A paper on "Circular Economy and Consumer Acceptance on Product-Service System: A Customer-Dominant Logic View" from key members of the Sustainability Research Cluster at James Cook University (JCU) in Singapore — Associate Professors Adrian Kuah, K. Thirumaran, Pengji Wang, and Mr Chang Hee Kim — has been judged to be one of the best accepted papers at the 83rd Annual Meeting of the Academy of Management (AOM) taking place in Boston, Massachusetts this year. An abridged version of the paper will be published in the Scopus-indexed Academy of Management Proceedings, edited by Sonia Taneja.

The 83rd AOM Annual Meeting is the largest gathering of management and organisation scholars annually in North America to expand research and disseminate the latest knowledge on management. The annual meeting draws attention from over 10,000 attendees around the world, and about 1,500 papers are selected for presentation.

Meanwhile, JCU, Singapore’s strong emphasis on business knowledge also lies in the JCU Singapore Business School‘s exceptional teaching and research, which are organised along four domains of Marketing & International Business; Accounting & Finance; Tourism & Hospitality; and, Management & Human Resources. All programs at the JCU Singapore Business School, including its Higher Degree by Research (HDR) program, are accredited by the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB) since July 2021. HDR students work alongside thought leaders in four research clusters — the Sustainability Research Cluster, the Tourism Behaviour Research Cluster, the Peoples, Cultures, and Careers Cluster, and the Ethics, Organisations and Society Cluster.

The Sustainability Research Cluster began as a circular economy and sustainability group arising out of Round Two of the Strategic Research Investment Fund Application — a research grant call by James Cook University Australia with industry support to co-invest in worthy research groups — in 2018. The work carried out by the group across Singapore and in Australia is unique, because it covers the circular economy, green consumers, and the social economy, that successfully weave social science and environmental sciences into evaluations of real business models.

Associate Professor Kuah, the leader of the cluster, alongside Mr Kim, are also collaborating with several international scholars to bring forward the agenda on process and practice perspective in addressing today’s grand challenges. Their second paper — "Process and Practice Perspectives: A Morphological Analysis and Reassessment of Impact" — represents an ongoing collaboration with leading researchers from top business schools such as Ivey Business School, BI Norwegian Business School, and Indian Institute of Management.

From social economy perspective, Mrs Ratna Devi Pillai, another valued member of the Sustainability Research Cluster, will also present her research paper on “Corporate Volunteering and Employee Engagement: Bringing externalities to the workplace” at the forthcoming AOM Meeting. This third paper is co-authored with her supervisors, Associate Professors Pengji Wang and Adrian Kuah.

Notably, Mr Kim and Mrs Pillai are both nearing completion on their PhD research at the JCU Singapore Business School. They are the first cohort of Singapore-based doctoral candidates in the HDR (Higher Degree by Research) program in 2019. Currently, more than 15 candidates are actively pursuing or completing their PhD research at the JCU Singapore Business School.

Professor Abhishek Bhati — Campus Dean and Head of Learning, Teaching and Student Engagement at James Cook University in Singapore — said, “It is an incredible achievement for several members of faculty and doctoral students’ work to be accepted at the Academy of Management, because about 8,500 papers are competitively submitted every year, and only about 1,500 papers are accepted. In both cases, our doctoral students demonstrate that they have reached a high international standard, which is a testimony to the excellence of our AACSB-accredited PhD program.”

Discover further information on areas of research and research strength at James Cook University in Singapore.

Find out more about the Sustainability Research Cluster at James Cook University in Singapore.

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Contacts

Associate Professor Adrian Kuah  [email protected]

Media: Mr Edwin Teo [email protected]