International and Area Studies Commons^™

Defense, U.S. Department Of, Bert Chapman

Libraries Faculty and Staff Scholarship and Research

Provides an overview of U.S. Department of Defense activities in the western U.S. including the military's increasing emphasis on Asia-Pacific strategic trends and developments.

Do Singaporeans Spend Too Much On Housing?, Sock Yong Phang

Research Collection School Of Economics

According to a 2011 IMF study, Singapore's level of government intervention in housing finance is the highest in the developed world (Slide 3). This level of intervention in housing finance has correspondingly produced the highest level of homeownership amongst advanced countries. This housing outcome is the result of our very unique HDB-CPF housing framework – an institutional framework that was established in the 1960s during the formative period of our country?s history (Slides 4 and 5). Singapore was, at that particular point in time, faced with a situation of chronic housing shortage, low homeownership rates and an underdeveloped housing mortgage …

An Examination Of Localization Success Factors Of Chinese Big Four Accounting Firms, Alexa Mcisaac

Honors Projects in Modern Languages

In May 2012, the Chinese government mandated that once the Big Four accounting (KPMG, PwC, Ernst & Young, and Deloitte) joint venture agreements expire, the firms must begin to localize most of the senior management. Although most of the Big Four firms employ many locals, there are more expatriate partners than Chinese counterparts. Because of this, the Big Four firms must quickly find qualified local senior management personnel. Amongst compliance and global regulatory issues, the Big Four firms must develop a strategy for localizing. Through a survey, this study aims to examine how expatriates and local Chinese managers perceive the …

Using Digital Storytelling To Engage Student Learning, Themin Suwardy, Gary Pan, Poh Sun Seow

Research Collection School Of Accountancy

No one really knows what the first story ever told in human history was, but storytelling is an art that spans many civilizations and cultures, and continues to be a major part of our modern lives. More recently, storytelling has gone digital with advances in technology and connectivity. Educators have also rediscovered how storytelling can be an effective teaching pedagogy for engaged student learning. A digital story can engage students' visual and auditory senses in a way that the written word alone cannot. This article describes such an effort. The Movie-Door-2-Door.com (MD2D) is a digital story spanning 12 episodes. The …

Social Capital, Informal Governance, And Post-Ipo Firm Performance: A Study Of Chinese Entrepreneurial Firms, Jerry X. Cao, Yuan Ding, Hua Zhang

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

This paper explores the links between entrepreneurs' social capital and post-IPO firm performance in China's unique capital market and regulatory setting. Using hand-collected data on entrepreneurs' political connections and firm financial information, we construct original measures for various types of social capital and examine their roles in determining the accounting and financial performance of entrepreneurial firms after an IPO. On one hand, firm accounting performance is enhanced by entrepreneurs' bridging social capital, such as political connections or a willingness to share power with external investors. On the other hand, bonding social capital such as intra-group related party transactions causes performance …

The Transformation Of Urban Vegetable Retail In China: Wet Markets, Supermarkets, And Informal Markets In Shanghai, Qian Forrest Zhang, Zi Pan

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

The state-monopolised system of vegetable retail in socialist urban China has transformed into a market-based system run by profit-driven actors. Publicly owned wet markets not only declined in number after the state relegated its construction to market forces, but were also thoroughly privatised, becoming venues of capital accumulation for the market operators now controlling these properties. Self-employed migrant families replaced salaried state employees in the labour force. Governments’ increased control over urban public space reduced the room for informal markets, exacerbating the scarcity of vegetable retail space. Fragmentation in the production and wholesale systems restricted modern supermarkets’ ability to establish …

Customer Satisfaction Index Of Singapore 2012: 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, subsector, 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. Singapore’s performance in the CSISG relative to a select group of countries that deploy the same or similar methodologies, are shown in Figure A for reference.

This results overview concludes the scores of CSISG 2012 that comprises nine services sectors.

