International and Area Studies Commons^™

Providing Childcare, Christine Ho, Sunha Myong

Research Collection School Of Economics

Women’s economic empowerment has been hailed as one of the most remarkable revolutions in the past 50 years. Yet, women still face the lion’s share of the burden of childcare despite major progress in their education and earnings capacity. This is particularly salient in many Asian countries. This chapter proposes a synthesis of the state of knowledge on childcare and discusses policy-relevant issues applicable to the Singapore context. Selected policies are documented and lessons from the international landscape are discussed. Raising children incurs both direct costs in the form of childcare and opportunity costs in the form of career costs. …

Up Close And Personal With Mr Sundar Selvam: Hitting Zero Targets, Sundar Selvam

Oral History Collection

He might not be one you would have come across on campus. And not one you might read much about in SMU news or in the limelight for its achievements, preferring to remain in the background. But look around the SMU campus and you will see the fruits of his work and that of his team. Meet Sundar, SMU’s Vice-President for Campus Infrastructure and Services. Since January 2015, he has been at the forefront of driving SMU’s own sustainability journey which has resulted in several “firsts”. This interview was published in the August edition of SMU CIRCLE.

Celebrating A Milestone: 20th Anniversary Achievement Highlights [School Of Accountancy], Singapore Management University

SMU Corporate Reports

The book “Celebrating a Milestone 20^th Anniversary Achievement Highlights” was published in August 2021 to commemorate SoA’s 20^th Anniversary as well as the 15^th Anniversary of the Master of Professional Accounting Programme. The book documents the achievements and key milestones in SoA’s history.

Growth And Resilience During Covid-19: Research On The Impact Of The Pandemic On Older Adults In Singapore, Centre For Research On Successful Ageing

ROSA Research Briefs

It has been a year since the Centre for Research on Successful Ageing (ROSA) was established in place of the Centre for Research on the Economics of Ageing (CREA). While it was a year full of challenges (least of all the COVID-19 pandemic), the team at ROSA adapted and worked hard to overcome these challenges, and we are grateful for the opportunity to share this annual report that presents a snapshot into the centre’s work to better understand the ‘ageing Singaporean’. Much of the work that has been done in the first year has been focused on establishing a good …

To Stay Or Not To Stay? A Clash Of Arbitration And Insolvency Regimes, Darius Chan, Sidharrth B Rajagopal

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

In the wake of the global Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, a rise in creditorinitiated winding-up proceedings is likely to be impending in coming years (See e.g., RCMA Asia Pte. Ltd. v. Sun Electric Power Pte. Ltd. [2020] SGHC 205). At the same time, geopolitical developments, such as the scale and ambition of Belt & Road Initiative projects, have raised questions over the issue of debt sustainability. Given the prevalence of arbitration clauses in modern international commercial and project agreements, the interplay and relationship between insolvency and dispute resolution, and especially arbitration, requires careful attention. While the intersections between the …

Public Cleanliness Satisfaction Survey 2021, Paulin Straughan, Mathews Mathew

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

The Singapore Management University undertook the fourth wave of the Public Cleanliness Satisfaction Survey (PCSS) with 2,007 Singapore resident respondents providing responses to the survey from February 2021 to May 2021, amidst the COVID-19 pandemic.

The 2021 wave of the PCSS continued to reflect the overall satisfaction with public cleanliness in Singapore, similar to the last PCSS in 2019. Majority of survey respondents (92%) were satisfied with the cleanliness of public spaces that they had recently visited, a 1% decrease from the findings in 2019.

There was a substantial drop in satisfaction with the cleanliness of food outlets, with a …

A Reconsideration Of Equal Protection And Executive Action In Singapore, Wei Yao, Kenny Chng

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

In Syed Suhail bin Syed Zin v Attorney-General, the Singapore Court of Appeal reconsidered how Article 12(1), the equal protection provision in Singapore’s Constitution, should apply to executive actions. Departing from the established ‘deliberate and arbitrary’ test, the Court of Appeal proposed to first consider whether the relevant persons were ‘equally situated’ and subject to differential treatment. If so, this treatment had to be justified by legitimate reasons. This note argues that while the rejection of the ‘deliberate and arbitrary’ test ought to be welcomed, this approach risks returning to an emphasis on classes in equal protection analysis – an …

