Business Commons^™

Integrating A Liberal Arts Approach Into An Undergraduate Business Programme : Lessons From A University In Hong Kong, Richard S. Simmons, Paul Whitla

Hong Kong Institute of Business Studies Working Paper Series

Universities are under pressure to provide graduates with qualities that will enhance their long-term employability in today’s fast-changing business world. Accordingly, the integration of liberal arts into business education is nowadays becoming increasingly recognised and appreciated. However, doubts remain as to whether business education can ever be compatible with a liberal arts perspective, indeed whether business education should even take place in a liberal arts education institution.

The purpose of this article is to contribute to this debate, and perhaps help lessen these doubts, by presenting a case study showing how a liberal arts based approach has been recently infused …

Digital Certificates : Success Or Failure?, Wai Sing, Alfred Loo

Hong Kong Institute of Business Studies Working Paper Series

This paper examines a controversial topic – “Is digital certificate technology a success or failure?” The arguments and facts from both sides are presented in this paper. A high profile failure case in Hong Kong is discussed. Some problems of Certificate Authorities are presented. This paper differs from other security papers in that technical terms (such as algorithms, details of data frames, etc.) are minimized as far as possible.

Social Media, Networking, And Marketing Performance : A Study Of Social Enterprises In Hong Kong, Hiu-Kan, Ada Wong, Wing Lam, Felix Tse

Hong Kong Institute of Business Studies Working Paper Series

Over the past few years, the number of social enterprises has been increasing in Hong Kong. The marketing performance of these social enterprises, however, are found to be problematic. Although some studies have investigated the ways for improving marketing performance of social enterprises through launching various marketing activities, this is surprising that the roles of social media and networking are lacking attention in the literature. In this conceptual paper, we aim at investigating how the implementation of these cost-effective marketing activities, namely (i) social media and (ii) networking, may improve the marketing performance of social enterprises in Hong Kong.

A Review Of Data Mining Techniques For Research In Online Shopping Behaviour Through Frequent Navigation Paths, Wing Lok Yeung

Hong Kong Institute of Business Studies Working Paper Series

Knowing how consumers navigate online shopping web sites enables retailers to not only better design their sites for navigation but also place buying recommendations at strategic points and personalise the flow of content. Frequent navigation paths can be derived from browsing histories or clickstreams with sequence-oriented data mining techniques. In this working paper, we highlight, with examples, the relevance of frequent navigation paths to online shopping behaviour research and review some relevant data mining techniques.

Can Education Improve Tax Compliance? Evidence From Different Forms Of Tax Education, Raymond M. K. Wong, Wai-Yee, Agnes Lo

Hong Kong Institute of Business Studies Working Paper Series

We examine whether tax compliance is improved via different forms of tax education. We argue that different types of tax education have respective impacts on tax compliance. To explore this empirical issue, we conduct a survey related to tax compliance among 205 students taking either a general tax course or a technical tax course in Hong Kong. Our findings suggest that sales tax compliance among undergraduate students was significantly improved if they had been exposed to a general tax education, and income and sales tax compliance among postgraduate students were significantly improved if they had taken a technical tax course.

Perceived Similarity Of Other Customers On Service Experience, Lisa Wan, Shing Chung, Patrick Poon, Maggie Chu

Hong Kong Institute of Business Studies Working Paper Series

This study aims to examine how a mere appearance of other similar customers will influence the perceived service quality of a potential customer. This research involves two experimental studies. Findings shows that if potential customers perceive other customers to be similar (vs. dissimilar) in a hospitality setting with regard to age, they will have more favorable perceptions toward the service quality and have a higher purchase intention. However, the positive impact of the similarity in age cohort can override the negative impact of dissimilarity in ethnicity on one's perceived service quality and purchase intentions. The results provide implications for hospitality …

Environmental Practice And Performance Of Chinese Exporter Firms : How Does Environmental Knowledge Integration Matter?, Ling Yee, Esther Li