Smu Launches Southeast Asia’S First Regional Institute Focused On Family Businesses, Singapore Management University

SMU Press Releases and News

The Singapore Management University (SMU) today launched Southeast Asia’s first regional institute set up specifically to serve the needs of business families in this part of the world. The Business Families Institute, or BFI@SMU, will be an educational, engagement and research platform to bring together business families in Asia. SMU will leverage on the vast experience of faculty who have worked closely with business families and thus understand their strengths and challenges, as well as the University’s strong expertise in business and management, to help them deal with business family-specific issues such as family ownership, business succession, business diversification and …

Walmart In China [Book Review], John A. Donaldson

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

No abstract provided.

Corporate Governance: The Role Of Independent Directors, Singapore Management University

Perspectives@SMU

Companies in Singapore may now have to spend more time and resources to look for independent directors for their firms after the recent revised Corporate Governance Code, but the efforts will be worth it, said Jeremy Goh, associate professor of finance at SMU at a panel discussion during the 3rd Singapore Corporate Governance Week.

The Czech Automotive Industry In Global Production Networks: Regional Dimensions Of Upgrading Between 1998 And 2008, Jan Ženka, Petr Pavlinek

Geography and Geology Faculty Publications

n this article, we draw on the global production networks (GPNs) and global value chains perspectives to examine the regional development effects of economic upgrading in the Czech automotive industry between 1998 and 2008. We investigate how the position of Czech-based automotive firms in GPNs affects the intensity of upgrading and the amount of value captured for the benefit of the host regions through wages, corporate taxes revenues and reinvested profits. Based on the statistical analysis of firm-level data aggregated at the micro-regional level, the intensity of economic upgrading and value capture is measured for groups of regions and for …

Essays On The Digital Divide - Explorations Through Global, National And Individual Lenses, Maria Skaletsky

2013

The Digital Divide has emerged as an important research and policy issue during the past thirty years. The divide exists at different levels, such as global, regional and individual levels. While extensive research already exists on this subject, the complexity of the issue presents opportunities for further research. In particular, there is ample scope for significantly contributing to the literature by leveraging recent analytics techniques, all the more since most of the literature on the Digital Divide relies on descriptive methods or on simple or multiple regression models. Therefore, the motivation for this study is two-fold. First, the Digital Divide …

Tabaqueras On The Shop Floor : Gendered Labor Process And Production Model Transformations In Cigar Factories In Santiago, Dominican Republic, 1940-2011, Ingrid Mercedes Bircann-Barkey

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

This dissertation uncovers the different gendered labor processes that have shaped the cigar women workers or tabaqueras' work experiences on the cigar shop floor or galera since the 1940s. I argue that contradictory processes of exclusion and inclusion in the urban-rural nexus of the tobacco/cigar economy may be based on gendered notions of skills. This gendered notion may be traced to how changes in state policy, international markets, and financial systems as well as changes in premium cigar production models, have transformed the galera's social organization and labor process.

Essays On Rethinking African Development: Contextual And Methodological Advances, Olumayokun Soremekun

2013

This research study sets out to provide analytical answers to the questions of African development and inequality. We examine various aspects of development from the issue of inequality among African countries to unravelling the synergies among the MDG goals and finally to investigating the progress if any that African countries have made towards attaining the MDG goals.

This research is broken down into three main studies: measuring inequality of opportunity, examining the synergies between the Millennium development goals at a particular point in time and lastly assessing the progress that has been made towards attaining the MDG goals in Africa. …

Corporate Social Responsibility As Corporate Soft Law: Mainstreaming Ethical And Responsible Conduct In Corporate Governance, Eugene K. B. Tan

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

This article explores corporate social responsibility ("CSR') as a viable mode of regulation and governance in the corporate arena. A starting premise is that good corporate governance must move resolutely beyond a compliance mindset to one which recognises that effective corporate governance must have an ethical backbone in which the dimensions of responsibility, transparency, and accountability are evident, recognised and supported. Regulatory endeavours and corporate governance reforms in the past decade have increasingly intersected with mainstream CSR motivations. CSR is increasingly inducted and mainstreamed into corporate governance thinking, characterised by the dual perspective ofrisk management and values-driven/principled governance and operations. …

Negotiating Successfully In Asia, Michael Benoliel

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Cross-cultural negotiations are complex, challenging, and difficult to navigate because much of the Asian culture is unstated, implicit, and internalized in subtle behavioral patterns. It is like an iceberg; more is invisible and less is visible. To understand how the Asian negotiation values and practices are different from those in the West, I describe briefly the Asian cultural roots, highlight the major dimensions that differentiate cultures, explore the factors that influence the Asian negotiation processes and outcomes, and provide a list of practical suggestions for negotiating successful deals with Asian negotiators.

