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Full-Text Articles in Business

What Has Changed? The Impact Of Covid Pandemic On The Technology And Innovation Management Research Agenda, Gerard George, Karim R. Lakhani, Phanish Puranam Dec 2020

What Has Changed? The Impact Of Covid Pandemic On The Technology And Innovation Management Research Agenda, Gerard George, Karim R. Lakhani, Phanish Puranam

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Whereas the pandemic has tested the agility and resilience of organizations, it forces a deeper look at the assumptions underlying theoretical frameworks that guide managerial decisions and organizational practices. In this commentary, we explore the impact of the Covid‐19 pandemic on technology and innovation management research. We identify key assumptions, and then discuss how new areas of investigation emerge based on the changed reality.


Reflections Of A Chief Strategy Officer In A Diversified Conglomerate, Nirmalya Kumar Dec 2020

Reflections Of A Chief Strategy Officer In A Diversified Conglomerate, Nirmalya Kumar

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

After a lifetime as an academic, I was hired as Chief Strategy Officer (“CSO”) at Tata, a colossal $100 billion group with more than a hundred companies and 650,000 employees worldwide. At first sight, the job of being strategy head for the Tata Group may seem rather different from my academic role, with implementation responsibility and ability being the key difference. But, it did not require much of an adjustment for two reasons. First, I was not the typical academic. For twenty years, as an external consultant, I had been working with top executives and helping them think through their …


Kin Ties And The Performance Of New Firms: A Structural Approach, Gokhan Ertug, Reddi Kotha, Peter Hedstrom Dec 2020

Kin Ties And The Performance Of New Firms: A Structural Approach, Gokhan Ertug, Reddi Kotha, Peter Hedstrom

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Kin ties are all but ubiquitous in new firms. However, their effects on performance are not straightforward, because they may provide new firms with advantages (enhanced coordination and cooperation) as well as disadvantages (reduced diversity, nepotism concerns, and the possible spillover of personal conflict). As kin ties may have both positive and negative implications for performance, a contingency approach to the performance of new firms is valuable. We develop such an approach by relating different structural configurations of kin ties – whether they are between founders, between founders and employees, and between employees – to the performance of new firms. …


Healthcare Innovation From The Inside Out: Leveraging The Human Capital System At Tan Tock Seng Hospital, Kenneth T. Goh, Richard Raymond Smith, Cher Heng Tan, David Dhevarajulu Nov 2020

Healthcare Innovation From The Inside Out: Leveraging The Human Capital System At Tan Tock Seng Hospital, Kenneth T. Goh, Richard Raymond Smith, Cher Heng Tan, David Dhevarajulu

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

The global pandemic has strained healthcare systems around the world, yet some providers have been able to adapt better and more swiftly than others. One such example is Singapore’s Tan Tock Seng Hospital (TTSH). When Covid-19 broke out, TTSH had to strike a balance between reducing business-as-usual (BAU) services and increasing outbreak-coping capacity. The latter meant that the hospital needed to build isolation rooms, and effectively ramp up its intensive care unit (ICU) capacity and capabilities to adapt to a rapidly evolving global pandemic. Furthermore, hospital management had to make an active push towards ensuring adequate supplies of personal protective …


The Dark Side Of Sustainability Orientation For Sme Performance, Teemu Kautonen, Simon J.D. Schillebeeckx, Johannes Gartner, Henri Hakata, Katariina Salmela-Aro, Kirsi Snellmand Nov 2020

The Dark Side Of Sustainability Orientation For Sme Performance, Teemu Kautonen, Simon J.D. Schillebeeckx, Johannes Gartner, Henri Hakata, Katariina Salmela-Aro, Kirsi Snellmand

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

This article examines how a firm’s willingness to make trade-offs that favour sustainability over commercial goals attenuates the relationship between firm-level sustainability orientation and subsequent performance. The hypothesis development draws on stakeholder theory and the literature on mission and revenue drifts, while the empirical analysis is based on two waves of original survey data on Finnish manufacturing SMEs. We find that sustainability orientation is positively associated with performance only when the willingness to make sustainability trade-offs is low, whereas the relationship becomes negative when the willingness to make such trade-offs is high. Our findings thus suggest that the popular adage …


