Business Commons^™

Building Workplace Trust In Some Cultures Is To Blur The Line Between Professional And Personal Life, Knowledge@Smu

Knowledge@SMU

In China and Turkey, the separation between work and personal life is not so clear cut as compared with western societies, according to a joint study by Singapore Management University professor of organisational behaviour Tan Hwee Hoon, and management professors S. Arzu Wasti and Selin Eser of Sabanci University in Turkey. The main purpose of their research was to provide insights into the impact that different cultures have on trust in the workplace.

Marketing On A Shoestring In Not-For-Profits: No Pain No Gain, Knowledge@Smu

Knowledge@SMU

Sarah Mavrinac is the founder and president of not-for-profit financial education organisation, aidha, which started operations in January 2007 in Singapore. aidha offers training courses to women migrant workers, in particular those in domestic service. Mavrinac delivered a talk recently on “Marketing on a Shoestring -- The Challenge of Not-for-Profit Outreach", organised by the Centre for Marketing Excellence of the Lee Kong Chian School of Business, Singapore Management University.

Making Great People Decisions Is The Toughest Business Challenge Say Top Executives, Knowledge@Smu

Knowledge@SMU

Where great people decisions are concerned, the right person in a leadership position can take an organisation to greater heights, but the wrong candidate can steer a path to disaster. Founding leader of global search firm Egon Zehnder International, Claudio Fernandez-Araoz, introduced his new book, Great People Decisions, recently at a Singapore Management University Distinguished Public Lecture, followed by a panel discussion featuring top executives in Singapore.

Competition In Modular Clusters, Carliss Y. Baldwin, C. Jason Woodard

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

The last twenty years have witnessed the rise of disaggregated “clusters,” “networks,” or “ecosystems” of firms. In these clusters the activities of R&D, product design, production, distribution, and system integration may be split up among hundreds or even thousands of firms. Different firms will design and produce the different components of a complex artifact (like the processor, peripherals, and software of a computer system), and different firms will specialize in different stages of a complex production process. This paper considers the pricing behavior and profitability of these so-called modular clusters. In particular, we investigate a possibility hinted at in prior …

Japanese Corporate Governance: Structural Change And Financial Performance, Asli M. Colpan, Toru Yoshikawa, Takashi Hikino, Hiroaki Miyoshi

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

This paper analyzes institutional and legal changes related to corporate governance and their impact on financial performance in Japan since the second half of the 1990s. We attempt to address two issues systematically: (1) how much the governance reforms of Japanese firms transformed the conventional system of alliance capitalism and managerial control; and (2) what economic outcomes those governance changes have yielded. As the Commercial Code and other legal and institutional frameworks were revised, Japanese firms experienced shifts in terms of stock ownership, corporate control and managerial organizations. Our empirical results show that the influence of new ownership composition and …

The Effects Of Entrepreneurial Growth Orientation On Organizational Change And Firm Growth, Wee Liang Tan, Thomas Menkhoff, Yue Wah Chay

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Managing growth in an enterprise as it grows beyond the startup phase is a challenge for many entrepreneurs. One key element that can help or hinder growth is the entrepreneur. Entrepreneurial growth has been linked to micro variables (motivations and psychological attributes of the entrepreneur) and macro variables. However, few studies have examined the role of the growth aspirations of the entrepreneur on the necessary elements of organization change related to growth.

This paper reports a study employing a typology of entrepreneurs based on their growth aspirations using an established dichotomous scale devised by Smith to differentiate between what he …

The Challenge Of Developing Across Borders: Singapore’S Gambit In Bangalore, India, Choong Tze Chua, Wilfred Pow Ngee How, Caroline Yeoh

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

No abstract provided.

Business Groups: An Integrated Model To Focus Future Research, Daphne W. Yiu, Yuan Lu, Garry D. Bruton, Robert E. Hoskisson

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Business groups are the primary form of managing large business organizations outside North America. This paper provides a systematic and integrative framework for understanding business groups. We argue that existing theoretical perspectives of business groups pay attention to four critical external contexts, each of which draws from a specific theoretical perspective: market conditions (transaction cost theory), social relationships (relational perspective), political factors (political economy perspective), and external monitoring mechanisms (agency theory). Business groups adapt to these external forces by deploying various internal mechanisms along two key dimensions: one focuses on the distinctive roles of the group affiliates (horizontal connectedness) and …

Knowledge Narratives And Heterogeneity In Management Consultancy And Business Services, Robin Fincham, Timothy Adrian Robert Clark, Karen Handley, Andrew Sturdy