Review On The State Of Sustainability Reporting In Singapore, Soo Chiat Hwang, Teng Aun Khoo, Dan Chi Wong

Research Collection School Of Accountancy

The trend of sustainability reports has increased inexorably as the clamor by various stakeholders including NGOs have been growing louder and louder. Some countries have even made sustainability reporting mandatory. In Singapore only a small percentage of listed companies are voluntary providing sustainability reporting but this number is set to increase in line with the world trend. As sustainability reporting in Singapore will continue to grow this study attempts to address the perceptions of the importance and usefulness of sustainability reporting, the reporting framework and the training needs of both users and preparers to provide such reports. The results from …

The Aftermarket Performance Of Initial Public Offerings, Chiyachantana N. Chiraphol, Theerawat Pinta, Nareerat Taechapiroontong, Anantaporn Wongkham

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

This paper examines the aftermarket performance of initial public offerings (IPOs) and explores the underpricing of IPOs in an Asian emerging equity market using a comprehensive sample of IPOs. Our findings suggest that there exist a significant underpricing. Specifically, new issues have been offered at an average market-adjusted discount of about 20%. The magnitude of IPO underpricing is significantly larger for large firms, older firms and firms with small offering size.

Collectivistic Norms And International Entrepreneurship: A Tale Of Two Clans, The Wenzhounese From China And The Chettiars From India, Wee Liang Tan

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

There is a need in the field of international entrepreneurship for ideas and theory developed from within the SME field and less reliance on that developed in the field of international business and large firms. This paper seeks to address this gap but examining the two groups of international entrepreneurs from China and India: the Wenzhou people and the Chettiars. These two groups began internationalising in the past before globalisation became a norm in the colonial days and before when ships sailed along trade winds. It seeks to draw lessons from these two groups: their collectivistic norms and practices.

International Conventions And The Failure Of A Transnational Approach To Controlling Asian Crime Business, Mark Findlay, Nafis Hanif

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

The paper argues that without a realistic understanding of criminal enterprise located against the commercial forces shaping contemporary Asian market contexts, then domestic, bi-lateral, regional and international control initiatives are not only likely to fail in their regulatory objectives, but the premises on which they are constructed may heighten the market conditions for crime business profitability.The international convention-based approach to regulating transnational and organized crime is the framework from which a critique of non-market centred law enforcement control concentrations is developed. This critique reveals the transposition of flawed normative control considerations from domestic to supra-national control contexts, and shows how …

Critique Of Microcredit As A Development Model, Grace Levin

Pursuit - The Journal of Undergraduate Research at The University of Tennessee

The field of microcredit (otherwise known as microfinance, microlending, or microcapital) has expanded rapidly since the 1980s as an economic means of lifting people out of poverty. Generally, microcredit has been accepted as an effective method for empowering both individuals and communities. In recent years, however, critics have brought to light some of the problems associated with microlending, such as the complex socioeconomic factors that can cause loan programs to fail. These problems stem from the basic tenet of microfinance: the need for lending programs to be managed locally in order to understand the needs of a community and assess …

Fuelling The Asian Growth Engine: Talent Challenges, Strategies And Trends, Mario Ferraro, Catherine Mudford, Karina Kuok, Saumya Sindhwani, Rebecca Siow

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

The emerging economies of Asia are increasingly playing a critical role in the global arena, even as there is continuing turmoil and uncertainty in other parts of the world due to economic, financial and political upheavals. While Asian economies are undoubtedly impacted by global headwinds, most of them have been buffered by their sound economic and policy fundamentals, healthy domestic demand and continued inflow of Foreign Direct Investment (FDI). Meanwhile, Asia is undergoing its own transformation: many countries in Asia are experiencing greater economic prosperity and rising affluence, translating into higher demand for goods and services. As businesses flock to …

Customer Satisfaction Index Of Singapore 2012: Q3 Results, 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. This is the sixth year of measurement.

