Business Commons^™

Improving Lives In The Base Of Pyramid, Profitably, Stefan Jacob, Pin Kwok

Social Space

Stefan Jacob and Pin Kwokchallenge Southeast Asian companies to consider the rewards, and risks, of entering the Base of the Pyramid market.

Hard Truths About Heart Work: An Interview With Jennie Chua, Lien Centre For Social Innovation

Social Space

Just as there are calls for leadership to bridge the business and social worlds, there are also calls for new models and inspiration in the nonprofit sector. Social Space catches up with the inimitable Jennie Chua,fundraiser and chairman of the Community Chest, to hear her thoughts on these issues. True to form, Jennie delivers a few hard truths about fundraising and charity in Singapore.

The Global Ecosystem For Social Innovation, Louise Pulford

Social Space

Louise Pulford shares how the social innovation industry is applying its own medicine to accelerate social innovation globally.

Carnivorous Lions And Herbivorous Asians: How The Recession Has Made A Case For Leadership In Asia, Knowledge@Smu

Knowledge@SMU

It may seem as if the worse is over. Those oversights and indiscretions which led to the global financial crisis have been exposed and dealt with – or have they? According to Andrew Sheng, renowned economist and distinguished speaker at SMU's Ngee Ann Kongsi Annual Lecture Series, the severity of the crisis is far more extensive than most people believe. Compounding the problem are systemic complexities brought on by "shadow banking", "moral hazards", and the carnivorous lions of Wall Street.

Gold, Gas And Grains: Smartest Investment For The Coming Decade?, Knowledge@Smu

Knowledge@SMU

The disappointing performance of investments like stocks, bonds and real estate during the recent crisis, has only served to accentuate the attractiveness of investing in commodities. With finite supply and voracious demand from countries like China, it seems that the prices of oil, gold, iron and other natural resources could only rise. John Stephenson, of First Asset Investment Management Inc, tells us more in The Little Book of Commodity Investing, why investing in commodities is timely and smart.

Shaping Singapore: The Conductor, The Score, The Musicians, Knowledge@Smu

Knowledge@SMU

A majority of Singaporeans live in public housing. The system, based on the Housing Development Board's vision of "affordable homes, vibrant towns and cohesive communities", has been modelled by many other countries trying to solve their housing needs. Yet, with ever-rising public expectations and rapid developments in the housing market, challenges never cease for this statutory board. The key to meeting these demands, according to CEO Cheong Koon Hean, is to create musical harmony between the agency's engineers, architects, administrators and managers.

The Demand And Supply Of Sensibility, John Elkington

Social Space

A new order is emerging and John Elkingtonbelieves that this won’t come from conducting business as usual.

The Promise Of Social Impact Bonds, John Loder

Social Space

A financial tool from Wall Street is being adapted in the social market to nurture early interventions and incentivise capital flow. As John Loder reports, social impact bonds promise two fundamental shifts—for governments to overcome the politics of fear and for private investors to fund social causes with impact.

Fraud: A Review And Research Agenda, Pan, Gary, Poh Sun Seow, Themin Suwardy, Hui Ting Evelyn Gay

Research Collection School Of Accountancy

Corporate scandals such as Enron, Tyco, WorldCom and Adelphia have drawn significant attention to the occurrence of fraud. This has implications for public interest as the prevalence and consequences of fraud may affect the shareholders, creditors and the public’s confidence in the financial system. Much research has been published on various aspect of fraud. In this paper, we selected fraud articles published in accounting and management journals between 1996 and 2010 based on selected search phrases. We identified a total of 56 articles and perform content analysis on the fraud phenomenon in the articles, classified them into a number of …

The Performance Of Venture Capital Funds And Vc-Backed Ipos: An Evidence From China, Weng Hong Lou

Dissertations and Theses Collection (Open Access)

This study is divided into three parts based on the listed companies on the Small and Medium Enterprise Board on the Shenzhen Stock Exchange in China. The first part is to study the investment performance of Venture Capital Funds. I found that the investment return in terms of investment multiple and annual rate of return is better than those in the US market, and also the VC investment portfolios outperform the public equity market. Furthermore, I compare the performance of non VC-backed IPOs and non VC-backed IPOs by using the Buy-and Hold Abnormal Return and Wealth Relatives. Both measurements show …

Optimal Advertisement Scheduling In Breaks Of Random Lengths, Ajay Srinivasan Aravamudhan

Dissertations and Theses Collection (Open Access)

Broadcasters generate a large part of their revenue through advertising, especially in live sports. Scheduling advertisements can be challenging in live broadcasting, however, for sports such as Cricket that have breaks of random lengths and number during which the ads are shown. This uncertainty, coupled with the high price of spots for major competitions, means that improving ad scheduling can add significant value to the broadcaster. This problem shares similarities with the stochastic cutting stock problem and the dynamic stochastic knapsack problem, with applications in the wood, steel and paper industry and the transportation industry respectively.

