Business Commons^™

Theorizing Gender In Social Network Research: What We Do And What We Can Do Differently, Raina Brands, Gokhan Ertug, Fabio Fonti, Stefano Tasselli

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

We review the ways in which gender is theorized in social network research and propose an alternative approach for future research to consider. To assess “what we do,” we undertake an evaluative review. In that review, we first examine how gender is typically theorized in structural approaches to social network research. Then, in greater detail, we review social network research that affords more diversity into such theorizing. We organize this more detailed review around a framework that is based on the level of analysis at which the implications of gender are invoked (cognitive, behavioral) and the focus of relational mechanisms …

Gamifying An Assessment Method: What Signals Are Organizations Sending To Applicants?, Konstantina Georgiou, Filip Lievens

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Purpose: The paper aims to expand the authors' knowledge on gamification and the signals sent on behalf of the organization when gamified assessments are used. The authors examine the mechanisms through which the use of gamification into an assessment method may increase the attractiveness of an organization as a prospective employer. Design/methodology/approach: The first study examines, following a longitudinal design, the signals that an organization sends to applicants about the organization's symbolic traits (e.g. innovativeness), through the characteristics of a gamified assessment, in terms of enjoyment and flow and impact on organizational attractiveness. Upon clarifying this mechanism, the second study …

Performance Of Smart Beta Etfs In The U.S. Market: 2009–2019, Chiyachantana N. Chiraphol, Chiraphol N. Chiyachantana, Kuan Yong David Ding, Tanakorn Likitapiwat

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Purpose: This paper empirically analyses the performance of smart beta exchange traded funds (ETFs) through the absolute return, relative return, and risk-adjusted return over the decade from 2009 to 2019.Methodology: Using a sample of smart beta ETFs in the U.S. stock market, we examine the components of the risk factors in a smart beta strategy. Results: Our results show that a smart beta strategy is not able to maintain a persistent performance over the period examined. Moreover, there is not a single year that smart beta ETFs could generate an abnormal return that is statistically significant. The evidence illustrates that …

Why Do U.S. Firms Invest Less Over Time?, Fangjian Fu, Sheng Huang, Rong Wang

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Capital expenditures of U.S. public firms, relative to total assets, decrease by more than half from 1980 to 2020. The decline is pervasive across industries and firms of different characteristics and cannot be explained by the usual determinants of investment and many other seemingly plausible reasons. The decline is consistent with the transformation in production technology — firms rely more on intangible capital and less on fixed assets in production. Industry-level analyses yield supporting evidence. We observe similar declining trend in capital expenditure in other developed countries but not in most emerging markets.

A Zero-Based Cultural Perspective On Dealing With The Hybrid Reality Of Teaching In Business Schools, Susan Fournier, Howard Thomas

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Susan Fournier and Howard Thomas explore a new business school future, question existing approaches and identify and examine five core issues.

Measuring Impact To Make A Difference, Singapore Management University

Perspectives@SMU

Impact-Weighted Accounts (IWAs) quantify impact and aims to help managers make better decisions

Building Sustainability And Impact Into Accounting, Hajar Yagkoubi, Eelco Van Der Enden, Eszter Vitorino, Reynir Indahl, Tjeerd Krumpelman

Perspectives@SMU

Can it be done? The answer is yes but it depends on solid academic research, investor pressure, and good old lobbying

Burning The Flame Of Entrepreneurship, Singapore Management University

Perspectives@SMU

From starting a business in a foreign land to adapting to the internet economy, Florence Fang is all about enhancing human lives

Is Guanxi Still Everything When Doing Business In China?, Singapore Management University

Perspectives@SMU

Research finds that traditional guanxi-style connection-building is no longer the main key to success when doing business in China, and a new generation of Chinese entrepreneurs form business ties based on reputation and capabilities

Daung Well By Daung Good, Leon Qiu, Singapore Management University

Perspectives@SMU

Leon Qiu started microfinance lending startup Daung Capital to help the unbanked in Myanmar. Can he adequately help the farmers there?

