International and Area Studies Commons^™

Asean's Role In Asia Pacific In The Driver's Seat Or Just A Back-Seat Driver?, Sudhir Devare

Asian Management Insights

The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) has often been described as the fulcrum around which the security, political and economic architecture of AsiaPacific will be built. But can ASEAN play that role?

Foreign Investors Are Finding Vietnam Increasingly Attractive, Tony Diep, Hawkins Pham

Asian Management Insights

A new wave of mergers and acquisitions and foreign direct investments is coming into Vietnam thanks to macro stability, an emerging middle class and changes in Asia’s manufacturing landscape.

Developing Leaders, Rajeev Dubey

Asian Management Insights

Investing in human resources and leadership potential to develop sustained competitive advantage.

The Past And The Hopeful Future Of Vietnam’S Economy, Le Dang Doanh

Asian Management Insights

Reform and integration are key for tapping Vietnam’s economic potential.

Muddling Through Or Knee Deep In The Big Muddy?, Howard Thomas

Asian Management Insights

A widening gulf between thepractice of managementand academic organisationscharacterises the stateof affairs in business schools today.

Asean: Growth In The Fast Lane, Edward Lee

Asian Management Insights

ASEAN’s political, economic and demographic factors suggest a giant is awakening.

The Future Of Petroleum Security In Asean, Christopher William Dula

Asian Management Insights

Structuralchanges inAsia’s demandfor petroleumthreaten todisrupt supplystability,especially forSoutheast Asia.

Smu Announces Appointment Of New Provost, Singapore Management University

SMU Press Releases and News

The Singapore Management University (SMU) is pleased to announce the appointment of Professor Lily Kong as the University’s new Provost. Professor Kong, who is currently Vice Provost (Academic Personnel) at the National University of Singapore (NUS) where she also holds the Provost’s Chair Professorship, will join SMU from 1 September 2015. At SMU, Professor Kong will hold the Lee Kong Chian Chair Professorship of Social Sciences. Professor Kong is widely regarded as a thought leader in religion, cultural policy and creative economy, heritage and conservation, and national identity.

Opening Address By Ms Indranee Rajah At The Launch Of Applied Research Centre For Intellectual Assets And The Law In Asia (Arciala), Singapore Management University

SMU Press Releases and News

No abstract provided.

Hague Convention On Choice Of Court Agreements 2005: A Singapore Perspective, Tiong Min Yeo

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

When Singapore joined the Hague Conference on 9 April 2014, it was widely anticipated that it would adopt the Hague Convention on Choice of Court Agreements 2005. This article explores the differences between the Convention regime and the common law position in Singapore, the likely effects of the adoption of the Convention under Singapore law, as well as the considerations that are likely to influence Singapore's approach to the adoption of the Convention.

Drug Traffickers' Deaths: Criticisms Of Laws Not All Fair, S. Chandra Mohan

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

This is a comment on the western media frenzy over the executions of eight drug traffickers in Indonesia. The commentary looks at whether the anguish over the executions following a conviction and appeals to higher courts in accordance with Indonesian law, apart fromn the loss of life,was well placed.

E-Finance In Asean, David Kuo Chuen Lee

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

No abstract provided.

Rinse, But No Need To Repeat, Srinivas K. Reddy

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Unilever promotes water sustainability through product innovation. By October 2007, it had become apparent that competition in the laundry products segment in Vietnam was heating up rapidly. Huyen Bui, the senior brand manager for Comfort at Unilever Vietnam, was contemplating how to stay ahead of long-time rival, Procter & Gamble (P&G), in terms of market share. In April 2007, Unilever launched Comfort One Rinse, a fabric conditioner designed to reduce water use in hand-washed laundry by 66 percent. Six months later, P&G responded by launching Downy One Rinse, a nearly identical product.

E-Learning In Higher Education For Adult Learners In Singapore, Guan Chong, Ding Ding, Kong Weng Ho

Research Collection School Of Economics

Countries across the world have witnessed tremendous expansion of adult education and dramatic growth of adult learners. Moreover, with the growing importance of life-long learning, online learning has become a popular tool which is well received by adult learners. In order to enhance adult learners’ learning experience, we have conducted an exploratory research on online learning for adult learners to understand the challenges faced by them in their pursuit of higher education. The results suggest that technical trainings or preparations are needed prior to e-learning and infrastructure needs to be improved. The findings also emphasize on the importance of using …

