"Enhanced Employment Agency Enforcement: A step towards eliminating one of HK's largest black-market industries"
Hong Kong’s employment agency industry has been criticised worldwide for its widespread illegal business practices. Mr. David Bishop’s KE project successfully lobbied the Hong Kong government to amend the regulations of the employment agency (EA) industry in Hong Kong, particularly extending the statutory time limit for prosecution of abuses, in an effort to eliminate one of Hong Kong’s largest black-market industries. The team organised NGOs and labour organisations focusing on migrant worker issues behind this goal and helped them draft statements for the Legislative Council. In addition, the team investigated several cases of agency illegality with HKU students, resulting in numerous media reports and criminal prosecutions.
The Faculty Teaching Award Scheme recognises and rewards teachers with outstanding achievements and significant contribution in teaching and student learning in the Faculty. The award-winners for the academic year 2017-18 are:
Faculty Outstanding Teacher Award (Postgraduate Teaching)
“I deeply care about our students at FBE and about creating a positive impact in their lives through better teaching. As a teacher and instructor, what matters most to me is to foster long-lasting changes in student’s professional lives and careers by going beyond the daily routine of delivering courses and lectures. In each and every class, I ask myself how the material taught can be used and applied by students not only to hopefully receive a good grade at the end of the course, but more importantly how it can be employed to make wise career choices and to advance students’ careers even many years after graduation.”
“My teaching practice is to establish an effective learning environment for students. Excellent course preparation is one of the essential elements. For example, specially designed project works can let students understand how to apply theoretical financial models into real world situations and also enhance their learning interests through the practical experience. A mutual respect and trust relationship between a teacher and students is another essential element, which allows a teacher to provide a personalized teaching and learning experience to individual students. I believe that every student in my class is a distinctive individual. I do my best to recognize every student in my class and understand the student’s learning progress. This personalization practice can effectively encourage students to actively participate in class discussion, and also allow me to provide immediate guidance to those who need additional support. Finally, students’ learning attitude and learning effectiveness can be greatly enhanced.”
“Teachers’ beliefs are self-fulfilling. When we believe our students have high potentials, we set high expectations for them and they perform well. A great teacher should be a giver who is inclined to discover the potential of students, hold on the optimistic beliefs about them and take efforts to develop them.”
“Two aspects of my teaching practice that I am striving to develop have recently been on my mind. First, are ways to create a more active classroom learning environment that expands beyond traditional teacher delivered lectures. There are myriad ways to accomplish this, including technology tools, which I am trying to incorporate more effectively. Second, I have tried to cultivate more reflection in my teaching practice to help me not just assess my teaching, but more importantly, to help me determine if students are learning well too, which is the ultimate goal.
Admittedly, though there are many areas of my teaching practice that are still developing, I am grateful for the opportunity I have to be in the classroom and teach such wonderful students. Teaching at HKU is truly a privilege in my life.”
Faculty Outstanding Teacher Award (Undergraduate Teaching)
“As a teacher, I have been supporting my students to develop passion and professionalism in their academic disciplines. Students find my teaching useful and relevant if I can demonstrate to them how the subject knowledge is linked to real life contexts and their future career. Students would also like to put what they have learnt into practice during their studies, so it is crucial for teachers to build up a practical learning environment that encourages and empowers our students to grow and develop.
Apart from specialized knowledge, students should be equipped with generic skills such as critical thinking and problem solving skills. These abilities are of utmost importance to facilitate their life-long learning and enhance their sustainability in face of various challenges and competitions. Still, this is not enough. In this ever-changing world, people use creativity to stand out among others. I believe inspiring students to think and stay on the cutting-edge of global trends is always the right way to help our students create a successful career and make contribution to the advancement of society.”