Tackling The Critical Question Of Schooling’S Ns Deferment After His Poor Tokyo Olympics Performance, Tan K. B. Eugene

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

In a commentary, SMU Associate Professor of Law Eugene Tan, who was team manager of Singapore’s 2004 Athens Olympics national swim team, discussed the critical question of Singapore’s sporting icon Joseph Schooling’s National Service (NS) deferment after his subpar performance at the Tokyo Olympics. Joseph has been on long-term NS deferment since 2014. Assoc Prof Tan noted that what is at stake is the integrity of long-term deferment, and the precedent-setting decision calculus which would come under intense scrutiny.

Can Employers Justify Paying Workers Who Return To The Office More Than Those Who Work From Home?, Jared Nai

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Employers have strong grounds to do so but should avoid differentiating for wrong reasons like presenteeism, Singapore Management University’s Jared Nai says.

Special Report On Covid-19 Vaccination Trends Among Older Adults In Singapore, Micah Tan, Paulin T. Straughan, Wensi Lim, Grace Cheong

ROSA Research Briefs

This report examines trends in vaccination among older adults in Singapore to better understand why segments of older adults continue to resist vaccination against COVID-19. We find that individuals who were most likely to still be waiting to vaccinate or to not want to be vaccinated as of June 2021; are relatively older (aged 71-75), are of lower socioeconomic status (lower education levels and living in 1-3 room HDB flats), were the least likely to rely on Newspapers and Government Sources as sources of information for COVID-19 related news in November 2020, were least trusting of all sources of information, …

The Taxation Of Cryptocurrency Gains, Vincent Ooi

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

Taking Singapore as an example, this article lays out a series of tests for determining whether gains arising from the disposal of cryptocurrencies are trade or business income, “all other income” or capital gains. It also considers the possibility of a presumption that individuals engaging in such transactions are gambling.

One Year On Since Ge2020: Thinking Afresh For The Post-Covid Era, Tan K. B. Eugene

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

In this commentary, the author opined that even as political competition in Singapore sharpens, a deeper understanding and broader consensus must develop on critical issues. He believes that remaking Singapore to be a fairer, more just, and compassionate society in a post-Covid world is a key responsibility for Parliament.

The Unmeritorious ‘Legality’/‘Merits’ Distinction In Singapore Administrative Law, Benjamin Joshua Ong

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

The Singapore courts often state that judicial review of executive decision-making ought only to involve an inquiry into the ‘legality’ of a decision or the ‘decision-making process’, and not the ‘decision itself’ or its ‘merits’ – let us call this the ‘Distinction’. This paper argues that the Distinction should be expunged from Singapore law. The Distinction has its roots in English case law which aimed to prevent the courts from arbitrarily substituting their decision for the executive’s by reason of mere disagreement. But Singapore case law has gone further and treated the Distinction as a general principle applicable to all …

One Year On Since Ge2020: Thinking Afresh For The Post-Covid Era, Tan K. B. Eugene

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

In a commentary, SMU Associate Professor of Law Eugene Tan opined that even as political competition in Singapore sharpens, a deeper understanding and broader consensus must develop on critical issues. He believes that remaking Singapore to be a fairer, more just, and compassionate society in a post-Covid world is a key responsibility for Parliament.

Tracetogether And Safeentry Were Never Foolproof In Averting Recent Fishery Port And Ktv Clusters, Mark Findlay

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

Don’t blame the technology. COVID-19 control technology depends on the cooperation of people to be fully effective, says SMU Professor Mark Findlay. Singapore has one of the best subscribed COVID-19 tracing, tracking and safe entry apps worldwide. Then how is it that we are back to Phase 2 (Heightened Alert)? It would be tempting but wrong to blame the technology as being insufficiently intrusive or robust. A look at the recent outbreak suggests we should avoid an over-reliance on tech solutions when incompatible human behaviours are at work.