Hong Kong Institute of Business Studies Working Paper Series

Knowledge has been upheld as the key resource to create sustainable advantage in the strategic management field. In quest for sustainable performance, theorists in the environmental management domain advocate taking the learning route. However, the extant studies examined only the direct effect of environmental practices on a firm's competitiveness and performance and hence ignored the intervening learning processes. Framed within the Resource-based view (RBV) of the firm, the current inquiry investigated into resource inputs as determinants accounting for a firm's environmental knowledge integration, and competitive outcomes deriving out of such integration. While the RBV shed notable insights on the main …

Sorry Seems To Be The Hardest Word : The Effect Of Self-Attribution When Apologizing For A Brand Crisis, Denghua Yuan, Geng Cui, Lei Lai

Hong Kong Institute of Business Studies Working Paper Series

When apologizing for a product failure, self-attribution by a business inevitably affects consumer attitude and behavior. This study draws from the dissonance-attribution model and investigates the effect of self-attribution in apologies on consumers' brand attitude. Using a 2x2 experiment, the results show that internal attribution generates significant change in brand attitude in a positive direction, while external attribution leads to negative change in brand attitude. Dispositional attribution leads to significantly more positive brand attitude than situational attribution. Internal/dispositional attribution produces significantly more positive effect on consumer attitude than the other three types of attribution. Moreover, perceived risk is found to …

What Do Seller Manipulations Of Online Product Reviews Mean To Consumers?, Ling Peng, Geng Cui, Mengzhou Zhuang, Chunyu Li

Hong Kong Institute of Business Studies Working Paper Series

There is growing evidence that consumers are influenced by online product reviews when making a variety of purchase decisions. Firms are therefore tempted to monitor and manipulate online product reviews on the company's website or forum to influence consumer perceptions by anonymously posting positive reviews, hiding or deleting unfavorable reviews, or offering rewards to consumers who post favorable reviews. Our review of the literature has revealed a surprising shortage of work directed at the development of an integrative theoretical framework or rigorous empirical studies on the effectiveness and the exact impact of such activities on the payoffs to various parties. …

Compensation And Price Delegation For Heterogeneous Sales Force, Jian Chen, Hongyan Xu, Liming Liu

Hong Kong Institute of Business Studies Working Paper Series

A heterogeneous sales force may not be as desirable as a homogeneous sales force for two reasons: premiums are required for all except from one agent type, and only the highest type would work as hard as though they were from a homogeneous sales force. This study revisits the heterogeneous sales force compensation and price delegation problem with type-dependent reservation. We find that an equilibrium separating or pooling compensation contract always exists. Different types of agents may receive premiums, and there are scenarios when no premiums are paid. Retaining centralized pricing provides a tool for regulating agent behavior. More than …

Power Distance And Its Moderating Impact On Empowerment And Team Participation, Yi Zhang

Hong Kong Institute of Business Studies Working Paper Series

This paper studies how power distance (the level of acceptance of an uneven distribution) impacts empowerment and team participation for two types of Chinese employees: those working in Chinese R&D companies, and employees of China-based American R&D companies. These two groups have different perceptions of individual power distance; Chinese employees in American companies have a lower power distance perception than Chinese employees in Chinese companies. High power distance and high empowerment lead to high team participation. Indigenously rooted cultures and companies' home-country cultures together influence employees' values, attitudes, and behaviors through top-down socialization and organizational acculturation processes. The findings have …

Effects Of A Taxation Ethics Intervention On Hong Kong Undergraduates' Attitude Towards Tax Avoidance And Evasion, Richard S. Simmons

Hong Kong Institute of Business Studies Working Paper Series

Increasing public concern over the ethical behaviour of accounting professionals, including those involved in providing tax services, has focused attention on the effectiveness of educational responses to the problem. Accordingly, this study investigates whether a tax ethics intervention imbedded in an undergraduate taxation course influences the attitudes towards tax avoidance and evasion of accounting major business students at a university in Hong Kong. The research also considers whether the intervention changes students' attitudes towards the importance of corporate ethics and social responsibility (CESR).

