Intuitively, the culture value of collectivism (rather than individualism) should be beneficial for team cooperation and, as a result, team successes. This is because collectivists prioritise collective interests over self-interests (Triandis, 1989). Indeed, research suggests that collectivism is one of the strongest predictors of team successes (Dierdorff, Bell, & Belohlav, 2011). In this research, I suggest that collectivism impairs rather than benefits team cooperation in hyper-speed decision contexts. The core characteristic of hyper-speed decision contexts is that crucial decisions which determine the successes or failures of teams are made instantaneously (e.g., tenths of a second).

A preliminary archival analysis of 99 years’ of data across 84 nations in 3 major team sports (football, volleyball, and basketball) found that higher levels of individualism at the national level are positively associated with performance in team sports. This finding is robust in both female and male sports, and after controlling multiple country-level indicators. This project will likely make a significant impact in the areas of cross-cultural management, cultural psychology, and sports psychology.

Due to their authority and strategic position at work, leaders are considered important sources of influence to employees’ work-life and their performance (Farh, Lanaj, & Ilies, 2017). Accordingly, over the past several decades, scholars have investigated the role of leadership and the effects of leaders’ behaviours, particularly on follower’s affective well-being, attitudes, motivation, and performance-related outcomes. Leaders’ emotions play important roles in the quality of leadership as well as followers’ wellbeing and performance (Humphrey, Pollack, & Hawver, 2008). Leaders use emotion to inspire their followers, show appropriate response in a given situation, or respond followers’ work-related outcomes (e.g., feedback; Bass, 1990; Gardner, Fischer, & Hunt, 2009; Lewis, 2000). Thus, previous research examined the effects of leaders’ emotion on their leadership behaviours (Barnes, Guarana, Nauman, & Kong, 2016), followers’ affective well-being (Bono & Ilies, 2006; Sy, Cote, & Saavedra, 2005) as well as performance (Damen, Van Knippenberg, & Van Knippenberg, 2008; Van Kleef et al., 2009).

Despite enriched findings on the effects of leaders’ emotion, we have less knowledge about why and how leaders’ emotion matters in the organisation. Therefore, I contend that leaders’ emotional experiences and displays are essential determinants of their leadership quality, as well as their followers’ work-related outcomes. The purpose of this paper is to examine the diverse forms of leaders’ emotional experiences and their impacts on their management styles, as well as followers.

To examine our hypotheses, I conduct a series of dyadic (leader-member) experienced sampling methods (ESM) to collect the data for five consecutive working days.

Research on the work-home interface has provided insightful knowledge on the consequences work-family conflict and work-family enrichment that has served as the basis for the development of a wide range of family-focused work policies and practices that have been adopted in many organisations. However, research has largely ignored the work-home interface of employees who are single and childless. This is an unfortunate omission, because there is a worldwide increase in one-person households. Although the Singaporean government stresses the importance of family as a cornerstone of Singapore society, families here are also getting smaller and an increasing number of Singapore residents stay single and childless. To illustrate, the proportion of single and childless Singaporeans in their mid and late twenties rose from 51.7 per cent in 2000 to 71.7 per cent in 2017. Given the prevalence and (mainly negative) consequences of work-home interference and the change of family structures and living arrangements, it is important to explore the role of family structure in the work-home interface. The current study aims to develop and test a theoretical model that explores processes that may explain differences in the home-work interface that affects single and childless and married employees (with or without children).

Intertemporal choices represent one of the most common and fundamental trade-offs in consumer decision-making. How do intertemporal choices for another person differ from similar choices for oneself? To examine this question, the present research introduces the first integrative self-other decision model and experimentally tests five model-derived hypotheses. This model distinguishes between the psychological processes associated with vicarious versus reactive utility and highlights the pivotal role of anticipated affective reaction in interpersonal decision-making. Seven experiments and two additional replications reveal consistent results supporting model predictions. The results show that an intertemporal choice for a specified other person tends to reveal more impatience than an otherwise identical choice for oneself, contrary to what has previously been assumed, predicted, and reported in studies using abstract and unspecified others as recipients. This “giver’s impatience” is moderated by decision characteristics, including the anticipated timing of the recipient’s affective reaction, the affective value of the choice options, and decision responsibility. This research provides critical new insights and opens new avenues for research into intertemporal choices and interpersonal decision-making.

