Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Customer Satisfaction Index Of Singapore 2011: Full Year Overview, Institute Of Service Excellence, Smu

Research Collection Institute of Service Excellence (2007-2024)

The Customer Satisfaction Index of Singapore (CSISG) computes customer satisfaction scores at the national, sector, sub-sector, and company levels. The CSISG serves as a quantitative benchmark of the quality of goods and services produced by the Singapore economy over time and across countries with 2011 marking its fifth year of measurement.

Civil Society And Local Activism In South Korea's Local Democratization, Yooil Bae, Sunhyuk Kim

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Recent studies on causes of intergovernmental transformation in old and new democracies have found that decentralization is often the outcome of negotiations between national and local political interests. South Korea is commonly believed to be an exception because local elections and institutions introduced in the early 1990s were, by and large, the product of negotiations among political elites at the centre, without significant inclusion of local actors. However, this article attempts to explicate a hitherto ignored aspect of decentralization reform in Korea: the role of civil society and local activism in the politics of decentralization. In the 2000s, several ‘triggering …

Avoiding Russia's Path In Myanmar, Bridget Welsh

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

The political reforms that have occurred from August 2011 in Myanmar have captured international attention due in part to the overwhelming desire for the pariah of ASEAN to move toward better governance and greater political liberalization. The unexpected changes began in August 2011 when the current president Thein Sein rallied reformers in his Cabinet and sat down with the country’s de facto opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi to move the country toward national reconciliation. Over the last seven months, Myanmar’s military leadership has begun a process of liberalization that is unprecedented.

Product Suitability, Due Diligence And Management Responsibility: The New Regime Of Regulation 18b Of The Financial Advisers Regulations, Kee Yang Low

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

In response to the structured products crisis of 2008, many changes were made to the Singapore regulatory landscape over the past three years. More recently, in July 2011, the Financial Advisers Regulations (Cap 110, Rg 2, 2004 Rev Ed) was amended and an important new provision – reg 18B – was added. Regulation 18B requires a financial adviser and its senior management to conduct a comprehensive due diligence exercise before selling a new product. This comment considers reg 18B’s overall scheme, its interpretational difficulties, the demands of the diligence requirements, its interrelation with s 27 of the Financial Advisers Act …

Asian Religions Aren't That Exotic, Justin K. H. Tse

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Toronto filmmaker Quentin Lee's The People I've Slept With (2009) may seem like a sex-comedy at odds with Asian Canadian religious values. The story is set in California - but the movie is classed as Canadian because of Lee's Torontonian roots - and revolves around the love lives of Angela Yang and her gay best friend Gabriel.

Improbable Art: The Creative Economy And Sustainable Cluster Development In A Hong Kong Industrial District, Lily Kong

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

A noted Singapore-based cultural geographer and specialist on Asia analyzes the emergence and functioning of a unique artistic cluster in Hong Kong's Fotan light industrial district. The objective of the research is to understand how artistic work in the cluster, despite some challenges, has thus far proven sustainable in cultural, social, and economic terms. The findings of this case study permit further clarification of several dimensions of an emerging theory of cultural/creative clusters, which should be considered as distinct from business and industrial clusters. Selective comparisons between the Fotan cluster and the Moganshan Lu cluster in Shanghai demonstrate that cultural/creative …

The Role Of Faculty Members' Cross-Cultural Competencies In Their Perceived Teaching Quality: Evidence From Culturally-Diverse Classes In Four European Countries, Alain De Beuckelaer, Filip Lievens, Joost Bucker

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

In the field of higher education, it has often been claimed that in culturally-diverse classes high levels of cross-cultural competence will result in better teaching performance among faculty. Unfortunately, to date this relationship has not been tested empirically. In this study, we examine the nature of this relationship using course-related survey data from faculty members (N = 46) teaching management-related courses to master's students (N = 1,219) in four EU countries (Belgium, France, Germany, and The Netherlands). Results demonstrate that cross-cultural competence (in particular showing a high degree of cultural empathy and being open-minded) is an important asset for faculty …

