Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Service Transformation That Will Boost Your Business, Neeta Lachmandas-Sakellariou

Asian Management Insights

Focus on your customers to catapult your company to success. However, leaders must drive a culture change to make it happen.

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 …

How Transformational Leadership Transforms Followers’ Affect And Work Engagement, Benjamin Bader, Michael Gielnik, Ronald Bledow

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

How do episodes of transformational leadership transform followers? To address this question, we build on theories of affective events and affect regulation and develop a research model that explicates a mechanism of the transformation process implicit in transformational leadership theory. Specifically, the model explains how experiencing episodes of transformational leadership transforms (i.e., changes) followers’ positive affect and eventually their work engagement by fulfilling followers’ basic psychological needs. We tested our model in two independent longitudinal samples using daily and weekly measurement designs with 214 (N = 75) and 147 (N = 54) lagged observations, respectively. In support of our model, …

Why And How Leaders Differentiate?, Srishti Banerjee

Dissertations and Theses Collection (Open Access)

A key tenet of Leader-Member Exchange (LMX) Theory is that leaders treat followers differently, referred to as leader-member exchange differentiation (LMXD) (Yu et al., 2018). When leaders treat followers differently, they develop a varying quality of relationships within the team referred to as LMX quality (LMXQ). LMXQ has received the vast majority of research with findings being largely consistent that higher quality relationships benefit followers (Yu et al., 2018). In contrast, surprisingly, much less research has focused on how this actual differentiation (LMXD) impacts employee reactions and there are no conclusive findings regarding its effects (Bauer & Erdogan, 2015; Chen …

Leadership Through Effective Communication, Han Boon Kevin Lim

Dissertations and Theses Collection (Open Access)

Charismatic leadership oratory is critical in aligning the organisational vision and goals for business sustainability. This research focuses on charismatic leadership, particularly on oratory leading to charismatic perception by the audience. This research seeks to provide future leaders with a better perspective of the multigenerational workforce in an effort to customise the rhetorical process for this diverse workforce to enhance charismatic perception, thereby promoting organisational communication.

The audience in prior studies has been treated as a homogeneous unit (Clark & Greatbatch, 2011; Groß et al., 2015), without distinguishing between different generational groups and their respective receptiveness to a leadership oratory. …

Leading Business Schools, Julie Davies, Howard Thomas, Eric Cornuel, Rolf D. Cremer

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Business schools are critical players in higher education, educating current and future leaders to make a difference in the world. Yet we know surprisingly little about the leaders of business schools. Leading a Business School demystifies this complex and dynamic role, offering international insights into deans’ dilemmas in different contexts and situations. It highlights the importance of deans creating challenging and supportive learning cultures to enhance business and management education, organizations and society more broadly.Written by renowned experts on the role of the dean, Julie Davies, Howard Thomas, Eric Cornuel and Rolf D. Cremer, the book traces the historical evolution …

How Should Leaders Manage Hybrid Working Relationships?, Karin Sanders, Andrew Dhaenens

Perspectives@SMU

Organisations and their leaders need to adapt to new ways of working and hybrid work relationships, write UNSW Business School’s Karin Sanders, Andrew Dhaenens and Patrick Sharry

Mediate, Not Litigate, To Resolve Disputes, Aloysius Goh, Terence Quek

Asian Management Insights

A leader’s fi rst resort.

Academic Leadership Qualities Towards Innovation Endeavours In An Organisation: A Comparative Study Of Malaysia And Singapore Perceptions, Cheng Sim Quah, Sandra Phek Lin Sim, Wee Liang Tan

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

This study employed mixed methods to explore the comparison between Malaysia and Singapore in terms of the contribution of leadership qualities and impacts towards innovation endeavours. Besides that, it also examined the significant relationship between leadership qualities and innovation endeavours in both countries. Findings revealed that operational focus and quality measurement qualities make the strongest unique contribution to explaining the variance, emphasising the importance of innovation. Findings also showed that innovation endeavours have promising impacts on Malaysia and Singapore university students towards enhancing, inspiring and motivating their learning, besides providing them a sense of self-improvement, self-motivation, self-satisfaction, self-efficiency and a …

Cfos Play Crucial Role In Surviving Covid-19 Crisis, Themin Suwardy

Research Collection School Of Accountancy

In recent years, chief financial officers (CFOs) have been called upon to do many things. They have stepped beyond their traditional technical finance functions, embracing technology and innovations to partner chief executive officers (CEOs) and boards on strategic issues. But if asked at the end of 2019, probably no CFO would place "managing through a global pandemic and economic crisis at the same time" among their top five things to do in 2020. Like many others, CFOs are being asked to do even more in a very short timeframe.