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

In the professional services, diversification into various types of business advice has implications for knowledge boundaries. This is a sector of changing jurisdictional patterns and periodic reconstruction. Firms like large law practices that feed services into corporate clients have been merging to provide global coverage (Suddaby and Greenwood, 2001; Suddaby et al., 2004). But new specialisms in areas like consulting and IT are even more dynamic. Patterns such as the growth in outsourcing and movement into management consulting accounted for stupendous growth of the global accounting firms. These changes have themselves been overtaken, as the IT and systems giants muscled …

The Validity Of Assessment Centres For The Prediction Of Supervisory Performance Ratings: A Meta-Analysis, Eran Hermelin, Filip Lievens, Ivan T. Robertson

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

The current meta-analysis of the selection validity of assessment centres aims to update an earlier meta-analysis of assessment centre validity. To this end, we retrieved 26 studies and 27 validity coefficients (N=5850) relating the Overall Assessment Rating (OAR) to supervisory performance ratings. The current study obtained a corrected correlation of .28 between the OAR and supervisory job performance ratings (95% confidence interval .24 < =rho < =.32). It is further suggested that this validity estimate is likely to be conservative given that assessment centre validities tend to be affected by indirect range restriction.

Measurement Equivalence In The Conduct Of A Global Organizational Survey Across Countries In Six Cultural Regions, Alain De Beuckelaer, Filip Lievens, Gilbert Swinnen

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

This study examined the measurement equivalence of a global organizational survey measuring six work climate factors as administered across 25 countries (N = 31.315) in all regions of the world (West Europe, East Europe, North America, Latin America, South America, Middle East, Africa and Asia-Pacific). Across all countries, the survey instrument exhibited 'form equivalence' and 'metric equivalence', suggesting that respondents completed the survey using the same frame-of-reference and interpreted the rating scale intervals similarly. Schwartz's (1994, 1999, 2004) cultural value theory was then used for grouping the countries in cultural regions, and to anticipate measurement equivalence of the data from …

Creating Alternate In-Basket Forms Through Cloning: Some Preliminary Results, Filip Lievens, Frederik Anseel

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Research on constructing alternate forms of assessment center exercises is very scarce. This study examines the effectiveness of a cloning procedure (incident isomorphic approach) for developing alternate forms of a computerized in-basket. In this approach, original and alternate items are essentially similar (they are based on the same critical incident), while being superficially different (they are situated in a different context). Results showed there was no significant difference between the overall in-basket score across the alternate forms. In addition, these overall scores correlated .66, with projected estimates for the full in-basket approaching .80. Implications and limitations of the use of …

Investigating Web-Based Recruitment Sources: Employee Testimonials Vs Word-Of-Mouse, Greet Van Hoye, Filip Lievens

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Although the internet has dramatically changed recruitment practices, many web-based recruitment sources have not yet been investigated. The present study examines the effects of web-based employee testimonials and web-based word-of-mouth (i.e., 'word-of-mouse') on organizational attraction. The source credibility framework is used to compare these company-dependent and company-independent recruitment sources. In a sample of potential applicants for a head nurse position, word-of-mouse was associated with higher organizational attractiveness than web-based employee testimonials. However, potential applicants were more attracted when testimonials provided information about individual employees than about the organization. Conversely, word-of-mouse was associated with higher organizational attractiveness and more organizational pursuit …

Measurement Invariance Of The Pay Satisfaction Questionnaire Across Three Countries, Filip Lievens, Frederik Anseel, Michael M. Harris, Jacob Eisenberg

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

In recent years, pay satisfaction has been increasingly studied in an international context, prompting the importance of examining whether the Pay Satisfaction Questionnaire (PSQ) is invariant across countries other than the United States. This study investigated the measurement invariance across three countries, namely, the United States (N = 321), Belgium (N = 301), and Cyprus (N = 132). Results showed that the measurement structure of the PSQ was invariant across these different countries because there was no departure from measurement invariance in terms of factor form, factor pattern coefficients, factor variances, and factor covariances. These results show promise for the …

Value Discount Of Business Groups Surrounding The Asian Financial Crisis: Evidence From Korean Chaebols, James Jinho Chang, Young Jun Cho, Won Kang, Hyun-Han Shin

Research Collection School Of Accountancy

We examine the effect of business group membership on firm value in each pre-and postcrisis Korea. Consistent with prior studies, results show that group affiliated chaebol firms suffer value discount relative to non-chaebol firms in the precrisis period. However, we also find that chaebol firms experience an improvement in firm value relative to non-chaebol firms after the financial crisis. These findings imply that the value discount of business groups reported in prior studies is not an inevitable consequence of diversification, but can be alleviated or overcome by structural reforms in business practices or economic conditions.

