Research Seminars in 2022

李兆基商業管理學院 Research Seminars in 2022

2022

IIBG Distinguished Professor Research Seminar Series

Predatory Publishing: How can we stop this pernicious practise?

Professor Graham Kendall

Emeritus Professor, The University of Nottingham, UK
Visiting Professor, Hong Kong Metropolitan University

14 Nov 2022

Open Access publishing has enabled predatory publishers to exploit the academic community for financial return. Predatory publishers are undermining the integrity of the scientific archive which, after 350 years, is in real danger of becoming so infected that it can no longer be relied upon.

Paying money to a predatory publisher not only takes money away from funding other research but also harms the CV of those who (perhaps) unwittingly publish in predatory journals.

In this talk, the predatory publishing model will be described, along with some ways of identifying a predatory publisher. We will discuss (the now defunct) Beall's List as a case study and discuss what has since been suggested to address this pernicious practise.

IIBG Distinguished Professor Research Seminar Series

The Strategy of the Multinational Enterprise in the Long, Long Run

Professor Peter Buckley

Professor of International Business, Founder Director of CIBUL
Founder Director of the Business Confucius Institute at the University of Leeds, UK

7 Nov 2022

The challenge that this paper attempts to meet is to develop a coherent and parsimonious framework to analyse how Multinational Enterprises (MNEs) can address International Business (IB) phenomena unfolding over the long run. The model addresses the location and internalization decisions of MNEs and how MNEs' capital expenditure decisions (especially FDI and equivalent decisions) are affected by “new phenomena” in the IB sphere. Risk management alters in the long long run because what was previously extraordinary and required massive adjustments typically becomes routinized. Mainstream internalization theory thinking provides an appropriate framework for this long long run analysis. 

IIBG Distinguished Professor Research Seminar Series

The Role of CEOs' Political Promotion in Firm R&D Investment

Professor Chengqi Wang

Professor of International Business and Innovation, Alliance Manchester Business School, University of Manchester, UK

31 Oct 2022

We advance understanding of how one of CEOs' unique career concerns – political promotion influences research and development (R&D) investment of the firm. Drawing on insights from CEO career concerns theory, we argue that CEOs who have political promotion concerns likely exercise risk aversion and short-termism and therefore reduce R&D investment because the risk and uncertainty involved and a delayed payoff may jeopardize the prospects of their promotion. Analysis based on a sample of Chinese state-owned enterprises (SOEs) shows that the likelihood of a Chinese CEO's political promotion to either government ranks or party secretary position of the firm has a negative effect on R&D investment of the firm. Our framework also clarifies how institutional ownership and industry dynamism neutralize this negative effect. By linking R&D investment with a CEO's political promotion, the study not only advances a new explanation of what determines a firm's R&D investment but also enriches understanding of how CEOs' implicit incentive mechanisms influence their risk-taking behaviour and decision-making.

IIBG Distinguished Professor Research Seminar Series

Revisiting the Role of Intellectual Property Protection in Determining Firms' Innovation Performance

Professor Mario Kafouros

Professor of International Business and Innovation, Alliance Manchester Business School, University of Manchester, UK

24 Oct 2022

This study examines the mechanisms through which IPR protection affects firm innovativeness (the likelihood of introducing new products and services) across a sample of emerging economies. It considers the indirect mechanisms, both mediating and moderating, through which the strength of IPR protection influences firm innovativeness. It therefore explains the role of IPR protection more holistically. It also shows that IPR protection influences the willingness and ability of firms to innovate differently and may in turn lead to very different innovation outcomes. 

The Successful Chinese Family Businesses: An Archaeological and Anthropological Journey into Well-being

Dr. Joey Ng

Assistant Professor, Lee Shau Kee School of Business and Administration, Hong Kong Metropolitan University

14 Sep 2022

'Well-being' is a contemporary term used by people around the globe to address how comfortable their lives are.  The notion is considered significant to business management.  Nevertheless, is well-being significant to Chinese family business?  In response to this inquiry, this book demystifies the notion from a critical lens.  It examines well-being in the context of a Chinese family business in Hong Kong.  

