Dr. Sara Kim, Associate Professor of Marketing, Faculty of Business and Economics was recognised as one of the winners of the Outstanding Young Researcher Award (OYRA) 2018-19. The award aims to recognise young researchers for their outstanding research accomplishments at the University of Hong Kong.

Dr. Kim has made a great impact in her research. She has been collaborating with different companies in China and Korea to put her research findings into practice.

When talking about her research, Dr. Kim said, “I have built a new area examining computerised helpers in mobile games and education software. My research also provides new insights on prosocial behaviour and service marketing. For instance, two of my papers provide important insights on the development of digital assistants for marketers, software designers, and educators. I am also collaborating with two Korean companies to implement real world business strategies based on my findings in these papers. I also collaborated with a Chinese e-commerce firm to implement service strategies for their frontline employees.”

OYRA is determined on the basis of documented evidence of international recognition of research accomplishments, quality and quantity of research publications, ability to compete for research grants, taking into account the prestige of the funding bodies and the size of the grants awarded, and impact of the research work. Only applicants under age 40 will be considered.

Dr. Kim’s research focus is on consumer and managerial decision making and its implications for marketing management. She is particularly interested in antecedents of consumers’ sense of self, including self-affirmation, identity threats, mortality salience, and implicit theories of personality, and the impact of consumers’ sense of self on various consumer judgments and behaviours such as consumer emotions, word-of-mouth, prosocial behaviour, and anthropomorphism. Her work has appeared in renowned publications such as Journal of Consumer Research and Psychological Science, and reported by international media such as New York Times, Time, Science Daily, and Medical News Today.

To success, be unique

Dr. Wang’s interests in the transfer and creation of knowledge were germinated since young. As a practical person keen on knowledge with high application value, midway through his undergraduate years, Dr. Wang had changed his undergraduate major from Biology to Computer Science, a discipline which guarantees scholars plentiful collaboration opportunities with the real business world.

Compare with private research institutions that focus specifically on problems faced by the company or its attached industry, Dr. Wang believes that the academic route suits him better as scholars enjoy more liberty in topic selection. This could satiate his thirst for meeting up and learning from people from all walks of life. Therefore, Dr. Wang has decided to become a scholar after accomplishing his master's degree.

The competition for academic posts is fierce. Dr. Wang believes that while skills in acquiring high grades in undergraduate courses are irrelevant to research, it is, unfortunately, a prerequisite to enter academia. Therefore, in order to be a successful researcher, students must develop skills that are desirable and rare in the field. Dr. Wang himself, for example, possesses uncanny skills in data analysis, a skill that is highly prized by both academia and the private sector. This has offered Dr. Wang lots of opportunities to engage in all sorts of collaborations and consultation projects over the years, allowing him to develop concrete practical experiences and prestige in academia.

Competition mania

Over the years, Dr. Wang has participated in over 30 IT and business-related competitions. Participating in competitions is very important as it enables students to apply theories on authentic data from private firms. Dr. Wang himself, for example, develops all his unique data analytical skills through participating in competitions. As researching on IT knowledge and developing new IT products often requires live data from private firms, Dr. Wang believes that these competitions are excellent warm-ups for students aspired to develop an IT career.

Competition experiences could also enable students to develop a better understanding of the industry. In the future, either they have chosen to become a scholar or work in the private sector, their research and projects will be relevant and useful.

To Dr. Wang, participating in competitions not only allows him to learn new knowledge from other contenders but being overwhelmed by a competitive atmosphere also gives him a mental time-out.

AI and debt collection

Dr. Wang shared his experience in developing an AI specialized in debt collection. The debt-collecting industry has always been facing a disequilibrium. While calling for debts already entails a lot of work, most debt-collecting agencies also lack the manpower to operate efficiently. However, as Dr. Wang’s AI could group debtees with good repayment records and calculate the best time period and frequency to make reminders, a lot of time is freed up for staff to pursue debtees with poor repayment records. It is believed that this AI could greatly boost the productivity of debt-collectors. As the US alone has more than USD 600 billion of debt accumulated among its households, the research of Dr. Wang has become a game-changer in the market.

IT giant vs IT entrepreneur

When asked whether students should work in an IT giant or become an IT entrepreneur, Dr. Wang believes that it depends on the student’s personality. Working for an IT giant offers one a quality life and a successful career prospect in the IT industry. But becoming an IT entrepreneur, however, is very risky and arduous.