The future work selves is a promising psychological resource for individuals. Embodying individuals’ hopes and aspirations with respect to their future careers, the future work selves has motivational value for employees, especially when they experience adverse work events. In this study, I examine the moderating effect of salient future work selves on job insecurity and several work-related attitudes and behaviours among mid-career individuals.

Secrecy is omnipresent in social action, and happens frequently at workplace. This research proposes a reactive model of perceiving leader’s secrecy that depicts when and how perceived leader’s secrecy influences his/her image and follower’s subsequent leader-directed behaviours (leader-directed helping behaviour and leader-directed voice behaviour). We aim to make at least three contributions to the existing literature. First, we introduce a novel angle to understand and explore the effect of secrecy by integrating relational perspectives. Secrecy, as a phenomenon rooted in social interactions, not only influence secret keeper’s psychological and physiological states, but also secret perceiver’s, and eventually re-define and reconstruct their relationship. Second, we contribute to impression management literature by showing the violation of leader’s desirable image and the behavioural consequences induced by perceived secrecy. Finally, we contribute to social identity theory by exploring the moderating effect of leader member exchange social comparison, as well as investigating the contingent effect of group membership on perceived leader secrecy and follower behaviours.

Funded by a grant from the Ng Teng Fong Charitable Foundation, this is a follow-on from a pilot project funded by the NUS Business School HSS Seed Fund. This 2-year project commenced in July 2018 and will be carried out in collaboration with Tsinghua University. Recent public policy focus on university-industry collaboration has created a tension between the core university mission of university research and the “third mission” of contributing economic value and societal impact. This study frames the debate in the context of Stokes’ quadrant model, which postulates two motivations for scientific research: (a) furthering fundamental scientific understanding, and (b) addressing user problems. Using data on NUS, Tsinghua and Stanford University faculty members, the project examines the links between scientific motivation of individual researchers and the technology commercialization outcomes achieved. Comparative analysis between NUS and Tsinghua will examine the role of heterogeneous institutional structures. A proposed focal research area is talent mobility as a source of academic entrepreneurship, and how research motivation influences this relationship.

In this project, I explore the application of labour market information (e.g., financial analyst turnover, corporate accounts’ career paths, the revolving door practice of regulator, etc.) in topics related to financial accounting. For example, I use an innovative dataset of lower-level employee profiles from a large professional social network to examine the turnover of lower-level accounting employees in financial misconduct. Specifically, I examine two research questions: (1) whether accounting employees proactively leave before financial misconduct is revealed; (2) whether accounting employees who do not proactively leave are punished in the labour market after financial misconduct is revealed. In another working paper, my co-author and I assemble a comprehensive dataset of individual characteristics (e.g., SEC-affiliation, educational background, gender) of lawyers based on LinkedIn and other public sources. We examine the impact of SEC-affiliated lawyers on the SEC comment letter process and shed light on the concern that former SEC employees may continue to influence the agency even after they leave.

Shadow banking, or credit intermediation outside the formal banking system, has continued to evolve since the 2007–09 Global Financial Crisis. The shadow banking sector in China has been growing by more than 20% per year from 2007 to 2017. Due to data limitations, not much is known about the cause of this rapid growth or the potential impact it has on financial and economic stability. This study aims at filling this gap in the literature by examining micro-level data compiled from primary sources. I identify shadow banking activities of both regulated banks and non-financial firms in this project and plan to study their performances and risks. With the Chinese economy is at the forefront of some of the crucial developments in this area, this study can also shed light on the economics of shadow banking.

A central question in human development and policy design is how environmental factors and interventions at different stages shape individuals’ human capital. This project investigates the long-run effect of adolescent environment on non-cognitive skills. We will use exogenous shocks that influence individuals’ adolescent environment, such as the historical episode of Cultural Revolution in China, where millions of teenagers were forced to leave their urban homes and life to work in the countryside, to establish a causal link between adolescent experience and long-run non-cognitive outcomes, including their core beliefs, preferences, and health outcomes.