Disaster Relief, Inc., Hao Liang, Cara Vansteenkiste Nov 2020

Disaster Relief, Inc., Hao Liang, Cara Vansteenkiste

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

We investigate the motivations and value implications of corporate philanthropy by exploiting a global sample of publicly listed firms from 45 countries that provide disaster-relief grants to affected communities. We argue that, while in general corporate philanthropy entails agency concerns, the saliency of large, attention-grabbing natural disasters amplifies the strategic benefits of donating. We find that the returns from donating increase with disaster severity and become positive for firms that rely more on reputation and social image. Returns are also higher for countries with low government relief support, for medium-sized donations, and for in-kind donations. Overall, our results highlight the …


Stakeholder Preservation Or Appropriation? The Influence Of Target Csr On Market Reactions To Acquisition Announcements, Li Tong, Heli Wang, Jun Xia Oct 2020

Stakeholder Preservation Or Appropriation? The Influence Of Target Csr On Market Reactions To Acquisition Announcements, Li Tong, Heli Wang, Jun Xia

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

This study examines how target corporate social responsibility (CSR) affects the economic gains for acquirers, as reflected in market reaction to acquisition announcement, from two distinct perspectives: stakeholder preservation versus stakeholder appropriation. The stakeholder preservation perspective suggests that positive market reaction to an acquisition stems from potential new value creation by honoring implicit contracts and maintaining good relationships with target stakeholders. By contrast, the stakeholder appropriation perspective posits that positive market reaction is primarily derived through wealth transfer to acquirers by defaulting on implicit contracts with target stakeholders. Using a dataset of acquisitions in the US, we find that target …


When Do Host Country Nationals Help Expatriates? The Roles Of Identification With The Multinational Enterprise And Career Development Support By The Subsidiary, Sachiko Yamao, Toru Yoshikawa, Soo Min Toh, Daijeong Choi Sep 2020

When Do Host Country Nationals Help Expatriates? The Roles Of Identification With The Multinational Enterprise And Career Development Support By The Subsidiary, Sachiko Yamao, Toru Yoshikawa, Soo Min Toh, Daijeong Choi

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

One of the concerns of host country nationals (HCNs) who work alongside expatriates in subsidiaries of multinational enterprises (MNEs) is their career prospects in the organization. This study advances the literature of expatriate management in MNEs by spotlighting the roles of the HCNs’ identification with the MNE and career development support received by the HCNs as key factors affecting the HCNs’ decisions to provide help to expatriates. According to the data collected in four countries (Australia, China, India, and Singapore), the HCNs’ identification with the MNE and their perceived subsidiary support for career development are positively related to their extra-role …


Corona Crisis And Inequality: Why Management Research Needs A Societal Turn, Hari Bapuji, Charmi Patel, Gokhan Ertug, David G. Allen Sep 2020

Corona Crisis And Inequality: Why Management Research Needs A Societal Turn, Hari Bapuji, Charmi Patel, Gokhan Ertug, David G. Allen

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

As the world struggles to deal with the COVID-19 pandemic, the stark inequalities in our societies have been laid bare, and the interplay between organizations and societies has also become evident yet again. This crisis underscores the need for management scholars to take a societal turn and examine how organizational practices interact with societal economic inequality. To illustrate this approach, we discuss organizational practices – corporate social responsibility, work design, recruitment and selection, and compensation management – that can contribute to the normalization, reinforcement, and reduction of economic inequalities in society. We conclude by calling on scholars of inequality, as …


Power To The People? The Limits Of Equality-Based Involvement In Managing Strategic Change, Daniel Z. Mack Aug 2020

Power To The People? The Limits Of Equality-Based Involvement In Managing Strategic Change, Daniel Z. Mack

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Existing research has highlighted the importance of involving a wide representation of organizational members in the strategic change process to manage it effectively. We conducted a real-time inductive study of a strategic change at an organization in the hotel industry. Our findings suggest that the equality-based involvement – designed to promote equal opportunities for voice among employees – unintendedly undermined the implementation of strategic change. Although wide organizational involvement provided frontline employees with greater voice and autonomy, it also instilled greater fear in middle managers due to more escalating complaints to top management and newly created constraints in middle managers’ …


Foreign Subsidiary Csr As A Buffer Against Parent Firm Reputation Risk, Nan Zhou, Heli Wang Jul 2020

Foreign Subsidiary Csr As A Buffer Against Parent Firm Reputation Risk, Nan Zhou, Heli Wang