Not only IT entrepreneurs on average have lower pay than employees of IT giants, but they also have to deal with a buffet of miscellaneous, non-IT related problems such as office rent. Although there is a one in a million chance for an IT entrepreneur to become the second Bill Gates, chances are that your start-up will either go bankrupt before taking off, and your entrepreneurial ambition will be gradually whiled away by the mundane desire to achieve break-even. At the end of the day, the road of entrepreneurship attracts both the foolish and the wise.

Way forward

Dr. Wang observes that the AI community in Hong Kong is small and is yet to be well-developed. Joining HKU, Dr. Wang aims to utilize his connection with the private sector to create more internships for HKU students in order to strengthen their knowledge in AI and hone their technical expertise. Through attracting talents around the world and keeping up the cutting-edge research level of HKU, Dr. Wang is optimistic that Hong Kong would remain relevant in the era of data.

The craftsman of knowledge

From Medicine, to Marketing, to Economics, and eventually settling down with Accounting, the uninhibited soul of Dr. Stice has prevented him to be satiated by routine work in the private sector, but to explore the further regions of knowledge and to become the herald of innovation. Years of exploring the vast ocean of business disciplines, has Dr, Stice reached the bottom of its marina trench. He then realized that accounting is the foundation of the modern financial market. It is what keeps companies to be ethical, and what encourages investors to have faith in the market. While mastering the accounting skill of data analysis would greatly facilitate one to further advancing their expertise in finance, understanding the inseparable bond between accounting and ethics could even guide one to the path of earning righteous and sustainable income. Always interested in producing general knowledge that could encompass the world, Dr. Stice has decided to dedicate his life on crafting jewels of business knowledge through tempering the rough stone of accounting.

Although private institutions also have research teams, Dr. Stice is not satisfied with focusing on narrow research topics within limited time. He loves to think and he thinks big. He aims to create knowledge that is applicable to the world. Dr. Stice views the collaborations with the private sector as working holidays as an academic, as a chance to put research findings into practice and observe how they operate in real life. After acquiring new knowledge, he prefers to return to the academia to further his research.

“You can’t do a research in a hedge fund or an investment bank for years! They will give you several hours to make a decision, or several weeks, or months to do a project. That’s all. That is all the time they can give you. The academia on the other hand is different. HKU for example, as long as your research is top-notched, you can have all the time in the world.”

The quintessence of knowledge creation

While many believes that the skills required to get good grades in undergraduate courses are different from the skills in research, Dr. Stice believes that only students who study to survive undergraduate courses would selectively work hard on exams and forgo all the knowledge after the semester ends. However, for students that are genuinely interested in learning, they will go extra mile to understand knowledge from multiple perspectives and discuss their findings with their teachers. These brainstorming activities could prepare an undergraduate student very well for PhD. However, Dr. Stice believes that students have to be more creative in their postgraduate studies as they are tasked to develop and explore ideas never been thought of in the history of human kind.

Other than the basics of ‘being passionate’, to enjoy the academic culture is also a crucial factor to survive academia. The academic culture refers to the endless reading of articles, exchanging of ideas and debating with other scholars. Scholars read what others think, develop their own views, and debate with other scholars on the same issue. Then, they return to their office with a refreshed mind and repeat the process again. After being intellectually stimulated for many years, a scholar may be able to melt down all these ingredients into a delicious stew. If you enjoy thinking, then the academia will be your pot of gold in the rainbow’s end. Since knowledge exchange is a crucial part in the academic culture, the more diverse the background of scholars, the more comprehensive and novel the knowledge produced. As HKU is one of the most internationalized academy in the world, Dr. Stice feels he has found his second home.

But on the dark side of the moon, failure and stress lurk. Publishing an article is very difficult. Top journals would usually have a rejection rate over 90%. It would be a huge deal if a professor ever managed to produce even one publication in a top journal throughout their career. As success is hard, Dr. Stice recommends novice scholars to effectively manage their expectations. On one hand, scholars have to be persistent and determined. You must have faith in your research and constantly believe that you are on the right path. By adjusting your view in such way, every morning you wake up, you would have the motivation to run the gauntlet, again.