“As a student, I failed my first intermediate microeconomics course, receiving an indisputable F as a final grade. Among other excuses, I found the content difficult (with all the first order and second order conditions) and boring (e.g., how is knowing how to disentangle substitution effect from income effect useful for solving real world issues?). So the moment I learned that I would be teaching this course at HKU I was strongly committed to change this perception. To accomplish this, in the past two years, I have developed in-class experimental learning sessions to provide students with an engaging and tangible learning experience and introduced some of my ongoing research projects to convey to students how microeconomic theory can be applicable and utilized for understanding human behavior and institutions in the real world.”
“I enjoy teaching and interacting with students. My teaching philosophy is simple: truly care about the students and enjoy the time with them! Students know whether you truly care about them or not. And they reciprocate by being engaged and being thankful. When you truly care about the students, teaching is not something counted as “teaching load”, or duties specified in the contract. It is how you define your career, how you define who you are and how you would like to spend your life in a meaningful way. I enjoy sharing my knowledge and experiences with students. And I highly value the title of “professor” as to communicate and to pass on
Professor Kevin Zhou, Chair of Strategy and International Business, has been named by Clarivate Analytics in the list of “Highly Cited Researchers 2018” among the world’s top researchers for three consecutive years since 2016.
The list recognizes world-class researchers selected for their exceptional performance, demonstrated by production of multiple highly cited papers that rank in the top 1% by citations for field and year in Web of Science.
Caption: Mr. David Lee (2nd from the left) received HKU Early Career Teaching Award.
The HKU Excellence Awards Presentation Ceremony was held last Friday. Mr. David Lee, Senior Lecturer of the Faculty received Early Career Teaching Award in recognition of his outstanding contributions and commitment at early stage of his teaching career.
David adopts an interactive approach and complements his teaching with practical case studies in real life. He is a popular faculty member and is always a student’s favourite. David commented that teaching is a meaningful role, which gives him much satisfaction. He further elaborated that his teaching is framed by five principles, namely Transformational Learning, Active Learning Environment, Linking to the Real World, Student Advising and Focus on the Future.
The HKU Excellence Awards are a salute to the exceptional and inspirational accomplishments of our colleagues and a celebration of the diverse range of disciplines and specialisations at the University. Professor Xiang ZHANG, President and Vice-Chancellor, presided at the ceremony and Dr the Honourable Sir David LI Kwok Po, Pro-Chancellor, was the Guest of Honour.
Caption: Mr. David Lee (2nd from the left) received HKU Early Career Teaching Award.
The HKU Excellence Awards Presentation Ceremony was held last Friday. Mr. David Lee, Senior Lecturer of the Faculty received Early Career Teaching Award in recognition of his outstanding contributions and commitment at early stage of his teaching career.
David adopts an interactive approach and complements his teaching with practical case studies in real life. He is a popular faculty member and is always a student’s favourite. David commented that teaching is a meaningful role, which gives him much satisfaction. He further elaborated that his teaching is framed by five principles, namely Transformational Learning, Active Learning Environment, Linking to the Real World, Student Advising and Focus on the Future.
The HKU Excellence Awards are a salute to the exceptional and inspirational accomplishments of our colleagues and a celebration of the diverse range of disciplines and specialisations at the University. Professor Xiang ZHANG, President and Vice-Chancellor, presided at the ceremony and Dr the Honourable Sir David LI Kwok Po, Pro-Chancellor, was the Guest of Honour.
The Vice-President and Pro-Vice-Chancellor (Research) of HKU announced on December 21, 2018 the award recipients of the 2017-18 Outstanding Researcher Awards scheme. The following paper of Dr Heng Chen, Associate Professor in Economics and Professor Wing Suen, Chair of Economics and Henry G. Leong Professor in Economics has been awarded the Research Output Prize (ROP):
Chen, Heng and Suen, Wing.“Aspiring for Change: A Theory of Middle Class Activism.” The EconomicJournal 127.603 (2017): 1318-1347.
Dr Heng Chen
Professor Wing Suen
The ROP is a Faculty-based award to honour the best research output from each Faculty. This year, ten Research Output Prizes are conferred on the authors by the Faculties.
Dr. Jayson Jia has published in top-tier journals such as Management Science, Journal of Consumer Research, and Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.
