Faculty Members Coach Students to Success in Competitions and Career Development

Dr David Ko, in the Department of Management and Marketing (MM), coached a PolyU student team who won a second prize in the Social Enterprise / Culture and Creative Services section of the 6th Hong Kong University Student Innovation and Entrepreneurship Competition held in May 2020. The competition was organized by Hong Kong New Generation Cultural Association, funded by Innovation and Technology Commission, and co-organized by Hong Kong Science & Technology Parks Corporation. He also acted as mentor to an outstanding MM alumna, Ms Farrah Wong, who is now pursuing a career in the UK.

Dr Sunny Sun and Dr Te Feng Chen, from the School of Accounting and Finance, coached two teams of students for the Accounting event and Finance event respectively, for the Inter-collegiate Business Competition 2020 Preliminary Case Report Round in November 2019. The Accounting team successfully progressed to the Finals hosted by the Smith School of Business at Queen's University held in Kingston, Canada in January 2020 and was coached by Dr Hazel Lee to secure third place in the Accounting event of the Inter-collegiate Business Competition Finals 2020.

Dr Sun also coached a team of financial services students who won two prizes at ACCA-CFA Institute Business Competition 2019-2020.

Academic Promotion

Congratulations to Dr Yulan Amanda Wang, in the Department of Logistics and Maritime Studies, on her promotion to the rank of full professor with effect from 1 July 2020.

Reciprocal Relationships between Dispositional Optimism and Work Experiences: A Five-wave Longitudinal Investigation
Journal of Applied Psychology, 104(12), 1471-1486 (2019)

Li Wendong, The Chinese University of Hong Kong
Li Shuping, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University
Michael Frese, National University of Singapore and Leuphana University of Lueneburg

Previous research on dispositional optimism has predominantly concentrated on the selection effect of dispositional optimism on predicting work outcomes. Recent research, however, has started to examine the socialization effect of life experiences on fostering dispositional optimism development. Extrapolating primarily from the TESSERA framework of personality development (Wrzus & Roberts, 2017) and the literature on dispositional optimism, the current study represents a first attempt to reconcile the two seemingly contrasting perspectives. The authors proposed and examined change-related reciprocal relationships between dispositional optimism and work experience variables including income, job insecurity, coworker support, and supervisor support. Latent change score modeling of data from a five-wave longitudinal study demonstrated that dispositional optimism resulted in decreases in job insecurity, and the decreased job insecurity in turn promoted further increases in dispositional optimism later on. Furthermore, income gave rise to increases in dispositional optimism at a later point in time, but not vice versa. No significant relationships were observed between dispositional optimism and coworker and supervisor support. The findings provide a cautionary note to the majority of previous research based on cross-sectional and lagged designs that assumes causal effects of dispositional optimism on work outcomes. They also showcase the importance of examining personality change in organizational research and enrich the understanding of a more nuanced dynamic interplay between the optimistic employee and the work environment.