On the other hand, one must not take career achievements as their only source of happiness. To Dr. Stice, happiness through workplace achievements are temporary but happiness from family and friends are perpetual. Therefore, it is important to take a break from research once in a while in order to stay mentally and physically healthy. Develop some hobbies could greatly alleviate your stress. Dr. Stice himself for example, engages in a regime of weightlifting and cardio exercises.

The pursue of round numbers

During the interview, Dr. Stice has shared with us his decade-long research work on why are humans fixated on rounded numbers. For example, when reading the financial statements, investors would always prefer to 100 billion instead of 99.5 billion, even though such amount is insignificant in the financial market. But in spite of the irrationality of worshiping rounded figures, companies who achieved them in their financial reports do attract more media coverage, more attention from institutional shareholders, and more analysts to follow.  

Unfortunately, the blind pursuit of the rounded figure also induces negative influences. Staff will eventually burn out and companies that have achieved rounded numbers for several years would eventually experience a slower growth in the long term. The market will then lost confidence on the firm’s expansion capabilities, making it increasingly difficult for the firm to solicit new sources of finance.

These conclusions are drawn based on analyzing all the listed companies that have ever existed since the birth of stock market. Dr. Stice has already developed a model to describe these human behaviors and we believe the research will be very interesting.

AI and the accounting career

Dr. Stice has observed that many accounting students are pessimistic with their future because of the development of AI. However, Dr. Stice posits that, what AI replaced is the duty of book keeping and that is conducive to the industry’s development. As accounting interns are freed from mechanical tasks, they can focus more on honing their skills in data analysis.

Dr. Stice believes that the value of accountants lies on their ability to interpret the financial statements and fathom follow-up strategies. Therefore, Dr. Stice believes that it is unnecessary for accounting students to develop a second major in computer science. After all, one does not need to have two majors to excel in life. The second major for students should be reserved for disciplines they are truly interested in. Selecting a major you are uninterested in is excruciating. Your performance is likely to be bad and all your time spent will be rewarded with barren harvest.

Another thing Dr. Stice wants students to bear in mind is that taking CPA does not mean that you have to be with accounting for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health. Accounting is the stepping stone in the business world. It could offer you the pathway to multiple industries. For example, as employees of the Big4 accounting firms have a lot of opportunities to analyse the financial records of different prestigious companies, it is therefore very common for Big4 accountants to develop their second career in their clients’ company.

The fundamentals of accounting

For students who are interested in developing a career in accounting, Dr. Stice stresses the importance of understanding accounting principles.

With regards to the principles, there are two schools of thought. Some believes that accounting numbers are facts. They come out from the accounting system and they are absolute. But some believes that accounting numbers are fabricated by manager to help them to get more bonus or to get a promotion.

Neither of them are correct, as accounting principles are executed flexibly in real life. People wants accounting principles to be flexible in order to leave room for mangers to exercise their judgement, and reflect the most accurate economic reality to the market. However, according to the agency theory, because of information asymmetry between mangers and shareholders, managers would always attempt to cheat more than they deserve. Therefore, the auditors of Big4 shoulders great responsibilities to ensure that the financial market is operating in an ethical and trust worthy manner. By striking a balance between the interests of shareholders and managers, auditors ensure that information in the market are credible enough to maintain customer confidence and incentivise investments.

Therefore, Dr. Stice is very active in the crusade of raising corporate awareness on the importance of business ethics and accounting. While he has been consulting and training personnel from countless prestigious financial institutions, his quest is far from over.

Way forward

Teaching in HKU for some time, Dr. Stice observes that students are not only intelligent but also possessing great leadership potential. Since no one knows all, no one will always be on the steering position. Therefore, a good leader is a good team player who could flexibly swap positions between leading and following. Dr. Stice also observes that students have good communication skills during negotiations and division of labour. He is confident that they will be great leaders in the future.

Other than teaching, Dr. Stice also greatly enjoys his research. Dr. Stice is greatly influenced and aspired by the Faculty’s ambition to become the best business school in Asia and even the world. He is excited about the challenges and opportunities ahead.

Knowledge X Family X Freedom

Since her undergraduate years, Dr. Qiu is already hooked up with knowledge production. Although she was majored in economics and finance, her mother’s professional background as an auditor had encouraged her to research on accounting. In addition, as the private sector does not guarantee liberty to its workers, the freedom that academics enjoy in research is another factor encouraging Dr. Qiu to become a scholar after graduation.  

