Digital Commons Network^™

Collaboration In Supply Chain: A Multi-Agent Approach, Xin Li, Sim K. Lau

Dr Sim Kim Lau

Supply chain collaboration has become a critical success factor for supply chain management. Supply chain collaboration builds on information sharing, collaborative planning and execution. Many information systems have been developed for supply chain management. However, these systems do not sufficiently support collaborative supply chain. Recently, intelligent agent technology has received a great potential in supporting transparency in information flows and modeling the dynamic supply chain for collaborative supply chain. This paper explores the similarities between multi-agent system and supply chain to investigate the appropriateness of multi-agent based technology to model supply chain system and support collaborative supply chain planning and …

The Development Of A User Self-Help Knowledge Management System For Help Desk: Deployment Of Knowledge Management Approach And Software Agent Technology, Kar Yin Leung, Sim K. Lau

Dr Sim Kim Lau

Most help desks have admitted their call volume has increased in the past decade while “help unavailable when needed” is the major reason for service delivery failure and user dissatisfaction. The habit of calling help desk for simple problems has prompted the investigation of transferring part of first-level troubleshooting duty from help desk to user. This research proposes the development of user self-help knowledge management system that allows user to solve simple and routine technical enquiries. The proposed approach incorporates software agent to allow autonomous handling of enquiries so that the most appropriate solution and user communication can be facilitated.

Relieving The Overloaded Help Desk: A Knowledge Management Approach, Kar Yin Leung, Sim Lau

Dr Sim Kim Lau

No abstract provided.

A Multi-Agent Approach Towards Collaborative Supply Chain Management, Xin Li, Sim K. Lau

Dr Sim Kim Lau

Supply chain collaboration has become a critical success factor for supply chain management and effectively improves the performance of organizations in various industries. Supply chain collaboration builds on information sharing, collaborative planning and execution. Information technology is an important enabler of collaborative supply chain management. Many information systems have been developed for supply chain management from legacy systems and enterprise resource planning (ERP) into the newly developed advanced planning and scheduling system (APS) and e-commerce solutions. However, these systems do not provide sufficient support to achieve collaborative supply chain. Recently, intelligent agent technology and multi-agent system (MAS) have received a …

A Framework Of Ontology Revision On The Semantic Web: A Belief Revision Approach, Seung Hwan Kang, Sim K. Lau

Dr Sim Kim Lau

The focus of the research in ontologies shifts from ontology representation to ontology evolution perspectives that become an important field of ontology research. Even though ontology refers to specification of conceptualisation that provides a useful way to represent the semantics of the Web resources, there is a still need for maintaining and handling ontologies. Because ontologies may change as a result of accepting new information, when this occurs, ontology needs to be revised. However the new information may contradict what was initially defined in the ontology when ontology revision is performed. To discuss this revision perspective, this research proposes an …

The Use Of Team-Based Learning As An Approach To Increased Engagement And Learning For Marketing Students: A Case Study, Paul Chad

Paul Chad

Marketing educators are often faced with poor preclass preparation by students, declining student interest in attending classes as the semester progresses, and student complaints regarding previous bad experiences with team assessment activities. Teambased learning (TBL) is an innovative teaching strategy using semiformalized guidelines aimed to enhance student engagement and improve teamwork and, hence, overcome the typical problems faced by educators. This case study examines the firsttime use of TBL in a postgraduate marketing subject at an Australian university. The results indicate that the TBL innovation has a positive influence on student engagement and offers opportunities to assist learning. The study …

Can Volunteer Counsellors Help Prevent Psychological Trauma? A Preliminary Communication On Volunteers Skills Using The 'Orienting Approach' To Trauma, Mitchell Byrne, Frank Deane, Andrew Phipps

Mitchell K Byrne

The capacity of 73 volunteer telephone counsellors to administer a brief and early intervention for secondary trauma was assessed. The counsellors participated in a 1-day training programme in the ‘Orienting Approach’ to Trauma Counselling (Phipps & Byrne, 2003). Volunteer counsellors showed significant improvements in both knowledge and skills from pre- to post-training. The potential benefits of this intervention to the community and professional health services are discussed.