This dissertation adds to …

Transition To Is Project De-Escalation: An Exploration Into Management Executive's Influence Tactics, Gary Pan, Shan Ling Pan

Research Collection School Of Accountancy

This paper seeks to understand the factors that shape management executives' influence behaviors and the influence tactics that may be utilized during de-escalation of commitment to information systems (IS) projects. De-escalation is potentially a more important issue than escalation because de-escalation provides remedies for the ills of escalation. Therefore, it is important to understand how project stakeholders' commitment to troubled IS projects may be transformed under management executives' influence, hence allowing project teams to carry out their de-escalation activities. Here, we adopt theories of leadership, politics, and interpersonal influence, as our lenses to examine the management executive's influence behaviors during …

Lessons From The Financial Crisis: Report Of The Asian Financial Regulatory Committee, Jeremy Choo Yong Goh, Sri Adiningsih, Maria S. Gochoco-Bautista

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

No abstract provided.

Understanding Investor Sentiment: The Case Of Soccer, Gennaro Bernile, Evgeny Lyandres

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

We examine the extent to which the stock market's inefficient responses to resolutions of uncertainty depend on investors’ biased ex ante beliefs regarding the probability distribution of future event outcomes or their ex post irrational reactions to these outcomes. We use a sample of publicly traded European soccer clubs and analyze their returns around important matches. Using a novel proxy for investors’ expectations based on contracts traded on betting exchanges (prediction markets), we find that within our sample, investor sentiment is attributable, in part, to a systematic bias in investors’ ex ante expectations. Investors are overly optimistic about their teams’ …

Autonomy In The Workplace: An Essential Ingredient To Employee Engagement And Well-Being In Every Culture, Marylène Gagne, Devasheesh P. Bhave

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

The nature of organizational life requires questioning the role of worker autonomy. An impressive amount of management research has been devoted to autonomy issues in organizations. Autonomy is at the forefront of research on job design and the management of employees. Therefore, we review evidence in the area of job design and management practices that deeply affect worker autonomy. Throughout this discussion, we evaluate the cross-cultural applicability of research and practice and offer future directions based on self-determination theory.

The Impact Of Underemployment On Individual And Organizational Performance, Michael Ramsay Bashshur, Ana Hernández, José María Peiró

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

The issue of underemployment is one of increasing concern for countries across the globe. For example, in the USA estimates have put the number of underemployed as high as 20.3%, while in Europe the number of overqualified workers (just one dimension of underemployment) has been estimated at 21.5% (Groot & Maassen van den Brink, 2000). Unfortunately, given the current global economic crisis, this situation can only be expected to worsen in the near future. The international labor pool is becoming more educated and qualified (Peiró, Agut, & Grau, 2010) while organizations worldwide are seeking the minimum effective level of human …

Internal Control Weakness And Bank Loan Contracting: Evidence From Sox Section 404 Disclosures, Jeong-Bon Kim, Byron Y. Song, Liandong Zhang

Research Collection School Of Accountancy

Using a sample of borrowing firms that disclosed internal control weaknesses (ICW) under Section 404 of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, this study compares various features of loan contracts between firms with ICW and those without ICW. Our results show the following. First, the loan spread is higher for ICW firms than for non-ICW firms by about 28 basis points, after controlling for other known determinants of loan contract terms. Second, firms with more severe, company-level ICW pay significantly higher loan rates than those with less severe, account-level ICW. Third, lenders impose tighter nonprice terms on firms with ICW than on those …

Why 'Democracy' And 'Drifter' Firms Can Have Abnormal Returns: The Joint Importance Of Corporate Governance And Abnormal Accruals In Separating Winners From Losers, Koon Boon Kee

Research Collection School Of Accountancy

No abstract provided.

Markowitz Meets Talmud: A Combination Of Sophisticated And Naive Diversification Strategies, Jun Tu, Guofu Zhou

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

The modern portfolio theory pioneered by Markowitz (1952) is widely used in practice and extensively taught to MBAs. However, the estimated Markowitz portfolio rule and most of its extensions not only underperform the naive 1/N rule (that invests equally across N assets) in simulations, but also lose money on a risk-adjusted basis in many real data sets. In this paper, we propose an optimal combination of the naive 1/N rule with one of the four sophisticated strategies—the Markowitz rule, the Jorion (1986) rule, the MacKinlay and Pástor (2000) rule, and the Kan and Zhou (2007) rule—as a way to improve …

Reshaping Exercise Design In Assessment Centers: Theory, Practice, And Research, Filip Lievens, Eveline Schollaert

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Upon looking at this title, an obvious question is whether assessment center (AC) exercises need to be designed differently from what was done in the past. AC exercises have been around since World War I and their longevity attests to their success. So why propose some changes to this monument in personnel selection and development? Let us first acknowledge that we concur that ACs are in still in good shape. However, every good brand needs some adjustments (which is a more appropriate term than “changes” in this context) once in a while, based on new theoretical insights and empirical research. …

International Entrepreneurship And Capability Development: Qualitative Evidence And Future Research Directions, Erkko Autio, Gerard George, Oliver Alexy

