Business Commons^™

Failed Policy As Seen In The Solar Trade War, Emma Weirich

Economics Theses

Increasing protectionist policies in the United States have attempted to protect solar manufacturing jobs; however, they have created negative repercussions for the majority of the industry. This paper aims to analyze the 2018 30% US tariff on all imported photovoltaic cells and modules and whether or not it has been an effective policy to protect and encourage the solar industry. To do so, the paper will analyze similar tariffs enacted in 2012 and 2014 by the United States to understand how the tariffs have been impacting the solar energy’s labor market and photovoltaic module and cell price fluctuations. By researching …

Leadership Doctorates Newsletter: Volume 5, Number 4, Larry Starr, Phd

Leadership Doctorates Newsletter (Formerly Strategic Leadership Newsletter)

In this Issue:

• Program Re-Envisioning
• Faculty Award
• 3rd Annual Applied Research Methods Learning Exchange Conference
• Wilkes-Barre Project
• Annual Meeting and Call for Papers
• Jefferson Digital Commons
• 2019-2020 DSL Dissertation Candidates and Titles
• Horse and Carriage Project
• Community Updates and Scholarship
• At This Holiday Season

From Actions To Paths To Patterning: Toward A Dynamic Theory Of Patterning In Routines, Kenneth T. Goh, Brian T. Pentland

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

This paper demonstrates a new way of seeing and theorizing about the dynamics of organizational routines through the concept of paths – time-ordered sequences of actions or events in performing work. Empirically and conceptually, paths provide the missing link between specific actions and patterns of action. When routines are represented as a narrative network, tracing the formation and dissolution of action paths can generate new insights about the dynamic patterning of actions in routine performances. We traced action paths using longitudinal field data from a videogame development project and found that action patterns change dramatically over time based on the …

Optimal Control For Transboundary Pollution Under Ecological Compensation: A Stochastic Differential Game Approach, Ke Jiang, Ryan Knowles Merrill, Daming You, Pan Pan

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

To account for previously ignored, yet widely observed uncertainty in nature's capability to replenish the natural environment in ways that should inform ideal design of ecological compensation (EC) regimes, this study constructs a stochastic differential game (SDG) model to analyze transboundary pollution control options between a compensating and compensated region. Equilibrium strategies in the stochastic, two player game inform optimal control theory and reveal a welfare distribution mechanism to form the basis of an improved cooperative game contract. A case-based numerical example serves to verify the theoretical results and supports three key insights. First, accounting for various random disturbance factors, …

Corporate Governance And Institutional Investors: Proxy Voting Behavior After The Stewardship Code (コーポレートガバナンスと機関投資家―スチュワードシップコード改訂後の議決権行使の状況について), Mari Yamauchi, Toru Yoshikawa

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

本稿では，日本版スチュワードシップコードの改訂により始まった機関投資家 による議決権行使の結果について，投資家のタイプごとに分析し，どのような投 資家がどのような会社提案議案についてより多くの反対票を投じているかについ て検討した。先行研究に従えば，資産運用会社のように投資先企業とアームズレ ングスの関係を持つ投資家は，保険会社のように投資先企業とビジネス上の関係 を持つ投資家と比較すると，会社側提案に対して異議を唱える可能性が高いとさ れる。また，株式持ち合いなど日本的背景を考慮すると，日本においては，外資 系投資家の方が国内の投資家に比べて，会社提案に対して反対票を投じる可能性 が高いことも予想される。2018年度の議決権行使の結果を分析したところ，ほぼ 先行研究と同じ結果が得られ，業種で分類した場合，資産運用会社の方が生損保 のような保険会社より反対票の比率が高いこと，資本国籍で分類すると，外資投 資家の方が買収防衛策の導入や退任役員への退職慰労金の支給など特定の項目に ついて，日系の投資家に比べて反対率が高いことが確認された。

Ecosystem-Specific Advantages In International Digital Commerce, Jiatao Li, Liang Chen, Jingtao Yi, Jiye Mao, Jianwen Liao

