Digital Commons Network^™

How And Why Is Context Important In Leadership?, Burak Oc, Joseph A. Carpini

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Leadership can be defined as a goal-influence process that occurs between a leader and a follower, groups of followers, or institutions that directs effort towards the achievement of a shared objective (Antonakis & Day, 2018, p. 5). From this definition, we can distil four key elements of leadership: a) leaders, b) followers, c) influence and d) goals, motivation and performance. While leaders and followers are the main actors of leadership processes, how they influence each other has implications for group goals. However, most leadership research focuses on leaders, largely treating them as the sole driver of organisation success or failure …

Employees’ Job Positions, Psychological Ownership, And Commitment To Change, Bo Zhang

Dissertations and Theses Collection (Open Access)

Organisational change is crucial to the development of enterprises. However, when enterprises are implementing major changes, there are great differences in the attitudes and behaviours of employees in different job positions toward changes. Research in this area is insufficient. Therefore, this dissertation investigates the problem of employee commitment amid enterprises’ organisational changes. This dissertation is committed to determining why employees at different levels and with different roles have different degrees of commitment to change and confirming the role of job positions in affecting employees’ psychological ownership of the change process. According to the findings, the impact of employees’ job rank …

Is There A Strategic Organization In The Behavioral Theory Of The Firm? Looking Back And Looking Forward, Henrich R. Greve, Cyndi Man Zhang

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

In the 20 years of Strategic Organization, how well has knowledge drawn from the behavioral theory of the firm contributed to the field of strategy? We see progress both in the pages of SO! and elsewhere in the field of strategy, but this progress has been held back by divisions between strategy and organization theory in what theories should predict, what mechanisms are preferable predictors, and what outcomes are of interest. Despite these divisions, the last few years have seen particularly rapid progress, turning the behavioral theory of the firm into one of multiple organization theory sources of strategy knowledge. …

Social Performance Feedback And Firm Communication Strategy, Heli Wang, Ming Jia, Yi Xiang, Yang Lan

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Although corporate social performance has become an important measure of firm performance, there is little understanding about how firms respond to social performance feedback and how impression management may function as an important firm response to the feedback. Building upon and extending the literature on the behavioral theory of the firm and the strategic use of language, we examine how discrepancies between firms’ social performance and their aspiration levels affect how firms use visual expressions in their CSR reports. In addition, we argue that the relationship between social performance discrepancies and the use of visual expressions in CSR reports is …

What Machines Can't Do (Yet) In Real Work Settings, Thomas H. Davenport, Steven M. Miller

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

AI systems may perform well in the research lab or under highly controlled application settings, but they still needed human help in the types of real world work settings we researched for a new book, Working With AI: Real Stories of Human-Machine Collaboration. Human workers were very much in evidence across our 30 case studies. In this article, we use those examples to illustrate our list of AI-enabled activities that still require human assistance. These are activities where organizations need to continue to invest in human capital, and where practitioners can expect job continuity for the immediate future

Innovation Culture Assessment: An Exploratory Diagnosis Of A Taiwanese Manufacturing Company, Yong Keong Tay

Dissertations and Theses Collection (Open Access)

The purpose of this research study is to better understand how manufacturing firms in Asia are trying to make innovation work and the challenges they are facing in creating and capturing new value. Based on a real-life case study of a medium-sized OEM lock manufacturer in Taiwan (“3ST”), the study sheds light on key building blocks of a robust corporate innovation culture with focus on ‘Values’, ‘Behaviours’, ‘Climate’, ‘Resources’, ‘Processes’, and ‘Success’, using a valid and reliable diagnostic innovation culture framework developed by Rao & Weintraub (2013).

Besides the identification of critical gaps in 3ST’s innovation culture based on Rao …

Cultivating Positivity To Achieve A Resilient Society: A Critical Narrative Review From Psychological Perspectives, Andree Hartanto, K. T. A. Sandeeshwara Kasturiratna, Xun Ci Soh

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

With the rapid speed of globalization and technological breakthroughs, current social issues have become more complex than in past decades. As many issues such as pandemics, terrorism, and interracial conflict are realistically unpredictable, the idea of resilience offers an intuitively plausible and attainable strategy to deal with these potential adversities. The current narrative review explores the cultivation of positive emotions and traits as a plausible way to achieve a resilient society. Based on research in the social and industrial organizational psychology literature, we reviewed the role of positive emotions and traits on resilience. Lastly, we highlight important experiences and interventions …

Key Factors In The Strategic Transformation Of Traditional Food Enterprises In China, Hui Ching Lau

Dissertations and Theses Collection (Open Access)

