volume-21-number-3

Author: Romeo B. Lee

Preliminaries

Year: 2021, Volume 21 Number 3

Pages: 1 – 12

This qualitative study focused on the documentation and analysis of the narratives on the diaspora stories of the overseas Filipino workers in Singapore in the contexts of their fear, opportunities, and management initiatives, viewed through management perspectives. The Filipino diaspora has gone global, having overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) present in all parts of the world. Push factors motivated many Filipinos to seek better job opportunities in developed countries such as Singapore. However, the length of stay is limited by the working pass. Narrative inquiry as a research design was used, and the data were collected through face-to-face interviews with the storytellers who are working in Singapore for five years and more under working pass. The narratives were themed and analyzed, and the results were inferred with the functions of management to surface the management perspectives. The storytellers were motivated by a better quality of life and a higher salary, and they fear the unknown and the uncertainties on their return home. As for opportunities, the storytellers consider putting a business in the future. For management initiatives, their employers provide programs for skills development. The narratives surfaced plausible inferences on the planning, leading, organizing, and controlling functions of management. The study concluded that the OFWs are adamant to return home because of the better quality of life in Singapore. They also give high regard to family and are strengthening their financial literacy. Their narratives led to recommendations for the multinational companies where they work to enhance their international management and leadership styles, establish stronger labor welfare, and consider distance employment.

Keywords: return-home stories, management functions, management perspectives, narrative inquiry, overseas Filipino workers

Pages: 13 – 27

This research analyzes the effect of social media crisis communication on resistance to change of university employees in the Philippines during the COVID-19 situation. The study also consider the role of organizational citizenship behavior (OCB), which is hypothesized as a predictor of employees’ resistance to change, as well as a moderator that strengthens the effect of social media crisis communication on employees’ resistance to change. Survey data were collected from 522 employees from three public universities in the Philippines. The hypotheses are tested using partial least squares structural equation modeling. The results show that social media crisis communication and OCB are negatively related to employees’ resistance to change. Moreover, the moderating effect analysis indicated that OCB significantly intensified the negative effect of social media crisis communication on the employees’ resistance to change. This result implies that social media crisis communication can have a stronger impact on lowering employees’ resistance to change when OCB is highly expressed among employees.

Keywords: change management, corporate communication, crisis management, organizational citizenship behavior

Pages: 28 – 42

This study investigated one of the learning materials of the World Wildlife Fund for Nature-Philippines and its effectiveness in promoting positive environmental behaviors among 99 Filipino 5th and 6th graders. The study examined if there was a significant difference in the environmental knowledge, attitudes, subjective norms, and behavioral intentions (BI) of the students after they read and studied the manual. The study also determined the correlation between the participants’ environmental knowledge-attitude, knowledge-norms, and knowledge BI. Lastly, this study measured how features of the manual—its language used, design, and content—influenced its effectiveness. Findings of the study show a significant increase in the students’ knowledge; however, no significant increase was shown for their attitudes, subjective norms, and BI. Results also show a positive yet insignificant correlation for the participants’ knowledge-attitude, knowledge-norms, and knowledge-BI. Additionally, regression analysis shows that none of the features of the manual significantly influenced the students’ knowledge, whereas content was found to be the greatest predictor of attitude, norms, and BI. The design was found to be a significant predictor of attitude and norms, whereas language is found to be a negative coefficient of the participants’ BI. Insights from the dyad interviews support these results.

Keywords: environmental education, waste management, Theory of Reasoned Action, Filipino students

