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A Recognition To Be Remembered


UCSI University’s Faculty of Business and Management (FBM) dean Professor Ts Dr Ooi Keng Boon and Associate Professor Dr Garry Tan Wei Han’s research paper was awarded the Most Downloaded Paper – 7/25 – in the International Journal of Information Management (IJIM) from Elsevier Ltd.

IJIM is a prestigious journal and is ranked A* in the Australian Business Dean Council (ABDC) Journal Quality List and has an impact factor of 5.063 according to the Journal Citation Report 2018 (JCR) by Clarivate Analytics.

This article entitled “Time to seize the digital evolution: Adoption of blockchain in operations and supply chain management among Malaysian SMEs” was co-authored with Dr Wong Lai Wan (Xiamen University Malaysia), Dr Leong Lai Ying and Mr Hew Jun Jie (Universiti Tunku Abdul Rahman).

As for the significance of this article, Dr Garry Tan had this to say: “For one, the work answers the call to enrich the current state of blockchain research with empirical evidence. In particular, this work looks at the adoption aspect of the technology in a supply chain and operations management using a nonlinear non-compensatory Partial-Least Squares-Artificial Neural Network (PLS-ANN) approach.”

“SMEs make an interesting choice in terms of resources for technology competence and investments considerations. Blockchain is a viable key enabler to drive new propositions and innovation due to its features of immutability, transparency and security that have the potential to revolutionise businesses. One clear finding of our work, however, is that talent scarcity is prevalent.  This means awareness of the potentials of blockchains need to be improved,” added Dr Garry.

According to Professor Ooi, achievements such as these can bring much benefit to the individual, faculty and institution.

“The significance of this achievement span across many levels. For budding researchers, this is a sense of accomplishment for them and signifies that they can do even more. Even for seasoned researchers, it is important to know that knowledge evolves, and is not constant,” he said.

“Publications do wonders for the faculty. Besides encouraging one another, it also tells us that research can no longer be done in silos. It advances the faculty strength and the ability to stay abreast of developments in respective fields. To publish in a top-notch journal lends further testimonial to the institution’s overall standing”, he added.

Essentially, this article bridges technology and business. In an era of accelerated digital transformation, while businesses have mostly begun transformations in some way or another, the consensus is that in Malaysia, there is still much more to be done. The benefits of technology are clear but the extent to which businesses are able to or have embraced technology is not in tandem with the maturity of Malaysian SME businesses.

For Professor Ooi and Dr Garry, this paper was propelled by a strong motivation to bridge technology and business from an organisation investment decision’s perspective as well as one inherent desire: advancing research using sophisticated statistical analysis.

Both are of the opinion that in order for a paper to be recognised as ‘Most Downloaded’, it depends on the overall readership of the topic investigated. Topics should not only be novel but must be close enough to the targeted readers’ interest. In this paper, the technology, organisation and environment triad play a synergistic role that has garnered the interest of a wide spectrum of readers.

As of today, Professor Ooi has received over 10,000 Google citations with a H-index of 60 and has published over 100 research papers indexed in Clarivate Analytics (Thomson ISI Web of Science). Dr Garry's work has also been cited more than 2600 times according to Google citations and has a H-index of 25 with over 30 published articles indexed in Clarivate Analytics.


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