Researcher 101

For students aspired to become a researcher, Dr. Qiu recommends them to attend more seminars and workshops. It is the best way for students to familiarize themselves with research topics that the academia focuses on. Dr. Qiu believes that talking to young professors is also conducive as they could provide students with the most updated information on the cultures of different research institutions and the merits of different post-graduate programmes.

While graduating with first-hon is stressful and hard, it pales in comparison with postgraduate research. As research work is a chronic battle, having adequate rest is very important to the physical and psychological health of researchers. Dr. Qiu herself would visit museums and listen to concerts when she need a mental time-out.

Finding someone to talk to also helps a lot. The academic path can be lonely as outsiders are unable to comprehend what you are going through and your difficulties or setback along the research journey. Therefore it is very important for PhD students to open up with one another in order to stay energetic. 

Accounting is beyond book-keeping

Producing financial statements is only part of an accountant’s job. The true worth of an accountant lies in his ability to interpret business data and to advise clients on making financial decisions capable of meeting the challenges today and making preparations for the future. Since AI have taken up the tedious data-entry work, accounting interns would have more time honing their skills in business analytics. By mastering the knowledge of accounting, one can open up multiple career paths. Other than being accountants and trust managers in investment banks, possessing knowledge in accounting would also give novice entrepreneurs a head start in managing their business.

Accounting knowledge could also enables us to make good decisions in life. While rudimentary knowledge such as book-keeping could nurture us to spend responsibly, advance knowledge such as evaluating investment return could enable us to purchase goods capable of generating perpetual gains.

Dr. Qiu further guides us to explore accounting by introducing us her research interests in corporate governance. Little known to laymen that maintaining corporate governance is also a duty for accountants. It is often overlooked by the public that auditors and tax officers bear great social responsibilities to ensure that firms are adhering to business ethics. As an accounting scholar, Dr. Qiu is interested to study how the shift in power balance will impact the incentives of the top management, and in the long run, how will it impact the companies’ capability in generating value to the society. Dr. Qiu observes that it has become a global trend in recent years that shareholders are increasingly influential in business operations. As the voting cost decreases, shareholders are more actively engaged in Say-on-Pay. Moreover, institutional investors are also playing an increasngly significant role in the shaping of top executives' remuneration plans. For example, shareholders in Disney had voted down the board’s decision in doubling the CEO’s bonus during the merger and acquisition deal with 21st Century Fox.

Way forward

As HKU is a prestigious institution well known for its resourceful network, Dr. Qiu hopes that she could leverage its prestige to participate on more consultancy projects. Dr. Qiu is particularly interested in researching the corporate governance of pharmaceutical firms and tech firms. As the CEO in these companies usually possesses technical expertise beyond that of the board and the shareholders, Dr. Qiu is intrigued to study their power dynamics. By getting inside the black box to observe their power dynamics, Dr. Qiu is aspired to contribute more empirical data to the academia.

Other than research, Dr. Qiu hopes that she could, as a young scholar, encourage more discussions in class and would make it easier for students to share with her the difficulties they are facing.

Janice Danier (4th from right) and her teammates won their case category.

Janice Danier, a Year 4 BEcon&Fin student, and fellow team members from other business schools, won their case category during the KPMG sponsored Team Case Competition at Beta Gamma Sigma’s Global Leadership Summit held in Chicago in late 2019. The team was selected as a winner based on their innovative solution for their assigned business case and the effectiveness of their presentation.

Also attending the event was Ji Ming Jung, a Year 4 BBA(Acc&Fin) student. During the 4-day summit, they both participated in specialised leadership trainings and team events hosted by BGS, and learned from the leaders in various fields of business and academia. They were also given many networking opportunities with recruiters from big companies and got the latest job market information firsthand.

Commenting on the summit, Janice said, “The sessions and speakers had definitely inspired me to develop my own passion, and develop skills outside of the classroom, that would help me differentiate from others and be a good leader in work environment. I also found having conversations with recruiters very useful in understanding more about the requirements that I might need for future enrollment.”

