Incivility is an interactive event where the target, the instigator, and the situation play a role. Research has not yet examined what actually triggers employees to act in an uncivil manner and how targets and witnesses respond to uncivil behaviour. It has been suggested, though, that targets and witnesses of workplace incivility may react with equal or harsher deviant behaviours toward the instigator or others in their environment and that uncivil incidents at work could ultimately result in a spiral of increasingly deviant and aggressive behaviour. However, because uncivil incidents are relatively mild and characterised by the ambiguous intent to harm the target, targets and witnesses may have difficulty making sense of the situation and how to perceive the uncivil incident. Hence, individuals may differ in their perceptions of and reactions to uncivil incidents, depending on their causal attribution of the instigator’s uncivil behaviours. The current study will examine these issues— what triggers workplace incivility, what are the causal attributions targets and witnesses make for instigators’ uncivil behaviour, and how do they actually respond to it.

This research project aims to collect primary data from Singapore social purpose driven organisations such as social enterprises. Although there are several existing international databases that evaluate the social impact of this type of firms, there is a lack of contextualised framework that takes into account of the local political, social and economic considerations in Singapore. The construction of SPOD will allow the Asia Centre for Social Entrepreneurship and Philanthropy (ACSEP) at NUS Business School to develop relevant training and development programmes for the social purpose organisations. Researchers can also benefit from the SPOD by conducting in-depth analysis on these organisations to contribute to the literature on social entrepreneurship and philanthropy from an Asian country’s perspective.

Sustainability reporting is becoming a most critical area of concern for organisations all across the world. In particular, more and more companies are required disclose information related to sustainability. Singapore Exchange just announced plans in May 2015 to boost the transparency of governance with sustainability reporting on a “comply or explain” basis and thus making sustainability reporting an important feature in the Singapore business landscape of the future. This research aims to investigate the relationship between firm performance and sustainability reporting in Singapore. Specifically, it will generate a broad-based model of awareness, acceptance and adoption of sustainability reporting and the linkages with the key domains of firm performance.

In face of increasing competition from online retailers, traditional retailers have been losing their market share. One of the key disadvantages for traditional retailing, besides higher cost due to rental for shop space, labour for salesforce, etc., is the lack of data availability. Not like an online retailer, who can easily identify which customer is browsing what product and for how long, traditional retailers have very limited visibility in customers’ activities in the store. The absence of such valuable data has been the major obstacle for traditional retailers to better understand and optimise their retailing operations. In this project, I attempt to explore various sensors technologies that may lead to cost-effective ways of collecting data on customers’ activities in retailing outlets, investigate statistical methodologies for calibrating models with such data, and optimise operational decisions such as assortment, inventory, pricing, and product display. The framework closes the loop of data collection, parameter estimation, and model optimisation.

In the wake of financial crisis, the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act (DFA) puts more emphasis on financial system stability and establishes two new regulating agencies to monitor systemic risk. Meanwhile, financial system transparency is advocated by researchers and practitioners and promoted by the banking regulators. However, the underlying assumption that transparency helps improve financial system stability is not warranted. Especially for disclosures from regulators, it is not clear whether such disclosures will improve the financial system stability, and no empirical evidence has been documented. In this project, we investigate the impact of public releases of enforcement actions on the stability of the entire banking system. Specifically, we investigate the impact of the public releases of bank regulators’ enforcement actions against a bank on the entire banking industry, the role of the peer bank’s financial reporting transparency in mitigating or intensifying the effects of public releases of enforcement actions on financial stability, and the cross-sectional variance of impact due to types and qualities of enforcement actions. Our project will contribute toward the debate on transparency in financial industry and have practical implications for financial regulators. Our evidence also provides rational explanations for some actions taken by the regulators in recent years. For example, during the financial crisis in 2008-2009, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) deliberately halted the application of fair value accounting on some financial instruments to prevent further market crash.

Corporate fraud is a worldwide problem, especially in emerging markets (e.g., China and India). If not detected and prevented on a timely basis, corporate fraud can cause significant harm not only to stakeholders of the firms directly linked to the fraud cases but also to non-fraudulent firms that compete with fraudulent firms for investors’ scarce capital or customers. Unfortunately, the detection of fraud is difficult, especially in emerging markets due to weak firm-level corporate governance and country-level investor protection. Even if fraud is detected, it may not be disclosed to the public. Hence, an important research question in academic research is to develop effective methods to detect corporate frauds on a timely basis so that the extent of damages from such fraud cases can be either completely prevented or minimised and an economy’s resource allocation becomes more efficient. The existing literature has employed a variety of fraud detection techniques, ranging from the simple logistic regression model to more advanced models such as the bivariate probit model with partial observability or the SVM (support vector machines) method developed in computer science. The objective of this proposal is to develop new fraud detection methods appropriate for different levels of financial markets (e.g., the US versus China) using new ideas and interdisciplinary methodologies.