Virtue And Virility: Governing With Honor And The Association Or Dissociation Between Martial Honor And Moral Character Of U.S. Presidents, Legislators, And Justices, Dov Cohen, Angela K. Y. Leung

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

In many honor cultures, honor as martial honor and honor as character/integrity are often both subsumed under the banner of honor. In nonhonor cultures, these qualities are often separable. The present study examines political elites, revealing that Presidents, Congresspeople, and Supreme Court Justices from the Southern United States with a greater commitment to martial honor (as indexed by their military service) also show more integrity, character, and moral leadership. This relationship, however, does not hold for nonsoutherners. The present studies illustrate the need to examine both between culture differences in cultural logics (as these logics connect various behaviors under a …

Structured Notes Fiasco In The Courts: A Study Of Relevant Judgments In Taiwan Between 2009 And 2010, Christopher Chao-Hung Chen

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

The purpose of this article is to analyse relevant judicial decisions in Taiwan regarding structured notes sold to retail investors. Regarding pre-sale disputes, one issue was that investors failed to read contractual documents properly before signing contracts, so there was a question whether they could later claim a bank’s violation of its duty to explain. This article favours the view that an investor’s signature may exempt a bank’s duty, provided that investors are made aware of relevant warnings. In addition, for suitability assessment, relevant judgments show that customers were too easily classified as active investors based on a simple questionnaire. …

Policy Positioning In The European Parliament, Kenneth Benoit, Kenneth Benoit

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Party politics in the European Parliament (EP) consists of competition between transnational party groups, each consisting of multiple national member parties from the 27 member states of the European Union (EU). Identifying the policy space that these parties inhabit and their ideological positions is both practically and conceptually challenging. In this article we characterize this policy competition by tracking EP political groups from three separate, original expert surveys taken in 2004, 2007 and 2010. We look at the relative positioning of the groups on multiple dimensions of policy, as well as changes in party group policy since 2004. Additionally, we …

Is Specialization Desirable In Committee Decision Making?, Ruth Ben-Yashar, Winston T. H. Koh, Shmuel Nitzan

Research Collection School Of Economics

Committee decision making is examined in this study focusing on the role assigned to the committee members. In particular, we are concerned about the comparison between committee performance under specialization and non-specialization of the decision makers. Specialization (in the context of project or public policy selection) means that the decision of each committee member is based on a narrow area, which typically results in the acquirement and use of relatively high expertise in that area. When the committee members’ expertise is already determined, specialization only means that the decision of each committee member is based solely on his/her relatively high …

A Note On Separability And Intra-Household Resource Allocation In A Collective Household Model, Tomoki Fujii, Ryuichiro Ishikawa

Research Collection School Of Economics

We consider a collective model of a household in which each member has a utility function satisfying the weak separability condition. We show that the separability at the individual level carries over to the household level and that the allocation of private goods in any Pareto-efficient allocation can be supported as a Pareto-efficient allocation of private sub-problem. We also provide the necessary and sufficient condition for the Pareto weight for the private sub-problem to move in the same direction as the household Pareto weight.

Why Was The Arab World Poised For Revolution? Schooling, Economic Opportunities, And The Arab Spring, Filipe R. Campante, Davin Chor

Research Collection School Of Economics

What underlying long-term conditions set the stage for the Arab Spring? In recent decades, the Arab region has been characterized by an expansion in schooling coupled with weak labor market conditions. This pattern is especially pronounced in those countries that saw significant upheaval during the first year of the Arab Spring uprisings. We argue that the lack of adequate economic opportunities for an increasingly educated populace can help us understand episodes of regime instability such as the Arab Spring.

Us Government Efforts To Repair Its Image After The 2008 Financial Crisis, Andrea A. Chua, Augustine Pang

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Globalization has intensified the interaction and interdependency among countries. The need to maintain good reputation and establish good relationships should dominate public diplomacy efforts (Hiebert, 2005). Using the US financial crisis 2008 as a case study, this study examines how the world's only superpower repaired its image when it was accused of triggering the financial meltdown that impacted the world economy. Few studies have examined repair strategies by nations. The need to undertake more empirical research to understand how the image-rebuilding rhetoric can aid diplomatic efforts remains relevant today.