Pages: 43 – 56

The COVID-19 pandemic has challenged higher education worldwide. From face-to-face sessions between teachers and students, teaching and learning have to be done online to allow students to continue learning while preventing the spread of this infectious disease. Faced with a wide range of electronic learning systems (ELS) to choose from, this study examined the factors that could affect the students’ intent to re-use the ELS. There were 135 college students in a private university in Manila, Philippines, and 177 college students from a public university in Macau, China, who were surveyed to find out the factors that would influence their intent to re-use ELS. Using structural equation modeling (SMART-PLS), this study showed that there was a significant relationship between perceived ease of use (PE) and perceived usefulness (PU), which were the constructs of the technology acceptance model (TAM). This implies that those who find the ELS easy to use will also find it useful. This study also extended TAM to include intrinsic motivation (IM) and extrinsic motivation (EM) as moderating variables between satisfaction (ST) and intent to re-use the ELS (INT). The result showed that IM and EM did not moderate the relationship between ST and INT. This suggests that Chinese and Filipino students are not motivated to use the ELS. This may be because there is a need to make the ELS enjoyable and engaging. Perceived convenience (PC) was significant to PE and PU. This shows that those who find the ELS convenient find it easy to use and useful. The overall results showed that user training (UT) was significant to PE and PU. This implies that training can stress the usefulness and ease of adopting the ELS. Satisfaction (ST) was significant to INT. The results validate existing literature that those who find the technology easy to use and those who are satisfied with the learning systems are likely to re-use it. This study is one of the few studies in the Philippines that examined the factors that affected students’ re-use of the ELS. It has significant implications for educational institutions in terms of designing an ELS that would encourage students to re-use it, especially during this time when educational institutions have developed courses to be taught in an online environment even if there are vaccines for COVID-19.

Keywords: electronic learning system, behavioral intention, motivation, TAM

Pages: 57 – 73

This study attempts to analyze the dimensions of the night market visit experience of international tourists. Based on a two-step analysis of 13,833 Google review comments collected for the nine most popular night markets in Phuket, two key dimensions—market experience and food experience—were identified. Overall, the tourists were highly satisfied with their night market experiences. The results of machine learning analysis using the KNIME analytics platform indicate that the market experience dimension was more positive in valence and higher in salience than the food experience dimension. In addition, food was found to be the most important component in both market experience and food experience dimensions. The content analysis results of both positive and negative reviews show factors that determine tourist satisfaction, including a variety of food and stores, affordable prices, and a pleasurable atmosphere. On the other hand, factors being of serious concern to tourists were also identified and are discussed, most of which relate to the food experience dimension, including food hygiene, staff attitude, and overcharging.

Keywords: Tourist experience, online-review, night market, Phuket

Pages: 74 – 85

Engaging in research helps teachers improve their own classroom practices, thereby increasing the chance to foster an engaging classroom environment where fresh materials and strategies are used. However, there remains to be some form of the dichotomy between teaching and research, even in the context of universities. What little research is available in the ASEAN and Philippine contexts regarding teachers’ research engagement reports perennial problems such as lack of time, heavy workload, and lack of research skills. This study aimed to add to the literature in the Philippine English language teaching (ELT) context by uncovering university teachers’ perceptions on the benefits of and challenges in doing research, as well as their own research practices and the academic environment they are in. A group of 22 English language teachers participated in semi-structured online interviews. The thematic analysis of interview data revealed that both personal and professional considerations permeated the issues on benefits, challenges, and practices, corroborating or contradicting previous studies. The participants likewise highlighted enabling and hindering factors concerning research engagements in their own university context and even proffered points for improvement. The study concludes that many teachers have engaged and want to engage in research, but variations can be seen in their level of engagement, exposure to research, and reasons for engaging in such endeavor.

Keywords: English language teaching (ELT), teacher professional development, teacher research, teachers’ research practices

Pages: 86 – 101

Based on years of ethnographic research about compliance management practice in China’s pharmaceutical industry, this article examines the reaction of Western transnational companies and Chinese workers to recent changes of managerial control in the socialist workplace. Although academic research on China’s labor studies has fully explored the areas, such as traditional manufacturing, little is known about the new changes of management-labor practices in China’s pharmaceutical market. Following the labor process theory, this article argues that compliance management sounds neat and modern in the context of China, but in practice, the management and workers have “hypocritical” and “paradoxical” reactions to it. Although the transnational pharmaceutical companies attempt to discipline Sales Representatives to work within China’s policies and regulations around pharmaceutical marketing, the management also flexibly permits Sales Representatives to engage in informal practices to earn profits. Meanwhile, Sales Representatives have developed a new kind of subjectivity that compels them to “consent” to this new managerial control.