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

In this article, we explore how new capabilities emerge and solidify in new ventures that are faced with fundamental uncertainty from their environment. To do so, we draw from the organizational and entrepreneurial literature on cognition and capabilities. Using initial qualitative evidence from a multi-firm study in the context of new venture internationalization, we develop a cognition-based model of capability emergence in new ventures. Our findings extend the capability development and learning implications of internationalization to the fundamental character of organizing processes in start-ups. Moreover, we derive avenues for future entrepreneurship research on the origins and evolution of capabilities in …

Do Individual Differences In Perceiving Situational Demands Moderate The Relationship Between Personality And Assessment Center Dimension Ratings?, Anne Jansen, Filip Lievens, Martin Kleinmann

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

This study contributes to research on assessment centers' (AC) external construct-related validity by investigating a potential moderator of the relationship between personality and AC dimension ratings. On the basis of recent insights in person-situation contingencies we hypothesized that individual differences in people's perception of situational demands moderate the relationship between personality and conceptually related AC dimension ratings. The hypotheses were tested with 108 individuals in two leaderless group discussion exercises. Results confirmed the hypotheses for two of the three traits (i.e., Agreeableness and Conscientiousness). In particular, people high on these traits who identified the situational demands received higher AC dimension …

Consolidating Or Non-Consolidating Queues: A Game Theoretic Queuing Model With Holding Costs, Kwan Eng Wee, Ananth Iyer

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

We consider a two-server queueing system in which the servers choose their service rate based on the demand and holding cost allocation scheme offered by the demand generating entity. We provide an optimal holding cost allocation scheme that leads to the maximum possible service rate for each of a pooled and a split system. Our results suggest that careful allocation of holding costs can create incentives that enable minimum turnaround times using a common queue.

The Role Of Gender In Negotiation, Elizabeth Layne Paddock, L. J. Kray

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

No abstract provided.

Improving Service Through Just-In-Time Concept In A Dynamic Operational Environment, Kar Way Tan, Hoong Chuin Lau, Na Fu

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

This paper is concerned with the problem of Just-In-Time (JIT) job scheduling in a dynamic environment under uncertainty to attain timely service. We provide an approach, based on robust scheduling concepts, to analytically evaluate the expected cost of earliness and tardiness for each job and also the project. In addition, we search for a schedule execution policy with the minimum robust cost such that for a given risk level (epsilon), the actual realized schedule has (1 - epsilon) probability of completing with less than or equal to this robust cost. Our method is quite generic, and can be applied to …

Would Price Limits Have Made Any Difference To The 'Flash Crash' On May 6, 2010, Wing Bernard Lee, Shih-Fen Cheng, Annie Koh

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

On May 6, 2010, the U.S. equity markets experienced a brief but highly unusual drop in prices across a number of stocks and indices. The Dow Jones Industrial Average (see Figure 1) fell by approximately 9% in a matter of minutes, and several stocks were traded down sharply before recovering a short time later. The authors contend that the events of May 6, 2010 exhibit patterns consistent with the type of "flash crash" observed in their earlier study (2010). This paper describes the results of nine different simulations created by using a large-scale computer model to reconstruct the critical elements …

The Impact Of Transaction Duration, Volume And Direction On Price Dynamics And Volatility, Anthony S. Tay, Christopher Ting, Yiu Kuen Tse, Mitchell Warachka

Research Collection School Of Economics

We explore the role of trade volume, trade direction, and the duration between trades in explaining price dynamics and volatility using an Asymmetric Autoregressive Conditional Duration model applied to intraday transactions data. Our results suggest that volume, direction and duration are important determinants of price dynamics, while duration is also an important determinant of volatility. However, the impact of volume and direction on volatility is marginal after controlling for duration, and the impact of volume on volatility appears to be confined to periods of infrequent trading.

Business School Futures: Evaluation And Perspectives, Howard Thomas, Eric Cornuel

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

The purpose of this paper is to present details of this special issue, that has as its theme: “Business school futures: evaluation and perspectives”. The Guest Editors have assembled a set of papers presented at recent AACSB/EFMD meetings to provide further fuel for this important debate. Together the papers in this volume provide a set of insights about important themes and perspectives on business schools as we reflect about their future evolution. The insights presented in this special issue should provide the fuel for continued critical debate and dialogue as we confront the current turning points in management education and …

Perspectives On Leadership In Business Schools, Howard Thomas, Lynne Thomas

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

This paper aims to focus on leadership in business schools. It seeks to advocate examining strategic leadership processes through the exploration of interactions between such multiple constituencies as the dean, faculty, university councils and advisory boards. A range of models of the leadership process are identified and illustrated, namely, the strategic leadership process model, a model of leadership dynamics and an interactionist model, involving an examination of leadership characteristics, context and leadership style. The current financial crisis and criticisms of the business school in the modern university require deans to address changing models and contingencies, globalisation and moral values in …

A Sustainable Model For Business Schools?, Kai Peters, Howard Thomas

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

The article looks at the condition of business model of business schools, and presents the views of the authors on its instability in terms of finance and unsustainability. It explores the financial drivers of business schools, both on the income and expenditure sides, as well as highlights the areas of distinct concern for business school finances. The sources of funding for business schools are discussed.