College graduates transit from students to organisational members through two major processes— job search and organisational socialisation. In the last year of college life, the most important activity for most students is job seeking. A successful job search leads to an ideal employment opportunity. After obtaining that opportunity, students start their organisational entry process, which is most often been examined as the organisational socialisation process. The current proposal plans to examine both processes with college graduates. Job search is the behavioural process through which individuals look for job. In the job search process, job-seekers undertake a series of activities, such as following leads from newspaper ads, writing resumes, contacting employers, and going through job interviews. The job interview is often considered as a popular recruiting and selection tools in organisations. Whether job-seekers can engage in job search in an effective and timely fashion has important implications for them to obtain their employment. The current proposal plans to examine college graduates’ job search behaviour from the lens of affective experience. The data can enable us to address questions of how job search behaviours change over time, how job search activities and job interviews are related to positive and negative affect, and how these behaviours and affects are related to job search effectiveness. This study will also investigate the combined effect of newcomer’s proactivity and the leader’s support on newcomer’s organisational socialisation outcomes from two perspectives — learning and organisational identification, and in a three months period. According to person-organisation fit literature (specifically, person-supervisor fit [Kristof, 1996; Kristof-Brown, Zimmerman, & Johnson, 2005]), I propose that the more aligned a newcomer’s proactivity and his or her leader’s supports are, the higher the newcomer’s learning and identification developing. At the same time, this study will test asymmetrical incongruence effects when the newcomer’s proactivity is higher than the leader’s support, and vice versa. Finally, the study will test the newcomer’s and the leader’s combined effects on distal organisational attitudes and behaviours— newcomer’s work engagement and organisational commitment at the end of the dynamic process, three months after the newcomer’s entry.

Cultural differences and similarities are examined that affect innovation processes in India, China, and Singapore. China and India are two giant economic powers that are important for the development of the world. All three countries emphasise in their public statements their wish to increase their innovative ability. However, there are differences in innovative abilities between these countries. One potential reason for differences may be cultural. However, cultural differences do not just affect differences in innovation processes. They also may affect in a subtle way specific strategies and ideas to increase innovations, e.g., in R&D teams. Thus, cross-cultural differences are important – however, as far as we know cross-cultural psychological studies have not been done comparing these three countries. We use the GLOBE study as a starting point to develop hypotheses on how cross-cultural differences affect these three countries. The GLOBE study examines nine cultural difference variables and is the newest and methodologically the best developed cross-cultural study (based on more than 17,000 responses from mid-level managers in 61 countries. The study will be an important addition to the burgeoning literature on innovation and contribute greatly to cross-cultural studies. It also fills a gap of studies based in Asia and with contribution to Asian businesses.

Commuting to work is an unavoidable reality for majority of the working population. Research suggested that employees are spending an increasing amount of time commuting to work over the years (Lyons & Chatterjee, 2008). For instance, employees in Canada spend an average of 53.2 minutes a day commuting to work, while employees in London endure the longest average commute of 74.2 minutes a day in the UK (the UK average is 54 minutes). In Singapore, there has been a heightened demand for public transportation amidst the growing population and tighter government regulations on private car ownership. As of 2014, per day train ridership consisted of 2.76 million passengers, and 3.75 million passengers for public buses (Land Transport Authority, 2015). These numbers are set to grow further. Against this context, the current study examines the impact of employees’ commuting experience on their work performance and well-being.

This research will focus on legal barriers to overseas investment imposed on mutual funds across Asian countries, and particularly in Southeast Asia. Mutual funds in the region face restrictions regarding the fraction of their holdings that can be invested in foreign securities. Some of these restrictions can be relatively strict—Indonesian mutual funds are not allowed to hold more than 15% of their holdings in foreign securities. These restrictions limit the ability of local investors to invest in foreign assets, which in turn will limit the investors’ ability to diversify their portfolios and retirement accounts. As these investors are already exposed to the domestic risk through their labour income (as well as government policies), this restriction can prove harmful, particularly for the middle class. The research will examine the costs and benefits of geographical investment restrictions on mutual funds’ investment. We aim to collect data on legal barriers to geographical diversification, and then examine research questions related to (1) the effects of these legal barriers on the performance of local mutual funds, (2) the corresponding effects on the ability of local investors to reduce their risk exposure and attain more optimal portfolios, and (3) the effects on the development of local and regional financial markets.