The food industry is an important industry for China’s social development and one of the pillar industries of China's industrial economy. With the development of China’s urbanization, the victory of building a moderately prosperous society in all respects, and the continuous improvement of people’s living standards, consumer demand has become diversified and rationalized from “seeking for fullness” to “seeking for good”. In this context, the supplier of food products, that is, food companies, has become more competitive in market segments. With the continuous improvement of China's market openness, many top international food companies have flooded into the food industry. Coupled …

Substantive Representation Of Women In Asian Parliaments, Devin K. Joshi, Christian Echle

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Combining data from nearly 100 interviews with national parliamentarians from ten Asian countries, the contributors to this book analyze and evaluate the advancement of gender equality in Asia. As of the year 2022, no country in Asia has gender parity in its parliament. Meanwhile, the proportion of national-level women parliamentarians in Asia averages a mere 20%. What is more important than simple descriptive representation, however, is whether outcomes for women are improving. Rather than focusing on numerical representation, the chapters in this book focus on the substantive representation of women. In other words, what do women and men parliamentarians do …

The Effect Of Formal Time Allocations On Learning Trajectories And Performance, Kenneth T. Goh, Colin M. Fisher, S. Amy Sommer

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

How do formal time allocations in teams affect team learning trajectories and performance? We argue that allocating more time for transition phases induces steeper learning trajectories that engender a positive group atmosphere, which in turn improves team performance by improving coordination quality. We tested our hypotheses in a laboratory experiment in which teams worked on a creative design task over multiple iterations. Using a latent growth modeling approach, we found that teams with shorter action and longer transition phases during prototyping had lower initial performance but steeper learning trajectories, which indirectly led to better final team performance.

Growing Pains: The Effect Of Generational Product Innovation On Mobile Games Performance, Liang Chen, Pengxiang Zhang, Sali Li, Scott F. Turner

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Research Summary: Strategy research advises firms to capture generative value by continually introducing generational improvements on their existing products. This article considers a potential dark side of such strategy. We argue that generational innovation can elicit a negative near-term response from customers, as it distorts their ingrained behavioral patterns and imposes learning costs. Further, we propose that this negative effect of generational innovation will diminish when the product has a leading market position; and it will be more severe as the product's technological legacy lengthens. Using a difference-in-differences research design based on mobile game apps that multihome on two platforms, …

It’S So Boring – Or Is It? Examining The Role Of Mindfulness For Work Performance And Attitudes In Monotonous Jobs, Andreas Wihler, Ute R. Hülsheger, Jochen Reb, Jochen I. Menges

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

We examine the role of employee mindfulness in the context of highly monotonous work conditions. Integrating research on task monotony with theorizing on mindfulness, we hypothesized that mindfulness is negatively associated with the extent to which employees feel generally bored by their jobs. We further hypothesized that this lower employee boredom would relate to downstream outcomes in the form of job attitudes (job satisfaction and turnover intentions) and task performance. We examined both objective task performance quality and quantity to shed light on the complexity of the mindfulness–task performance relation, which has so far mostly been investigated using subjective supervisor …

It's So Boring - Or Is It? Examining The Role Of Mindfulness For Work Performance And Attitudes In Monotonous Jobs, Andreas Wihler, Ute R. Hulsheger, Jochen Reb, Jochen I. Menges

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

We examine the role of employee mindfulness in the context of highly monotonous work conditions. Integrating research on task monotony with theorizing on mindfulness, we hypothesized that mindfulness is negatively associated with the extent to which employees feel generally bored by their jobs. We further hypothesized that this lower employee boredom would relate to downstream outcomes in the form of job attitudes (job satisfaction and turnover intentions) and task performance. We examined both objective task performance quality and quantity to shed light on the complexity of the mindfulness-task performance relation, which has so far mostly been investigated using subjective supervisor …

Evidence Integration For Coherent Nexus Policy Design: A Mediterranean Perspective On Managing Water-Energy Interactions, Sarah Giest, Ishani Mukherjee

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Nexus governance increasingly relies on using data to design policy measures. At the intersection of different policy fields, such as energy and water, data is seen to shed light on complex challenges and have the ability to measure both problems and solutions systematically. In order to analyze the challenges linked to data use in the context of nexus governance, we use a policy design lens and more specifically the perspective of organizational policy instruments to look at the Mediterranean region. We focus on how the design of organizational tools enables or impedes policy coherence and thereby the efficacy of data …

Conflicting Institutional Logics As A Safe Space For Collaboration: Action Research In A Reforestation Ngo, Simon J.D. Schillebeeckx, Ryan K. Merrill

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Climate change is the defining issue of our time. Taking urgent action to combat climate change and its impacts (Sustainable Development Goal 13) is one of the most wicked problems governments, companies, and civil society have ever had to solve (Reinecke & Ansari, 2016). The path to solving the climate crisis is reasonably well defined but the road ahead is treacherous. We need to decarbonize the economy so that we can decouple growth from carbon emissions. This requires massive investments in clean energy, a radical rethink of the food production system, and innovations in aviation and primary extractive industries to …