Implementing A Sustainability Balanced Scorecard 'Dashboard' Approach To Assess Organisational Legitimacy, Tairan (Kevin) Huang, Matthew P. Pepper, Graham D. Bowrey

Graham Bowrey

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to identify and determine the contributing factors which influence the contents of a firm‟s sustainability reporting through combined social and environmental accounting and management perspectives. Design/methodology/approach: This paper analyzes the disclosed sustainability indicators of a major Australian financial institution, Westpac, through the application of the research method content analysis. The theoretical framework will be shaped by the consideration of legitimacy theory and the Balanced Scorecard approach. Findings: The results indicate that the four perspectives of a traditional Balanced Scorecard are related to the main sources of influential inputs to Westpac‟s sustainability reporting – …

Opportunities For Interactivity In Public Health Websites: A Content Analysis Approach, Sumayya Banna, Helen M. Hasan, Joseph A. Meloche

Sumayya a Banna

The Internet has many advantages over other media in the provision of information services in the area of public health. However many designers are not yet taking full advantage of its potential for interactivity. This paper examines the development of interactivity in public health websites in the increasingly important area of Palliative Care. Content analysis is used here to map the interactivity in a sample of 30 existing websites along with Heeter’s six dimensions (content and availability of choice, effort users must exert, responsiveness to the users, and the ease of adding information, monitoring the information and the system use, …

Measuring The Banking Efficiency And Productivity Changes Using The Hicks-Moorsteen Approach: The Case Of Iran, Amir Arjomandi, Charles Harvie, Abbas Valadkhani

Amir Arjomandi

This study is the first to use a comprehensive decomposition of the Hicks–Moorsteen TFP index developed by O’Donnell (2010a) to analyse efficiency and productivity changes in a banking context. The paper investigates the efficiency and productivity growth of the Iranian banking industry between 2003 and 2008, encompassing pre- and post-2005-reform years. The advantage of this approach over the popular constant-returns-to-scale Malmquist productivity index is that it is free from any assumptions concerning firms’ returns to scale. We assume that the production technology exhibits variable returns to scale. Our findings show that the banking industry’s technical efficiency level – which had …

Organization-Based Social Marketing: An Alternative Approach For Organizations Adopting Sustainable Business Practices, Mary Franks Papakosmas, Gary Noble, John Glynn

John J Glynn

This article conceptualizes a new area for social marketing practitioners by focusing on individual behavior change that might occur within organizations. Organization-Based Social Marketing (OBSM) draws from organization change theory and internal marketing theory, while maintaining social marketing’s focus on beneficial behavior modification. The article argues that as such, OBSM represents a viable approach for organizations seeking to address the increasing demand for change strategies that promote proenvironmental behavior among their employees

Maintaining Social Marketing's Relevance: A Dualistic Approach, Gary I. Noble

Gary Noble

There have been calls amongst academics and practitioners to move social marketing 'upstream'. This paper attempts to clarify what upstream social marketing is, its appropriate relationship with ‘downstream’ social marketing and how both approaches can be combined into a suitable theoretical framework. The paper argues that neither up or downstream social marketing is superior and suggests that a dual, synergistic approach is needed. This argument is supported through reference to current social marketing interventions in the areas of road safety and childhood obesity. The paper concludes by suggesting that Polonsky, Carlson and Fry’s (2003) ‘harm chain’ concept may be a …

A Knowledge Mapping Approach To Facilitate Strategic Human Resource And Knowledge Management, Debbie Richards, Peter R. Massingham, Peter Busch