Is The Crypto World Having Its Own 2008 Lehman Brothers Moment?, Eric Lim

Perspectives@SMU

Cryptocurrency markets have tumbled in recent times due to the age-old story of greed, arrogance and disregard for responsibility, writes UNSW Business School’s Eric Lim

Customer Satisfaction Index Of Singapore 2022: National Scorecard, Institute Of Service Excellence, Smu

Research Collection Institute of Service Excellence (2007-2024)

This scorecard summarises the results of the CSISG 2022 satisfaction scores at the national, sector, sub-sector, and company levels. CSISG scores are generated based on the econometric modelling of survey data collected from end-users after the consumption of products and services. Company scores (in black) are weighted based on a separate incidence study. This incidence study helps determine each company’s sample profile and the local-tourist weights. Sub-sector scores (in blue) are derived as a weighted average of company scores, in proportion to the local and tourist incidence interactions with the constituent companies. Sector scores (in gold) are derived by aggregating …

Building A Supply Chain For Emergency: A Case Study Of Kingfa's Mask Supply Chain, Nanjing Li

Dissertations and Theses Collection (Open Access)

In case of emergency such as pandemic or earthquake, there are usually surge demands for some necessary products, which are usually far more than available production capacities thus it is necessary to quickly build more production capacities. However, building production capacities is not just building production lines but to constructing whole supply chains, from raw materials and equipment sourcing, manufacturing flow lines to demand management.

To quickly construct a supply chain for fulfilling such emergency demands is very challenging both theoretically and practically. This thesis aims to develop a model of supply chain construction for emergency demand and identify the …

Under What Circumstances Are Chinese Entrepreneurs Reluctant To Go Public, Ting Huang

Dissertations and Theses Collection (Open Access)

As secondary stock markets often overestimate corporate value, many Chinese entrepreneurs seek to achieve their wealth targets by going public. However, some companies in China do not want to go public. This paper utilises multi-case research methods to develop theories about which factors lead to corporate reluctance to go public. Case studies show that compared with entrepreneurs with lower shareholdings, entrepreneurs with higher shareholdings have stronger long-term orientations and a greater desire for control and are more reluctant to go public. Industry characteristics affect entrepreneurs’ long-term orientation, desire for control, and early listing experience, thus influencing their listing decision-making. Empirical …

From Impacts To Dependencies: A First Global Assessment Of Corporate Biodiversity Risk Exposure And Responses, Sergio Henrique Collaço De Carvalho, Theodor Florian Cojoianu, Francisco Ascui

Research Collection College of Integrative Studies

There is growing awareness that biodiversity loss poses a significant risk to the global economy, but a lack of clarity on what this means for corporations, and how they are responding. This study provides a first quantitative assessment of biodiversity risk exposure across the world's largest listed companies, compared with their adoption of biodiversity policies, through analysis of disclosures from a sample of 11,812 companies from 2004 to 2018. We find that companies have started responding strategically to biodiversity risk, with 29% having adopted a biodiversity policy by 2018. However, around $7.2 trillion of total enterprise value remains exposed to …

Essays On Financial Materiality Of Corporate Social Responsibility And Corporate Strategies, Yang Lan

Dissertations and Theses Collection (Open Access)

This dissertation investigates how the endorsement of certain social activities by CSR standards impacts stakeholders’ interpretation on firms’ motivation of doing CSR and how managers make decisions on which specific CSR activities they would like to participate in. The first essay examines how the standards release of CSR by Sustainability and Accounting Standards Board (SASB) affects the relationship between material CSR and firm performance outcomes in terms of stock returns (for investors) and sales growth (for customers), through shaping investor and customer perceptions on the motivation underlying a firm’s material CSR activities. I further argue that a sharp increase in …

Two Studies Exploring The Effects Of Ageing Cohorts And Channel Usage On The Antecedents And Consequence Of Customer Satisfaction, Yongchang Chen

Dissertations and Theses Collection (Open Access)