Adaptive Mindset: An Effective Approach To Leadership In Cross-Cultural Contexts, Francis Lotzer

Asian Management Insights

Understanding cultural signals by exploring the ‘hidden part of the iceberg’ and communicating the benefits of change to team members.

That Could Have Been Me: Director Deaths, Mortality Salience And Ceo Prosocial Behavior, Guoli Chen, Craig Crossland, Sterling Huang

Research Collection School Of Accountancy

Mortality salience—the awareness of the inevitability of death—is often traumatic. However, it can also be associated with a range of positive, self-transcendent cognitive responses, such as a greater desire to help others, contribute to society, and make a more meaningful contribution in one’s life and career. In this study, we provide evidence of a link between chief executive officer (CEO) mortality salience—triggered by the death of a director at the same firm—and a subsequent increase in firm-level prosocial behavior or corporate social responsibility (CSR). We further show that this core relationship is amplified in situations where the death of the …

Leadership Capabilities: Transforming Your Organisation For The Digital Age, Katharina Lange, Flocy Joseph, Markus Bjorn Karner

Asian Management Insights

Leaders of large organisations need to strike a balance between speed and thoroughness, centralisation and decentralisation, and technology and the human touch.

Authentic Leadership In The Digital Age, Richard R. Smith

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Artificial intelligence algorithms are actively assessing our personality and behaviour based on our social media footprint with amazing accuracy – even after we have retired or died.

The Missing Shifts, Saumya Sindhwani, Jerry Conner, Howard Thomas

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Saumya Sindhwani, Jerry Connor and Howard Thomas argue it is time to change the way we develop leaders – and tap into the power of mindset. The needs the managers speak of fit into two broad categories (“empathy” and “resourcefulness”) and both are fundamental “changes in mindset”. By that, we mean a change in attitude or world view.

Leading Mindfully In Dynamic Times: Can A Mindfulness-Based Leadership Training And Coaching Program Increase Leadership Effectiveness?, Nina Tan

Dissertations and Theses Collection (Open Access)

This research examined the influence of a Mindfulness-based Leadership Training and Coaching Program (MBP), in garnering three aspects of leadership effectiveness; extra employee effort, productive performance and followers’ satisfaction with leadership.

We hypothesized that mindfulness-based leadership training and coaching program can influence leaders’ frequency in adopting authentic, transformational and transactional leadership behaviors to enhance leadership effectiveness.

We tested these predictions separately on two control and intervention groups. Results suggested that the combined training and coaching mindfulness-based intervention program had predictive effects between the practice of mindful attunement of leaders’ behaviors and enhancement in leadership effectiveness, even in a short span …

Can Being Overconfident Make You A Better Leader?, Kenny Phua, T. Mandy Tham, Chi Shen Wei

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

When Apple CEO Steve Jobs approached AT&T about partnering on a new kind of mobile phone — a touchscreen computer that would fit in your pocket — Apple had no expertise in the mobile market. Yet AT&T executives quickly came to believe so strongly in Job’s vision that they skipped internal process protocols to land the deal. Randall Stephenson, then CEO of AT&T, famously said, “I told people you weren’t betting on a device. You were betting on Steve Jobs.” Apple went on to secure massive commitments from AT&T’s suppliers, who spent hundreds of millions to build factories for iPhone-specific …

Creating Meaning In Work, Eunyce Yap, Joanna Lam

Research Collection Institute of Service Excellence

Eunyce Yap and Joanna Lam, Founders of fashion label, Love & Bravery, tell us why there should always be more to business than just the bottom line.