The Association Between Audit Fees And Auditors' Opinions On Internal Control Weakness Under Section 404 Of The Sox, Jong-Hag Choi, Jeong-Bon Kim, Soo Young Kwon, Yoonseok Zang

Research Collection School Of Accountancy

The Section 404 of Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX) requires top management toestablish, maintain, and regularly evaluate the effectiveness of the internal controlover financial reporting (ICOFR), and obtain an auditor’s attestation. In this paper, weidentify 232 firms that received “Ineffective” audit opinion on the effectiveness ofICOFR due to one or more material weakness in internal control (WIC). We examinethe association between audit fees and the WIC for pre- and post-SOX period. Wefind that highly levered clients with the WIC paid greater audit fees even in the preSOXperiod and continuously paid the high fees in post-SOX period, whereas theloss-making clients with WIC paid …

Tennis, Anyone? Lessons On Innovation In A Mature Industry, Knowledge@Smu

Knowledge@SMU

Tennis qualifies as the oldest racquet sport in the world. Since 1874, little had changed until the 1970s when the wooden racquet was phased out, followed by a succession of cutting edge designs. How did the classic tennis racquet lend itself to being so thoroughly reinvented? Wharton management professor J.M. Pennings, together with Hann E Kim, professor at the KDI School of Public Policy and Management in Korea, set out to find some answers.

Building Swift Clan Control In Complex It Projects, Cecil Eng Huang Chua, Wee Kiat Lim, Christina Soh, Siew Kien Sia

CMP Research

Clan control is often essential in complex multi-stakeholder projects for project success. Furthermore, clan control is especially important during requirements analysis which occurs at project inception. How can controllers quickly institute clan control in complex IT projects? Through the case analysis of a large IT project, we observed that clan control can be accelerated by the purposeful application of formal controls to build social capital. Our findings corroborate the notion that, properly structured, clan control can emerge quickly in a multi-stakeholder project to improve the likelihood of IT implementation success.

St Engineering: A Globalisation Success Story, Knowledge@Smu

Knowledge@SMU

Tan Pheng Hock is president and CEO of Singapore Technologies Engineering (ST Engineering), one of the largest companies listed on the Singapore stock exchange.The global integrated engineering group has 18,000 employees with operations in 20 countries, and 100 subsidiaries serving customers in more than 70 countries. Tan was the featured speaker at the Singapore Management University's Wee Kim Wee Centre CEO Talks series recently. He spoke to Knowledge@SMU about ST Engineering’s globalisation strategy and key learnings.

Monitor Group's Go-To-Market Methodology Advocates The 'Outside-In' Approach, Knowledge@Smu

Knowledge@SMU

How can companies, especially those operating in end-consumer industries and saturated markets, become successful? By transforming themselves into truly marketing-led organisations, advises the Monitor Group, a global management services firm. Monitor has developed a finely tuned go-to-market approach which calls for a fundamental shift at the leadership level from an inside-out perspective to an outside-in view of the marketplace.

A Unified Interdisciplinary Theory Of Open Source Culture And Entertainment, Jerald Hughes, Karl Reiner Lang, Eric K. Clemons, Robert J. Kauffman

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Digital technologies are profoundly transforming the production and consumption of culture and entertainment products. The emerging digital re-mix culture is an open source approach where content products in the arts and entertainment industries are increasingly rearranged, manipulated, and extended in the process of creating new works. This article offers a unified description of the tools and techniques that led to the development of the open source culture and that enable the processes which promote re-use of previously recorded materials. It then lays out the incentives and forces that either promote or inhibit the development, distribution, and consumption of modified cultural …

A Trans-Tasman Business Elite?, Nicholas Harrigan, Shaun Goldfinch

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

This article examines the close relationship between the Australian and New Zealand business communities to ask whether the relationship is best characterized as simply a bi-lateral trading relationship, or whether there is evidence of the formation of a transnational business community. This article also seeks to explore the nature of Australia—New Zealand integration, and specifically the degree to which the relationship is interdependent or asymmetrical. Data are drawn from quantitative sources — including a dataset developed from the IBISWorld's Largest 2000 Enterprises in Australia and New Zealand, Who's Who in Australia, and Who's Who in Business in Australia — and …