This book consists of an archaeological and anthropological examination.  The first part of the analysis draws from Foucault's (1972) Archaeology of Knowledge to examine the discursive (trans)formation of well-being. The second part is an ethnography that focuses on a Chinese perspective regarding the everydayness of life. In light of recent social movements, this book does not only offers an insight into the core values of Hong Kongers, but also dissects various layers of meaning in these values.  Hopefully, this book can lift up the voices of Hong Kongers who were once marginalised in the discourse of well-being.

Examining the Impact of Summer Setback on the Reading Performance

Dr. Kinnie Chan

Assistant Professor, Lee Shau Kee School of Business and Administration, Hong Kong Metropolitan University

24 Aug 2022

The summer holiday is a long break for students from the regular and formal learning opportunities provided in university. The vast majority of students in Hong Kong learn English as a second language and usually have an English language environment only in those classroom settings. Outside of those English language classes, they are most likely to communicate in Cantonese or Putonghua, their mother tongue in daily lives. Many studies reported that students experienced learning setbacks, especially in the area of reading abilities when they engaged in very limited educational activities during the summer holiday. The aims of this project are to apply the Rasch model to develop a scale of students' English reading achievement. The assessments with linked items will be used to calibrate the reading achievement of university students in Hong Kong. 

Change after Success: The Organizational Transformation Role of Outsider CEOs in Newly Public Ventures' Growth

Dr. Leven Zheng

Assistant Professor, Lee Shau Kee School of Business and Administration, Hong Kong Metropolitan University

10 Aug 2022

This study investigates how outsider CEO succession influences the growth of newly public ventures. As ventures going public successfully, opportunities arise for growth along with challenges due to the evolving into the brand new stage. This study proposes that an outsider succession event can help newly public ventures avoid inertia trap and argues outsider CEOs play an effective organizational transformation role based on awareness-motivation-capability (AMC)  framework in adjusting organizational routines to achieve growth at ventures' newly public stages. Based on a sample of 280 newly public ventures in China, we find that newly public ventures with outsider CEO succession in the initial years of going public have stronger sales growth; more so when these outsider CEOs have prior experience in managing publicly listed firms as executives or board directors. Our additional tests indeed demonstrate that newly public ventures are more likely to make changes, such as executive team changes and new product introductions after outsider CEO successions.

The Impact of Relative Performance on the Product Market Decisions of Firm Managers

Dr. Matthew Sao

Assistant Professor, Lee Shau Kee School of Business and Administration, Hong Kong Metropolitan University

20 Jul 2022

The use of relative performance evaluation (RPE) in designing executive compensation packages has long been promoted by practitioners. The adoption of RPE is mainly motivated by agency theory, which postulates that reducing noise in a contracted performance measurement can increase contract efficiency and reduce excess compensation costs. Since manager compensation is usually contracted on firm performance, RPE, which eliminates the external shocks to firm performance that are uncontrollable by the manager, is a desirable feature that can improve contract efficiency. However, the theory of strategic interaction suggests that RPE has other consequences. Since strategic managerial decisions influence both focal and peer firms, incentives that place weight on peer firms will shape the decisions of the manager. As a result, adopting RPE increases the competition among focal and peer firms.

Despite the theoretical constructs of RPE and its popularity in real-world settings, little evidence on its outcomes has been produced. This research aims to fill this void and document a key aspect of RPE outcomes. Both theoretical constructs of RPE posit that managers' product market decisions are affected by RPE; thus, this research seeks to document this outcome using a recently developed text-based measure of firms' product markets and industry membership which allows us to observe changes in firms' product market decisions after RPE adoption and determine whether RPE promotes learning from peers, herding behaviour, or differentiation from peers.