Ji Ming also found helping others to grow and to reveal their potentials at work is another approach of leadership that can drive business success, “I gained an idea of how I can further utilise one’s strengths, motivations and social styles for optimising results and the best work experience.”

The Beta Gamma Sigma’s annual Global Leadership Summit brings together nearly 400 BGS members to explore their talents while building relationships with fellow leaders from chapters around the world. During the Summit, attendees participate in a carefully cultivated series of leadership sessions designed to build upon each other to culminate in an intensive team competition.

Janice Danier (left) and Ji Ming Jung (right) participated in the Beta Gamma Sigma’s 2019 Global Leadership Summit.

About Beta Gamma Sigma

Established in 1913, Beta Gamma Sigma is an international honor society which operates exclusively for AACSB accredited business programs. Membership in Beta Gamma Sigma is highly selective, reserved for top students within the top 5% of business schools around the world. Members of Beta Gamma Sigma go on to lead—and even create—some of the largest and most successful companies around the globe. Beta Gamma Sigma has inducted more than 830,000 members worldwide since its founding in 1913.

In search of happiness

Professor Li originally planned to become an actuary as it was believed to be the best job for overall happiness. However, encountering the father of modern differential geometry, Shiing-Shen Chern, in a two-week research programme has become a turning point of Professor Li’s life. That experience has Professor Li addicted to knowledge production and realized that the freedom an academic enjoys is what he craves in life. Thereafter, Professor Li gleefully embarked on his academic journey.

Bengt Holmström, 2016 Nobel Prize Winner in Economic Sciences, and a member of Professor Li’s PhD committee member, is another impactful figure. Professor Holmström’s ability in observing the unobvious and his philosophical approach in research have encouraged Professor Li to become an economic theorist specialized in simplifying complex phenomena.

To see things clearly

The world is complicated and full of unknowns. Yet our brain is limited—psychologists suggest that our minds can only remember seven items on average, and the models we have about the complex world are necessarily incomplete and inaccurate. All economics models are wrong (in the sense that they cannot perfectly capture the reality), but some are better than others. Good economics model offer a perspective to see important facts that are ex ante surprising but ex post natural.

Being able to reckon the limitations of our analytical models marks the watershed between studying and researching economics. Undergraduate training enables one to utilize quantitative methodologies to understand the logic of the models but postgraduate research is beyond mathematical questions that are placed in a right-or-wrong dichotomy. Research is an art as it involves value judgement in the sense that it’s about deciding which aspects of the reality to focus on. Professor Li believes that the work process of economic theorists has a lot in common with that of artists, painters and poets in particular. The similarity does not merely lie in the fact that both involve creativity. More importantly, both struggle to represent the complex world using limited medium, be it an essay or a math formula. These limitations imply that art works and economic models are inevitably distortions of reality. The key decisions are therefore to decide which aspects of reality to sacrifice and which aspects highlight the more important and perhaps deeper truth of the world. If done well, one finds beauty in painting, in poems, and in economic models. Professor Li highly recommended books such as E.H. Gombrich’s Art and Illusion, and T.S. Eliot’s On Poetry and Poets.

A Research Odyssey

The research journey shared by Professor Li is his research on how firms should design their promotion protocols in order to attract, motivate, and retain talent, particularly when the growth rate of the firm fluctuates over time. As a short summary, the research concludes that the best promotion mechanism is a combination of first-come-first-serve and random allocation. Workers waiting for promotion are divided into two groups: a top group in which everyone (with the same ability) has the same chance of being promoted, and a bottom group in which no one can get promoted immediately, but wait to join the top group under the first-come-first-serve rule.

While the result is simple, it took Professor Li and his coauthors several years to derive it. In earlier stage of the research, Professor Li had included several additional variables (such as wages and bonuses) into the model. While these variables are realistic, they make the optimal promotion rule opaque and the analysis cumbersome. After being put in a standstill for a long time, Professor Li decided to exclude these variables. The exclusion allows him to focus on the heart of the problem, and in turn creating a streamlined model which produced a clear and simple result.

Way forward

As a creative organizational economist, Professor Li has always considered our body as an organization on his own. Realizing that creating an AI thinking like a human is a goal among machine learning scholars, out of interest in understanding the differences between the command structures of androids and humans, Professor Li has ventured into related fields. He has also shared some insights with us on the correlation of neural science and machine learning.