Including Corporate Social Responsibility, Environmental Sustainaibility, And Ethics In Calibrating Mba Job Preferences, David B. Montgomery, Catherine A. Ramus

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

It has long been understood by organizations and academics that the people make the place (Schneider, 1987). A quality workforce is an important source of competitive advantage, and organizational and financial success for firms (Capelli, 2000; Chapman, Uggerslev, Carroll, Piasentin, & Jones, 2005; Huselid, 1995; Pfeffer, 1994, 1998; Teece, 1998). Attracting talent is difficult for business organizations, and may become increasingly so in the years to come, as demographic and economic factors create a war for talent (Chapman, et al., 2005; Johnson, 2000; Michaels, Handfield-Jones, & Axelrod, 2001). Particularly salient in this war for talent is the ability to attract …

International New Ventures: Revisiting The Influences Behind The 'Born-Global' Firm, Terence P. C. Fan, Phillip Phan

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

There is a small but theoretically important literature on 'born-globals' or international new venture firms that positions itself in contrast to the more established sequential international entry literature. In this paper we examine the pattern of entry into international markets for a set of international new ventures and show that they need not be a distinct breed of firms, as previous research has portrayed. Absent a specific technological advantage, the decision for a new venture to internationalize at inception is influenced by the size of its home market and by its production capacity, as well as by cultural and economic …

Lessons From The Sub-Prime Crisis, Melvyn Teo

Research Collection BNP Paribas Hedge Fund Centre

We show that there is significant variation in performance across hedge funds during the subprime crisis. Hedge funds that (i) invested in Asia, (ii) had equity exposure, (iii) adopted directional strategies, or (iv) allowed for frequent redemptions, underperformed other funds. Moreover, leveraged funds did not fare significantly worse than their non-leveraged counterparts. Our results suggest that credit market illiquidity was not directly responsible for the bloodshed amongst hedge funds. Rather, funds were hurt by an increase in global risk aversion and by fire sales conducted in anticipation of redemptions.

Is Direct Method Cash Flow Reporting Better At Predicting Future Performance?, Knowledge@Smu

Knowledge@SMU

“Cash is king” goes the saying. Even companies enjoying brisk business have been known to fail because of unhealthy cash flows. The accounting profession is split over the benefits of the direct method (DM) versus the indirect method (IM) of preparing cash flow reports. In a study of over 100 US-based companies which used direct cash flow statements, Singapore Management University accounting professor Yoonseok Zang shows conclusively that the direct method does better at predicting future performance and earnings. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Transforming A Region Into A Vibrant Entrepreneurial Economy: How To Create The Multiplier Effect, Knowledge@Smu

Knowledge@SMU

Sankaran Venkataraman is business administration professor at the Darden Graduate School of Business Administration, University of Virginia, and visiting professor of entrepreneurship and business at the Singapore Management University. At a recent seminar in Singapore, Venkataraman explored the question, “What does it take for a nascent entrepreneurial region to create the multiplier effect necessary to transform itself into a vibrant entrepreneurial economy?” In his view, institutional specialisation, division of labour, the architecture of entrepreneurial sub-systems and intangible cultures all play critical roles.

Michael Schaper On Small Businesses: Unravelling Popular Myths About Their Value And Viability, Knowledge@Smu

Knowledge@SMU

Small businesses typically account for more than 95% of all private sector entities and employ more than half the workforce in some countries, reveals a study by Michael Schaper, dean of the Murdoch University Business School in Australia. Speaking at the Singapore Management University’s UOB-SMU Enterprise Alliance Centre recently, Schaper dismantled some common misconceptions about the value and profiles of small businesses and their owners.

Global Sourcing Model Helps Companies Optimise Benefits From Free Trade Agreements, Knowledge@Smu

Knowledge@SMU

As FTAs (Free Trade Agreements) proliferate, companies increasingly face difficult decisions about where to source for components and set up manufacturing bases so as to benefit from FTAs. Brian Rodrigues, professor of operations management at the Singapore Management University, and management sciences professors Li Yanzhi and Andrew Lim at the City University of Hong Kong, have developed an easy to use algorithm which helps companies do just that.

Understanding Differences In Behaviour: The Role Of Mental Models, Knowledge@Smu

Knowledge@SMU

Why do some people make snap judgements about another person based on a single behaviour, while others make up their minds only after repeated observations in different situations? Singapore Management University psychology professor Jennifer Tong attempts to shed new light on why people entertain different assumptions about the nature of human behaviour in a series of psychological studies with a difference. Her findings have practical implications for interactions in the office and at the personal level. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------