Dr. Jayson JIA, Assistant Professor of Marketing from the Faculty of Business and Economics at HKU recently became a Marketing Science Institute (MSI) Young Scholar 2019 – a distinguished accolade to recognise young marketing scholars worldwide with great potential to be the ‘leaders of the next generation of marketing academics’.
“I feel very lucky to have won such recognition for taking the road less travelled and undertaking some high-risk research. I am incredibly grateful for the constant moral support from my colleagues, and funding support from the faculty and Hong Kong Research Grants Council, without which I would not have been able to pursue this line of research,” says Dr. Jia.
Dr. Jia’s research focuses on consumer behavior and digital experimentation. His recent work involves combining social experiments with individual-level mobile telecom metadata to study what drives people to respond to strangers online. He also studies the psychological recovery of earthquakes victims by analysing mobile app usage data and earthquake data. These and other related projects, combined with big data and psychological theory, will help us understand human dynamics and consumer behavior.
At HKU, Dr. Jia teaches Introduction to Marketing and Internet Marketing. He received his PhD degree in Marketing from Stanford University.
MSI is a non-profit research organisation dedicated to bridging the gap between academic marketing theory and business practice. This year, the biennial MSI Young Scholar Program recognised 35 promising marketing academics from around the world who earned their PhD degree within three to six years. Professor Echo WAN, Professor of Marketing at HKU, was honoured as a MSI Young Scholars in 2013. Professor David TSE, Chair Professor of International Marketing at HKU, served as a MSI Academic Trustee in 2008 to advise and support MSI’s research efforts and represent MSI’s worldwide community of marketing scholars.
A team of four FBE students won the Outstanding Award in the 2018 Deloitte Tax Championship. Having achieved the highest score in the Regional Round in September, the FBE team entered the National Round held on 9th – 11th November with teams from top universities in Greater China, exchanging knowledge and insights on tax and business, particularly the most recent tax reforms and technology advancements in the industry.
Deloitte Tax Championship is an international competition aiming at promoting education, research and innovation in taxation by supporting an array of national and local programmes across Greater China. Themed “Intelligent innovation for a digital future”, the participating teams were asked to explain how tax reform could stimulate the economy and business in this year competition.
Thanks to Dr. Christina Ng, Principal Lecturer in Accounting, for being the advisor of the team, and congratulations to all the team members.
FBE members include: Miss Wu Yuxuan, BBA(Acc&Fin), Team Leader Mr. Hao Yifeng, BBA(Acc&Fin) Mr. Ho Wai Yiu Ryan, BBA(IBGM) Miss Xiong Shuying, BBA(Acc&Fin)
My research interests span the economic history of China, its institutions and its political economy of development, Particularly, I am interested in the civil exam system, ’keju’, because this meritocratic system for selecting officials based on a series of exams appeared in Song Dynasty of ancient China almost 800 years before a similar system was introduced in Europe. This institution has likely bred a culture of valuing education. The meritocratic nature of the civil exam system has an intriguingly strong parallel with the bedrock of China’s economic reforms — one designed to reward individual officials who have achieved robust economic growth in their administrative jurisdictions with promotion to the next level.
As an undergraduate, in order to broaden my horizon I took as many electives as possible: anthropology, comparative literature, economic history, philosophy, you name it.
‘Experience suggests that passion and curiosity are important elements of success in one’s career’
My main research area lies at the intersection of organisational economics, personnel economics, and labour economics. My research focuses on the dynamics of informal relationships and explores how firms can design organisations — by choosing organisational structure, allocating decision rights, adopting performance review and compensation methods — to align incentives and build trust. This research sheds light on how organisational design can be a source of competitive advantage. I became interested in these topics because they are obviously important, extremely relevant, and fundamentally, immensely fun to work on.
‘Stay open, stay curious, and keep learning new and exciting things’
My research interests are mainly in the role of information in facilitating managers and capital market participants to make sound decisions. Toward this end, I researched 1) the incentive design that helps achieve the desired organisational purposes; 2) the type of information and the quality of such information that can facilitate the decision-making and incentive design, and mechanisms to obtain this information.
