Strategic Management Policy Commons^™

Bringing Excitement To Empirical Business Ethics Research: Thoughts On The Future Of Business Ethics, Mayowa T. Babalola, Matthijs Bal, Charles H. Cho, Lucia Garcia-Lorenzo, Omrane Guedhami, Hao Liang, Greg Shailer, Suzanne Van Gils

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

To commemorate 40 years since the founding of the Journal of Business Ethics, the editors-in-chief of the journal have invited the editors to provide commentaries on the future of business ethics. This essay comprises a selection of commentaries aimed at creating dialog around the theme Bringing Excitement to Empirical Business Ethics Research (inspired by the title of the commentary by Babalola and van Gils). These editors, considering the diversity of empirical approaches in business ethics, envisage a future in which quantitative business ethics research is more bold and innovative, as well as reflexive about its techniques, and dialog between quantitative …

Preservation Technology Investment And Carbon Abatement Strategies In A Supplier-Retailer Cold Chain Based On A Differential Game, Xueli Ma, Ying Zhao, Qian Luo, Qingguo Bai

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Against the background of a low-carbon economy and the rising environmental awareness, extensive attention has been paid to carbon emissions in the cold chain in academic research and practice. In cold chain operations, consumers’ preference for freshness is also growing, which motivates the investment in preservation technology to improve the freshness of perishable products. However, further investment in preservation technology also increases carbon emissions. Considering these idiosyncratic features in cold chains, we apply a differential game model to examine cold chain members’ preservation technology investment and carbon abatement behaviors from a long-term horizon and dynamic perspective. The equilibrium strategies of …

The Impact Of Fear Of Losing Out (Folo) On College Students’ Performance Goal Orientations And Learning Strategies Insingapore, Haelim Choi, Chi-Ying Cheng, Sheila Xi Rui Wee

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

The current research investigated the influence of the Fear of Losing Out (FoLO) mindset on learning strategy via performance goal orientation and its interaction with social comparison amongst Singaporean college students. In Study 1, a positive relationship between FoLO and performance goal orientations (i.e., avoidance and approach) was found. Study 2 replicated this finding and further revealed a downstream effect of FoLO on surface learning via performance goal orientations. In addition, social comparison moderated the link between performance goal orientation and surface learning in the mediation model. Specifically, in downward social comparison conditions, FoLO facilitated high performance-avoidance goal orientation, which …

Broken Effects? How To Reduce False Positives In Panel Regressions, Xina Li, Phebo D. Wibbens

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Many published papers in the management field have used statistical methods that, according to the latest insights in econometrics, can lead to elevated rates of false positives: results that appear “significant, ” whereas they are not. The question is how problematic these less robust econometric analyses are in practice for management research. This paper presents simulations and an empirical replication to investigate two widespread but now largely discredited practices in panel data analysis: nonclustered standard errors and random effects (RE). The simulations indicate that these two practices can lead to strongly elevated rates of false positives in typical empirical settings …

Attraction Versus Competition: A Tale Of Two Similarity Effects In Director Selection Of Chinese Firms, Gao Renfei, Helen Hu, Toru Yoshikawa

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Extant research has focused primarily on the collaborative side of chair-director similarity in director selection, whereas the potential competitive side remains underexplored. Emphasizing the dual role of directors as both collaborators and competitors, as perceived by chairs, we incorporate both the similarity-attraction logic and the similarity-competition logic in director selection and develop a collaborative-competitive framework to reconcile the tension between them. Based on new director selection data from Chinese listed firms, we find that chair-director similarity in the competitive-oriented political background is negatively related to the likelihood of the director being selected—consistent with the similarity-competition logic, whereas chair-director similarity in …

Out Of The Trap: Conversion Funnel Business Model, Customer Switching Costs, And Industry Profitability, Niloofar Abolfathi, Andrea Fosfuri, Simone Santamaria