Peter Massingham

A key challenge facing organisations is how to effectively connect employees who seek knowledge with those who have the necessary knowledge. From case studies conducted in three separate knowledge intensive organisations, briefly introduced in this paper, we found that locating and measuring expertise were major challenges with no current satisfactory solutions. We offer a method to map intellectual capital within organisations distinct from previous expertise location methods in several significant ways. First, it includes the measurement of knowledge value within the context of the organisation's strategy and activities. Second, it addresses concerns with existing methods such as subjectivity associated with …

A Cultural-Historical Activity Theory Approach To Users, Usability And Usefulness, Helen M. Hasan

Helen Hasan

This paper takes an historical overview of the field of Human-Computer Interaction. Itdescribes how the cognitive psychology emphasis on user involvement in systemsdevelopment of the 1980s reached its limit by the early 1990s. At this point the focus shifted onto support for the tasks of users using computer-based systems in real contexts, a focus that ideally suits the mobile, ubiquitous and social technologies of the new millennium. The Cultural-Historical Activity Theory provides an appropriate framework for understanding this phenomenon and is adopted in this paper to present the work, over a seven year period, of a usability laboratory grounded in …

Opportunities For Interactivity In Public Health Websites: A Content Analysis Approach, Sumayya Banna, Helen M. Hasan, Joseph A. Meloche

Helen Hasan

The Internet has many advantages over other media in the provision of information services in the area of public health. However many designers are not yet taking full advantage of its potential for interactivity. This paper examines the development of interactivity in public health websites in the increasingly important area of Palliative Care. Content analysis is used here to map the interactivity in a sample of 30 existing websites along with Heeter’s six dimensions (content and availability of choice, effort users must exert, responsiveness to the users, and the ease of adding information, monitoring the information and the system use, …

Accounting For Emission Rights: An Environmental Ethics Approach, Emma Zhang-Debreceny, Mary A. Kaidonis, Lee Moerman

Mary Kaidonis

We argue that the International Accounting Standard Board's difficulty in arriving at a standard for accounting for emission rights, which is central to Emission Trading Schemes, is an opportunity to re-examine the issues from an environmental ethics approach. We critically evaluate the IASB approach which privileges profits, and views emission rights as tradeable entitlements to pollute. We consider social ecology, an example of an environmental ethical perspective which holds that humans' survival and the environment's sustainability are inextricably linked. We conclude that social ecology can inform accounting standard setters about the accounting treatment of emissions rights.

The Effects Of Currency Appreciation On Share Market Return: Ardl Approach, Gary G. Tian, Shiguang Ma

Gary Tian

This study employs the ARDL cointegrating approach to examine the impact of financial liberalization on the relationships between three Chinese main bilateral exchange rates and its share market performance. We discovered that a long-term equilibrium relationship measured by cointegration has emerged between the exchange rate of the RMB against the Japanese Yen and, to a lesser extent, the exchange rate against both the US dollar and Hong Kong dollar and the Shanghai Composite Index since 2005 when the Chinese exchange rate regime changed from a peg system to a more flexible managed floating system. We found that the exchange rate …

Dementia And Driving: An Approach For General Practice, John Carmody, Victoria Traynor, Donald C. Iverson

Faculty of Health and Behavioural Sciences - Papers (Archive)

Background As our population ages, the proportion of drivers with dementia will continue to rise. Increasingly, health professionals are faced with the clinical dilemma of determining fitness to drive. Unfortunately, the management of drivers with dementia is fraught with hazards.

Objective This article attempts to provide an overview of the complex issue of driving and dementia as it relates to general practitioners in Australia. In addition, an evidence based management strategy is proposed.