My advice for FBE students is never think of college as your final stop in learning. Think of college as the years that shape your learning horizon, and build your self-learning and critical thinking skills. These are much more important for your life and self-development than learning the knowledge from one or two textbooks.
‘A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step; work ten years like day’
Dr. Dan YANG Assoicate Professor (Innovation and Information Management)
My research interests are mainly in data science, which analyses and enriches data. Modern technology has led to datasets of increasingly large and complex structure, which prohibits the direct application of conventional methodology This type of phenomenon is omnipresent in various areas such as economics, business, finance, biology, healthcare, etc. My primary research focus is to design efficient and effective tools to cope with massive amounts of data, which will eventually advance science, improve business and enhance wellbeing.
My advice in my own teaching is always ‘give a man a fish and feed him for a day — yet teach him to fish and feed him for life’, and therefore my advice to students is ‘learn how to fish instead o asking for a fish’, which is the most crucial ability one should learn in college.
My research interests lie in the area of multi-sided markets, including media markets and matching markets. The evolution of the media industry is happening at an unprecedented speed. The entire ecosystem involves many participants, including media platforms, advertisers, content suppliers, search engines, ad exchanges, news aggregators, consumers, etc. I believe the research in this area will generate important managerial implications such as media platform pricing, content provision, news aggregation, as well as useful policy guidance.
My advice to FBE students is that learning does not only happen in classrooms. In fact, most learning happens outside classrooms.
‘Be open-minded, make friends, learn from each other, and understand that there are many perspectives of viewing the world’
Dr. Ye LUO Assistant Professor (Economics & Finance)
My research interests lie in applying machine learning and AI to economics and finance. On the one hand, the potential and benefits of implementing data technology in areas such as business operations, economics and finance are growing fast — for example, digital economy, logistics and financial technology. On the other hand, the data technology itself — namely, machine-learning algorithms — have been developed and are still under fast development.
I believe that, for students of business schools, it is important to be aware of the opportunities in the joint field of data science and business. With data science technology, the old business systems become more efficient and new business models rise. I think the training programmes of FBE in data science will broaden our students’ vision and future career development.
‘My task is to bring students closer to real world data science, teach them the principles as well as practices’
My research focuses on business cycle fluctuations. I have recently worked on two topics. The first topic is about the role of fiscal policy in counteracting economic downturns, Specifically, I estimated how government spending and tax changes can affect the macro-economy such as GDP, inflation and exchange rates. The second topic focuses on business cycle transmission across countries. In one of the projects, I study whether more international trade leads to large fluctuations in the economy.
‘Before joining HKU, I have worked at the Bank of Canada so I would like to share the work experience there as well as my research with the HKU community’
The HKU Faculty of Business and Economics’s influential partnership with London Business School and Columbia Business School is ranked the top joint EMBA programme in the Global EMBA Rankings conducted by Quacquarelli Symonds (QS) in April 2018.
As mentioned in the QS report, the EMBA-Global Asia programme, synergizing the strengths of three prestigious business schools, enables students to “benefit from unique insights and gain a truly global perspective”.
This year, QS refined and improved its methodology to better reflect the EMBA landscape for students, with more emphasis on employers' feedback and research expertise. The QS Global EMBA Rankings evaluates a total of 142 programmes on the basis of five key indicators: career outcomes, diversity, employer reputation, executive profile and thought leadership. The Faculty’s EMBA-Global Asia scored strongly across all dimensions and achieved the highest overall score among all joint programmes.
The management from the three business schools, including Professor Hongbin Cai, Dean of Faculty of Business and Economics, HKU; Professor François Ortalo-Magné, Dean of London Business School; and Ms. Kelley Martin Blanco, Assistant Dean, EMBA Programs and Dean of Students, Columbia Business School, together with guests, teachers, students and alumni enjoyed a cocktail reception to commemorate the success.