Keywords: compliance management, transnational pharmaceutical company, labor management and control, Sales Representatives, China

Pages: 102 – 121

Despite the increasing interest in social media use in tourism, limited empirical work has been devoted to the effectiveness of social media marketing on festival tourism branding. The present study proposed a theoretical model that explains the effect of social media marketing (SMM) on festival brand gestalt and brand loyalty. Furthermore, this study examines the mediating effect of brand gestalt on the relationship between SMM and brand loyalty. Based on relevant literature, a conceptual model that explains the link among variables was developed and tested using structural equation modeling (SEM). An online survey was carried out from August 2019 to February 2020 on 865 millennial and generation Z (Gen Z) attendees of the two most popular festivals in North Sulawesi, Indonesia. The analysis revealed three major findings. First, SMM exerted a significant and positive effect on brand gestalt’s dimensions (i.e., story, sensescape, servicescape, and stakeholder). Further, SMM and the two brand gestalt dimensions, sensescape and stakeholder, were found to be the significant determinants of brand loyalty. Finally, the results confirmed a partial mediating role of the brand sensescape and stakeholder on the effect of SMM on brand loyalty.

Keywords: Social media marketing, millennials, Generation Z, branding, festival tourism, brand gestalt, brand loyalty

Pages: 122 – 136

This study systematically investigated the determinants of the firm value of conventional banks in Southeast Asian countries. The panel data technique used was based on the data extracted from 63 commercial banks over nine years (2009–2017), with 567 observations. The empirical results revealed that capital adequacy and asset quality had a significant positive impact on the firm value of banks. Meanwhile, the liquid asset ratio and deposit ratio have a significant and positive effect on firm value, and the efficiency ratio had a significant and negative impact on firm value. On the other hand, the Herfindahl-Hirschman Index and bank size have a significant negative effect on firm value, whereas the firm value is not affected by diversification, gross domestic product (GDP) growth, and inflation rate. The study provides the implication that bank management and policymakers focus on the importance of macroeconomic policies. Priority should be given to policies that can control inflation and as well foster financial intermediation. Hence, further study should include government changes and industry concentration, oil shocks, and financial structure.

Keywords: firm value, bank-specific factors, macroeconomic factors, profitability, Southeast Asian

Pages: 137 – 148

I present an alternative to methodological individualism and the assumption of instrumentally rational individuals that dominates much of mainstream economic theorizing. Following mainly Davis’ corpus of work on the socially embedded individual, I argue that methodological individualism no longer works, especially when the alternative view of socially embedded individuals holds even stronger explanatory and prescriptive power. The current Coronavirus pandemic experience is used both as a backdrop to this proposed change and as a live case through which collective intentionality is appreciated to be more superior than instrumental rationality. I discuss collective intentionality as a mediating feature of the socially embedded individual to participate in collective action and provide necessary and sufficient conditions, developing a synthesis of magisterial contributions to the literature of collective intentionality in terms of its structure, content, and mode. I also provide a recommendation on how its normative feature can be used in dispensing the art and craft of economics that is in tune with the demands of changing economic realities triggered by the pandemic.

Keywords: Collective intention, rationality, methodological individualism, economic methodology, philosophy of economics

Pages: 149 – 168

With Industry 4.0, the role of research cannot be undermined. As innovations drive the economy, we explicated the contribution of knowledge capital to the macroeconomy. Following the endogenous growth theory, we estimated a three-factor Cobb-Douglas aggregate production function for selected ASEAN+3 economies. Using the total number of Scopus-indexed journals as our proposed alternative metric for knowledge capital, we found that investing in the creation of more scientific researches and using it as productive inputs allow an economy to experience growth in the long run. Results showed that increasing knowledge capital, constituting higher levels of research, creates new technologies and innovations that stimulate economic growth.

