Business Commons^™

The Multidimensionality Of Business Risk: A Managerial Perspective Implications For Its Classification, Interpretation & Management, Prakash Bagri

Dissertations and Theses Collection (Open Access)

Business risk has been a critical area of managerial attention and the topic of extensive academic research. Despite the intense focus, there is little convergence around its understanding and limited insights on how managers deal with it. Extant literature provides an ex post model of business risk, focusing on the behavioural context of risk-taking driving a linear expression of risk action.

We conducted in-depth interviews of 16 C-suite executives to find that managers (1) view business risk as a multi-dimensional construct involving different facets of risk, (2) emphasize the importance of people across these facets, (3) differ in their prioritization …

Do Satisfied Employees Deliver Better Service Experiences That Result In Satisfied Customers, And, What Are The Factors Affecting Employee Satisfaction And Customer Satisfaction?, Chuen Kong Kevin Cheong

Dissertations and Theses Collection (Open Access)

It is often said that a happy worker is a good worker, but do happy workers in the service industry result in happy or satisfied customers or guests? This research aimed to seek out answers to this anecdotal question by surveying both frontline, customer-facing employees and visitors or guests in several visitor attractions in Singapore and the Philippines. The research found significant correlation between job satisfaction, psychological empowerment and guest satisfaction, particularly in zone-managed visitor attractions. Zone-managed attractions did not deploy the conventional and traditional functional operating structure; employees’ job functions were clustered by customer touchpoints associated with how the …

Research On Extreme Poverty Governance Based On Social Network Analysis, Wenyong Lei

Dissertations and Theses Collection (Open Access)

In this dissertation, the author goes inside some of China's most remote and poorest villages and tries to reveal the determinants, correlates and strategies to address the gap of existing poverty governance system and the complexity and diversity of poor population. He offers in-depth insights into what the poor people think about poverty with two major indicators, identifies evidence on the feasibility of duel-network embedding strategy to reduce poverty, and explains how diverse groups hit by extreme poverty could develop entrepreneurship relationship with diversified market and available social economic resources. Drawing on examples that take place in Xide County, a …

Micro-Coaching As A Blend To Make E-Learning More Effective, Krishnan Narayanan

Dissertations and Theses Collection (Open Access)

While e-learning has taken a stronghold as the de-facto training medium in knowledge intensive technology sector organizations, several factors have been hypothesized to influence the efficacy of training efforts, such as educator presence, interaction levels and individual motivation for development. This dissertation looks at one blended learning intervention that organizations can make use of to significantly improve the learning outcomes. The paper introduces micro-coaching, a new construct referring to brief coaching and mentoring interventions, that in conjunction with the e-learning sessions can improve cognitive as well as behavioral changes in individuals, which are key to improving learning and the resultant …

Regulatory Focus And Female Leadership Development: How Male Leaders Modify The Self-Regulating Focus Of Mid-Career Female Followers To Motivate Their Pursuit Of Future Career Progress, Vinika Devasar Rao

Dissertations and Theses Collection (Open Access)

Inadequate representation of women in the upper corporate echelons remains a worldwide problem, in spite of seemingly concerted efforts by organizations to counter it. While progress has been made in terms of entry level percentages of women, the numbers continue to fall with growth up the corporate ladder. Asia is no exception to this phenomenon. Analysis of literature and secondary data reveals that academic writing on the subject is generally declining but practitioner literature abounds with reports on the still low number of women in leadership positions.

This research study uses a discovery-oriented grounded theory approach based on qualitative analysis …

Opinion Shopping To Avoid Going Concern Audit Opinion And Subsequent Audit Quality, Heesun Chung, Catherine Heyjung Sonu, Yoonseok Zang, Jong-Hag Choi

Research Collection School Of Accountancy

Despite regulatory concerns over opinion shopping (OS) behavior, there exists little systematic evidence on the prevalence and consequences of OS to avoid a going concern opinion (GCO). Using Lennox's (2000) framework to identify OS, we find that distressed firms successfully engage in OS to avoid a GCO. Moreover, clients engaging in OS exhibit a higher ex post Type II error rate in audit opinions than clients that do not, and the higher Type II error rate is salient for clients switching auditors for OS but not for clients retaining auditors for OS. We continue to find this asymmetric effect of …

Essays In Asset Pricing, Wanshan Song

Dissertations and Theses Collection (Open Access)

My dissertation centers on two areas related to market microstructure. First, the role of retail traders, or the information they have, for financial markets. I use retail short selling as an example to narrow down the topic and study their trading patterns and trading strategies. Second, the role of passive indexers such as index funds or ETFs, for financial markets. I am trying to analyze the channels through which the nominally uninformed traders have influences on the return and market quality of the underlying stocks.