The study adopts a survey approach incorporating a pre-test/post-test data collection methodology. The surveys include case studies …

Global Electronic Commerce Through Ebxml And Service Oriented Architectures, Wing Lok Yeung

Hong Kong Institute of Business Studies Working Paper Series

Global electronic commerce has flourished following the commercialisation of the Internet. ebXML is a global business-to-business (B2B) electronic commerce standard which addresses not only the formats and vocabularies of electronic business documents exchanged between business partners, but also the choreography of business transactions during a collaborative process. On the other hand, the service-oriented architectures (SOA) together with web services promise a new era for B2B collaboration with dynamically created business partnerships transacting based on published choreographies, for which the ebXML BPSS (Business Process Specification Scheme) is a major specification language. This paper illustrates the approach with a contract negotiation process …

Ethical Issues Concerning The Experience Of Representational Predicaments At Work, Robin Stanley Snell, Mei Ling, May Wong, Suk Kwan, Sandy Hui

Hong Kong Institute of Business Studies Working Paper Series

Representational predicaments refer to situations in which job incumbents believe that dominant authorities are holding incomplete or otherwise incorrect work-related assumptions about them. We carried out qualitative interviews with a diverse and gender-balanced sample of 55 Hong Kong Chinese job incumbents, from whose perspective we identified three broad categories of representational predicament: (1) doing unvalued work; (2) doing thankless work; and (3) being subject to distorted representation. Each category of representational predicament was reported both by female and male informants, with females reporting more representational predicaments than males. Stories of unvalued work referred either to unnoticed and unvalued work, which …

What Future For The Corporate Tax In The New Century?, Richard S. Simmons

Hong Kong Institute of Business Studies Working Paper Series

It has long been recognised that the corporate tax suffers from several inherent deficiencies. However, in recent years, the transformation and integration of the world economy has exacerbated and highlighted these weaknesses, placing a question mark over the future of the tax. Through an examination of the problems besetting the tax today, a critical analysis of the conventional justifications for it, and a review of economic and political factors relevant to its continued existence, this article considers its future in the new century.

Five main criticisms of the tax are identified. First, allocating profit between tax jurisdictions is becoming increasingly …

Optimal Insurance Brokerage Commission, Arthur Hau

Hong Kong Institute of Business Studies Working Paper Series

This paper studies a principal-agent insurance brokerage problem with a risk-averse principal (an insured) and a risk-neutral agent(a broker). The concept of “mean-preserving spread-reducing effort” is introduced to delineate the broker's activities. Using the first-order approach, it is shown that under some common conditions, the insured may “concavify” the reward function to induce the risk-neutral agent to exert MPSR brokering effort. Surprisingly, these conditions together with an additional condition guarantee the validity of the first-order approach even when the monotone likelihood ratio condition (used exclusively to justify the first-order approach) is violated. The case with a risk-averse agent is also …

Antecedents, Moderators And Examples Of Representational Predicaments At Three Hong Kong Sites, Robin Stanley Snell, Mei Ling, May Wong

Hong Kong Institute of Business Studies Working Paper Series

Employees suffer representational predicaments if they feel that they bear invisible burdens and/or make invisible contributions. This feeling implies a belief that dominant authorities in the organization are embracing unfavourable prevai1ing images of employees (PIEs) that are incongruent with salient work-life space domains. Qualitative interviews at an insurance agency branch and an on-line database provider indicated embedded human resource values characterized by aggressive instrumentality, small circle and top down govemance, and expectations of employee deference and silence. These values reflected the

Hong Kong human resource govemance environment: absence of labour rights and protections, and cultural assumptions of large power distance, …

A Note On The Preferred Hedge Instrument, Arthur Hau

Hong Kong Institute of Business Studies Working Paper Series

Contrary to Battermann et al.'s (2000) claims, this paper shows that risk-averse exporters may produce less with fair commodity futures than with fair put options; moreover, they may prefer the latter instrument for hedging against its exchange rate risk.