Keywords: knowledge capital, production function, research and development, Scopus

Pages: 169 – 179

Studies agreed that the use of Facebook in classroom instruction offers benefits both for teachers and students. However, little is known about its use as an online teaching platform, especially in times of emergency health crisis such as COVID-19 when classroom teachers are not prepared to migrate to online teaching. Using the lens of collaborative autoethnography, this article reports on university teachers’ shared experiences and reflections on the use of a closed-class Facebook group’s (FBG) discussion forum and group chat (FBG messenger) as an alternative online platform to residential classroom teaching in Thailand during the COVID-19 pandemic. Based on our experiences and reflections, the use of FBG provided the students with an opportunity to explore their potentials as independent learners as they engaged interactively in various in-class practices remotely. Although there may be some issues (e.g., online fatigue, lesson, and class activities delivery), we argue that Facebook may have great potential to be an effective platform for online pedagogy in times of health emergencies, especially when schools do not have a learning management system (LMS).

Keywords: Autoethnography; collaborative autoethnography; COVID-19; Facebook group; online teaching

Pages: 180 – 195

This research examines the benefits of host language proficiency of Chinese expatriates working in Thailand. Host language proficiency is conceptualized in terms of linguistic and communicative competence. Anchored on social identity theory, this study tests whether the host language proficiency of Chinese expatriates affects their work engagement and to what extent host country nationals (HCN) support plays a mediating role. Survey data were collected from 15 Chinese subsidiaries in Thailand. In total, 413 valid questionnaires were gathered. Partial least square structural equation modeling was used for data analysis. The results not only found a direct positive association between host language proficiency and work engagement but also confirmed that the HCN support partially mediated the linkage of host language proficiency and work engagement. The finding of this study adds a greater understanding of how and why host language proficiency can exert a beneficial influence on the work engagement of Chinese expatriates in Thailand. Based on the result, relevant practical implications are provided.

Keywords: expatriate, foreign language, social identity, social support, work engagement

Pages: 196 – 213

Employee work engagement has become a great challenge for today’s HR managers globally as hardly 13% of employees are engaged in their work. Therefore, this study investigates the mechanism between corporate social responsibility (CSR) and employee work engagement considering compassion at work and psychological ownership as mediators. We collected data from 251 employees working in the life insurance company using a self-administered questionnaire through convenience sampling. We applied structural equation modeling using AMOS version 24 to test the hypotheses. The results reveal a significant direct association between CSR and employee work engagement. Further, compassion at work and psychological ownership were found to partially mediate the association between CSR and employee work engagement. Our study highlights the significance of CSR to increase employee work engagement by experiencing compassion at work and psychological ownership. This research contributes to the existing literature on CSR and micro organizational behavior literature from the social identity perspective. Furthermore, to the best of our knowledge, compassion at work and psychological ownership have not been examined as mediators between CSR and employee work engagement.

Keywords: corporate social responsibility, compassion at work, psychological ownership, employee work engagement

Pages: 214 – 228

The purpose of this study was to assess the impact of Indonesia’s National Health Insurance (NHI) on health care utilization. Specifically, by performing logistic regressions with the national socioeconomic data of 2018, we analyzed health-seeking behavior between insured and inunsured people together with selected socioeconomic factors. The results revealed that insured people were more likely to utilize the NHI services than uninsured people. Additionally, the utilization pattern was more significant in socially vulnerable groups, particularly lower-income, lower-educated, unemployed, and rural beneficiaries. Assuming that one of the ultimate goals of social health insurance is to enhance the equity of health care utilization by lowering the financial burden of health care for the marginalized population, the results indicate that the NHI adequately accomplished the equity goal. However, we also noticed a considerable policy gap between the need for and availability of the NHI services. That is, although the NHI offered almost free services, a large proportion of beneficiaries still relied heavily on self-medication and private facility care, which required out-of-pocket costs. To reduce the gap, the government should continue its efforts to improve the current inadequacy of health care financing and infrastructure in the public sector, accompanied by more empirical investigations.