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

We consider the applicability to digital platforms of extant international business scholarship. The organization of digital platforms has been seen to such an extent as predicated upon the bundling of external resources for collective value creation that their expansion may follow the logic of externalization. We further that literature contrasting the governance of network multinationals with that of platform-centric ecosystems. Building on and extending the theory of the ecosystem, we propose the concept of ecosystem-specific advantages. We identify costs and difficulties in the transfer of such advantages to new markets, emphasizing in particular the idea of bottlenecks. We then propose …

2019 Asia Insights: Building A Great Place To Work For All: The Untapped Power Of Gender Diversity In Asia, Richard Raymond Smith, Evelyn Kwek, Tyler Thorpe

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Through this study, we hope to increase understanding of the context, considerations and practices to leverage the amazing diversity of our region. We hope to learn more about what makes a strong workplace culture, particularly in Asia. We turn our attention to the topic of diversity and inclusion, with a focus on gender diversity in the Asian workplace. This is one of the largest studies in Asia to highlight gender differences and evaluate how psychological safety, inclusion and belonging result in strong teamwork which in turn contributes to building high performing great workplaces.

Developing Strategies To Improve Competitiveness Of Shipping Companies : A Case Of State-Owned Ethiopian Shipping And Logistics Service Enterprise, Darek Abebe Kebede

World Maritime University Dissertations

No abstract provided.

Offshore Support Vessels Market: Sales & Purchase, And Chartering Strategies For Psv And Ahts : An Evaluation Of The Influential Factors, Juan Manuel Pulido Guzman

World Maritime University Dissertations

No abstract provided.

Developing A Shipping Registration Strategy For The Philippines: A Business And Policy Framework, Althea Marie E. Calag, Carlo B. Cruz

World Maritime University Dissertations

No abstract provided.

Making The War Colleges Better, Richard A. Lacquement Jr

The US Army War College Quarterly: Parameters

No abstract provided.

The Who, Where, What, How And When Of Market Entry, Gideon Markman, Peter Gianiodis, G. Tyge Payne, Christopher Tucci, Igor Filatotchev, Reddi Kotha, Eric Gedajlovic

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

This introductory, along with the eight articles contained within this Special Issue, highlights and brings greater clarity to entrant-incumbent interactions and to firm movement – when entrants traverse market territories for the creation and/or delivery of offerings, where ‘markets’ include service or product categories, technology or resource spaces, industries, sectors and/or geographies. Collectively, this Special Issues explains that firm movement across market boundaries is highly consequential, influencing resource-capability mixes inside firms, interfirm relations, market logic and industry value chains, and of course, people, communities and even nations. Specifically, we develop a field-wide perspective of market entry by expanding on the …

Building Customer-Centric Brands In Asia: How To Compete Globally, Martin Roll

Asian Management Insights

One crucial factor that would differentiate winning businesses from the others is the equity of a strong brand. They must learn to compete globally, sustain competitiveness, and master customer loyalty by building customer-centric brands.

Redefining Corporate Strategies And Functions, Havovi Joshi

Asian Management Insights

Traditional corporate planning—marked by a march towards a series of deliverables, detailed spreadsheets that project costs and revenue into the future, and review meetings according to an annual calendar—is not enough to succeed in today’s business environment. Ken Favaro, Senior Partner at Booz & Company, warned leaders of the common trap of confusing vision, mission, purpose, plans or goals for the real work of strategy. He explained that if these five are the cart and strategy is the horse, leaders who put the cart ahead of the horse often end up with no horse at all.

Strategic Categories And Competition: Significant Clustering For Strategic Groups, Charles Carroll, Howard Thomas

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Purpose: Strategic groups research has been hampered by the poor alignment between theory and methods. This has been due in large part to the lack of significance tests for cluster analysis. Now that significance tests are available, the theoretical and methodological implications are discussed. The paper aims to discuss these issues. Design/methodology/approach: The theory behind strategic groups is reframed to capitalize on the available significance tests. Subsequently, the significance tests are also modified to fit the proposed theory. Due to this integrative approach, this is both a theoretical and a methodological paper. Findings: In lieu of significance tests, finding differences …

The Business Case For Industrial Safety: Revealing The Comprehensive Value Of Ergonomic Investments For Manufacturing Enterprises In Industry 4.0, Shane Stan