“When we are holding a cup of hot coffee, our hand will want to let go but our brain will force it to hold it. But if the coffee is too hot, our hand will bounce off upon contact nonetheless. Therefore, I believe that knowledge in neural science help us understand more on how machine learns”

One requires more than constant adaptation and acquisition of new skills to excel in today’s dynamic and fast-paced business environment. In order to equip our alumni with new knowledge and to refresh their networks, the Faculty of Business and Economics offers the taught post-graduate alumni the chance to come back to class and top-up their learning to stay relevant and competitive.

Last autumn, HKU MBA alumni were invited to join the pilot alumni auditing programme. Beyond our expectation, we received encouraging response and nearly all forty seats were filled in a short period of time. The programme was then expanded to include alumni from taught-postgraduate master programmes last December, including Master of Accounting, Masters of Economics and Master of Finance. Once again, we were impressed by the overwhelming feedback with all seats taken quickly by alumni who are eager to learn.

“It was refreshing to learn for myself,” one alumni participated in the programme last semester noted. Others reported much satisfaction growing their network and meeting current students.  “My experience was fantastic, loved the teacher and content and found the lectures very engaging and relevant,” raved a student who joined the newly added Private Equity/Venture Capital course taught by a VC expert and new adjunct professor, Marvin Lai. Another student in Mr. Lai’s class mentioned that he was interested in learning more about investing, as he was investing private funds himself.

This audit programme also benefits faculty members, who enjoy having experienced participants in the classroom with current students, who then can have the opportunity to meet with alumni from different backgrounds and age. Students are delighted to sit with alumni who have lived through the programme and are now working in a large variety of industries in Hong Kong.

In view of growing demand for lifelong learning, the Faculty will be offering another round of audit classes the coming summer, and explore opportunities to expand the programme to a broader alumni community.

Please stay tuned.

What you need to know about alumni auditing:

• FBE postgraduate alumni are eligible to audit one elective per academic year
• The cost is HKD500, payable via bank transfer
• Seats are allocated on the basis of availability and only with the permission of the teaching faculty members
• No credit or certificate of completion will be granted to alumni
• The teaching faculty member(s) reserves the rights to decide alumni’s in-class engagement

     

Crossing the river by feeling the stones

Like many undergraduates, Dr. Zhang was uncertain about his future. In order to provide himself with more options, Dr. Zhang had decided to take a PhD after graduation. The consultation with his PhD advisor was very impactful to his future development. Encouraged by his mentor, Dr. Zhang had taken an additional master in financial mathematics and ventured into the financial world.

Equipped with financial knowledge and superb numerical reasoning skills, Dr. Zhang secured an internship with a prestigious financial institution in the US. Although Dr. Zhang had received a return offer after he had completed his PhD, after careful contemplation, Dr. Zhang had decided to turn down the offer. Compare academic research with asset pricing, Dr. Zhang is more attracted to the thrill of being intellectually challenged. Even though financial institutions also have research teams, Dr. Zhang believes that pegging research results with profit generation will only hamper his exploration on knowledge. As academics received a relatively higher degree of discretion in research, Dr. Zhang has eventually decided to become a scholar.

While Dr. Zhang was original researching on credit risk, the global financial crisis in 2008 had plunged the market demand for high risk financial products and brought down the demand and budget for research on new risk calculation methodologies. But when one door closes, another door opens. During the same period, the academia’s interests on machine learning and AI has started to grow. As Dr. Zhang is always interested in knowledge with high application value in real life, researching on machine learning and information technologies have since then become his bread and butter.

Reviewing his academic journey, Dr. Zhang believes that being passionate is more important than being smart. Skills involved in research are very different from those in studying. While undergraduate courses require students to execute orders instructed by teachers, postgraduate research on the other hand requires students to take more initiatives in research and problem solving. In addition, exploring unknown topics is very difficult and time consuming. Without passion, one will not be able to muster up the motivation and patience to put through.

Machine learning and telephone call centers

During the interview, Dr. Zhang has shared with us his recent research on how machine learning could improve the productivity of call centers, or in other words enhance operation management. Dr. Zhang observes that the labor supply of call centers is unstable. Turnover is high and most staff are part-timers. In addition, as the demand for call center services is hard to predict, to effectively allocate manpower has become the key to survive.

