Informal institutions—society’s unwritten codes of conduct—influence all aspects of international business, but they have received surprisingly little attention in the literature to date. Helping to fill this gap, HKUST’s Jiatao Li and co-researchers build a novel typology and framework for examining neglected aspects of informal institutions, as well as the ... Read More

One of the many painful lessons of the COVID-19 pandemic is that the world’s supply chains are highly vulnerable to external shocks, especially when manufacturers rely on a single source for the parts that they need. This issue created a severe problem when governments and ventures were racing to ramp up COVID-19 vaccine production. Offering cutting-edge ... Read More

A rule designed to protect investors may encourage managerial short-termism, to the detriment of firms. This sobering finding comes from a study led by HKUST’s Yan Xiong. According to Xiong and a U.S. colleague, the American government is tying firms’ hands with the requirement to disclose managers’ pay offers. The paper shows how managers become more myopic ... Read More

Is green coffee bean extract a miracle cure for obesity? Are raspberry ketones or saffron extract magic weight loss ingredients? Regardless of the veracity of these claims, the celebrity physician Dr. Mehmet Oz has endorsed those and many products to the viewers of The Dr. Oz Show. This has created “the Oz effect” of increased interest—and may perhaps have ... Read More

Advertising is central to e-commerce. In a world of choice, ads drive consumption by informing consumers about available products. New insights into the influence of online advertising on e-shopping behavior come from a study led by Ralf van der Lans of HKUST. The team used eye-tracking experiments to probe how ad features and site design can help or hinder ... Read More

For fledgling ventures, part of the growth process is to develop key systems, both external (such as marketing and sales) and internal (such as accounting and human resources). To date, most researchers have assumed that these systems develop uniformly as ventures scale and complete developmental milestones. According to HKUST’s Pavel I. Zhelyazkov and ... Read More

Online product review platforms have become popular places for consumers to share their opinions on and experiences of the products and services they buy. In online marketplaces, the quality of a new product or service is initially unknown, but reviews posted by buyers inform subsequent customers. By reducing uncertainty about product quality, this type of ... Read More

Data-driven technology has the potential to not only predict how people will behave but also to predict what actions might encourage desirable behaviors. For example, the music app Spotify uses this technology to encourage its users to upgrade their accounts and engage with the platform. Focusing on Spotify’s playlist generation systems, HKUST’s Carlos ... Read More

Employee creativity is vital for organizational success, so sustaining it during a crisis—such as the recent COVID-19 pandemic—is essential. In a study with important implications for how organizations should react to crises to maintain employee creativity, HKUST researcher Yaping Gong and two colleagues show that an employee’s mindset and goal orientation ... Read More

Policymakers are deeply concerned about the impact of hiring workers from different locations on firm profitability and the substitution or complementarity of domestic and foreign workers. But assuming that these workers are interchangeable is a myth that may not lead to productive directives and policies for everyone involved. Despite the critical nature of ... Read More