Examining the Factors Affecting Emotional Exhaustion and Physical Fatigue for Emotional Labour in Shift Work

Dr. Ka Shing Woo

Associate Professor, Lee Shau Kee School of Business and Administration, Hong Kong Metropolitan University

13 Jul 2022

Approximately one fifth of the workforce is shift worker in our 24/7 business world, engaging in different types of work shift schedule such as afternoon shift, evening shift, and night shift that spans across early morning. Shift work can be a double blow to frontline service employees. On the one hand, like their daytime counterparts, they have to act out the necessary display behaviour in order to comply with the display rules (e.g., display of friendliness and suppression of anger) imposed by their employers. The disparity between internal feeling and external display behaviour creates tension and emotional exhaustion to these frontline service employees, leading to work withdrawal. On the other hand, night shift work contradicts to circadian rhythms. The disruption of circadian rhythms creates different sources of stress (e.g., high blood pressure and fatigue) that are deleterious to the employees' mental and physical health. In this study, we try to examine the factors affecting the daily experience of emotional exhaustion (mental) and fatigue (physical) of frontline service employees in shift work. The results of this study will not only contribute to the literature by investigating a significant but yet unexplored topic of emotional labour, but will also provide managerial implications to practitioners on how to improve the well-being of frontline service employees in a city that never sleeps.

The Effects of Foreign Direct Investment in Latin America

Dr. Gonzalo Hernandez Soto

Senior Lecturer, Lee Shau Kee School of Business and Administration, Hong Kong Metropolitan University

29 Jun 2022

In matters of development in Latin America, the dependency theory has always been the dominant one when explaining the differences between the most developed countries and those that are less so. However, since the fall of the Berlin Wall onwards, the traditional theory of dependency, by which differences in the development of the Latin American continent were understood as the result of a process of unequal international trade agreements, has given way to analysis of other determining factors such as foreign investment from third countries in foreign countries. China is today one of the main investor countries in this matter. It is the objective of this work to analyze the implications of Chinese investment in the Latin American continent.

The Impact of Climate Risk in Traditional and ESG Mutual Funds Holding: An International Perspective

Dr. Leah Li

Assistant Professor, Lee Shau Kee School of Business and Administration, Hong Kong Metropolitan University

8 Jun 2022

In this seminar, we compare the local and international funds facing increasing country-level climate risk. We have divided the studied funds into local and nonlocal funds. The results indicate that the negative relation between climate risk and funds' shareholding is mainly driven by local fund managers, consistent with our hypothesis that local managers may have more information about climate risk firms. We have also split the funds into ESG and non-ESG funds. We find that the mentioned relation is only statistically significant when using the non-ESG-oriented sample. We find a positive but insignificant relation between climate risk and shareholding when using the ESG fund sample.

 

Acknowledgement: The work described in this presentation is fully supported by the School Research Grant of the Hong Kong Metropolitan University (R2076).

Examining Distinctions and Relationships between Creating Shared Value (CSV) and Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) in Eight Asia-based Firms

Dr. Hamid Khurshid

Assistant Professor, Lee Shau Kee School of Business and Administration, Hong Kong Metropolitan University

1 Jun 2022

The notion of creating shared value (CSV) has gained popularity over the last decade, and some MNCs have espoused that CSV has entered the heart of their corporate practices. Notwithstanding this, there has been criticism from business scholars about the lack of a standard, universal definition. The purpose of the current study was to develop a working definition of CSV by identifying espoused and practical distinctions between CSV and various forms of CSR, and any possible interrelationships between them. We conducted 26 semi-structured interviews with managers and stakeholder representatives of five multinational corporations (MNCs) and three small and medium enterprises (SMEs), all headquartered or rooted in Asia. These firms claim to have engaged both in CSV and corporate social responsibility (CSR) practices. We compared and contrasted interviewees' definitions and descriptions of CSV and CSR and mapped these against Carroll's four-layer model of responsible corporate management. Interviewees tended to frame CSV as a sustainable business model that generates social and economic value simultaneously, in contrast with traditional CSR, perceived as entailing “giving back” some of the surplus from economic returns.

Dynamic Trade-offs of Supplier Knowledge and Exchange Relationships across an Innovation's Life Cycle

Dr. Faisal Khurshid

Assistant Professor, Lee Shau Kee School of Business and Administration, Hong Kong Metropolitan University