Through developing an AI to analyze all historical data available, managers would know on what days, what times, and what periods the demand for services will be particularly strong, allowing them to be better informed when planning the roster. The AI would also run different contingency simulations in order to advice managers on different extreme scenarios.

The machines are not taking over yet

Dr. Zhang observes that business AI is still very primitive. In the context of a call center, while the AI’s superior analytical skills enables it to design smooth operational plans, their inability to process incoherent, contradictory, and wrong instructions accidentally made by customer and respond to orders beyond their programming has prevented them from replacing human workers.

While it is the dream for machine learning scholars to develop an AI capable of producing and manage tailor-made services for the thousands in tandem, it is beyond the technology level in the present day AI. Dr. Zhang believes that the development of AI will remain focusing on streamlining operation procedures and bosting labor efficiency. Therefore, AI will not cause massive shocks on the labor market in the coming decade.

Way forward

Dr. Zhang commented that it is a pleasure to serve HKU as students are smart and very innovative. Dr. Zhang is particularly impressed by a student who had applied text analytics into analyzing the meeting minutes of the US Federal Reserves to investigate whether there is a correlation between the use of specific words and the fluctuations of the stock market. In addition, he is very grateful for the recognition and feedback given by his students. It has become new fuel for Dr. Zhang to improve his teaching quality. Moreover, as HKU has an amazing culture focusing on the development of multidisciplinary knowledge, cross-faculty and inter-faculty research collaborations are very common. As an enthusiast in knowledge creation, he feels that he has found his second home.

Motivated by interest

Interested in applied mathematics and social science, Dr. Luo had majored in economics with the aspiration of understanding the world with quantitative methodologies. Influenced by the rich academic culture of his alma mater, Dr. Luo had taken the academic path after graduation.

While scholars enjoy a great amount of freedom in research, Dr. Luo states that the process could be very arduous. Developing new knowledge is like searching in the dark. Failure is common and great patience is required. Dr. Luo believes that having faith in the importance of your research is the key to prevent yourself from giving up. Having a good adviser will be a huge bonus, as he can support you both technically and emotionally when facing setbacks.

Painstaking it may be, the joy of successfully creating knowledge conducive to the world is very satisfying. To Dr. Luo, being a researcher is a privilege as it is an honor to contribute to the development of mankind. Therefore, he strongly encourages students aspiring to change the world to become scholars.

The global market trend

Accumulating rich consultation experiences over the years have Dr. Luo believed that possessing work experiences is conducive to research and teaching. R&D on fintech requires a large amount of raw data such as those related to financial activities and behaviors of social media users. Only through collaborating with mega firms and public organizations could researchers gain access to them. In addition, experiencing firsthand on how technologies are deployed in business operations and understanding their limitations could enable teachers to deliver quality content in class.

Work experiences also have Dr. Luo realized that the market demand for specialists in the joint fields of data science and finance are growing exponentially. In mainland China, the US, and the EU, financial institutions are hiring data scientists in the thousands to develop business AI. In the global financial market, there are millions of job vacancies in this field. As financial services are increasingly digitalized, Dr. Luo believes that the back office will be increasingly dominant. The world is changing and HKU Business School will continue to equip their students with multidisciplinary skills in order to make them as versatile and competitive as possible. 

To become a regional fintech center

While Hong Kong is lagging behind in innovation and technology, Dr. Luo sees great potential in Hong Kong in developing fintech. After all, fintech needs to follow the logic of finance and meet all the regulations to maintain stability in the financial market. Hong Kong as an IFC has the financial resources and a sound legal framework to support the R&D on fintech. Coupled with local universities’ internationally renowned research capabilities and their supply in talents with multidisciplinary skills, Dr. Luo is confident that Hong Kong possesses both the “fin” and the “tech” to become a regional fintech center.

Dr. Luo thinks that Hong Kong is lucky as her status as an IFC enables her to be embedded in the entire Asia-Pacific financial markets. Their ever-growing demand on financial products would be a powerful external boost to stimulate the growth of Hong Kong’s local fintech industry.

Fintech opens up new markets

Dr. Luo observes that the development of AI has enabled niche markets, such as micro-loans, to open up. While the demand for micro-loans on daily consumption, such as borrowing money for phone purchasing, has always been around the corner, heavy administration costs have dissuaded large financial agencies to explore them. However, as business AI can greatly reduce the costs in service delivery by automating the lending process, large financial agencies are now capable of competing with small financial institutions in supplying micro-loans.