Discussion When determining an individual’s fitness to drive, a clinician’s input may have legal, ethical, emotional and social ramifications. At present, a clear consistent national protocol detailing …

Creative Unit And Lesson Planning Through A Thematic/Integrated Approach To Teaching Games For Understanding (Tgfu), Paul I. Webb, Philip J. Pearson

Faculty of Social Sciences - Papers (Archive)

The Teaching Games for Understanding (TGfU) approach developed by Bunker and Thorpe (1982) involves a different approach to the traditional/technical model of teaching of games. The focus of the model is placing the student or athlete in a game situation where tactics, decision-making and problem solving is critical. The purpose of this paper is to explore a model for unit and lesson planning used for pre-service Physical and Health Education students at an Australian University as part of the movement studies subjects. These subjects included invasion, striking/ fielding, target and net/court games. This paper extends Webb and Pearson's (2008) previous …

Training Self-Assessment And Task-Selection Skills: A Cognitive Approach To Improving Self-Regulated Learning, Danny Kostons, Tamara Van Gog, Fred Paas

Faculty of Social Sciences - Papers (Archive)

For self-regulated learning to be effective, students need to be able to accurately assess their own performance on a learning task and use this assessment for the selection of a new learning task. Evidence suggests, however, that students have difficulties with accurate self-assessment and task selection, which may explain the poor learning outcomes often found with self-regulated learning. In experiment 1, the hypothesis was investigated and confirmed that observing a human model engaging in self-assessment, task selection, or both could be effective for secondary education students' (N=80) acquisition of self- assessment and task-selection skills. Experiment 2 investigated and confirmed the …

Parameter Estimation Of A Regime-Switching Model Using An Inverse Stieltjes Moment Approach, X Xi, Marianito R. Rodrigo, Rogemar S. Mamon

Faculty of Engineering and Information Sciences - Papers: Part A

We address the problem of recovering the time-dependent parameters of the Black-Scholes option pricing model when the underlying stock price dynamics are modelled by a finite-state, continuous-time Markov chain. The coupled system of Dupire-type partial differential equations is derived and formulated as an inverse Stieltjes moment problem. We provide numerical illustration on how to apply our method to simulated financial data. The accuracy of the model parameter estimation is examined and sensitivity analyses are included to study the behaviour of the estimated results when model parameters are varied.

The Use Of Team-Based Learning As An Approach To Increased Engagement And Learning For Marketing Students: A Case Study, Paul Chad

Faculty of Commerce - Papers (Archive)

Marketing educators are often faced with poor preclass preparation by students, declining student interest in attending classes as the semester progresses, and student complaints regarding previous bad experiences with team assessment activities. Teambased learning (TBL) is an innovative teaching strategy using semiformalized guidelines aimed to enhance student engagement and improve teamwork and, hence, overcome the typical problems faced by educators. This case study examines the firsttime use of TBL in a postgraduate marketing subject at an Australian university. The results indicate that the TBL innovation has a positive influence on student engagement and offers opportunities to assist learning. The study …

Beyond Barcoding: A Mitochondrial Genomics Approach To Molecular Phylogenetics And Diagnostics Of Blowflies (Diptera: Calliphoridae), Leigh Nelson, Christine L. Lambkin, Philip Batterham, James F. Wallman, Mark P. Dowton, Michael F. Whiting, David K. Yeates, Stephen L. Cameron

Faculty of Science - Papers (Archive)

Members of the Calliphoridae (blowflies) are significant for medical and veterinary management, due to the ability of some species to consume living flesh as larvae, and for forensic investigations due to the ability of others to develop in corpses. Due to the difficulty of accurately identifying larval blowflies to species there is a need for DNA-based diagnostics for this family, however the widely used DNA-barcoding marker, cox1, has been shown to fail for several groups within this family. Additionally, many phylogenetic relationships within the Calliphoridae are still unresolved, particularly deeper level relationships. Sequencing whole mt genomes has been demonstrated both …

The Evidence-Policy Divide: A 'Critical Computational Linguistics' Approach To The Language Of 18 Health Agency Ceos From 9 Countries, Erica Bell, Bastian M. Seidel

Faculty of Science, Medicine and Health - Papers: part A

Background There is an emerging body of literature suggesting that the evidence-practice divide in health policy is complex and multi-factorial but less is known about the processes by which health policy-makers use evidence and their views about the specific features of useful evidence. This study aimed to contribute to understandings of how the most influential health policy-makers view useful evidence, in ways that help explore and question how the evidence-policy divide is understood and what research might be supported to help overcome this divide. Methods A purposeful sample of 18 national and state health agency CEOs from 9 countries was …