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

This study examines the influence of parent firm reputation risk on the level of corporate social responsibility activities of foreign subsidiaries. We first argue that a strong reputation risk spillover occurs from parent firms to their foreign subsidiaries due to the high visibility of multinationals, the control of parent firms over their subsidiaries, and the liability of foreignness associated with foreign firms in host countries. Then, we argue that subsidiaries may resort to CSR in their host country to reduce the spillover effect. Thus, we hypothesize a positive relationship between parent firm reputation risk and foreign subsidiary CSR activities. Moreover, …


The Resilience Of Family Controlled Business Groups: Survival Of The Unfit, Nirmalya Kumar, Phanish Puranam Jul 2020

The Resilience Of Family Controlled Business Groups: Survival Of The Unfit, Nirmalya Kumar, Phanish Puranam

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

The COVID crisis has demonstrated that family controlled business groups, usually criticized as being inefficient and diverse, have higher survival rates for precisely these reasons.


Why We Need A Theory Of Stakeholder Governance - And Why This Is A Hard Problem, John Amis, Jay Barney, Joseph T. Mahoney, Heli Wang Jul 2020

Why We Need A Theory Of Stakeholder Governance - And Why This Is A Hard Problem, John Amis, Jay Barney, Joseph T. Mahoney, Heli Wang

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Corporate governance is an important topic for both scholars and practicing managers. To date, most work on this subject has focused on how to resolve potential conflicts of interest between a firm’s senior managers and its shareholders in how firms create and distribute economic value. Work on using governance to resolve possible conflicts between senior managers and shareholders has largely developed separately from governance questions focused on the broader relationships between a firm and its multiple stakeholders.This is ironic since some of the earliest work on agency theory conceptualized a firm as “a nexus for a set of contracting relationships …


Making Connections: Social Networks In International Business, Ilya R. P. Cuypers, Gokhan Ertug, John Cantwell, Akbar Zaheer, Martin Kilduff Jul 2020

Making Connections: Social Networks In International Business, Ilya R. P. Cuypers, Gokhan Ertug, John Cantwell, Akbar Zaheer, Martin Kilduff

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Insights from social network research have generated significant advancements in disciplines such as sociology, economics, and psychology. In comparison, the incorporation of social network ideas into international business (IB) research remains more limited. The purpose of this special issue is to foster further research on social networks in IB. In our introductory essay, we provide a brief overview of network research in the IB domain to give a sense of some of the major ongoing themes and to illustrate how the social network approach can provide fresh insights and add substantive value to the field. To emphasize the considerable potential …


A Business School Disrupted: A View From Singapore, Richard Raymond Smith Jun 2020

A Business School Disrupted: A View From Singapore, Richard Raymond Smith

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

The COVID-19 pandemic rapidly changed our world. And through the preparation, rapid response, and early vigilance of the universities and the government in Singapore was admirable Richard Smith looks at the challenges still ahead.


The Triumph Of Nonsense In Management Studies: A Commentary, Peter Kai, Howard Thomas Jun 2020

The Triumph Of Nonsense In Management Studies: A Commentary, Peter Kai, Howard Thomas

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Professor Dennis Tourish’s recent essay (AMLE, March 2020) provides an analysis of why business schools and management education are perceived to be in a state of crisis. This commentary focuses on one important aspect of Tourish’s criticism of the management education field; namely, the quality, value, and appropriateness of the field’s research in advancing knowledge. His main criticisms are that the failure of management research arises from its extremely strong focus on theory development, its inadequate writing, and the formulaic, template style and formal structure of research papers in leading journals. Indeed, the rules and practices underlying the …


Do Coaches In The National Basketball Association Actually Display Racial Bias? Replication And Extension, Gokhan Ertug, Massimo Maoret Jun 2020

Do Coaches In The National Basketball Association Actually Display Racial Bias? Replication And Extension, Gokhan Ertug, Massimo Maoret

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

We replicate and extend empirical evidence that has been interpreted as an indication of coaches’ racial bias in the National Basketball Association (NBA) by Schroffel and Magee (2012) and Zhang (2017; 2019). After replicating the published results, we extend them by modeling coaches’ decisions of “resting the starters,” a common tactical decision based on players’ quality and not on their race, thus exploring whether this tactic may provide an alternative explanation for associations that might thus far have been taken to indicate racial bias. Our results show that, after empirically accounting for “resting the starters,” the magnitude of associations that …