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Research Summary: Across many industries, firms employ a conversion funnel business model to attract customers with basic and affordable products, generate lock-in, and then sell them more advanced and expensive products. We argue that this business model, coupled with high customer switching costs, results in a market outcome characterized by aggressive pricing and reduced profits. A sudden reduction in customer switching costs disrupts the conversion funnel and can eventually increase industrywide prices and profitability, an outcome that contradicts conventional wisdom in strategy research. We develop a stylized model to formalize our ideas and provide supportive evidence using a difference-in-differences methodology …

Corporate Shareholders In Singapore: Retail Shareholders, Effective Empowerment And The Unfulfilled Promise Of The Digital Revolution, Pearlie M. C. Koh, Hwee Hoon Tan

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

Under Singapore’s companies legislation, shareholders are vested with significant powers, placing them in the position to play an important monitoring role. Although there are discernible corporate governance benefits to encouraging shareholders to take on a more participatory role, many have argued against shareholder empowerment. Indeed, it is often asserted that shareholders are ill-equipped to play any role in corporate governance for a variety of reasons, including the generally-held view that shareholders, in particular retail investors, are rationally apathetic. The situation is presumed to be exacerbated in Singapore’s “concentrated shareholding” corporate environment. In this research, we sought empirical data to assess …

A Study On The Role Of Innovative Enterprise-Farmer Contracts In The Sustainable Development Of Agricultural Industrialization - A Perspective Based On Ghm Theroy, Yanjie Wu

Dissertations and Theses Collection (Open Access)

Agricultural industrialization is the primary channel to promote large-scale agricultural production, intensive processing, and marketing, enhancing agricultural production efficiency. In the long run, promoting agricultural industrialization is conducive to the deep integration of primary, secondary, and tertiary industries. It can improve the comparative efficiency of agriculture and reduce poverty by promoting the employment of agricultural labor and the flow of production factors between urban and rural areas. The model of “leading enterprises+farmers” is a significant agricultural industrialization business model. In China, the development of agricultural industrialization is late and fast, and more problems have emerged in the development. The contractual …

Key Factors In The Strategic Transformation Of Traditional Food Enterprises In China, Hui Ching Lau

Dissertations and Theses Collection (Open Access)

The food industry is an important industry for China’s social development and one of the pillar industries of China's industrial economy. With the development of China’s urbanization, the victory of building a moderately prosperous society in all respects, and the continuous improvement of people’s living standards, consumer demand has become diversified and rationalized from “seeking for fullness” to “seeking for good”. In this context, the supplier of food products, that is, food companies, has become more competitive in market segments. With the continuous improvement of China's market openness, many top international food companies have flooded into the food industry. Coupled …

Where We Are From Matters: Assessing The Impact Of Immigrants On Firm Environmental Performance, Narae Lee

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

This study examines the impact of immigrant populations on firm environmental performance. Leveraging a longitudinal dataset of more than 11,000 manufacturing facilities in the US in which I match the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) facility toxic emissions data with the location’s census immigration data, I document the negative impact of local immigrant populations on a facility’s environmental performance, which strengthens as heterogeneity among immigrant increases. I argue that this is because a more heterogeneous community is less cohesive and hence less capable of organizing effective pressures against pollution. Further, I show that because co-nationality links create unique bonds between the …

Essays On Financial Materiality Of Corporate Social Responsibility And Corporate Strategies, Yang Lan

Dissertations and Theses Collection (Open Access)

This dissertation investigates how the endorsement of certain social activities by CSR standards impacts stakeholders’ interpretation on firms’ motivation of doing CSR and how managers make decisions on which specific CSR activities they would like to participate in. The first essay examines how the standards release of CSR by Sustainability and Accounting Standards Board (SASB) affects the relationship between material CSR and firm performance outcomes in terms of stock returns (for investors) and sales growth (for customers), through shaping investor and customer perceptions on the motivation underlying a firm’s material CSR activities. I further argue that a sharp increase in …

Socially Oriented Shareholder Activism Targets: Explaining Activists’ Corporate Target Selection Using Corporate Opportunity Structures, Abhijith G. Acharya, David Gras, Ryan Krause