Up Close And Personal With Hugh Edmiston: Engineering Smu Towards Growth And Excellence, Hugh Edmiston

Oral History Collection

So what can a chartered engineer from the United Kingdom tell us about our aspirations to contribute to growth in Asia, as a young university in Singapore? As I found out…plenty. And then some. Meet SMU Senior Vice-President (Administration) Hugh Edmiston, who joined us just as COVID-19 hit our shores (“Little did I know there was a global pandemic on the horizon when I moved!”); and read on to learn more about his multiple roles and responsibilities in SMU as he drives our growth in Asia. This interview was published in the June 2021 edition of SMU CIRCLE.

Customer Satisfaction Index Of Singapore 2021: Q1 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. 2021 marks the 15th year of measurement for the CSISG national study.

The Digital Void Of Voluntourism: Here, There And New Currencies Of Care, Orlando Woods, Siew Ying Shee

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

This paper explores some of the ways in which “care” is being transformed in response to the mediatory role of digital technologies. Digital mediation has caused care to become an increasingly cross-border practice, and a more expansive construct, that destabilises the assumption of presence (“here”) and absence (“there”). Indeed, as the physical and digital merge into one integrated way of being in the world, they enable connectivity across geographical distance, but so too can they create emotional distance within situations of geographical proximity. These outcomes reflect the “digital void” within which caregivers, and society more generally, are implicated. Digital voids …

How To Talk About Racism, Benjamin Joshua Ong

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

In a commentary, SMU Assistant Professor of Law Benjamin Joshua Ong wrote that recent debates about race and race relations have reminded him that using a single word to describe something can lead to quibbles over the precise definition, while discussion of the thing itself is neglected. He believes that in addressing important questions related to race, we should not reduce the potentially rich discussion to a simplistic argument over whether the incidents are "racist" or not, but should keep an open mind when having difficult conversations.

Why Do Robots Have Smiley Faces?, Mark Findlay

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

The author discussed why engineers and designers provide machines with the semblance of friendliness, and why it takes more than that for humans to trust AI. The ground-breaking AI in community research and policy initiative by CAIDG, supported by the National Research Foundation Singapore under its Emerging Areas Research Projects Funding Initiative, seeks to understand how and why trust can be established when humans and machines come together.

(Un)Tethered Masculinities, (Mis)Placed Modernities: Queering Futurity In Contemporary Singapore, Orlando Woods

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

This paper considers how socio-political prescriptions can bring about the queering of futurity in Singapore. In Singapore, state-sponsored narratives of progress view futurity in terms that are bound to place, and reproduced through the heteronormative family unit. These factors have caused constructions of masculinity to be tethered to the family, and placed within public housing. Recently, this narrative has become an increasingly inflexible and marginalizing construct that can cause straight males to be queered by their prescribed futures. In contrast, gay males are more likely to be untethered from their families, and thus occupy “unplaced” positions in Singapore’s social structure.

The Influence Of Tertiary Education Disciplines On Self-Construals And Conflict Management Tendencies, Sheila Xi Rui Wee, Wan Yee Choo, Chi-Ying Cheng

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

While cultural difference on self-construal are well-documented, how acculturation to a new cultural environment could change an individual’s self-construal remains under-explored. In this research, how tertiary education disciplines could be associated with the endorsement of self-construals which, in turn, affect students’ conflict management tendencies were explored. Study 1 revealed that across the United States and Singapore, college students from business and social science disciplines exhibited the trend of endorsing more independent and interdependent self-construal respectively, regardless of the different dominant self-construals in the two countries. Study 2 explored how tertiary education disciplines is associated with individuals’ conflict management tendencies via …

Circuits Broken, Remade, And Newly Forged: Tracing Southeast Asia's Foreign Relations After The Vietnam War, Wen-Qing Ngoei

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

This article (2021) in Diplomatic History's pandemic feature examines how the principles and consequences of Singapore's "circuit breaker" policy offers a conceptual framework for studying the history of Southeast Asia's foreign relations in the 1970s to 1990s. With this approach, the essay considers how a study of Southeast Asia's culture-makers (artists, writers, dramatists), their works and transnational circuits, may open a productive inquiry into a diverse array of regionalisms that compete and complement ASEAN.