Family Ownership And R&D Investment: The Role Of Growth Opportunities And Business Group Membership, Young Rok Choi, Shaker A. Zahra, Toru Yoshikawa, Bong H. Han

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

This study examines whether the influence of family ownership on R&D investment varies depending on growth opportunities and business group membership. Using data on Korean firms over ten years (1998-2007), the study shows that family ownership is negatively related to R&D investment, but the relationship becomes positive when growth opportunities are present. The moderating effect, however, differs between independent family firms and family business groups. The positive influence that growth opportunities have on promoting R&D investment is diminished for affiliates of family business groups. These findings imply that family owners invest more in R&D when their family control goals are …

China’S Digital Landscape: Breaking Barriers To Innovation, Srinivas K. Reddy, Zack Zheng Wang, Deckie He Dong

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

When e-commerce giant Alibaba went public on the New York Stock Exchange in September 2014, its market capitalisation rocketed to roughly US$219 billion - a sum greater than any record previously set by its American contemporaries, Facebook, eBay and Amazon. It was a historic event that led many to believe that China’s digital economy was echoing the Middle Kingdom’s own meteoric rise onto the world-stage. China ranks high in digital connectivity. In 2015, almost half of the country’s population, or 649 million people, were online. It’s fast-growing Internet economy generates about US$100 billion annually and is predicted to reach US$277 …

The Nine Pillars Of Productivity, Augustine H. H. Tan

Research Collection School Of Economics

The report in The Straits Times on April 30, "S'pore cannot count on global demand to drive economy" makes for sober reading.Quoting Deputy Prime Minister Tharman Shanmugaratnam, the report notes that inflows of foreign workers slowed from 80,000 in 2011 to 20,000 last year. Meanwhile, resident labour force growth is tapering off severely. Hence the conclusion of Mr Tharman that restructuring the domestic sector to achieve higher productivity would be essential. Upgrading skills and allowing more market forces to work in weeding out the less innovative and efficient firms would be the keys to achieving this objective.Prime Minister Lee Hsien …

Thinking Bigger: Pushing Singaporean Entrepreneurship To The Next Level, Arcot Desai Narasimhalu

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

The environment in Singaporehas become more conducive forentrepreneurship. What lies aheadand what lessons can other Asiancountries learn?

Good Faith: Helping Commercial Parties Or Creating An Unnecessary Burden?, Ee-Ing Ong

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

One of the challenges facing Asian legal systems in the coming years is whether the courts should impose a general duty of good faith in contracts. The doctrine of good faith has been making inroads in various common law jurisdictions, most recently in Canada where the Supreme Court held in Bhasin v. Hrynew, 2014 SCC 71 that there was a duty of honest performance in all contracts. The idea behind imposing a duty of good faith in all contracts is to ensure that parties essentially “play fair” in contract negotiations and/or performance. However, is such a duty really necessary for …

Too Materialistic To Get Married And Have Children?, Norman P. Li, Amy J. Y. Lim, Ming-Hong Tsai, Jiaqing O

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

We developed new materials to induce a luxury mindset and activate materialistic values, and examined materialism’s relationship to attitudes toward marriage and having children in Singapore. Path analyses indicated that materialistic values led to more negative attitudes toward marriage, which led to more negative attitudes toward children, which in turn led to a decreased number of children desired. Results across two studies highlight, at the individual level, the tradeoff between materialistic values and attitudes toward marriage and procreation and suggest that a consideration of psychological variables such as materialistic values may allow for a better understanding of larger-scale socioeconomic issues …

Killing New Vistas With The Over-Regulation Of Recreational 'Drone' Use, Siyuan Chen

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

In the last few years, there has been a dramatic increase in the use of remote-controlled copters – often given the convenient but misleading epithets of unmanned aerial vehicles or “drones” – by recreational users to capture aerial photographs and videos on an unprecedented scale. Asia is no exception. The convergence of cutting-edge technological developments in gyroscopic gimbals, long-range wireless transmissions, GPS-enabled stabilisation, GPS-enabled flightpath-preprogramming, first-person-views, and compact digital imaging has led to the proliferation of affordable camera-carrying “drones” that even hobbyists can pilot with reasonable safety. Thus far, despite purported controversies there have not been any reports of serious …

The Visual Turn In Ir: Documentary Filmmaking As A Critical Method, William A. Callahan