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

We examine whether and when socially oriented shareholder activists use firms’ corporate social performance (CSP) to identify them as attractive targets for their activism. We build on the research in social movements theory and stakeholder theory to theorize how firms’ engagement with primary and secondary stakeholders reflected in their technical and institutional CSP respectively allows socially oriented shareholder activists to identify targets. We develop a theoretical model by identifying corporate targets’ degree of (1) receptivity to and (2) need to comply with activist demands as two key dimensions of their corporate opportunity structure that explains the variance in firms’ attractiveness …

The Effect Of Formal Time Allocations On Learning Trajectories And Performance, Kenneth T. Goh, Colin M. Fisher, S. Amy Sommer

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

How do formal time allocations in teams affect team learning trajectories and performance? We argue that allocating more time for transition phases induces steeper learning trajectories that engender a positive group atmosphere, which in turn improves team performance by improving coordination quality. We tested our hypotheses in a laboratory experiment in which teams worked on a creative design task over multiple iterations. Using a latent growth modeling approach, we found that teams with shorter action and longer transition phases during prototyping had lower initial performance but steeper learning trajectories, which indirectly led to better final team performance.

The Rise And Fall Of The Airbus A380, Singapore Management University

Perspectives@SMU

Congestion at air hubs and the Great Financial Crisis played a major part in the aircraft’s demise, but did Airbus contribute to its own failure?

Designing Successful Strategic Partnerships, Anurag Vij

Asian Management Insights

The Achilles’ heel of digital transformation.

How To Build An Innovation Ecosystem In Enterprises -- Taking 3nod As An Example, Zhixiong Liu

Dissertations and Theses Collection (Open Access)

In recent years, the global economy has been sluggish, especially affected by the Sino-USA trade war and the COVID-19, the harsh market environment and increased business uncertainty. In addition, China’s manufacturing industry is facing the impact of disappearance of the demographic dividend and strict environmental protection policies, so they are facing tremendous pressure for survival. At the same time, a new generation of science and technology continues to sprout and gradually penetrates in to production and life. Therefore, under these conditions, the innovation activities of manufacturing enterprises are more important and urgent. How to construct systematic innovation activities for manufacturing …

Revisiting The Internationalization-Performance Relationship: A Twenty-Year Meta-Analysis Of Emerging Market Multinationals, Sihong Wu, Di Fan, Liang Chen

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

With the rapid growth of emerging market multinational enterprises (EMNEs), increasing interest has been focused on exploring the internationalization-performance (I-P) relationship of EMNEs. Yet findings on the relationship remain contradictory. Although researchers emphasize the home-country-bounded nature of EMNEs, less is known about how home-government features and the EMNEs' political mindset affect their internationalization and performance. This study integrates and extends the literature on the I-P relationship of EMNEs using a meta-analysis covering a dataset of 218 effect sizes from 186 retrieved studies published between 1998 and 2021. Findings show that the I-P relationship is overall positive, yet it varies across …

Seachi 2022 Symposium: Bringing Equality, Justice, And Access To Hci And Ux Agenda In Southeast Asia Region, Eunice Sari, Masitah Ghazali, Adi B. Tedjasaputra, Yohannes Kurniawan, Thippaya Chintakovid, Siranee Nuchitprasitchai, Ellya Zulaikha, Noris Binti Mohd Norowi, Tamas Makany

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Southeast Asia that consists of eleven countries, has been proud of its way of life and rich culture and is generally happy to maintain its long comforting tradition. However, the region cannot deny that its diverse population and strategic location have become a center of attention for global players to invest in the region. With the emergence of Industry 4.0, digital transformation has become mandatory for any organizations or nations in Southeast Asia to consider. Through SEACHI (Southeast Asian CHI) Symposium, we aim to grow awareness in HCI and UX to improve the design and development of technology for a …