A Comparative Analysis Of A Game-Based Mobile Learning Model In Low-Socioeconomic Communities Of India, Paul Kim, Elizabeth Buckner, Hyunkyung Kim, Tamas Makany, Neha Taleja, Vallabhi Parikh

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

This study explores the effectiveness of a game-based mobile learning model for children living in underdeveloped regions with significant contextual variations. Data for this study came from a total of 210 children between the ages of 6-14 years old from six marginalized communities in India. The findings reveal that children with little or no previous exposure to technology were able to not only figure out the given mobile learning technology, but also solve a series of incrementally challenging problems by playing math games without specific intervention or instruction by adults. The study also found that various factors, including gender and …

Risk And The Technology Content Of Fdi: A Dynamic Model, Pao Li Chang, Chia-Hui Lu

Research Collection School Of Economics

This paper incorporates risk into the FDI decisions of firms. The risk of FDI failure increases with the gap between the South's technology frontier and the technology complexity of a firm's product. This leads to a double-crossing sorting pattern of FDI—firms of intermediate technology levels are more likely than others to undertake FDI. It is with the attempt to relax the upper bound of the technology content of FDI, we argue, that many FDI policies are created. The theory's predictions are consistent with the empirical patterns of FDI in China by US and Taiwanese manufacturing firms.

A Comparison Of Cardinal Tournaments And Piece Rate Contracts With Liquidity Constrained Agents, Kosmas Marinakis, Theofanis Tsoulouhas

Research Collection School Of Economics

Acelebrated result in the theory of tournaments is that relative performance evaluation (tournaments) is a superior compensation method to absolute performance evaluation (piece rate contracts) when the agents are risk-averse, the principal is risk-neutral or less risk-averse than the agents and production is subject to common shocks that are large relative to the idiosyncratic shocks. This is because tournaments get closer to the first best by filtering common uncertainty. This paper shows that, surprisingly, tournaments are superior even when agents are liquidity constrained so that transfers to them cannot fall short of a predetermined level. The rationale is that, by …

On The Intraday Periodicity Duration Adjustment Of High-Frequency Data, Wu Zhengxiao

Research Collection School Of Economics

In the last decade, intensive studies on modeling high frequency financial data at the transaction level have been conducted. In the analysis of high-frequency duration data, it is often the first step to remove the intraday periodicity. Currently the most popular adjustment procedure is the cubic spline procedure proposed by Engle and Russell (1998). In this article, we first carry out a simulation study and show that the performance of the cubic spline procedure is not entirely satisfactory. Then we define periodicity point processes rigorously and prove a time change theorem. A new intraday periodic adjustment procedure is then proposed …

Oral History Interview With John Niland: Conceptualising Smu, John Niland

Oral History Collection

The interview covered: first involvement with SMU, SMU's Board of Trustees, early priorities of the Board of Trustees, the Academic Affairs Committee, the tenure process at SMU, Finance and Remuneration Committee, admissions criteria, early days at SMU, the role of QAFU, the role of the International Academic Advisory Panel, looking ahead, Singapore's public policy in guiding universities, personal impact, advice for students.

Biography:

Deputy Chairman, SMU Board of Trustees (2000-2012)

Professor John Niland joined SMU Board of Trustees in 2000 and has been closely involved with SMU's growth and development since then. He served as the Chair of the Finance …

The Worth And Values Of Education, Singapore Management University

Perspectives@SMU

Singapore’s education minister Heng Swee Keat surprised parents and educators when he indicated last September at his first major policy address a desire for education in Singapore – which has come under criticisms for its emphasis on grades- to return to the basics of moulding students’ characters.