Applying Coleman’S Boat In Management Research: Opportunities And Challenges In Bridging Macro And Micro Theory, Amanda Cowen, Floor Rink, Ilya R. P. Cuypers, Denis Gregoire, Ingo Weller

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Over the years, ongoing conversations in Academy of Management Journal—and the broader management literature—have emphasized the value of research that bridges the macro and micro domains (Hitt, Beamish, Jackson, & Mathieu, 2007; Molloy, Ployhart, & Wright, 2011; Morgeson & Hofmann, 1999; Paruchuri, Perry-Smith, Chattopadhyay, & Shaw, 2018). Calls for cross-boundary work typically argue that bridging these two domains is required to understand and solve the complex management issues that societies face (George, Howard-Grenville, Joshi, & Tihanyi, 2016; House, Rousseau, & Thomas-Hunt, 1995; Kozlowski & Klein, 2000). Responses to the organizational challenges posed by the COVID-19 pandemic, or to societal problems …

Introduction To The Business Of Sustainability: An Organizing Framework For Theory, Practice And Impact, Gerard George, Martine R. Haas, Havovi Heerjee Joshi, Anita M. Mcgahan, Paul Tracey

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Human activity needs to become sustainable, and businesses have a massive role to play in it. Important progress has occurred. The Coronavirus pandemic has reinforced the importance of sustainability and resilience. Businesses have become champions of the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), both by integrating them into their core activities and by developing strategies and metrics to achieve them. Despite this progress, more must be done to achieve sustainability targets on a timetable that is relevant. While the narratives of businesses are often exciting, their follow-through with implementation remains limited. So too is information on successful practices, conceptual knowledge …

Ai And The Future Of Work: What We Know Today, Steven M. Miller, Thomas H. Davenport

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

To contribute to a better understanding of the contemporary realities of AI workplace deployments, the authors recently completed 29 case studies of people doing their everyday work with AI-enabled smart machines. Twenty-three of these examples were from North America, mostly in the US. Six were from Southeast Asia, mostly in Singapore. In this essay, we compare our findings on job and workplace impacts to those reported in the MIT Task Force on the Work of the Future report, as we consider that to be the most comprehensive recent study on this topic.

Using Role Play To Develop An Empathetic Mindset In Executive Education, Siu Loon Hoe, Tamsin Greulich-Smith

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

The purpose of this article is to discuss the importance of a role play activity as part of an experiential instructional strategy to develop an empathetic mindset among professionals, managers, and executives (PMEs) attending an executive education program in change management. This article provides an approach and process for management educators and facilitators of executive education programs to introduce and teach role play for the busy executives to learn about empathy. Role play is a useful teaching method that helps adult learners understand the importance of seeing things from another person’s point of view especially within a short period of …

Artificial Intelligence And Work: Two Perspectives, Steven Miller, Thomas H. Davenport

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

One of the most important issues in contemporary societies is the impact of intelligent technologies on human work. For an empirical perspective on the issue, we recently completed 30 case studies of people collaborating with AI-enabled smart machines. Twenty-four were from North America, mostly in the US. Six were from Southeast Asia, mostly in Singapore. We compare some of our observations to one of the broadest academic examinations of the issue. In particular, we focus on our case study observations with regard to key findings from the MIT Task Force on the Work of the Future report.

Case Study: National Library Board Singapore: Delivering Cost-Effective Service Excellence Through Innovation And People, Jochen Wirtz, Thomas Menkhoff

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

The National Library Board (NLB) Singapore is a statutory board that managed to become a serial innovator. Its globally leading innovations in the library context include shelf-reading robots, and even entirely self-service libraries. NLB’s consistent focus on excellent service delivery reinforced its commitment to innovation. Key levers were effective strategic leadership, a smart innovation strategy that made heavy use of technology — such as app-delivered self-service technologies, crowdsourcing, and robotics — as well as a people-centric staff culture. NLB managed to co-create attractive libraries of the future together with different types of community members, such as volunteers and corporations, ushering …

Resilience As An Organisational Capability: A Study Of How Firms Survive And Outperform In Disruptive Times, Dietmar Kappel

Dissertations and Theses Collection (Open Access)

An environment, in which volatility and deep uncertainty represent the leading paradigm, pressures firms to focus their attention on adapting to disruptive environmental conditions. Although scholarly attention in the firm-level resilience construct has increased over the years, a number of important issues remain underexplored. To advance progress in the field, research is needed on the dimensions of resilient response formulation and enactment, the dimensions of the disruptive environment and situational factors as well as resilience as a latent outcome variable. Based on an in-depth, systematic review of the received literature, this thesis aims to extend the firm-level resilience literature by …

Pressure To Be Creative: How Employees Respond To Organizational Creativity Pressure, Hye Jung Eun

Dissertations and Theses Collection (Open Access)

Creativity and innovation are vital for organizational growth and success, driving many organizations to increase pressure for employee creativity. Yet, researchers have neglected investigating how employees respond to creativity pressure at the workplace. This dissertation introduces and develops a new scale for the concept of organizational creativity pressure – the pressure on employees to continually develop novel and useful ideas and solutions. The scale is further validated through extensive assessment of content and construct validity, empirically differentiating the construct from similar others such as performance pressure and support for creativity.