In Chapter 2, I study retail short sellers. It is interesting to paint retail short …

Housing Equity And Household Consumption In Retirement: Evidence From The Singapore Life Panel, Lipeng Chen, Liang Jiang, Sock Yong Phang, Jun Yu

Research Collection School Of Economics

We utilize data from the Singapore Life Panel© survey to empirically investigate the impact of housing equity on consumption of elderly households. Based on panel analysis, we find housing equity value has no significant impact on non-durable consumption for elderly people. The conclusion holds for a battery of robustness check. Moreover, heterogeneity analyses based on subsamples by age of household head, house type, and number of property possessed also show no significant impact of housing equity on consumption in general. Finally, we use scenario analysis to study the Lease Buyback Scheme (LBS), a novel housing equity monetization scheme which allows …

How To Derive Causal Insights For Digital Commerce In China? A Research Commentary On Computational Social Science Methods, David C.W. Phang, Kanliang Wang, Qiu-Hong Wang, Robert John Kauffman, Maurizio Naldi

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

The transformation of empirical research due to the arrival of big data analytics and data science, as well as the new availability of methods that emphasize causal inference, are moving forward at full speed. In this Research Commentary, we examine the extent to which this has the potential to influence how e-commerce research is conducted. China offers the ultimate in data-at-scale settings, and the construction of real-world natural experiments. Chinese e-commerce includes some of the largest firms involved in e-commerce, mobile commerce, social media and social networks. This article was written to encourage young faculty and doctoral students to engage …

Being Sensitive To Positives Has Its Negatives: An Approach/Avoidance Perspective On Reactivity To Ostracism, Ferris D. Lance, Shereen Fatimah, Ming Yan, Lindie H. Liang, Huiwen Lian, Douglas J. Brown

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Workplace mistreatment is typically conceptualized as being exposed to a negative stimulus – for example, a threat, verbal abuse, or other forms of harassment. Consequently, we expect workplace mistreatment will have the greatest effect on individuals who are sensitive to the presence and absence of negative stimuli – or those with a strong avoidance temperament. Although this may be the rule for most mistreatment constructs, we argue that ostracism may be the exception. Using an approach/avoidance framework to highlight unique elements of ostracism, we build on the definition of ostracism as being the absence of an expected positive stimulus (i.e., …

Much Ado About Audit Opinions, Themin Suwardy

Research Collection School Of Accountancy

In a commentary, SMU Associate Professor of Accounting (Practice) and Dean of Postgraduate Professional Programmes Themin Suwardy opined that with a better understanding of the various types of modified audit opinions, investors can react appropriately to the news of companies failing to get a clean opinion. He added that investors should ask tougher questions about key audit matters at annual general meetings in order to get a more rounded and informed picture of a company’s financial and operating status.

Organizing For Artificial Intelligence (Ai) Technologies, Sukti Ghosh

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

This study focuses on organisation design choices as tools for addressing the management challenges of commercialising AI technologies for competitive advantage. It explores how design choices address fundamental problems of organising in such context, illustrating notable design features observed. Additionally, it examines external alignment and internal coherence reiterating interdependencies in organisation’s design choices, when adapting to exogenous changes due to emerging AI technologies.

Combating Child Labor: Incentives And Information Disclosure In Global Supply Chains, Soo-Haeng Cho, Xin Fang, Sridhar Tayur, Ying Xu

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Problem definition: We investigate multinational firms’ inspection and pricing strategies to address the challenges of combating child labor in global supply chains. We also examine how several factors (such as information disclosure, goodwill loss, inspection cost, external monitoring by nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), and penalty scheme) affect firms’ incentives to use different strategies to combat child labor. Academic/practical relevance: Nearly 200 million children are engaged in child labor, many in developing countries that are part of the supply base of global manufacturing networks. However, there has been little research on evaluating the impact of firms’ strategies and NGOs’ initiatives …

Constructed Response Formats And Their Effects On Minority-Majority Differences And Validity, Filip Lievens, Paul R. Sackett, Jeffrey Dahlke, Janneke Oostrom, Britt De Soete

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

The inflow of immigrants challenges organizations to consider alternative selection procedures that reduce potential minority (immigrants)-majority (natives) differences, while maintaining valid predictions of performance. To deal with this challenge, this paper proposes response format as a practically and theoretically relevant factor for situational judgment tests (SJTs). We examine a range of response format categories (from traditional multiple-choice formats to more innovative constructed response formats) and conceptually link these response formats to mechanisms underlying minority-majority differences. Two field experiments are conducted with SJTs. Study 1 (274 job seekers) contrasts minority-majority differences in scores on a multiple-choice versus a written constructed response …