A rapidly ageing customer base, and an acceleration in the adoption of self-service technologies (SST) are two major trends which are set to have an increasing impact on how companies manage and satisfy customers. While there has been a rich body of work studying the effects of ageing and SST usage on customers, research on how they might affect cumulative satisfaction appears to be limited. The ageing literature tends to focus on cognition and decision-making processes, while SST research tends to be narrowly focused on SST evaluation and adoption. Our understanding on how ageing affects how satisfied customers are with …

Managerial Trustworthiness And Buybacks, Sterling Huang, Kaisa Snellman, Theo Vermaelen

Research Collection School Of Accountancy

CEO trustworthiness is positively related to long-term excess returns after buyback announcements. When the CEO is trustworthy, statements that the stock is undervalued are more credible. CEO trustworthiness is initially measured by the extent to which people in the county where the company headquarters is located trust each other. Further, the positive impact of trustworthiness on excess returns is higher when the CEO has been a long-term resident of a high-trust county, and correspondingly, trustworthy CEOs are less likely to be accused of financial misreporting. Our conclusions are confirmed when we use alternative measures of trustworthiness such as employee trust …

Short Interest And Corporate Investment: Evidence From Supply Chain Partners, Xia Chen, Guojin Gong, Shuqing Luo

Research Collection School Of Accountancy

Short interest contains valuable information about a firm’s business fundamentals. We investigate whether such information affects business partners’ real investment decisions in the supply-chain setting. We predict and find that a supplier’s future investments (including inventory, R&D, and tangible asset investments) decrease with its customer’s current short interest. This negative relation is stronger when the supplier faces greater difficulty in assessing its customer’s business fundamentals and when short interest is more likely to indicate longlasting deterioration in the customer’s fundamentals. Additional analysis does not support the alternative explanation that the supplier adjusts investments in response to unfavorable information obtained via …

Endogeneity Of Commodity Price In Freight Cost Models, Kian Guan Lim

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

In this paper, we answer a novel question on how the value of goods carried can affect the freight cost. We focus on the issue based on a more specialized freight market involving transport of seaborne iron ore from mining ports to Qingdao in China during the period 2014 to 2019. We construct simultaneous systems of demand–supply equations on both the iron ore market and the freight market. In the models, we explain how endogeneity of iron ore as a regressor can arise due to the nexus between the two markets, and that the freight demand is largely a derived …

An Automation Tax- Adopt With Caution, Vincent Ooi

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

The post highlights three main issues that may result from the rapid and widespread automation of jobs: 1) declining tax revenues; 2) inequitable distribution of gains and losses from automation; and 3) social costs of job displacement, such as social support and retraining programmes for displaced workers.An automation tax may be imposed on a temporary basis to manage (slow) the rate of displacement of workers due to the adoption of automation technologies, but should not be a permanent feature. Otherwise, there will be a risk of loss of competitiveness in the long-term, possibly resulting in even greater economic harm.One main …

Do Large Gains Make Willing Sellers?, Dong Hong, Roger Loh, Mitch Warachka

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Using unique real estate data that allow for accurately-measured capital gains, we examine whether sell propensities depend on the magnitude of a seller's capital gain. We find that short-term sell propensities are flat over losses and increasing in gains. Consistent with their higher sell propensities, selling prices are lower for properties with larger gains. Large-sized short-term stock investments also have sell propensities that are flat over losses and increasing in gains, although the sell propensities of typical-sized short-term stock investments are V-shaped (Ben-David and Hirshleifer (2012)). Our findings provide empirical support for the realization utility theories of Barberis and Xiong …

Know Thyself: Access To Own Credit Report And The Retail Mortgage Market, Amit Kumar

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Borrowers may misestimate their probability of mortgage approval in the absence of precise signals of creditworthiness. Credit reports, which contain such signals, became easily accessible for all U.S. consumers since 2005, while it was already the case in seven states. A difference-in-differences strategy exploiting this change shows that pool quality of mortgage applicants improved as a result—approvals increased, whereas subsequent delinquencies decreased. These findings are consistent with a mechanism where under-estimators enter the applicant pool and over-estimators drop out, because easier access to credit reports reduces misestimation of one’s own probability of mortgage approval. Additional findings rule out supply-driven explanations.