Leading Mindfully: Two Studies Of The Influence Of Supervisor Trait Mindfulness On Employee Well-Being And Performance, Jochen Reb, Jayanth Narayanan, Sankalp Chaturvedi

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

This research examines the influence of leaders’ mindfulness on employee well-being and performance. We hypothesized that supervisors’ trait mindfulness is positively associated with different facets of employee well-being, such as job satisfaction and need satisfaction, and different dimensions of employee performance, such as in-role performance and organizational citizenship behaviors. We also explored whether one measure of employee well-being, psychological need satisfaction, plays a mediating role in the relation between supervisor mindfulness and employee performance. We tested these predictions in two studies using data from both supervisors and their subordinates. Results were consistent with our hypotheses. Overall, this research contributes to …

Followership, Leadership And Social Influence, Burak Oc, Michael R. Bashshur

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Traditional research in leadership has largely relegated followers to the role of passive recipients or, at best, moderators of leader influence and behaviors. However, recent work in the area of followership has begun shifting this focus and emphasizing the possibility that followers actively have an influence over leaders, in particular leader behavior. This paper revisits traditional areas of the leadership literature and builds on the emerging followership literature to reintroduce followers as part of the social context of leaders. In an attempt to build theoretical rationales for how followers influence leader behavior we draw on the social influence (e.g., Social …

The Ups Approach To Employee Relations, Singapore Management University

Perspectives@SMU

But at UPS, the management starts off every meeting by reciting one of the policies in the company’s policy handbook that contains guidelines on how to handle employees, stakeholders and customers. Mary Yeo, vice president of supply chain operations at UPS South District, said at a talk presented at Singapore Management University (SMU): “This is a reminder to all of us working at UPS that we cannot overlook any important matters happening in our environment by simply forgetting the good culture at UPS.”

Entrepreneurship, Professionalism, Leadership: A Framework And Measure For Understanding Boundaryless Careers, Kim-Yin Chan, Moon-Ho R. Ho, Oleksandr S. Chernyshenko, Olwen Bedford, Marilyn A. Uy, David M. Gomulya, Y. L. Sam, Wei Ming J. Phan

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

We propose a person-centered framework for conceptualizing subjective careers in an increasingly boundaryless work context. Specifically, we argue that entrepreneurship, professionalism, and leadership (EPL) can serve as three key dimensions of subjective career space. We relate this framework to earlier macro-level national and organizational career models proposed by Kanter (1989) and Schein (1978). Our empirical study involving 10,326 Singaporean university students demonstrated that entrepreneurial, professional, and leadership career aspirations (including motivations, efficacies, and intentions) can be measured independently, that these career dimensions are independent of vocational interests, and that they are to some degree viewed as competing career alternatives. We …

Pro-Creativity Leadership: An Exploratory Study On The Mediating Role Of Intrinsic Motivation, Gilbert Tan, Wei Nurn Chong

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Many scholars believe in the critical role leaders play in fostering creativity at the workplace (e.g. Amabile, 1998; Amabile, Conti, Coon, Lazenby, & Herron, 1996; Jung, 2000-2001; Mumford & Gustafson, 1988). Leaders have been described to occupy a boundary role position in organizations (Katz & Kahn, 1978) where they are tasked with influencing subordinate behavior in order to attain organizational goals (Fleishman, 1973; Mumford, 1986). As such, they are in the position to influence subordinate behavior considerably, including subordinates’ creative behavior. Yet to date, not much research has been done on the effect of leadership on employee creativity (Jung, 2000-2001; …

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 …

Trust In Leadership: Meta-Analytic Findings And Implications For Research And Practice, Kurt T. Dirks, Donald L. Ferrin

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

In this study, the authors examined the findings and implications of the research on trust in leadership that has been conducted during the past 4 decades. First, the study provides estimates of the primary relationships between trust in leadership and key outcomes, antecedents, and correlates (k = 106). Second, the study explores how specifying the construct with alternative leadership referents (direct leaders vs. organizational leadership) and definitions (types of trust) results in systematically different relationships between trust in leadership and outcomes and antecedents. Direct leaders (e.g., supervisors) appear to be a particularly important referent of trust. Last, a theoretical framework …

The Trusted General Manager And Unit Performance: Empirical Evidence Of A Competitive Advantage, James H. Davis, F. David Schoorman, Roger C. Mayer, Hwee Hoon Tan

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Employee trust for the general manager is proposed as an internal organizational characteristic that provides a competitive advantage for the firm. This paper empirically examines the relationship between trust for a business unit's general manager and organizational performance. Trust was found to be significantly related to sales, profits and employee turnover in the restaurant industry. Managers who were either more or less trusted differed significantly in perceptions of their ability, benevolence and integrity.