Senior Professor Ts. Dr. Ooi Keng Boon, FASc is one of Malaysia’s most prolific and influential researchers. Having been in the education sector for more than a decade, he has contributed some of the most important research in industrial management and information systems. He is currently serving as a Senior Professor of Industrial Management & Information Systems and is currently the Dean of UCSI Graduate Business School at UCSI University. Here, Senior Professor Ts. Dr. Ooi Keng Boon shares in-depth with Top 10 of Malaysia about his illustrious career and the important role industrial management and information systems play, now and in the future.
Senior Professor Ts. Dr. Ooi Keng Boon is from Ipoh, Malaysia. Even as a child, it already looked like he was going to be a teacher. “Teaching has been my dream profession since childhood and I am specifically passionate about education and the advancement of knowledge,” says Ooi. After his graduation, he worked as a senior IT engineer in a multinational semiconductor manufacturing firm for 7 years. Upon the completion of his doctorate, he decided to pursue his dream and therefore switched to a career in education in 2006. He was employed as a lecturer at the Faculty of Management in Multimedia University (MMU) from 2006 to 2008. Thereafter, he moved to Universiti Tunku Abdul Rahman (UTAR) and was given the opportunity to contribute as the Dean and Associate Professor for the Faculty of Business and Finance for 3 years. Presently, he is serving as a Senior Professor of Industrial Management & Information Systems and is currently the Dean of UCSI Graduate Business School at UCSI University.
Ooi received his Engineering Doctorate (DEng) in Engineering Business Management from the University of Technology Malaysia (UTM), Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) in Applied Statistics from the University of Malaya (UM), MBA from the University of Southern Queensland (Australia), Postgraduate Diploma in Tertiary Teaching from UCSI University, Postgraduate Award from the University of Warwick (UK) and Bachelor of Information Technology (Distinction) from University of Southern Queensland (Australia). Ooi is a Professional Technologist (P. Tech.) with the Malaysia Board of Technologists (MBOT). He is also a Fellow of the Academy of Sciences Malaysia and a Fellow of the Royal Statistical Society, UK.
“I am passionate about industrial management and information systems because I was always keen and enthusiastic towards technological innovation and how the advancements in information systems will spur the growth in industrial management, especially in Industrial Revolution 4.0,” says Ooi beaming with passion. Perhaps one of the most exciting findings related to Ooi’s research is in the article titled “The Age of Mobile Social Commerce: An Artificial Neural Network Analysis on its Resistances” Vol. 144, July 2019, pp. 311 to 324, which was collaboratively written with Dr Lee Voon Hsien, Dr Garry Tan Wei Han, Dr Leong Lai Ying and Hew Jun Jie. This ground-breaking paper was also recently awarded the “Top Downloaded Article 2019” by Technological Forecasting and Social Change (TFSC), Elsevier USA based on the high user-based download data obtained over the last 90 days. As to date, the article has undergone about 3,600 downloads worldwide.
“The study explores the mobile social media users’ resistance behaviour towards mobile social commerce intention using Artificial Neural Network analysis. The results show that all resistances positively correlated with usage intention, except for the image barrier, which coincidently was also indicated to be the most influencing factor. The study offers several significant contributions. The paper reaffirmed the coexistence of the ‘privacy paradox’ theory which confirmed the existence of resistances and usage intention. Practitioners are strongly encouraged to focus on the suggested resistances in their decision-making based on the findings. Theoretically, the study addressed the pro-change bias in mobile social commerce through the explanation of innovation resistance. Methodologically the study engages Artificial Neural Network analysis to address the non-linearity between resistances and mobile social commerce usage intention,” says Ooi.
Ooi is known for being prolific without sacrificing quality. So how does the Professor manage to achieve this delicate balance? “As an experienced academic, I strongly believe in the power of having a strong, efficient and effective research team so that we can achieve our research goals and complete the research projects on time.”
Some of Ooi’s accolades include receiving the National Outstanding Researcher Award and Malaysia’s Distinguished Researcher Award by Private Education Co-operative of Malaysia in 2017 and 2019 respectively. He was Malaysia’s Research Star Award (MRSA) recipient of the year 2018 presented by both Malaysia’s Ministry of Education and Clarivate Analytics and also the Highly Commended Award in the Research/Academic category from the University of Southern Queensland (USQ).
Ooi’s research excellence and impact have been recognized with different honours by various researchers in international journals of repute. An award-winning researcher, Ooi has been listed in the World’s Top Scientists Ranking for Computer Science and Electronics by Guide2Research 2021. He has also been recognised in social commerce and mobile commerce research. In social commerce research, Ooi was ranked 1st among the Top 10 Core Authors in the World from 2003 to 2018 in Clarivate Analytics (Web of Science) based on a conference paper published by the Association for Information Systems Electronic Library (AISeL) (Li et al, 2018).
Ooi was also ranked as one of the World’s Top 2% Scientists in the field of “Business and Management” by the 2019 Stanford University List and ranked number 1 in the World’s Top 10 Most Productive Authors in the field of “Mobile Commerce” (2007 to 2018) in Web of Science (Du and Li, 2019). Ooi’s name was also listed in the World’s Top 50 Most Productive and Influential Authors (ranked number 42) in Knowledge Management in Web of Science from 1961 to 2015 by Magaly Gaviria-Marin et al., (2019) and he was also acknowledged as one of the Top World Authors and High Impact Researchers in the topic ‘Technology Acceptance Model; Mobile Payment; UTAUT’ (2015-2020) by Elsevier’s Scopus and Scival where he ranked number 6. The Professor was also ranked number 4 in the list of the World’s Top 5 Most Productive and Influential Authors in the Journal of Industrial Management & Data Systems (Emerald) (1994-2018) in Web of Science (Wang et al., 2019).
With his extensive experience in teaching and being one of the prolific researchers in Industrial Management and Information Systems, Ooi has some advice to give those who are looking to pursue qualifications related to this particular field of business.
“It can be observed that increasingly most current organisations rely on effective design, precise implementation and sound management of today’s information technology-related systems. With knowledge in Industrial Management & Information Systems, your skills will be invaluable to top management and your organisation as a whole from a variety of sectors. Both degrees will equip you with technical and managerial skills, which are considered essential for successful professional enhancement. The ultimate objectives of getting a degree even if you are already a business professional are not only to equip yourselves with the necessary knowledge and skills but also to contribute to your organisation, not forgetting also towards the community and nation-building.”