Honors Theses

How can today’s manufacturing enterprises construct, implement, and optimize modern safety initiatives in a manner that will present maximum return on investment and facilitate enterprise growth? Furthermore, how can these manufacturers assure individual ergonomic investments become part of a larger strategy to facilitate organizational change in safety? This work addresses these questions by placing industrial ergonomics in a business improvement context which comprehensively presents the financial returns and growth opportunities poised by modern safety initiatives. Additionally, to further strengthen the business case for industrial safety, an ergonomic action planning framework is established to guide the creation of holistic safety programs …

Prioritizing Strategic Cyberspace Lethality, Andrew J. Schoka

Military Cyber Affairs

The primary concern of United States national security policy, as detailed in the 2018 National Defense Strategy, has shifted from asymmetrical counter-insurgency operations to countering inter-state strategic competition by rogue regimes and revisionist powers. This doctrinal shift has prompted an increased emphasis on military lethality, particularly in strategic-level cyberspace operations intended to counter open challenges to the global security environment and United States preeminence. Drawing from the theory of constraints in industrial engineering and Bayesian search theory in operations research, this paper identifies the key organizational constraints that hinder the lethality of the Department of Defense’s strategic-level cyberspace operations units …

Leadership Doctorates Newsletter: Volume 5, Number 3, Larry Starr, Phd

Leadership Doctorates Newsletter (Formerly Strategic Leadership Newsletter)

In this Issue:

• Welcome New DSL and CSL Learners
• Jefferson Ackoff 100 Celebration
• Wilkes-Barre Project
• Book on Decision Making in Complex Contexts Thanks Jefferson Leadership Faculty
• Digital-Life-Design Conference
• Vienna Workshop
• Designing a PhD Program in Istanbul
• Student-Learner Scholarship

Nebraska Monthly Economic Indicators: September 25, 2019, Eric Thompson

Leading Economic Indicator Reports

The Leading Economic Indicator – Nebraska (LEI-N) 1 fell by 1.89% during August of 2019. The drop in the LEI-N, which is designed to predict economic activity six months into the future, follows a sharp 2.51% increase during July. Taken together, results from the two months imply modest economic growth in Nebraska at the end of 2019 and the beginning of 2020. The leading indicator fell primarily due to a an increase in initial claims for unemployment insurance and a sharp increase in the value of the U.S. dollar. A rising dollar creates challenges for Nebraska busineses which export. Business …

Enhancing Dyadic Performance Through Boundary Spanners And Innovation: An Assessment Of Service Provider–Customer Relationships, Scott J. Grawe, Patricia J. Daughterty, Peter M. Ralston

Peter Ralston

Firms recognize that working together through collaborative relationships offers potential benefits such as improving cooperation, information sharing, and overall performance. An additional and extremely valuable benefit of working together is the potential for creating innovative business approaches and solutions. Thus, developing external linkages has become a higher priority within many organizations. Boundary spanning employees offer one means of achieving closer cross‐firm relationships. We investigate the roles of boundary spanners by examining service providers and their relationships with customers. More specifically, we examine boundary spanning employees that are physically on‐site at customer facilities. Results provide strong support that boundary spanners perceiving …

Strengthening Safety Culture By Leveraging The Daily Management System, Suneela Nayak, Mark Parker, Erin Graydon Baker, Amy Sparks, Ruth Hanselman, Stephen Tyzik, Sydney Green

Operational Transformation

STRENGTHENING SAFETY CULTURE BY LEVERAGING THE DAILY MANAGEMENT SYSTEM

There is abundant evidence that links a strong culture of safety with improved patient and staff experience. However, there has been no clear avenue identified as to how to achieve this metric.

A team in a large academic tertiary teaching hospital set about leveraging their daily managing system (DMS) to attain improvement in their institution’s safety. The goals of this quality improvement project were to use DMS to identify and report safety concerns and increase frontline team knowledge and comfort with reporting safety concerns during Gemba walks.

