Creative self-efficacy and intrinsic motivation for creativity can encourage employees to innovate, but their complex relationship has long puzzled researchers. Thanks to HKUST’s Yaping Gong and colleagues, we now know more about how these factors influence each other to generate creativity. Their findings will help organizations motivate and support ... Read More

Contrary to the common belief that financial supervision is costly for bank shareholders, agency theory indicates that supervisors’ audits can actually save shareholders money. Emilio Bisetti of HKUST examines this apparent contradiction in a unique setting—a sudden and unexpected decrease in off-site surveillance by the U.S. Federal Reserve (the Fed). “A ... Read More

HKUST-led research shows that judges’ ideological leanings affect the outcomes of insider-trading cases. According to Allen H. Huang, Yue Zheng, and a co-author, liberal judges take an especially strong stance against insider trading, with significant real-world consequences for traders and regulators. Judge ideology is known to influence securities lawsuits ... Read More

High-volume recruitment—hiring a large number of people in a short time—is a challenging process, yet one that is common across industries, from hospitality to global manufacturing. A poorly managed process may overwhelm the recruiting team and lead to inadequate hiring decisions. Thanks to HKUST’s Qing Li and co-authors, recruiters now have guidance for ... Read More

Cumulative innovation—building on existing ideas to create new innovations—is key to technological and economic development. Unsurprisingly, the process is geographically localized: innovations tend to be developed by innovators located nearer to their predecessors. Yet research has thus far failed to account for the strengthening of this effect in recent ... Read More

Performance targeting—setting short-term financial goals—is pervasive in today’s financial markets, but it may come at a cost. HKUST’s Emilio Bisetti and a colleague explore how public banks strategically alter their deposit pricing strategies when they face pressure to meet earnings per share (EPS) targets. “The general consensus is that, by encouraging ... Read More

When people try to infer how well someone will do on a task, they often rely on group characteristics. For example, people who graduated from university may be perceived as more conscientious, leading employers to prefer those with degrees even for jobs that do not require specific knowledge related to the degree. In many cases, these inferences are likely ... Read More

Whistleblowers play a crucial role in maintaining trust in capital markets by exposing fraud. However, is it always true that more whistleblowing is better? The authors identify a nuanced finding: while whistleblowing can enhance audit quality by alerting enforcers to potential misstatements (positive direct effect), it may also reduce the enforcer's ... Read More

What should firms do with their patent rights when inventors jump ship? This key managerial question was recently addressed in an elegant study by HKUST’s Yanfeng Zheng and a colleague. With critical implications for firms deciding whether to maintain intellectual property after inventors leave, the authors established and empirically tested a framework ... Read More