25 May 2022

When an innovator successfully launches a radical innovation onto the market, followers (incumbent firms) are compelled to develop new products.  Radical innovations tend to render the technological knowledge and capabilities of incumbent firms obsolete.  So for a timely response, incumbents need to acquire new knowledge and resources to successfully address the new innovation.  Incumbents can potentially garner new knowledge through in-house component development or by supplier acquisition, but these two strategies require considerable commitments of resources and time and can cause the firm to accumulate unwanted assets.  Therefore, (inter-firm) outsourcing has been viewed as an alternative strategy to alleviate such problems. Regarding outsourcing strategies, the traditional technology and strategy management literature emphasize the positive role of a firm's utilization of its own in-house knowledge stock, its supplier's knowledge stock, and long-term relationship for performance benefits particularly when time is of the essence (e.g., in response to an innovation shock). We suggest that the most appropriate course of action with regards to which knowledge stock to rely upon when facing technological changes should be the supplier-to-firm knowledge stock sequence for performance advantage across the technology life cycle.  Finally, given the importance of the supplier-to-firm knowledge stock sequence, the merits of long-term relationships should be more heavily emphasized during the era of ferment.  We draw on hierarchy hazards and exchange hazards to develop our arguments, examining the U.S. Hybrid Electric Vehicle (HEV) market from 1999 to 2017 to test our hypotheses.

Identity (In)Congruence in a Dual Role Context: Hybrid Entrepreneurs' Work Role Identities and Work Outcomes

Dr. Eric Adom Asante

Assistant Professor, Lee Shau Kee School of Business and Administration, Hong Kong Metropolitan University

18 May 2022

In this seminar, we develop and test a model that extends role identity theory to the dual-role context of hybrid entrepreneurs, who maintain dual identities in their entrepreneurial and wage work. Using a self-regulation lens, we propose that in a dual-role context, the two role identities jointly affect self-regulatory effort and performance. In a situation of identity incongruence, in which one role identity is more prominent than the other, hybrid entrepreneurs allocate more effort to the work they identify more with and subsequently perform better in that work. However, in a situation of identity congruence, hybrid entrepreneurs with equally prominent identities in both roles may experience regulatory impairment, compared with those with equally low identities in both roles. As such, they may fall short of expending sufficient effort and subsequently perform unsatisfactorily in both roles. We test our hypotheses using three-wave and multi-source data from 327 hybrid entrepreneurs, their venture partners, and wage work supervisors. The results from a polynomial regression and response surface approach lend support to our hypotheses. This research provides important insights into hybrid entrepreneurship and management of dual work roles.

Leader-member Exchange and Turnover Intention among Collegiate Student-athletes Sport Environments

Dr Bryan Chiu

Associate Professor, Lee Shau Kee School of Business and Administration, Hong Kong Metropolitan University

4 May 2022

In the extant literature, little is known about how athletes' perception of leader-member exchange with their coach affects their negative consequences (e.g. turnover intention). Therefore, this seminar examined the relationship between leader-member exchange and turnover intention among collegiate student-athletes. Moreover, the current study investigated the mediating effect of psychological empowerment and the moderating effect of psychological contract breach. A total of 220 student-athletes were recruited from four major universities in South Korea. This study found a negative influence of leader-member exchange on student-athletes' turnover intention and significant mediating effects of two dimensions of psychological empowerment (i.e. meaning and self-determination) on the relationship. Furthermore, the results suggested that psychological contract breach negatively moderated the relationships between leader-member exchange and three dimensions of psychological empowerment (i.e. meaning, competence, and impact). However, psychological contract breach did not moderate the relationship between leader-member exchange and turnover intention. This study confirms the significant association between the quality of the coach-athlete relationship and student-athletes' intention to leave. Moreover, student-athletes' psychological sense of gaining power and control, or psychological empowerment may enhance their self-esteem in the team and reduce their intention to leave. In addition, coaches and collegiate athletics administrators should pay attention to the psychological contracts between student-athletes and their team as it may weaken the role of leader-member exchange in strengthening their psychological states.

