Bovino, M. Brown, Thomas Lam, Et Al

Sim Kee Boon Institute for Financial Economics

The 15 participants in the June Livingston Survey predict higher output growth for the first half of 2023 than they predicted in the December 2022 survey. The forecasters, who are surveyed by the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia twice a year, now project that the economy’s output (real GDP) will grow at an annual rate of 1.1 percent during the first half of 2023. They expect weaker conditions in the second half of 2023, when growth is expected to be at an annual rate of -0.7 percent. Both projections represent upward revisions from those of the December 2022 survey. Growth …

Female Ceos And Investment Efficiency In The Vietnamese Market, Jun Myung Song, Chune Young Chung

Sim Kee Boon Institute for Financial Economics

This paper proposes female CEOs’ overconfidence and risky behavior stem from gender stereotype threats. With two subsamples in Vietnam—firms in the Northern and Southern regions–we empirically show that female CEOs in the North, where there is less gender stereotype, tend to overinvest relative to male CEOs. However, in the South, they are indifferent. Additional analysis reinforces the main finding that female CEOs from the North tend to take more risks even when dealing with market volatility and uncertainty (e.g., the COVID-19 pandemic). Such risky behaviors of female CEOs in the North do not deteriorate firm value but instead, possibly improve …

Air Pollution, Regulations On Emission And Firms' Social Responsibility, Jun Myung Song

Sim Kee Boon Institute for Financial Economics

This paper examines whether firms adjust their strategy in emission when air pollution is severe. Considering high PM 2.5 as severe air pollution across 65 countries, I show that firms from countries with severe air pollution have low emission score, suggesting that they put less effort in reducing emission. This is because if they improve emission strategy, firm performance deteriorates. However, such relationship disappears when the government’s environmental stringency is strong, suggesting that government’s intervention is crucial for sustainable environment. This paper concludes with analysis on the factors which can mediate the negative impact of air pollution on firms’ emission …

Singapore Management University (Smu): Tracking The Strategy Evolution Of A Start-Up University, Michelle P. Lee, Howard Thomas, Alex Wilson

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

The year 2020 marked the 20th anniversary of the Singapore Management University (SMU). SMU exists in an ecosystem for higher education that is quite unlike what one might find in other parts of the world. The supportive and stable environment the Singapore government provided in terms of its funding and policies meant a more predictable environment within which a university can make long-range planning. Singapore's development since its independence in 1965 has been undergirded by the belief that a strong educational system is the backbone of the country's economic development. The Era of Evolution is a story of both implementation …

How Does Credit Risk Affect Cost Management Strategies? Evidence On The Initiation Of Credit Default Swap And Sticky Cost Behavior, Jing Dai, Nan Hu, Rong Huang, Yan Yan

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

In this paper, we examine the effect of credit defaults swaps (CDS) initiation on reference firms' cost management strategies. CDS contracts provide insurance protection for creditors, inducing a shift in bargaining power from borrowers to creditors and an excessive incidence of bankruptcy. Anticipating more intransigent creditors in debt renegotiations and higher bankruptcy risk, CDS firms are incentivized to mitigate risk through decreasing cost stickiness after CDS initiation, as cost stickiness lowers liquidity and triggers early covenant violations. We find that, on average, CDS initiation is associated with a decline in reference firms' cost stickiness. This association is more pronounced for …

The Impact Of Working From Home On Employee Creativity: A Cross Cultural Comparison Of Germany And China, Andrew Heng

Dissertations and Theses Collection (Open Access)

The rise of work-from-home (WFH) arrangements has brought significant changes to how employees work and interact with each other. This dissertation aims to examines the potential impact of WFH arrangements on employee creativity and investigates whether this impact varies across high-context and low-context cultures, with a particular focus on how demographic characteristics such as gender, age, and education may affect this relationship. The study is conducted within a top 10 global automotive supplier with associates in China (high-context culture) and Germany (low-context culture). As individual creativity often arises from collaboration and interaction with others, I hypothesised that as WFH frequency …

The Interactive Effects Of Societal And Organizational Cultural Tightness On Employee Work Related Outcomes, Na Zhao

Dissertations and Theses Collection (Open Access)

Individuals are shaped by both their organizational and societal cultures, yet existing research often approaches these cultural dimensions in isolation, ignoring their combined impact on individual behaviors. In response to this research gap, I developed a novel theoretical framework by combining cultural tightness literature with social information processing theory. This framework highlights the interactive impacts of societal and organizational cultures on employees’ outcomes, including job performance, work attitudes, and mental health. Moreover, I proposed several mechanisms, including motivational, cognitive, and emotional mechanisms, through which these forms of cultural tightness could shape these specified work-related outcomes. To validate this framework, I …