Digital Commons Network^™

Gold Investment As An Inflationary Hedge: Cointegration Evidence With Allowance For Endogenous Structural Breaks, A. C. Worthington, Mosayeb Pahlavani

Faculty of Commerce - Papers (Archive)

This note tests for the presence of a stable long-run relationship between the monthly price of gold and inflation in the United States from 1945 to 2006 and from 1973 to 2006. Since both the price of gold and the consumer price index have been subject to structural change over time, a novel unit root testing procedure is employed which allows for the timing of significant breaks to be estimated, rather than assumed exogenous. After taking these endogenously determined structural breaks into account, a modified cointegration approach provides strong evidence of a cointegrating relationship between gold and inflation in both …

Stochastic Price Modelling Of High Volatility, Mean-Reverting, Spike-Prone Commodities: The Australian Wholesale Electricity Market, H. Higgs, A. C. Worthington

Faculty of Commerce - Papers (Archive)

It is commonly known that wholesale spot electricity markets exhibit high price volatility, strong mean-reversion and frequent extreme price spikes. This paper employs a basic stochastic model, a mean-reverting model and a regime-switching model to capture these features in the Australian national electricity market (NEM), comprising the interconnected markets of New South Wales, Queensland, South Australia and Victoria. Daily spot prices from 1 January 1999 to 31 December 2004 are employed. The results show that the regimeswitching model outperforms the basic stochastic and mean-reverting models. Electricity prices are also found to exhibit stronger mean-reversion after a price spike than in …

The Project Of Intellectual Capital Disclosure: Researching The Research, Indra Abeysekera

Faculty of Commerce - Papers (Archive)

This paper examines a number of key issues relating to intellectual capital (IC) disclosure by addressing some of the strengths, weaknesses and gaps of the extant research. The paper begins by examining the definitions of intellectual capital and intellectual capital disclosure currently in use. Methodological issues are examined in relation to the use of source documents, coding frameworks, and research methods. Both positivist and critical theoretical perspectives used to provide a theoretical underpinning of IC disclosure analysis are reviewed. The paper concludes by arguing for the importance of addressing these issues in order to improve the credibility of IC disclosure, …

Sources Of Price Discovery In The Australian Dollar Currency Market, Alex Frino, Elvis Jarnecic, Andrew S. Tan, Maxwell Stevenson

Faculty of Commerce - Papers (Archive)

This paper examines the source of price discovery in the Australian Dollar currency market. The time-varying relationship between changes in quotes posted by cash market dealers and changes in currency futures quotes is estimated. The cash market quotations identifY the eleven dealers posting the quotes, as well as geographical location of the dealers (Australia or overseas). Reported results show that price discovery originates in the cash market in any trading period. Amongst CUlTency dealers, the results imply that local desks are price leaders during Australian trading hours. Though some foreign desks do contribute to price discovery during the European and …

Debt As A Source Of Financial Stress In Australian Households, A. C. Worthington

Faculty of Commerce - Papers (Archive)

This paper examines the role of demographic, socioeconomic and debt portfolio characteristics as contributors to financial stress in Australian households. The data is drawn from the most-recent Household Expenditure Survey and relates to 3,268 probability-weighted households. Financial stress is defined, amongst other things, in terms of financial reasons for being unable to have a holiday, have meals with family and friends, engage in hobbies and other leisure activities and general money management. Characteristics examined included family structure and composition, source and level of household income, age, sex and marital status, ethnic background, housing value, debt repayment of various types and …

Investing In The Inter-Organisational Domain, Gordon Boyce, Stuart Macintyre, Simon Ville

Faculty of Commerce - Papers (Archive)

Oranisations communicate with one another in many different ways and for a variety of reasons. Markets especially business, and the price signals that underpin them, require organisations to communicate regularly.

On The Antecedents Of Career Commitment, Michael L. Jones, Michael Zanko, George Kriflik

Faculty of Commerce - Papers (Archive)

Organisational commitment, as a subset of the psychological contract, is an important consideration for organisational leaders to foster. Strong positive commitment can lead to increased levels of devotion, loyalty, and effort and can reduce costs associated with turnover. This paper provides a brief overview of the development of commitment, with a particular focus on career commitment. Following this, a review of current research into the antecedents of career commitment is provided. Next, it discusses seven of the most relevant antecedent factors. The paper concludes by identifying the implications of these antecedents for future research.