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Although the field of international relations (IR) is arguably in the midst of a ‘visual turn’, few scholars have directly discussed research methods for studying visual international politics. This article follows the aesthetic turn’s call to resist the rational methods that frame our understanding of ourselves and the world. Yet it also argues that the visual turn is more than an elaboration of the aesthetic turn. While analyses of visual culture are characteristically suspicious of the power of images, this article argues that making films can provide an innovative method for studying IR. In particular, the visual turn can better …

The Impact Of Xi Jinping’S Governance Of China – Ⅲ, William A. Callahan

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Xi Jinping’s latest book, The Governance of China, is popping up in odd places. It was prominently displayed on Facebook-founder Mark Zuckerberg’s desk when he entertained China’s Internet czar Lu Wei in December 2014. As Zuckerman explained: “I’ve bought copies of this book for my colleagues as well. I want them to understand socialism with Chinese characteristics.” Then in late March, Governance appeared at the annual Association for Asian Studies conference in Chicago—on the table of the China International Book Trading Corporation.

The Vietnam War, The American War And The ‘Bridge Generation’, Nancy K. Napier

International Business Program

One April morning in the 1990s during my commute to work on a project teaching business concepts and practices to professors and managers at the National Economics University in Hanoi, I saw red.

The Cold War: Over, Renewed, Or Never Ended?, Matt Phipps

Political Science Theses and Capstones

The Cold War has been studied repeatedly since the war supposedly ended in 1991. However recent events are starting to cause some concern and make many question whether or not the Cold War actually ended, if it took a different shape or perhaps has just been on pause. I argue that the Cold War has been a conflict that has been going on since 1947 and although the conflict has looked differently in recent decades the conflict was never properly put to an end. The research analyzes US decision making with respect to Russian and Asian relations over the last …

Environmental Change And The Emergence Of New Livestock Production Systems In Central Gansu Province, China, Gregory Veeck

Faculty Research and Creative Activities Award (FRACAA)

Post-2000 efforts to protect China’s grassland areas are distinct from earlier efforts in that funding for the most recent round of policies and programs is commensurate with the task. Among the most controversial of the current policies is the provision of an annual subsidy ranging from 2 yuan to 20 yuan/mu (1/15 hectare) to herders to not graze livestock contracted by their families for periods from 3-10 years. Many other recent policies, such as fencing programs and hunting and burning bans to protect keystone species are also controversial. Ideally, the policies are intended to protect grassland ecological systems while assuring …

The Girl With The Peanut Necklace: Experiences Of Infertility And In Vitro Fertilization In China, Ruoxi Yu

Student Work

A 2014-2015 William Prize for best essay in East Asian Studies was awarded to Ruoxi Yu (Berkeley College '15) for her essay submitted to the Department of Anthropology, “The Girl with the Peanut Necklace: Experiences of Infertility and in vitro Fertilization in China.” (Marcia Inhorn, William K. Lanman Jr. Professor of Anthropology, advisor; Susan Brownell, Professor of Anthropology at USML, secondary reader.)

Ruoxi Yu’s essay, “The Girl with the Peanut Necklace: Experiences of Infertility and in vitro Fertilization in China,” situates original research within the history of the one-child birth control policy and the tension between the …

Will Beijing Reconsider Its Maritime Strategy In The South China Sea Following The Melting Of The Arctic?, Nalanda Roy

Robert Ingram Strozier Lecture Series

China is asserting its territorial and maritime claims in the East and South China Sea. But as strategic questions are being raised about the SCS dispute, another issue of growing importance for China is the Arctic. China has become increasingly serious about the consequences of the melting Arctic as this would have a major impact on China’s future economy, and also open up more available routes with a lower risk of piracy. Interestingly, this research will analyze whether Beijing will learn how to share and bear, due to her increasing quest for natural resources in the Arctic thereby undermining its …

Michael Wong Pakshong [Singapore, Managing Director Of Mas], Michael Wong Pakshong

Digital Narratives of Asia

Michael Wong Pakshong was the first Managing Director of the Monetary Authority of Singapore. He shares with DNA the challenges of building up a new institution in a newly independent country, as well as the obstacles he faced when the government's vision for MAS changed.

How To Get An American Boyfriend: Japanese Women And Westernization, Nicole M. Puckett

Honors College Theses

Since the end of World War II, and even more so since the 1980’s, Japanese women have been gaining more and more independence through jobs and international experience. Part of this move towards liberation can be seen in how brand-focused many Japanese girls and women are and the overt manner in which they try to express themselves in typically western ways. This report will focus on Japanese women and how they try to make themselves appear western as a means of defining their individual identities and how they balance that with their usual prescribed roles as traditionally Japanese mothers and …