In the 2023 Fubon Life National Doctor and Master Thesis Awards, ten students from the College of Management of National Sun Yat-sen University stood out among more than 700 participants, winning the Highest Distinction Award, the Award for Outstanding Performance, and the Honorable Mention Award, shining amidst the fierce competition.
With more than 30 years of history, the Fubon Life Management Doctor and Master Thesis Award is organized by the Chinese Management Association and exclusively sponsored by Fubon Life. Every year, nearly 1,000 students and about half of Taiwan’s colleges and universities compete for the award. It is a very highly regarded thesis competition in Taiwan’s academic community.
The award is organized to provide a stage for management talents to showcase their skills while also promoting interaction between campus elites and companies. Over the years, the award has gained great attention from professors and students from universities across the country as well as from the public. Every year, young students from universities around the country participate in the competition. The judging panel, comprised of professors and entrepreneurs from academia and industry, selects the winning theses after a rigorous review process.
The doctoral and master’s degree students who are recognized by this award are also able to gain an advantage for their future job applications, giving them an entry tickets to many major corporations.
A total of 706 master’s and doctoral theses were submitted to the competition, only 10% of which were selected to enter the final round. Ten theses from NSYSU’s College of Management won awards, a great achievement!
Receiving the Highest Distinction Award in each category was no small feat, and NSYSU’s College of Management students claimed two of these coveted awards. One of these remarkable students is Chin-Yi Kuo, an MBA student in Marketing Communication supervised by Professor Hsuan-Yi Chou. Chin-Yi Kuo, whose thesis is entitled “Pets in Politics: The Influence of Pet Presentation in Campaign Advertising on Voting Intention”, competed in the Marketing Management category and received the Highest Distinction Award.
In addition, Ying-Chun Chou, an MBA student in Human Resource Management supervised by Professor Nai-Wen Chi, competed in the Human Resource Management and Organizational Behavior category, winning the Highest Distinction Award. Ying-Chun Chou’s thesis is entitled “Learning from star employees! How managers’ servant leadership influences coworkers’ performance through the proactive helping behaviors of star employees: Coworkers’ job self-efficacy, the intervening effect of challenge-seeking behaviors, and the moderating effect of the proportion of star employees on the team.”
Next, Hsuan-Yi Wu, an MBA student in Human Resource Management also supervised by Professor Nai-Wen Chi, received the Award for Outstanding Performance in the Human Resource Management and Organizational Behavior category. Hsuan-Yi Wu’s thesis is entitled “Beauty is Premium or Cost? Exploring the positive and negative psychological processes linking employee physical attractiveness influences coworkers’ proactive helping behaviors and social undermining behaviors: The moderating role of perceived warmth and competence”.
Another seven students from the NSYSU’s College of Management won the Honorable Mention Award. These include Yuan-Lung Peng, a doctoral student in Information Management who was supervised by Professor Wei-Po Lee. Yuan-Lung Peng’s thesis is entitled “Application of Financial Technology to Investment and Other Extensions”.
Professor Chun-Tuan Chang of the Department of Business Administration also had three students win the Honorable Mention Award in the Marketing Management category: Ssu-Ling Chen, a Master of Business Administration student, for the thesis entitled “The Impact of Disease Cues on Sweets Consumption Behavior”; Chien-Jui Liu, a Master of Business Administration student, for the thesis, “Influences of Disease Cue on Color Lightness Preference”; and Yu-Han Liu, a Master of Business Administration student, for the thesis, “The Influence of Disease Cues on Consumer Charitable Behavior”.
Ping-Yuan Lin, an MBA student in Finance supervised by Associate Professor Pei-Shih Weng, competed in the Finance, Accounting, and Risk Management category, winning the Honorable Mention Award for the thesis “Examining the impact of corporate governance on the reform of Taiwan’s convertible bond issuance system: A study of announced returns, issuance strategies, and market quality”.
Professor Nai-Wen Chi of the Institute for Human Resource Management has two other master’s students who have also received the Honorable Mention Award: Jou-I Lin, whose thesis is entitled “Enjoy working alone? Exploring the relationship between daily solitude at work, creativity and cyberloafing: The mediating roles of autonomy, need satisfaction and loneliness at work, and the moderating role of physical work environment” and Min-Jung Tsai, whose thesis is entitled “Too good to be trusted or envied? Understanding when high-performers increase supervisor’s abusive behavior and voice solicitation via supervisors’ cognitive trust and envy: The moderating role of employees’ impression on management behaviors.”
Winning the award for 12 consecutive years – a remarkable achievement
Even more remarkable is that students of Professor Nai-Wen Chi have consistently received awards in this competition in twelve consecutive years, while Professor Hsuan-Yi Chou’s students have received awards in three consecutive years. This impressive record is a testament to their tireless dedication to teaching.
Let’s take a closer look at Institute of Human Resource Management student Ying-Chun Chou’s Highest Distinction Award-winning thesis as an example, “Learning from star employees! How managers’ servant leadership influences coworkers’ performance through the proactive helping behaviors of star employees: Coworkers’ job self-efficacy, the intervening effect of challenge-seeking behaviors, and the moderating effect of the proportion of star employees on the team.” Based on social learning theory, this thesis examines the relationship between servant leadership of supervisors and the proactive helping behavior of star employees and whether star employees’ proactive helping behavior influences their coworkers’ subsequent performance. It further examines whether the proportion of star employees on a given team has a moderating effect on these indirect relationships mentioned above.
Hsuan-Yi Wu’s thesis, “Beauty is Premium or Cost? Exploring the positive and negative psychological processes linking employee physical attractiveness influences coworkers’ proactive helping behaviors and social undermining behaviors: The moderating role of perceived warmth and competence”, which won the Award for Outstanding Performance, is based on implicit personality theory and social comparison theory. It explores whether employees’ physical attractiveness influences their coworkers’ proactive helping behavior through desire for social interaction, or whether it leads to their coworkers’ social undermining behavior by evoking feelings of envy. In addition, the thesis further examines whether coworkers’ perceptions of employees’ warmth and competence, in different combinations, interferes with the mediating effect of the desire for social interaction on employees’ physical attractiveness and colleagues’ proactive helping behavior, as well as the mediating effect of envy on employees’ physical attractiveness and colleagues’ social undermining behavior.
The performance of NSYSU College of Management students in this competition is outstanding and demonstrates their unlimited potential for future development.
●List of NSYSU Management Students who are 2023 Fubon Life Doctor and Master Management Thesis Award recipients (in the order of the organizer’s category awards)
Highest Distinction Award:
Chin-Yi Kuo (Marketing Communication)
Ying-Chun Chou (Human Resource Management)
Award for Outstanding Performance
Hsuan-Yi Wu (Human Resource Management)
Honorable Mentions:
Yuan-Lung Peng (Information Management)
Ssu-Ling Chen (Business Management)
Chien-Jui Liu (Business Management)
Yu-Han Liu (Business Management)
Ping-Yuan Lin (Finance)
Jou-I Lin (Human Resource Management)
Min-Jung Tsai (Human Resource Management)
Source: 2023 Fubon Life Doctor and Master Management Thesis Award Winners’ Directory: https://www.cmathesis.org.tw/awarded_paper
(Written by Jennifer Shen, College of Management Media)