A root cause analysis …

Competitive Strategies In Small And Medium Sized Enterprises (Sme's): A Cross- Case Analysis Of Irish Construction Professional Service Firms, Oluwasegun O. Seriki, Roisin Murphy

Conference papers

Strategy formulation aims to attain strategic fit between an organisation and its business environment in pursuit of competitive advantage. Although competitive strategy research is long established within industries such as manufacturing, financial services and IT, strategy within construction is still under-investigated by comparison. For construction professional service firms (CPSFs), the dearth of academic inquiry is even more apparent, partly due to the intangible nature of their service offerings, highly customised nature of their services and reliance on intellectual capital. The Irish construction sector is experiencing stable growth since following a prolonged recession, thus understanding the strategy process within professional service …

The Strategy Process Of Irish Quantity Surveying Firms Operating Within A Turbulent Business Environment, Michael Adesi, Roisin Murphy, Dermot Kehily

Conference papers

Rapid technological changes and market fluctuations create a turbulent business environment that poses significant challenges to the strategy process of Quantity Surveying (QS) firms. A turbulent environment refers to the existence of high levels of uncertainty, unpredictability, volatile demand and changing growth conditions within an industry. The strategy process is complex and becomes more problematic in the face of a turbulent business environment. To date, studies focusing on QS practices seldom investigate the impact of a rapidly changing environment on the strategy process within these firms. This study aims to address this gap by investigating the impact of environmental turbulence …

Can Vuca Help Us Generate New Theory Within International Business?, L. Jeremy Clegg, Hinrich Voss, Liang Chen

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

The acronym and neologism “VUCA” is employed by management and some scholars to denote the unpredictability of the modern world and its impact on business. The VUCA approach suggests that a rational firm’s response should be to: protect against volatility by engineering-in redundancy and slack, gather information to reduce uncertainty, develop expertise to make complexity computable, and learn heuristically to reduce ambiguity. We combine a critical perspective on the VUCA approach with the global factory model, popularly used to describe the flexibility sought by advanced economy multinational enterprises (MNEs) within the global value chain. Both VUCA and the global factory …

When Do Expert Teams Fail To Create Impactful Inventions?, Simon J.D. Schillebeeckx, Yimin Lin, Gerard George

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

We investigate the salience of expertise in creating high impact inventions and question experts’ ability to deploy novel ideas. Specifically, we examine the relationships between expertise, component originality, and a team's structural holes’ position in the collaborative network and propose that, in relative terms, expert teams create lower impact inventions if they deploy more original components and if they occupy structural holes. We test and confirm our hypotheses in a sample of semiconductor firms. In post‐hoc analyses, we find a three‐way interaction where the negative effect of structural holes almost disappears when an expert team experiments with original components whereas …

Authentic Leadership In The Digital Age, Richard R. Smith

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Artificial intelligence algorithms are actively assessing our personality and behaviour based on our social media footprint with amazing accuracy – even after we have retired or died.

The Superstitious Heuristic In Strategic Decision-Making, Jing Liu

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation focuses on an important but largely ignored phenomenon in the strategic decision literature which I refer to as the use of superstitious heuristics in strategic decision-making. I define the superstitious heuristic as a decision shortcut based on one’s beliefs in the existence of forces or essences that transcend the boundary between the mental/symbolic and physical/material realities in a way that is unsupported by contemporary science. The use ofsuperstitious heuristics in strategic decision-making is prevalent in major economies and influences firms’ strategic behaviors and performance. In this dissertation, I first explored the concept of the superstitious heuristic and …

Risk And Strategies Of China's Oversea Port Infrastructure Investment Under "One Belt One Road" Initiative, Jingshun Ke

World Maritime University Dissertations

No abstract provided.

The Effect Of Latest Shipping Alliance On Shipping Industry, Lingjie Li

World Maritime University Dissertations

No abstract provided.

Intra-Organizational Communication, Understanding, And Process Diffusion In Logistics Service Providers, Scott J. Grawe, Peter M. Ralston

Peter Ralston

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to investigate, using survey data, how a firm may be able to leverage innovation or processes specifically developed for one customer across its entire customer network using onsite, or implanted, employees.

Design/methodology/approach – Data collected from a survey of 309 implanted logistics service provider (LSP) representatives are analyzed using structural equation modeling.

Findings – The findings show that intra-organizational task interdependence and face-to-face communication can lead to a greater understanding of firm processes developed for specific customers and greater diffusion of these new processes to other customers. Rather than separating customers that …