Drawing on the transactional theory of stress (Lazarus & Folkman, …

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 …

Outsourcing Life Cycle Model For Financial Services In The Fintech Era, Tristan Lim, Patrick Thng

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

In today’s financial services landscape, staying ahead of the innovation curve and being disciplined at enhancing core service offerings entail careful resource planning. A well-structured outsourcing arrangement can go a long way towards enhancing long term organizational strategic growth. In the post-2014 FinTech era, (i) strategic management with an innovation focus and (ii) financial technology-associated risks, have brought about changes to outsourcing in the financial services industry. Presently, most outsourcing life cycle models in existing literature seek to provide comprehensive, yet industry-neutral guidelines lacking industry context and depth of coverage. A newly licensed financial institution deciding to embark on outsourcing …

Getting Institutions Right: Matching Institutional Capacities To Developmental Tasks, Jacob I. Ricks, Richard F. Doner

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Since the 1990s, scholars and international organizations such as the World Bank have recognized the centrality of institutions for development. While important, this “institutional turn” has generally minimized the diversity of development challenges and the corresponding need for different institutional capacities. Yet distinguishing among developmental tasks is a critical step in understanding the kinds of institutions necessary to accomplish policy tasks. We identify five dimensions of task difficulty that affect the degree and nature of policy challenges and, as a result, the institutional capacities necessary to accomplish such challenges. We assess the utility of this framework through a qualitative analysis …

Preparing Workplaces For Digital Transformation: An Integrative Review And Framework Of Multi-Level Factors, Brigid Trenerry, Samuel Chng, Yang Wang, Zainal Suhalia, Sun Sun Lim, Han Yu Lu, Peng Ho Oh

Research Collection College of Integrative Studies

The rapid advancement of new digital technologies, such as smart technology, artificial intelligence (AI) and automation, robotics, cloud computing, and the Internet of Things (IoT), is fundamentally changing the nature of work and increasing concerns about the future of jobs and organizations. To keep pace with rapid disruption, companies need to update and transform business models to remain competitive. Meanwhile, the growth of advanced technologies is changing the types of skills and competencies needed in the workplace and demanded a shift in mindset among individuals, teams and organizations. The recent COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated digitalization trends, while heightening the importance …

Assessing Code Clone Harmfulness: Indicators, Factors, And Counter Measures, Bin Hu, Yijian Wu, Xin Peng, Jun Sun, Nanjie Zhan, Jun Wu

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Code clones are identical or similar code in software projects. On one hand, developers clone code to achieve higher productivity and thus clones inherently exist; on the other hand, code clones demand extra effort to maintain the consistency between clone instances and may introduce bugs, and thus are often considered harmful for software maintenance and quality. We believe that not all code clones have the same level of harmfulness. A systematic way of assessing the harmfulness level of cloned code would facilitate informed decisions on how to deal with clones. We propose a model for clone harmfulness level assessment with …

Marketing Agility: The Concept, Antecedents, And A Research Agenda, Kartik Kalaignanam, Kapil R. Tuli, Tarun Kushwaha, Leonard Lee, David T Gal

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Changes in the way customers shop, accompanied by an explosion of customer touchpoints and fast-changing competitive and technological dynamics, have led to an increased emphasis on agile marketing. The objective of this article is to conceptualize and investigate the emerging concept of marketing agility. The authors synthesize the literature from marketing and allied disciplines and insights from in-depth interviews with 22 senior managers. Marketing agility is defined as the extent to which an entity rapidly iterates between making sense of the market and executing marketing decisions to adapt to the market. It is conceptualized as occurring across different organizational levels …

Human Capital Leadership Insights: Solving Human Capital Challenges From The Business Perspective, Singapore Management University

Student Publications

In 2016, the Lee Kong Chian School of Business launched the Master of Human Capital Leadership (“MHCL”) program with the strategic objective of growing leaders to champion evidence-based human capital practices. The 2019 MHCL cohort took this a step further with their quest to share insights gained from studies and projects with industry stakeholders. This goal resonates with our mission -- to create and disseminate knowledge.