Impact of Urban Rehabilitation: Evidence from Subdivided Units (SDU) in Hong Kong

Dr Cong Liang

Research Assistant Professor, Lee Shau Kee School of Business and Administration, Hong Kong Metropolitan University

27 Apr 2022

This seminar aims to explore one question: To what extent does urban rehabilitation impact the housing search cost of the low-income tenants. This research adopts the fixed effects time-on-market (TOM) model and pricing model to study the research question. Urban rehabilitation lifts the SDUs' prices by around 7%. For the SDU located in old districts, urban rehabilitation gives rise to the rental price up by 11%-12%. The SDUs in the area without urban rehabilitation experience a short marketing period of 16%-17%. The SDU located in the old district that is without urban rehabilitation would have a short marketing time. This is the pioneering research to investigate the relationship between rehabilitation and low-income rental housing from the improved search theory. The improved search theory posits that under the circumstance of urban rehabilitation, low-income tenants' options are limited and the search behavior will be restricted in the affordable areas, then TOM will be shortened. With the concentration of subdivided units (SDUs) in Hong Kong, the test of the search theory is broken down into two hypotheses. (Hypothesis 1) Urban rehabilitation leads to low-income housing prices increase. (Hypothesis 2) Low-income housing located in areas without urban rehabilitation has a shorter time-on-market (TOM).

Who Can Facilitate Innovation in Family Firms? Evidence across Institutional Contexts

Dr Kelly Chen

Assistant Professor, Lee Shau Kee School of Business and Administration, Hong Kong Metropolitan University

13 Apr 2022

Drawing insights from managerial discretion theory, we propose that the impact of individual differences of family CEOs (e.g. birth order) on innovation is contingent on country-level institutions. Making use of a unique dataset of entrepreneurial families across countries, we examine how national institutions influence the extent to which birth order of family CEOs influence firm innovation. We find that later-born family CEOs are more likely to facilitate innovation under the conditions of better rule of law, lower power distance, and less family obligation. The study contributes to family business literature by enriching our understanding of how institutional differences condition the effect of birth order on innovation. 

Sources Seek Atypicality: Effect of Ostracizing Behavior on Preference for Extraordinary Consumption

Dr Eujin Park

Assistant Professor, Lee Shau Kee School of Business and Administration, Hong Kong Metropolitan University

6 Apr 2022

Although people ostracize in daily and social media interactions, no retailing/consumer research on ostracism has solely focused on the sources. Furthermore, since existing research on sources is limited to reparation intentions, sources' influence on reparation-irrelevant behavior is worth investigating. Four experiments were conducted to examine the sources' preference for extraordinary consumption in face-to-face and social media contexts. They transcend normative boundaries and prefer extraordinary consumption. The effect was moderated by the source’s degree of justification. We initiate consumer research on ostracism sources and contribute to the practice of extraordinary consumption and retailing.

Defragmenting Determinants of Sustainable Food Choices: A Systematic Literature Review

Mr Kevin Chu

Senior Lecturer, Lee Shau Kee School of Business and Administration, Hong Kong Metropolitan University

24 Nov 2021

Sustainable food choices have been a popular research topic in the last two decades. It is believed that consumers' deliberate choices of sustainable food would drive the business to innovate more quickly the way they manufacture to minimise carbon footprints and even practise circular economy with minimum environmental costs. In this study we provide an integrative and analytical review of factors determining sustainable seafood choice of consumers. Relevant empirical research is integrated into the review. We synthesize the developing knowledge about the determining factors influencing the consumers' choice. With the use of Poeszi's Triad Model, which comprises 'motivation', 'capacity' and 'opportunity', this study develops a guide for the practitioners in the sustainable seafood industry, based on the major determinants that have been defragmented and integrated from hundreds of relevant academic studies. It provides the corresponding suggestions for the practitioners who would like to more effectively promote sustainable seafood consumption.

IIBG Distinguished Professor Research Seminar Series

Balancing the Need to Protect Technology and Access Knowledge when Conducting R&D Abroad

Professor Mario Kafouros

Professor of International Business and Innovation, Alliance Manchester Business School, University of Manchester, UK
IIBG Distinguished Professor, B&A, Hong Kong Metropolitan University

29 Sep 2021

When multinational enterprises (MNEs) conduct R&D in countries with weak protection of intellectual property rights (IPR), they gain access to new knowledge but also face difficulties in protecting their own technology. In such situations, the two objectives (knowledge access and technology protection) conflict with one another. This study examines how certain geographic configurations of R&D portfolios help MNEs create technology-protection mechanisms, balance the two objectives, and enhance their performance. The multi-country longitudinal analysis employed in this study explains why some MNEs benefit from conducting R&D in weak IPR protection countries while others do not, and identifies which mechanisms are most effective in protecting technology.