Keywords: National Health Insurance, social health insurance, health care utilization, health-seeking behavior, Indonesia

Pages: 229 – 248

The current GST regime in Pakistan is characterized by various tax exemptions, reduced tax rates, and zero ratings. It creates inefficiency, supports tax fraud, and encourages rent-seeking activities. The net effect is the high tax rates and tax evasion, undermining the potential indirect tax revenues. There are various recommendations from public economists, international agencies, and the industrial sector to reduce the current GST from 17% to single-digit and abolish all kinds of tax exemptions and zero ratings to make it dynamically efficient and pro-growth. With this backdrop, we quantify the likely impacts of uniform GST on macroeconomic aggregates, households’ income, and income inequality of Pakistan by employing a global computable general equilibrium (CGE) model. CGE models are standard models for economy-wide empirical analysis, and it is widely employed to analyze tax reform and development planning. We have applied 5%, 10%, and 15% uniform GST on the broader base (i.e., leather, textile, carpets, surgical goods, and agriculture sector) instead of a non-uniform GST regime. The simulation results show that uniform GST has a positive impact on economic growth and tax revenue. The sectoral analysis also indicates that the reduction in GST helps develop the domestic industries leading to an increase in the exports of the manufacturing sector. However, the export of agriculture-related products has fallen. Moreover, these policy reforms negatively impact low-income households, especially labor and capital associated with the agriculture sector, thus worsening income inequality. Based on empirical investigation, this paper suggests the implementation of uniform GST in Pakistan. However, to ameliorate the income distribution, the government should increase the reliance on progressive taxes such as wealth, income, and corporate taxes.

Keywords: GST, CGE model, GTAP, Inequality, SAM, Pakistan

Pages: 249 – 259

Advancements in technology and pedagogy with respect to distance education have highlighted the need for higher education institutions to adapt to these changes and embrace online learning as an alternative approach to instructional delivery. To assess students’ readiness to this non-conventional modality, the current study utilized the online learning readiness scale (OLRS) by administering an online version of the instrument to 457 college freshmen in a private college. The overall mean scores and standard deviations obtained for the five dimensions of online learning readiness are as follows: motivation for learning (x̄ = 4.23, SD = 0.61), computer/Internet self-efficacy (x̄ = 4.05, SD = 0.64), online communication self-efficacy (x̄ = 3.76, SD = 0.75), self-directed learning (x̄ = 3.74, SD = 0.63), and learner control (x̄ = 3.41, SD = 0.68). Nonparametric tests were employed to examine differences in the OLRS dimensions based on sex, academic program, and duration of Internet use. No significant difference in online learning readiness between male and female students was detected using Mann-Whitney U test. A similar test performed on the duration of Internet use found that students who spend more than four hours online have significantly higher computer/Internet self-efficacy scores. Moreover, the results of Kruskal-Wallis H test revealed that students’ academic programs pose significant differences in three dimensions, namely, computer/Internet self-efficacy, online communication self-efficacy, and motivation for learning. Overall, the results reflect positively on the readiness of freshman students for online learning.

Keywords: computer self-efficacy, learner control, motivation for learning, online learning readiness, self-directed learning, online communication self-efficacy

Pages: 260 – 274

The purpose of this study is to extend the debate about gender dynamics and the complexities of livestock ownership, production, and markets in rural Northeast Thailand. Particular attention is paid to gender norms in specific contexts, such as the transition between rural subsistence to a market-based economy, the diversification of livelihoods, and the prevalence of a matrilineal system. The data was obtained from qualitative methods. The researcher conducted in-depth interviews and non-participant observation with 25 key informants in Si Sa Ket Province of Thailand. The results show that a range of contextual factors influences the division of labor, as well as gender roles associated with beef cattle production and trading. The importance of women’s roles in the livestock sector is demonstrated, in contrast with the limited level of government support that is offered to poor and middle-income women. The paper concludes that gender mainstreaming may be better promoted via the use of sex-disaggregated data to enable a detailed analysis of the hierarchical positions of men and women in the beef cattle sector.

Keywords: gender dynamics, complexities of ownership, Thailand