Subtextual Gendering Processes : A Study Of Japanese Retail Firms In Hong Kong, Mei Ling, May Wong

Hong Kong Institute of Business Studies Working Paper Series

This study examines equal opportunities for women employees in two Japanese-owned (Tairo and Okadaya) retail companies in Hong Kong. This paper initially discusses the various explanations for gender inequality put forward by scholars. Since the equal opportunity legislation - specifically Sex Discrimination Ordinance (SDO) - was introduced in Hong Kong in 1996, little research can explain as to why gender inequality persists. The issue can altematively be understood by examining the subtextual gendering processes. Concealed gendering processes (re)produce gender inequality based on hegemonic power, through structural, cultural, interaction and identity arrangements. Accounts of female staff at various hierarchies reveal that …

Citizenship In Organisations : The Good, The Bad, And The Fake, Robin Stanley Snell, Yuk Lan Wong

Hong Kong Institute of Business Studies Working Paper Series

The paper reports a qualitative, interview-based study of organisational citizenship behaviour (OCB) as perceived in non-subordinate colleagues by 20 Hong Kong Chinese managerial, professional and white-collar staff. Interviewees drew on their own observations of, and inferences about, specific workplace incidents to illustrate differences between authentic OCB on the one hand, and faked (pseudo-) OCB, which entailed colleagues feigning or espousing OCB while actually not transcending basic in-role requirements or even violating requirements. Faked counterparts were found for a wide range of OCB sub- types. A variety of cases of simple absent OCB and simple anti-OCB, which typically involved cover-up but …

"Do Women Really Make Better Leaders Than Men?" : An Update, James S. Pounder

Hong Kong Institute of Business Studies Working Paper Series

Women are continuing to make a major impact through their participation in organizations and their ownership of businesses and it is reasonable to assume that the number of women taking up significant roles in society will increase in the future. The growing impact of women in the workforce has kept the leadership style of women on the research agenda. Within the leadership literature, writers lamenting the lack of women in senior management positions do so primarily on the basis that modern organizations need the very style of leadership that comes naturally to women. By contrast, a number of studies have …

Gender Inequities After The Implementation Of Equal Opportunities Legislation : A Study Of Japanese Retail Firms In Hong Kong, Mei Ling, May Wong

Hong Kong Institute of Business Studies Working Paper Series

This study examines equal opportunities for women employees in two four retail companies in Hong Kong; two of the companies Japanese-owned (Tairo and Okadaya). Research conducted in Hong Kong shows that gender inequality persists in the workplace. This paper initially examines various explanations for gender inequality put forward by scholars. Since EO legislation - the Sex Discrimination Ordinance (SDO) - was introduced in Hong Kong in 1996, little research has done to explain why gender inequality persists after SDO has been implemented. It can be understood though by examining the gendering processes experienced by individual employees. Concealed gendering processes (re)producing …

Globalisation In Advertising Ii : Use Of Global Strategies By International Advertising Agencies, Paul Whitla

Hong Kong Institute of Business Studies Working Paper Series

This paper analyses the use of global strategies by intemational advertising agencies. 1t uses Yip’s (1989, 1992) conceptualization of global strategy as a multi-dimensional construct composed of a number of elements which he termed ' global levers'. The paper examines each of these levers in turn seeking to uncover which components of global strategy are being adopted and how are they being implemented by the agencies.

This paper supplements a previous working paper in this same series. 1n that paper the extant literature regarding theories and definitions of globalisation and global strategy was examined. The terms were clearly defined for …

Collective Myopia As The Blocking Mechanism To Organizational Learning, Mei Ling, May Wong

Hong Kong Institute of Business Studies Working Paper Series

This study aims to identify the blocking n1echanisms for Japanese expatriate managers to acquire double-loop organizational learning in their international assignments. Two Japanese multinational department stores - Morioka and Chubuya - were studied in Japan to illustrate how the Japanese expatriate managers were trapped by the collective myopia. The major blocking mechanisms identified are common Japanese practices which include parent company community spirit, dozoku inhabitants, parent company's translators, and desire for normality. The modes or frames of mind and thinking of these Japanese practices prevent the Japanese expatriates from moving up the organizational learning to achieve the corporate objective of …

Globalisation In Advertising I : Globalisation Drivers In The Advertising Industry, Paul Whitla

Hong Kong Institute of Business Studies Working Paper Series

This paper examines the causes of globalisation in the advertising industry. It is based on a qualitative survey of both advertising industry experts and senior executives responsible for setting international strategy within the agencies themselves. The underlying theory behind the study is an adapted version of Y旬's framework for global strategy (1 989, 1992) which provides a multi-dimensional view of the globalisation process.