An Approach To Compensate The Object Movement Errors In Phase Shifting Profilometry, Lei Lu, Jiangtao Xi, Yanguang Yu, Limei Song

Faculty of Engineering and Information Sciences - Papers: Part A

Phase shifting profilometry (PSP) technique is widely used as a 3-D shape measurement technique due to its robustness and accuracy. However, PSP requires multiple fringe pattern images to be projected onto an object and a reference plane to calculate the phase value, and also the object must maintain motionless when the measurement is taken. If the object moves during the measurement, significant errors will be introduced when calculating the phase value. This paper analyses the relationship between the object movement and the phase value, and proposes a method for compensating the errors caused by two-dimensional movement of object. This method …

The Vignette-Matching Procedure: An Innovative Approach To Assess Competencies In Psychology And Clinical Practicum. Final Report., Craig J. Gonsalvez

Faculty of Health and Behavioural Sciences - Papers (Archive)

No abstract provided.

Social Inclusion As An Unfinished Verb: A Practice-Based Approach, Lynne Keevers, Pamela Abuodha

Senior Deputy Vice-Chancellor and Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Education) - Papers

The Australian Government has embarked on a social inclusion agenda that includes ambitious targets to increase and widen participation in higher education. From the evidence to date their approach to social inclusion in higher education focuses attention on statistical indicators of "proportional representation". Most of the available measures of social inclusion and exclusion have an individualistic focus and tend to characterise social exclusion as a "state" in which people are assumed to be "excluded" from access to higher education. Such a perspective focuses attention on the point of entry but backgrounds how the relational experience of under-represented groups in learning …

Measuring The Banking Efficiency And Productivity Changes Using The Hicks-Moorsteen Approach: The Case Of Iran, Amir Arjomandi, Charles Harvie, Abbas Valadkhani

Faculty of Commerce - Papers (Archive)

This study is the first to use a comprehensive decomposition of the Hicks–Moorsteen TFP index developed by O’Donnell (2010a) to analyse efficiency and productivity changes in a banking context. The paper investigates the efficiency and productivity growth of the Iranian banking industry between 2003 and 2008, encompassing pre- and post-2005-reform years. The advantage of this approach over the popular constant-returns-to-scale Malmquist productivity index is that it is free from any assumptions concerning firms’ returns to scale. We assume that the production technology exhibits variable returns to scale. Our findings show that the banking industry’s technical efficiency level – which had …

Organization-Based Social Marketing: An Alternative Approach For Organizations Adopting Sustainable Business Practices, Mary Franks Papakosmas, Gary Noble, John Glynn

Faculty of Commerce - Papers (Archive)

This article conceptualizes a new area for social marketing practitioners by focusing on individual behavior change that might occur within organizations. Organization-Based Social Marketing (OBSM) draws from organization change theory and internal marketing theory, while maintaining social marketing’s focus on beneficial behavior modification. The article argues that as such, OBSM represents a viable approach for organizations seeking to address the increasing demand for change strategies that promote proenvironmental behavior among their employees

A Soft-In Soft-Out Detection Approach Using Partial Gaussian Approximation, Qinghua Guo, Licai Fang, Defeng (David) Huang, Sven Nordholm

Faculty of Engineering and Information Sciences - Papers: Part A

This paper concerns the implementation of the softin soft-out detector in an iterative detection system. A detection approach is proposed based on the properties of Gaussian functions. In this approach, for the computation of the APP (a posteriori probability) of a concerned symbol, the other symbols are distinguished based on their contributions to the APP of the concerned symbol, and the symbols with less contributions are treated as Gaussian variables to reduce the computational complexity. The exact APP detector and the well-known LMMSE (linear minimum mean square error) detector are two special cases of the proposed detector. Simulation results show …