High-Frequency Internet Survey Of A Probability Sample Of Older Singaporeans: The Singapore Life Panel, Rhema Vaithianathan, Bryce Hool, Michael D. Hurd, Susann Rohwedder

Research Collection School Of Economics

Facing a rapidly ageing population, Singapore is presented with urgent policy challenges. Yet there is very little data on the economic, health and family circumstances of older Singaporeans. In response, the Centre for Research on the Economics of Ageing (CREA) at Singapore Management University has been collecting monthly data on a panel of Singaporeans aged between 50 and 70 years. We detail the methodology by which the Singapore Life Panel® (SLP) was constructed using a population-representative sampling frame from the Singapore Department of Statistics. Contact was made with 25,000 households through postal, phone and in-person canvassing. More than 15,200 respondents …

Studying Successful Ageing: A Showcase Of The Singapore Life Panel, Jee Yuen Yew, Jia Wei Gwee, Anirudh Srivathsan

ROSA Research Briefs

In this special issue of the ROSA Research Brief Series, we showcase two aspects of the work being done at the Centre for Research on Successful Ageing (ROSA). Firstly, we showcase the capabilities of the Singapore Life Panel (SLP) and the data that the SLP is able to obtain and measure on a monthly basis. Secondly, we showcase the amazing work of the SGUnited Traineeship Programme’s Research Assistants at ROSA who have proven themselves to be incredible assets in helping further ROSA’s aims of enabling successful ageing in Singapore. ROSA aims to measure well-being among older adults holistically in order …

Brand Singapore, Buck Song Koh

Asian Management Insights

As the world gets a better grip on the Covid-19 pandemic, one outcome is becoming clear: Place branding— in particular, nation branding—is becoming more important than ever before.

The Impact Of Kiasu Mindset On Students’ Achievement Goal Orientations And Learning Strategies In Singapore, Haelim Choi

Dissertations and Theses Collection (Open Access)

Kiasuism, defined as the fear of losing out, has been a well-known and widespread phenomenon in Singapore. Despite the long history of Kiasuism in Singaporeans, there has been a dearth of research in this topic. The current research investigated the influence of the Kiasu mindset on Singaporean students’ achievement goal orientation and learning strategy, and also explored the impact of social comparison as a moderator. Study 1 showed initial evidence of a positive relationship between Kiasu mindset and performance goal orientations (i.e., approach and avoidance). Study 2 replicated this finding and further revealed a positive association of Kiasu mindset with …

Foreign Judgments: The Limits Of Transnational Issue Estoppel, Reciprocity, And Transnational Comity, Tiong Min Yeo

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

In Merck Sharp & Dohme Corp v Merck KGaA [2021] SGCA 14, a full bench of the Singapore Court of Appeal addressed the limits of transnational issue estoppel in Singapore law, and flagged possible fundamental changes to the common law on the recognition and enforcement of foreign judgments in Singapore. The litigation involves multiple parties spread over different jurisdictions. The specific facts involved in the appeal are fairly straightforward, centring on what has been decided in a judgment from the English court, and whether it could be used to raise issue estoppel on the interpretation of a particular term of …

Academic Leadership Qualities Towards Innovation Endeavours In An Organisation: A Comparative Study Of Malaysia And Singapore Perceptions, Cheng Sim Quah, Sandra Phek Lin Sim, Wee Liang Tan

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

This study employed mixed methods to explore the comparison between Malaysia and Singapore in terms of the contribution of leadership qualities and impacts towards innovation endeavours. Besides that, it also examined the significant relationship between leadership qualities and innovation endeavours in both countries. Findings revealed that operational focus and quality measurement qualities make the strongest unique contribution to explaining the variance, emphasising the importance of innovation. Findings also showed that innovation endeavours have promising impacts on Malaysia and Singapore university students towards enhancing, inspiring and motivating their learning, besides providing them a sense of self-improvement, self-motivation, self-satisfaction, self-efficiency and a …

Honour Singapore’S National Pledge By Calling Out Racism, Siow-Heng Ong

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Our National Pledge, taken daily in school and every National Day, is a passionate vow against intolerance of race, language or religion, in pursuit of the common good. It is a covenant to keep, individually and communally. It is a reminder that chauvinistic behaviour is forbidden. To support our avowed aspiration, we have legal and social protocols such as those against sedition.