Humility Breeds Authenticity: How Authentic Leader Humility Shapes Follower Vulnerability And Felt Authenticity, Burak Oc, Michael A. Daniels, James M. Diefendorff, Michael Ramsay Bashshur, Gary John Greguras

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Integrating existing work that considers the self through an interpersonal lens with theories pertaining to leader humility and authenticity, we develop a moderated mediation model that theorizes how and under what circumstances leader humility relates to follower felt authenticity. We argue that followers feel less vulnerable when their leaders express humility and further that this relation becomes weaker as the authenticity of leader humility decreases. We also theorize that follower vulnerability is the mechanism explaining the interactive effect of leader humility and its authenticity on follower felt authenticity at work. Our theoretical model was supported across four studies employing both …

Informed Options Trading Prior To Bankruptcy Filings, Li Ge, Jianfeng Hu, Mark Humphery-Jenner, Tse-Chun Lin

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Prior evidence on pre-bankruptcy-filing informed trade is mixed. The inconclusive findings might result from the sole focus on stock trading. We reassess the presence of pre-filing informed and insider trades by examining the information content of options trading before bankruptcy announcements. We find that bankruptcy filing returns are not significantly related to pre-filing insider stock trading. However, filing returns are significantly negatively related to pre-filing insider and informed options trading. The informational content of options trading reduces with options illiquidity and the amount of information impounded into pre-filing stock prices.

Making Ethnic Tourism Good For The Poor, Jean Junying Lor, Shelly Kwa, John A. Donaldson

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

How can ethnic tourism alleviate rural poverty? Due to the difficulty of simultaneously expanding tourism while promoting pro-poor tourism, most villages traverse one of two developmental pathways: 1) ensuring an inclusive structure before expanding, or 2) expanding before building an inclusive structure. This study compares four comparable cases in Southwestern China to understand the politics behind the decision to choose different pathways, and the impact each pathways has on local residents. While the first pathway requires a careful balance to maintain a pro-poor structure as tourism volume expands, the second pathway presents apparently insurmountable barriers to poverty reduction due to …

Blockchain: It’S Not All About Cryptocurrencies, Singapore Management University

Perspectives@SMU

From promoting renewable energy to internet security, the technology is not just about bitcoins and making a fast buck

Angry Birds Fly High Again With Data Analytics, Singapore Management University

Perspectives@SMU

User feedback has transformed Rovio’s culture and game design

Building The Green Movement, Singapore Management University

Perspectives@SMU

Changing hearts and minds on plastics is key to a green future. Businesses can take the lead

Flexible Moral Behavior In The Workplace, Kraivin Chintakananda

Dissertations and Theses Collection (Open Access)

In my dissertation, I systematically examine what it means to be morally flexible. I develop a scale to capture an individual’s willingness to adapt their moral behavior and examine both positive and negative consequences of this type of moral flexibility in the workplace. My dissertation consists of three studies. In Chapter 2, I draw from the personality strength literature and research on within-person variability in moral behavior to introduce the construct of moral adaptability (MA) defined as the willing to adjust moral behavior depending on the situation. I argue MA functions in a similar manner to personality strength (but in …

Disclosure Of Pending Lawsuits And Bond Terms, Yun Lou

Research Collection School Of Accountancy

I examine the effect of the disclosure of pendinglawsuits in 10-K/Q filings on the contractual terms of newly issued bonds. Ifind that firms’ decision to disclose pending lawsuits and the amount ofdisclosed information (i.e., the level of disclosure) have opposite effects.Specifically, firms that disclose a higher proportion of their pending lawsuitsface higher yields and are more likely to include default clauses pertaining tocourt judgments in the bond prospectuses. However, within the subsample offirms that disclose their lawsuits, I find that firms with a higher level of disclosureregarding their pending lawsuits are rewarded with lower yields. This evidencesuggests that bond investors …

The Impact Of Fintech Innovations And Financial Standards On Bank Performance: Evidence From Selected Commercial Banks In Asean, Kiyono Hasaka

Dissertations and Theses Collection (Open Access)

In the rapidly evolving financial
technology (fintech) landscape, there has been an increase in the number of the
industry research papers and articles on fintech adoption and innovations. However,
there are relatively few empirical studies that provide a quantitative analysis
of the effects of fintech and financial standards on bank performance using
financial indicators. This dissertation attempts to fill this research gap by
identifying and analysing the impact of commercial banks’ adoption of mobile
banking technologies on bank financial performance in five countries that adopted
financial standards in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). Using
the longitudinal panel data …