Learning From Digital Failures? The Effectiveness Of Firms’ Divestiture And Management Turnover Responses To Data Breaches, Gui-Deng Say, Gurneeta Vasudeva Jun 2020

Learning From Digital Failures? The Effectiveness Of Firms’ Divestiture And Management Turnover Responses To Data Breaches, Gui-Deng Say, Gurneeta Vasudeva

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

We examine whether firms learn from digital technology failures in the form of data breach events, based on the effectiveness of their failure responses. We argue that firms experiencing such technological failures interpret them broadly as organizational problems, and undertake unrelated divestitures and top management turnover to achieve better standardization and to remove dysfunctional routines. We test our hypotheses on unrelated subsidiary divestitures and chief technology officer (CTO) turnovers undertaken by 8,760 publicly traded U.S. firms that were at risk of experiencing data breaches in- volving the loss of personally identifiable information during the period 2005–2016. We find that data …


Transparency And Fairness In Organizational Decisions: An Experimental Investigation Using The Paired Ultimatum Game, Jared Nai, Reddi Kotha, Phanish Puranam Jun 2020

Transparency And Fairness In Organizational Decisions: An Experimental Investigation Using The Paired Ultimatum Game, Jared Nai, Reddi Kotha, Phanish Puranam

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Organizations often keep secret their decisions about what employees receive (e.g., salary, budgets, benefits) to manage fairness concerns. We propose that this can be counterproductive because of a mechanism we call the “escalation of deservingness under secrecy”, where the existence of peers can inflate one’s own sense of deservingness, even when the actual allocations to peers are unknown. Building on the ultimatum game, we developed a Paired Ultimatum Game (PUG) in which a player and a peer respondent engage with the same offeror simultaneously but with no direct competition between respondents. Across three experiments- a live interaction study as well …


Geographical Influences On The Relationship Between Corporate Philanthropy And Corporate Financial Performance, Jane Lu, Xueji Liang, Heli Wang May 2020

Geographical Influences On The Relationship Between Corporate Philanthropy And Corporate Financial Performance, Jane Lu, Xueji Liang, Heli Wang

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Building on stakeholder theory, the paper argues that geographical differences in stakeholders’ reactions to corporate philanthropy lead to differences in the relationship between corporate philanthropy and corporate financial performance across regions. When comparing the United States and China and different regions within China, it is found that the differences in stakeholder perceptions (as reflected by sinful industry) and information availability (as indicated by advertising intensity) across regions significantly moderate the corporate philanthropy–corporate financial performance relationship. The findings show that the value of corporate philanthropy varies by region and that stakeholder perception and information availability are two important mechanisms through which …


Covid-19 And Japanese Shareholder Activism: Brief Respite For Japan's Self-Healing Concrete, Toru Yoshikawa, Gavin Chua May 2020

Covid-19 And Japanese Shareholder Activism: Brief Respite For Japan's Self-Healing Concrete, Toru Yoshikawa, Gavin Chua

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Extrapolating from modern international understanding of corporate Japan’s distinct form of managerial capitalism, we elaborate on the growing momentum of shareholder activism in Japan leading up to the COVID-19 health crisis, so as to inform the subsequent discussion on the relevant primary considerations that belie the future direction of shareholder activism in Japan post-COVID-19. On an initial logical extrapolation, it appears probable that COVID-19 could mark the peak of Japanese activism. However, it is crucial to acknowledge that the success of Japan’s managerial capitalism have also declined, which poses a question on to which direction Japanese corporate governance may be …


It Won’T Be Business As Usual After Covid-19, Arnoud De Meyer Apr 2020

It Won’T Be Business As Usual After Covid-19, Arnoud De Meyer

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

As customer behaviours change, they will reshape business models in the post-coronavirus world.


Covid-19 Hr Challenge: Lessons From Vigilant Singaporeans, Richard R. Smith Apr 2020

Covid-19 Hr Challenge: Lessons From Vigilant Singaporeans, Richard R. Smith

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Lessons from Singapore that may benefit global HR business leaders in caring for the health and well-being of the workforce during this challenging time.