Shareholder Wealth Implications Of Software Firms' Transition To Cloud Computing: A Marketing Perspective, Mehdi Nezami, Kapil R. Tuli, Shantanu Dutta

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Moving into cloud computing represents a major marketing shift because it replaces on-premises offerings requiring large, up-front payments with hosted computing resources made available on-demand on a pay-per-use pricing scheme. However, little is known about the effect of this shift on cloud vendors' financial performance. This study draws on a longitudinal data set of 435 publicly listed business-to-business (B2B) firms within the computer software and services industries to investigate, from the vendors' perspective, the shareholder wealth effect of transitioning to the cloud. Using a value relevance model, we find that an unanticipated increase in the cloud ratio (i.e., the share …

Essays On Status Dynamics In Collectivistic Institutions, Eugene Yi Cheong Tung

Dissertations and Theses Collection (Open Access)

The essays reflect on the relationship between status hierarchies and institutional changes. In the course of accumulating social resources, high status actors lead and become the change in the institution; the relationship between the leaders and their communities is especially fascinating. A theory is proposed to explain the general patterns of status dynamics and an empirical test is conducted to partially test the theorized social relationships. This study highlights the strength of social governance in ensuring collective well-being in the course of never-ending changes in the institution.

Geographical Diversification Revisited: Examining Context To Date And Moderating Effects Of Crisis, Deepika Aniruddha Deshpande

Dissertations and Theses Collection (Open Access)

This study seeks to revalidate existing research insights on the relationship between internationalization and firm performance and to examine the role of the Global Financial Crisis (GFC) as a potential moderator to this relationship. The research uses a longitudinal database of US-listed manufacturing companies over the period 2000-19. It employs a foreign market penetration-based construct as well as a foreign production-based construct of internationalization and uses a fixed effects linear regression model for the analysis.

The study suggests that the relationship between foreign market penetration-based internationalization and firm performance shows a declining trend over the past two decades. This may …

Tipping Point From A Holistic View: An Integrated Theory Of Innovation Management And Evolution In Ai-Based Robots Companies, Weifeng Zheng

Dissertations and Theses Collection (Open Access)

The AI-based robot industry is a product of AI technology combined with traditional robotics. From the literature review on innovation management and AI-based robots, few scholars have studied the development path and internal mechanism of the AI-based robot industry. Focusing on the current specific micro-enterprises, meso-phenomena, and macro-systems, this paper studies the innovation management paths of enterprises in detail using research methods including literature review, case analysis, and questionnaire interview.

This paper focuses on the TO C/B application product enterprises in the downstream of the industry chain, and the following conclusions are drawn:1) The first principle of innovation management of …

Innovation Strategies In Chinese Smes: An Examination Of The Role Of Family Ownership, And The Social Identity And Regulatory Focus Of Ceos, Tiejiong Fan

Dissertations and Theses Collection (Open Access)

Since the reform and opening up, China’s family enterprises have developed rapidly and some family enterprises have entered the period of intergenerational inheritance which may experience some organizational turbulence and face great uncertainty. Meanwhile, more and more CEOs of Chinese enterprises realize that innovation has become the driving force for the transformation and upgrading of SMEs. So, during the intergenerational inheritance and afterwards, whether CEOs of family enterprises make the same decision on innovation strategy as CEOs of non-family enterprises? Whether the second generation CEOs of family enterprises make the same decision on innovation strategy as the founders of family …

Top Management Teams In International Business Research: A Review And Suggestions For Future Research, Ilya R. P. Cuypers, Charmi Patel, Gokhan Ertug, Jiatao Li, Youtha Cuypers

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

This article reviews and critically assesses the large and diverse literature on top management teams (TMTs) that has focused on international business (IB) issues. We apply an organizing framework that centers around four key elements of TMTs – TMT composition, structure, processes, and governance – and the most commonly studied IB-related choices and outcomes. This framework allows us to synthesize the contributions of the literature on TMTs in IB and identify opportunities for future research. The contributions of our review are threefold. First, we offer a roadmap for navigating the large and diverse literature on TMTs in IB. Second, we …