Can Us Economic Variables Predict Chinese Stock Market?, Jeremy Goh, Fuwei Jiang, Jun Tu, Yuchen Wang

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

In the last few decades, we observed a significant increase in global economic activities and these activities may have an impact on both China's economy and stock market. Given the potential impact, we empirically examine whether US economic variables are leading indicators of the Chinese stock market. Prior to China joining the World Trade Organization (WTO) in the end of 2001, we find no statistical relationship between US economic variables and the Chinese stock market returns. However, we find US economic variables have statistically significant predictive power for periods after China's admission into the WTO. In addition, we show that …

Performance Sensitivity Of Executive Pay: The Role Of Foreign Investors And Affiliated Directors In Japan, Asli M. Colpan, Toru Yoshikawa

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

This study investigates the effects of corporate governance factors on the firm performance and executive compensation linkage. Specifically, we examine how domestic corporate-appointed directors, bank-appointed directors and foreign ownership moderate the relationship between firm profitability, sales growth, and executive bonus pay in Japanese firms. Using a sample of the largest Japanese manufacturing companies from 1997 to 2007, we find that corporate-appointed directors positively moderate the relationship between firm growth and bonus pay, while foreign shareholders exhibit a positive moderating effect on the relationship between firm profitability and bonus pay. Bank-appointed directors are straddled between their profitability orientation and relational role: …

Innovating In The Periphery: The Impact Of Local And Foreign Inventor Mobility On The Value Of Indian Patents, Tufool Alnuaimi, Tore Opsahl, Gerard George

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

We examine the impact of local and foreign labor mobility in India by modeling one regional and one global network, each of which captures the inter-organizational mobility of inventors. Our analysis of the regional network shows that, within India, the productivity of inventors does not improve when they move from foreign to Indian organizations. In the global network, we find that Indian organizations remain located in the periphery as a result of employing a small number of inventors from foreign organizations. However, in the instances when inventors are hired from foreign organizations, they are able to produce patents with a …

Government Documents On Rare Earth Minerals, Bert Chapman

Libraries Faculty and Staff Presentations

Rare earth minerals contain unique chemical and physical properties such as lanthanum, are found in small concentrations, need extensive precise processes to separate, and are critical components of modern technologies such as laser guidance systems, personal electronics such as Blackberries, and satellites. The U.S. has some rare earth resources, but is heavily dependent on access to them from from Afghanistan, Bolivia, and China. Losing access to these resources would have significant economic, military, and political implications. This presentation will highlight government information resources on rare earth minerals from agencies such as the Department of Energy (DOE), Department of Defense (DOD), …

Engaging Students In Higher Education Through Mobile Learning: Lessons Learnt In A Chinese Entrepreneurship Course, Thomas Menkhoff, Magnus Lars Bengsston

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

This evaluative-exploratory case study reports pedagogical experiences with using mobiles phones, wikis, and other mobile learning approaches such as podcasts and walking tours as educational tools in the context of an undergraduate course on Chinese Entrepreneurship and Asian Business Networks taught at a university in Singapore. Conceptualized as mobile learning, the paper argues that information and communication technologies (ICT) devices used by Gen Y students as part of their everyday life such as hand phones in combination with social media platforms such as course wikis and other proven pedagogical methods such as mini lectures, field visits, and walking tours can …

The Political Economy Of Contract Farming In China's Agrarian Transition, Qian Forrest Zhang

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

How does rural China’s political economy determine the motivations and constraints that drive small farmers and agribusiness companies into contract farming and shape its practice and impact? This paper identifies three distinctive features of contract farming in China—varied impact on rural inequality, unstable contractual relations, and lack of competitiveness with other alternatives—and proposes tentative explanations with three features in rural China’s political economy: strong collective institutions, active state support for agriculture, and strong domestic markets. The recent turn in China’s agrarian transition toward vertical integration of agriculture with industries is, however, undermining these conditions and may move China toward more …

Customer Satisfaction Index Of Singapore 2012: Q2 Results, 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. This is the sixth year of measurement.