A follow-up working paper in this series provides an in-depth assessment if tge strategic response of advertising agencies to these globalisation drivers. This initial paper presents the theoretical background and methodology of the overall study. A thorough …

Developing As A Learning Organization : A Hong Kong Case Of Sensegiving And Career Contracts, Robin Stanley Snell

Hong Kong Institute of Business Studies Working Paper Series

I discuss a qualitative case study of a Hong Kong-based utility company where commercial imperatives drove, but also circumscribed, development toward ‘Learning Organization’ (LO) ideals. The case illuminates the paradox of promoting greater openness and creativity through top down sensegiving, as many managers and professionals participated in collective development towards LO ideals, but were seduced into what nearly became a propaganda trap. The case also highlights the importance of honouring psychological contracts, in that a covenant with the workforce, which leveraged the company’s dominant industry position, restored an atmosphere of mutuality with a marginalized rump. Noting that the focal company …

The Strategy In The Use Of Contingent Workers In Hong Kong : Case Studies In Retail Firms, Mei Ling, May Wong

Hong Kong Institute of Business Studies Working Paper Series

The research studies the strategy in the use of contingent employment in four retail firms - three Japanese and one British - in Hong Kong under different economic conditions, and the purposes of the use of contingent employment. From the data of in-depth qualitative case studies, it is found that the four case firms had different organisational responses to the economic conditions from the increase of sales before the Asian financial crisis and the shrinkage of sales after the crisis, notwithstanding these firms face similar contextual environment of Hong Kong. One of such responses is the companies ' employment policies …

Moral Atmosphere And Moral Influence In China's Transitional Economy, Robin Stanley Snell, Choo Sin Tseng

Hong Kong Institute of Business Studies Working Paper Series

We conducted a predominantly qualitative study of organizational moral atmosphere (OMA) in seven companies in the city of Wuhan, on the Chinese mainland. Our findings were consistent with other commentaries that have identified the mainland as a problematic context in which to achieve organizational integrity because of market distortions, public cynicism, and substantial weaknesses in the legal system and in civic accountability. We discovered also that in-company propagation of moral ideology appeared to have little beneficial impact on OMA, because of ideological incoherence and incompatibility with unofficial values and practices such as guanxi that are regarded as survival imperatives under …

Employee Casualisation In Department Stores In Hong Kong, Mei Ling, May Wong

Hong Kong Institute of Business Studies Working Paper Series

This study examines the pattern of employee casualisation in two Japanese and a British department stores in Hong Kong. A number of employee categories can be identified in these companies according to the model of the ‘flexible firm’. These companies employed four major casualisation strategies which reflected their culture and business strategies. During the economic good times, the Japanese companies tended to casualise more local staff due to the fact that they preferred to use ethnocentric management overseas. However, during the economic downturn, all companies used casualisation for cost-minimisation as a major business strategy for survival. This study implies that …

Employment Strategy : Comparing Japanese And British Retail Companies In Hong Kong, Mei Ling, May Wong

Hong Kong Institute of Business Studies Working Paper Series

This study examines and compares the employment strategy used by Japanese and British retail companies in Hong Kong. Hendry's (1995) structured employment systems model is adopted as the theoretical framework for this research. Three case companies - Morioka and Okadaya (Japanese-owned) and Supercom (British-owned) - are studied regarding what employment strategies they have adopted to expand in the Hong Kong, and to adjust to the changing consumer market. The evidence shows that the Japanese companies adopt more structured employment systems employing more employee groups than the British company. Both Japanese companies vary employment practices to different employee groups on the …