Digital Transformation, Sustainability, And Purpose In The Multinational Enterprise, Gerard George, Simon J.D. Schillebeeckx

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

We discuss how environmental and pandemic crises in combination with digitization are presenting the multinational enterprise (MNE) with increasing geopolitical, organizational, and market tensions. Institutional pluralism is creating a more complex global environment. The organization of productive work is shifting, which challenges how MNEs structure and coordinate their activities. Changing consumer and investor expectations are broadening the understanding of value creation with implications for business models. We contend that the tensions invite MNEs to reconsider how they frame, formalize, and realize corporate purpose. We close with a research agenda that recognizes the need for MNEs to become purpose-driven actors.

Organizational Cultural Strength As The Negative Cross-Entropy Of Mindshare: A Measure Based On Descriptive Text, Arianna Marchetti, Phanish Puranam

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

The strength of an organization’s culture is an important property that may have implications for organizational structure, performance, diversity, and inclusion, independent of its content. However, progress on conceptualizing and measuring cultural strength has been restricted so far. We propose a novel measure of an organization’s cultural strength as the negative average cross-entropy of its members’ mindshare distributions, defined on a support comprising a set of firm-specific cultural elements. Using descriptive text data produced by 2.9 million individuals in about 95 thousand US firms from the employee review website Glassdoor.com, we calculate our measure of organizational cultural strength using topic …

Culture And Firms, Zhihui Gu, Hao Liang, Hanyu Zhang

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

We study how societal culture shapes business activities and corporate behavior by leveraging data on the locations of Confucian schools in Ancient China. The number of historic Confucian schools surrounding a current firm’s location proxies for the firm’s exposure to Confucianism, the dominant culture in China over the last two thou- sand years, and is immune to the subjectivity and selection problems of most culture measures. We find systematic differences in corporate behavior across regions based on their varying exposure to Confucianism. Listed companies more exposed Confucianism make greater social contributions, provide greater employee protection, and have higher entertainment expenses, …

Growing Pains: The Effect Of Generational Product Innovation On Mobile Games Performance, Liang Chen, Pengxiang Zhang, Sali Li, Scott F. Turner

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Research Summary: Strategy research advises firms to capture generative value by continually introducing generational improvements on their existing products. This article considers a potential dark side of such strategy. We argue that generational innovation can elicit a negative near-term response from customers, as it distorts their ingrained behavioral patterns and imposes learning costs. Further, we propose that this negative effect of generational innovation will diminish when the product has a leading market position; and it will be more severe as the product's technological legacy lengthens. Using a difference-in-differences research design based on mobile game apps that multihome on two platforms, …

Externalization In The Platform Economy: Social Platforms And Institutions, Liang Chen, Sali Li, Jiang Wei, Yang Yang

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

The growing platform economy has revived the debate on the applicability of internalization theory in contemporary contexts. In moving this debate forward, we draw on insights from hybrids research and property rights theory to complement the internalization school. Our core contribution lies in a reconceptualization of platforms as a hybrid organizational form enabling the exchange of property rights between platform owners and complementors. Using social platforms as an example, we propose that improvement in a host country's intellectual property protection will increase the multinational platform's (MNP) level of internalization, and that the platform firm's governance capabilities may weaken the effect …

Platform Governance Design In Platform Ecosystems: Implications For Complementors' Multihoming Decision, Liang Chen, Jingtao Yi, Sali Li, Tony W. Tong

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Extant platform research focuses on how platform owners' governance behaviors directly affect complementors. This study explicates the multilateral interdependence among different groups of producers within a platform ecosystem. We theorize about how platform owners' governance design may create frictions between platform providers and complementors. While open governance grants greater autonomy to platform providers, it also cultivates a more complex ecosystem for complementors. Since ecosystem complexity raises the cost of product customization, complementors will be less willing to port an existing complement to a more complex ecosystem, that is, less likely to multihome. The negative effect is weakened as the complementor …