Enhancing Internal Communications: How Microsoft Cuts Through The Clutter, Singapore Management University

Perspectives@SMU

How do you communicate with 5,000 employees across 17 countries in a simple yet effective and compelling way? This was a question that Jovina Ang had to answer back in 2010, when she joined Microsoft Services Asia as marketing communications director.

The Central Role Of Information Systems In Managing Crises, Singapore Management University

Perspectives@SMU

Crisis management research recognises the importance of timely information in coordinating a suitable and rapid crisis response. However, the transmission of information would depend on the information systems assets available, how they work with other resources and how they facilitate coordination – areas that have not received much scholarly attention.

Large Mutual Fund Families: Bigger May Not Always Be Better, Singapore Management University

Perspectives@SMU

Size is not everything but it may be intuitive for the novice investor to place his money in a mutual fund from large fund families thinking that it will outperform the smaller ones.

When To Say “I Love You”: Before Or After Sex?, Singapore Management University

Perspectives@SMU

The words “I love you” is symbolic as it represents romantic devotion; a desire to bring the relationship to a higher, more serious level. It is no wonder that saying it for the first time in a relationship can be daunting.

Finding The Medicine For Healthcare, Knowledge@Smu

Knowledge@SMU

Health care costs are escalating rapidly in countries with aging populations and is often a source of headache for policymakers. Singapore, which has one of the world’s acclaimed healthcare systems, also faces the same issues of balancing social and economic objectives in its healthcare system. A healthcare expert has now proposed a radical policy shift for the Republic to meet the medical needs of its citizens.

When To Say “I Love You”: Before Or After Sex?, Knowledge@Smu

Knowledge@SMU

There are no hard and fast rules on when one should say 'I love you', or who should say it first. Yet, the implications either way can be profound. Taking an evolutionary-economics perspective, these words, for men, could be taken as "bids for sexual access". Women, on the other hand, might view it differently, depending on whether the words were uttered before or after sex. SMU associate professor Norman Li examines what it is that romantic partners really mean when they say "love".

The Social Network Of Software Engineering Research, Subhajit Datta, Nishant Kumar, Santonu Sarkar

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

The social network perspective has served as a useful framework for studying scientific research collaboration in different disciplines. Although collaboration in computer science research has received some attention, software engineering research collaboration has remained unexplored to a large extent. In this paper, we examine the collaboration networks based on co-authorship information of papers from ten software engineering publication venues over the 1976-2010 time period. We compare time variations of certain parameters of these networks with corresponding parameters of collaboration networks from other disciplines. We also explore whether software engineering collaboration networks manifest symptoms of the small-world phenomenon, conform to the …

Manipulation Of Online Reviews: An Analysis Of Ratings, Readability, And Sentiments, Nan Hu, Indranil Bose, Noi Sian Koh, Ling Liu

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

As consumers become increasingly reliant on online reviews to make purchase decisions, the sales of the product becomes dependent on the word of mouth (WOM) that it generates. As a result, there can be attempts by firms to manipulate online reviews of products to increase their sales. Despite the suspicion on the existence of such manipulation, the amount of such manipulation is unknown, and deciding which reviews to believe in is largely based on the reader's discretion and intuition. Therefore, the success of the manipulation of reviews by firms in generating sales of products is unknown. In this paper, we …

Conceptualising Cultural And Creative Spaces, Lily Kong

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

This paper reviews the literature on cultural and creative spaces, and examines its merits and shortcomings in helping to explain how culture and creativity in the city are supported. Alternative ways of conceptualising cultural and creative spaces which emphasise the importance of networks and multi-scalar relationships and non-economic considerations will be examined.

A Tilt In Favour Of The Older Generation, Less Fortunate, Tan K. B. Eugene

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

Assistant Professor of Law Eugene Tan writes that although there are generally no significant handouts, offsets or goodies, Budget 2012 addresses some of the key genuine concerns of Singaporeans during the May 2011 General Election. It is also expected to generate a surplus of S$1.3 billion at a time when many advanced economies are in recession and with significant deficits.