Problem-Solving Or Self-Enhancement? A Power Perspective On How Ceos Affect R&D Search In The Face Of Inconsistent Feedback, Radina Blagoeva, Tom J. M. Mom, Justin J. P. Jansen, Gerard George Apr 2020

Problem-Solving Or Self-Enhancement? A Power Perspective On How Ceos Affect R&D Search In The Face Of Inconsistent Feedback, Radina Blagoeva, Tom J. M. Mom, Justin J. P. Jansen, Gerard George

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Firms consider multiple reference points simultaneously to assess performance, yet often these referents may be inconsistent in signaling success or failure. Consequently, decision makers use two contrasting decision rules when responding to inconsistent feedback: problem-solving or self-enhancement. So far, disparate theoretical logics and mixed evidence has limited our understanding about when decision makers may shift their attention from positive to negative aspects of inconsistent feedback or vice versa, and may increase or decrease their R&D search. We examine how different types of CEO power explain why some firms may respond to inconsistent feedback, i.e. positive performance feedback and negative prospects, …


Tackling Regional Climate Change Impacts And Food Security Issues: A Critical Analysis Across Asean, Pif, And Saarc, Md. Saidul Islam, Edson Kieu Mar 2020

Tackling Regional Climate Change Impacts And Food Security Issues: A Critical Analysis Across Asean, Pif, And Saarc, Md. Saidul Islam, Edson Kieu

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Climate change and food security issues are multi-faceted and transcend across national boundaries. Therefore, this paper begins with the premise that regional organizations are optimally positioned to address climate change and food security issues while actively engaging global partners to slow down or reverse current trajectories. However, the potential of regional organizations to play a central role in mitigating these vital concerns has not been realized. In this paper, we focus on three regional organizations—the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), the Pacific Islands Forum (PIF), and the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) and set out to investigate …


How Do Prior Ties Affect Learning By Hiring?, Vivek Tandon, Gokhan Ertug, Gianluca Carnabuci Feb 2020

How Do Prior Ties Affect Learning By Hiring?, Vivek Tandon, Gokhan Ertug, Gianluca Carnabuci

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Research has shown that hiring R&D scientists from competitors fosters organizational learning. We examine whether hiring scientists who have many collaborative ties with the hiring firm prior to the mobility event produces different learning outcomes than hiring scientists who have few or no such ties. We theorize that prior ties reduce explorative learning and increase exploitative learning. Namely, we posit that prior ties lead the hiring firm to focus on that part of a new hire’s knowledge with which they are already familiar and that they help appropriate the new hire’s newly generated knowledge. At the same time, prior ties …


Dating Disruption: How Tinder Gamified An Industry, Niloofar Abolfathi, Simone Santamaria Feb 2020

Dating Disruption: How Tinder Gamified An Industry, Niloofar Abolfathi, Simone Santamaria

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Tinder’s gamelike user experience enticed overlooked users, led to rapid segment growth, and ultimately displaced industry incumbents.


Political Ideology Of The Board And Ceo Dismissal Following Financial Misconduct, Uisung Park, Warren Boeker, David Gomulya Jan 2020

Political Ideology Of The Board And Ceo Dismissal Following Financial Misconduct, Uisung Park, Warren Boeker, David Gomulya

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Why do some boards refuse to take serious action against CEOs who have committed financial misconduct? Past work has directed attention to the antecedents of misconduct while largely overlooking this question. The relatively few studies to examine it have typically revolved around the capacity of boards to take action, or their relationships to their CEOs. This study instead examines how the beliefs and values held by board members can influence their actions following financial misconduct. Focusing on political ideology, we argue and find that politically conservative boards are more likely to respond by dismissing the CEO than are liberal boards. …


The Role Of Endogenous And Exogenous Risk In Fdi Entry Choices, Peter J. Buckley, Liang Chen, L. Jeremy Clegg, Hinrich Voss Jan 2020

The Role Of Endogenous And Exogenous Risk In Fdi Entry Choices, Peter J. Buckley, Liang Chen, L. Jeremy Clegg, Hinrich Voss

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

FDI research has presented consistent evidence that firm experience moderates the effect of risk on entry in a new foreign market. This conclusion is contested by recent research. By revisiting the conceptualisation of risk by economists and behaviourists, we show that the proposed learning mechanism only applies to endogenous risk, not exogenous risk. As assessing endogenous risk involves self-evaluation of risk-reducing capability, it is posited that firms have differential tendencies to take such risks even when experience and ownership are accounted for. We find both observed and unobserved variations in firms' responses to endogenous risk, as opposed to exogenous risk.