Decentralized Finance: Implications Of The So-Called Disintermediation Of Financial Services, Nydia Remolina Leon

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

Decentralized Finance, known as DeFi, refers to the use of blockchain and digital assets or crypto-assets for the provision of financial services. Under this concept, services such as loans, insurance, crypto-asset exchanges, among others, are offered, are structured based on crypto-assets and through technologically decentralized applications. This chapter discusses the concept of DeFi and how it challenges the traditional market infrastructures of the financial sector, demystifying the idea of absolute decentralization, generally mentioned in the crypto-asset arena, from the perspective of decision-makers and governors of these decentralized applications. Subsequently, the chapter analyses the opportunities and challenges of DeFi for consumers, …

Active Independent Directors And Earnings Quality, Yuanto Kusnadi, Bin Srinidhi

Research Collection School Of Accountancy

We examine the relationship between active independent directors and earnings quality for U.S. firms. We construct measures that proxy for activeness of independent directors and find that the proportion of active independent directors is under half on average. Our finding shows that earnings quality increases with the percentage of active independent directors on the board. Once the active independent directors are separated out, the other independent directors do not have any effect on earnings quality. This finding supports the hypothesis that the activeness of independent directors is incrementally significant over just the proportion of independent directors for the quality of …

Remembering Robert W. Eisenberger: A Tribute To His Life And His Work On Perceived Organizational Support, Linda Rhoade Shanock, Mindy K. Shoss, Jacqueline Coyle-Shapiro, Lynn M. Shore, Thomas J. Zagenczyk, Louis T. Buffardi, Ford Michael T. Caesens Gaetane, Min-Kyu Joo, Gokhan Karagonlar, Zihan Liu, Zihan Liu, Pedro Neves, Denise M. Rousseau, Florence Stinglhamber, Xueqi Wen, Jing Zhang, Dianhan Zheng

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Dr. Robert (Bob) Eisenberger passed away on May 2, 2022 at the age of 79 after a brief illness. Upon hearing the news, many of Bob’s current and former students, professional colleagues, friends, and research collaborators began a series of email chains expressing our sadness and shock about losing Bob. There was an immediate and widespread outpouring of sadness and gratitude. It became apparent very quickly that Bob had touched the lives of many in an influential and positive way and that people wanted to honor him and memorialize his life’s work by sharing stories about him.

Socially Oriented Shareholder Activism Targets: Explaining Activists’ Corporate Target Selection Using Corporate Opportunity Structures, Abhijith G. Acharya, David Gras, Ryan Krause

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

We examine whether and when socially oriented shareholder activists use firms’ corporate social performance (CSP) to identify them as attractive targets for their activism. We build on the research in social movements theory and stakeholder theory to theorize how firms’ engagement with primary and secondary stakeholders reflected in their technical and institutional CSP respectively allows socially oriented shareholder activists to identify targets. We develop a theoretical model by identifying corporate targets’ degree of (1) receptivity to and (2) need to comply with activist demands as two key dimensions of their corporate opportunity structure that explains the variance in firms’ attractiveness …

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.

Internal Capital Markets And Predictability In Complex Ownership Firms, Ran Chang, Angelica Gonzalez, Sergei Sarkissian, Jun Tu

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Using global cross-firm ownership data, we find that both stock returns and cash-flow news of ownership-linked firms predict focal firm's returns for all types of ownership structures: subsidiary-parent, parent-subsidiary, subsidiary-subsidiary, and parent-parent. This effect, observed only after the establishment of cross-firm ownership, is not subsumed by focal firm or industry momentum, or alternative inter-firm relations, including customer-supplier links and shared analyst coverage. Our findings are explained by mispricing due to internal capital markets - a mechanism unique to complex ownership firms. Higher internal capital market activity among ownership-linked firms also induces larger investments and lower external financing of the focal …

The Rise And Fall Of The Airbus A380, Singapore Management University

Perspectives@SMU

Congestion at air hubs and the Great Financial Crisis played a major part in the aircraft’s demise, but did Airbus contribute to its own failure?