Robust Measures Of Earnings Surprises, Chin-Han Chiang, Wei Dai, Jianqing Fan, Harrison Hong, Jun Tu

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Event studies of market efficiency measure an earnings surprise with the consensuserror (CE), defined as earnings minus the average of professional forecasts. Even if asubset of forecasts can be biased, the ideal but difficult to estimate parameter-dependentalternative to CE is a nonlinear filter of individual errors that adjusts for bias. We showthat CE is a poor parameter-free approximation for this ideal measure. The fractionof misses on the same side (FOM), by discarding the magnitude of misses, offers a farbetterapproximation. FOM performs particularly well against CE in predicting thereturns of US stocks, where bias is potentially large, than that of international …

Stock Market Responses To Unethical Behavior In Organizations: An Organizational Context Model, Bradford E. Baker, Rellie Derfler-Rozin, Marko Pitesa, Micheal D. Johnson

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

We develop and test a model that extends the understanding of how people react to news of organizational unethical behavior and how such reactions impact stock performance. We do so by taking into account the interplay between the features of specific unethical acts and the features of the organizational context within which unethical acts occur. We propose a two-stage model in which the first stage predicts that unethical acts that benefit the organization are judged less harshly than are unethical acts that benefit the actor, when the organization is seen as pursuing a moral goal (e.g., producing inexpensive medicine rather …

Information Sampling, Judgment And The Environment: Application To The Effect Of Popularity On Evaluations, Gaël Le Mens, Jerker Denrell, Balázs Kovacs, Hülya Karaman

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

If people avoid alternatives they dislike, a negative evaluative bias emerges because errorsof under-evaluation are unlikely to be corrected. Prior work that analyzed this mechanismhas shown that when the social environment exposes people to avoided alternatives (i.e. itmakes them resample them), then evaluations can become systematically more positive. In this paper, we clarify the conditions under which this happens. By analyzing a simple learning model, we show that whether additional exposures induced by the social environment lead to more positive or more negative evaluations depends on how prior evaluations and the social environment interact in driving resampling. We apply these …

Implementing Natural Capital Credit Risk Assessment In Agricultural Lending, Francisco Ascui, Theodor Florian Cojoianu

Research Collection College of Integrative Studies

Agriculture has critical impacts and dependencies on natural capital, and agricultural lenders are therefore exposed to natural capital credit risk through their loans to farmers. Currently, however, lenders lack any detailed guidance for assessing natural capital credit risk in agriculture and are challenged by the fact that the relevant material risks vary considerably by agricultural sector and geography. This paper develops a natural capital credit risk assessment framework based on a bottom-up review of the material risks associated with natural capital impacts and dependencies for Australian beef production. It demonstrates that implementing natural capital credit risk assessment is feasible in …

Order Flow Volatility And Equity Costs Of Capital, Tarun Chordia, Jianfeng Hu, Avanidhar Subrahmanyam, Qing Tong

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

We propose that the volatility of order flow is a proxy for costs of information asymmetry, as order flow volatility varies positively with parameters that also influence adverse selection costs of trading. Empirically, order flow volatility is significantly higher prior to earnings or merger announcements when information asymmetry is likely to be elevated. Levels of and shocks to order flow volatility are positively and significantly correlated with existing illiquidity proxies, and strongly predict stock returns in the cross section. The impact of order imbalance volatility shocks on stock prices is reflected within one month in large, visible stocks, but takes …

Managing Wind-Based Electricity Generation In The Presence Of Storage And Transmission Capacity, Yangfang (Helen) Zhou, Alan Scheller-Wolf, Nicola Secomandi, Stephen Smith

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

We investigate the management of a merchant wind energy farm co‐located with a grid‐level storage facility and connected to a market through a transmission line. We formulate this problem as a Markov decision process (MDP) with stochastic wind speed and electricity prices. Consistent with most deregulated electricity markets, our model allows these prices to be negative. As this feature makes it difficult to characterize any optimal policy of our MDP, we show the optimality of a stage‐ and partial‐state‐dependent‐threshold policy when prices can only be positive. We extend this structure when prices can also be negative to develop heuristic one …

The Employment Relationship: Key Elements, Alternative Frames Of Reference, And Implications For Hrm, John W. Budd, Devasheesh P. Bhave

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

The employment relationship is the connection between employees and employers through which people sell their labor. This might consist of an immigrant day laborer paid by the bushel to pick fruit in the hot sun, a tech industry freelancer completing episodic gigs without ever meeting a boss, a salaried manager who has been working in an air-conditioned office for the same company for 40 years, or innumerable other situations. Irrespective of situation, all employees and employers have fundamental interests they pursue through the employment relationship, all forms of this relationship are mediated by labor markets and states, and each instance …