Big data technology is another game changer. As the development of cloud technology has made record management increasingly accurate and comprehensive, platform companies like Alibaba and Tencent have applied data science on their rich customer database to conduct risk assessment and deliver online banking services. As their default rates are significantly lower than traditional banks, their debut as mobile banks will instigate more competition in the banking sector.

Way forward

Joining HKU, Dr. Luo aspires to produce in-depth knowledge in machine learning and AI. He is ready to offer his expertise to aid the university’s crusade on becoming the leading business AI research institution in Asia. Surprised by local students’ fascination towards technologies, Dr. Luo greatly enjoys his pedagogic role in HKU.

A meandering footpath

Professor Tang was an engineering major who is uninterested in his discipline. However, after realizing that he is keen on researching social issues with quantitative methodologies, Professor Tang had moved on to study economics instead. Graduating with flying colours, Professor Tang’s grad job was an IT consultant in a prestigious company in the United States (US). While his grad job is similar to his aspiration in conducting economics analysis, he felt that as a small employee in a big company, it will take years of build-up to become impactful. To make his voice heard and to create actual impact, Professor Tang had eventually taken the academic path.

However, Professor Tang still encourages students to accumulate some work experience before considering the academic path. Rich work experience not only can empower lecturers’ credibility in teaching, it also provides researchers with more relevant topics. Therefore, when a student sought his advice on whether she should develop an IT career in Africa, Professor Tang strongly encourages her as long as there isn't any safety concerns.

The observations from one hailed from peaceful times

Studying and working in an ethnical melting pot like the US for most of his life, Professor Tang has interacted with people from all walks of life. He observes that people raised in peaceful environments lack purpose. For example, in the academic circle, they would research on technical methodologies such as econometrics. But on the contrary, people raised in unstable societies would have a very specific topic to research on. For instance, Indians are keen on solving poverty and South Americans are keen on halting perpetual financial crisis. Therefore, students should participate in overseas exchange to gain more international exposure and develop a more mature worldview.

What makes a successful research?

In the early 2000s, after the Chinese market was opened up to the global trade, the World Bank was eager in studying China’s evolution in the global supply chain. They were particularly baffled by the positive relationship shared between the domestic content of China’s exports and its market openness, which it is contrary to international trade theories.

Partnering with the World Bank, Professor Tang had succeeded to solve this conundrum. Through analyzing firm level data, Professor Tang discovered that because importing foreign raw materials has upgraded the productivity of Chinese firms, raw materials supplied by the Chinese has also become more competitive. This has eventually encouraged Chinese exporters to purchase raw materials from local sources.

Other than producing groundbreaking results, this research has also developed new methodologies to translate firm-level data to the national level. Professor Tang is particularly proud of his success in incorporating existing knowledge, such as the market liberalization theory, into the analysis. He believes such act could intellectually stimulate readers, which is conducive to knowledge creation and makes his paper ticks.

The resources curse of Hong Kong

Professor Tang is also an expert in developmental economics. He points out that a lot of third-world countries are suffering from the resource curse, which refers to the situation when the national economy is entirely supported by a single industry. This is a curse as the rent provided by the dominant industry will be too lucrative, leaving few talents and resources for other industries to prosper. In case the dominant industry collapses, there won’t be another industry to support the national economy. Hong Kong is also facing the same problem as its economy is over-reliant on the real-estate market and the financial sector.

In order to break the curse, Professor Tang believes that it is very important to send a message that people working in non-dominant industries are also living a decent life. The government could work hard on resources allocation, while universities could contribute by grooming talents with diversified skills. Then, there may be a chance for a new and energetic industry to emerge, giving the economy new impetus to grow.

Way forward

The China-US trade war is at a critical moment to the world. Many scholars are eager to bring up solutions to solve this global crisis. Hong Kong, as the middle-man between the US and China and the hometown to Professor Tang, has a special meaning and position. As such, Professor Tang returned with the aim of producing research capable of inspiring city-wide or even region-wide discussions, and influencing decision-makers here. In the long run, he is dedicated to exerting positive impacts to the world.