Process Flow Mapping Of Consumers In A High Involvement Service Purchase Process: An Exploratory Study, Robert G. Grant, Elias Kyriazis

Faculty of Commerce - Papers (Archive)

This paper reports on an exploratory study undertaken to deal with the intricacy of consumer behaviour in a buying process for a complex high involvement service bundle spanning both offline and online channels. A key finding is that consumers switch repeatedly between online and offline channels and between different types of information source to satisfy their search needs. This offers a challenge for communications management if organisations wish to add customer value by minimising their customer time and effort search costs. Prior online channel research has not acknowledged off-line information complementarity for complex high involvement search. Travel agents and principal …

Testing For Structural Breaks In The Korean Economy 1980-2005: An Application Of The Innovational Outlier And Additive Outlier Models, Charles Harvie, Mosayeb Pahlavani

Faculty of Commerce - Papers (Archive)

This paper employs quarterly time series data to endogenously determine the timing of structural breaks for various macroeconomic variables in the Korean economy. The Innovational Outlier (IO) as well as Additive Outlier models (Perron, 1997) are then used to test for non-stationarity of the Korean macroeconomic data. After accounting for the single most significant structural break the results from the (AO) model clearly indicate that the null o f a unit root cannot be rejected for all of the series under investigation. This finding is consistent with our finding based on the conventional unit root test. However, by applying the …

Performing And Agential Selves: Employees As Targets Of Control, And How We, As Academics, Theorise About Them, Karin H. Garrety, Simon Down

Faculty of Commerce - Papers (Archive)

Critical management scholars have noted how contemporary management practices encourage and sometimes require workers to adopt multiple identities, and that cynicism, irony and resistance are often manifested in those identities. In this paper, we explore some attributes of modern selfhood that make these positions possible. We concentrate on two related aspects: (1) the capacity of people to reflect on, and manipulate, the selves that they present to the world, and (2) different forms of agency that actors can effect. We argue that closer attention to these attributes can sharpen our analyses of organisational control and its impacts on the self.

The Wiki: An Environment To Revolutionise Employees' Interaction With Corporate Knowledge, Helen M. Hasan, Charmaine C. Pfaff

Faculty of Commerce - Papers (Archive)

Some corporations have adopted a Wiki on their Intranets for employees to collectively store, edit and access workrelated material such as reports, best-practice features, and documents. As such collaborative software moves from the social to the corporate arena, it is bound to challenge management authority, engaging the knowledge worker in a more participatory knowledge capability and environment. This paper explores the implication that this revolution has for the interaction of corporate users with technology that will lead to a profound change in organisational culture.

An Intelligent User Interface For Browsing And Search Mpeg-7 Images Using Concept Lattices, Jon R. Ducrou, Peter W. Eklund, T. Wilson

Faculty of Commerce - Papers (Archive)

This paper presents the evaluation of a design and architecture for browsing and searching MPEG-7 images. Our approach is novel in that it exploits concept lattices for the representation and navigation of image content. Several concept lattices provide the foundation for the system (called Image-Sleuth) each representing a different search context, one for image shape, another for color and luminance, and a third for semantic content. This division of information aids in the facilitation of image browsing based on a metadata ontology. The test collection used for our study is a sub-set of MPEG-7 images created from the popular The …

Change Management, Patrick M. Dawson

Faculty of Commerce - Papers (Archive)

A key aim of change management is to manage processes towards a future that, even when anticipated and planned for, can never be fully foreseen. It is a paradox that continues to generate considerable debate and conceptual and definitional confusion.

Structuring The Project Environment For Learning, Andrew J. Sense

Faculty of Commerce - Papers (Archive)

This paper argues that project learning and the learning competency development of project practitioners are most appropriately pursued through the creation and maintenance of supportive situated learning environments within projects. Drawing on participative action research into learning practices within a case study project involving organizational change, this paper introduces a model of project situated learning behaviour and identifies and explains five sociological elements (barriers or enablers) that are primal in shaping the learning behaviours of project team participants. This framework facilitates practitioners’ systematic and communal reflection on their learning practices and helps develop their skills in ‘learning how to learn’.

The Wiki: A Tool To Support The Activities Of The Knowledge Worker, Helen M. Hasan, Charmaine C. Pfaff

Faculty of Commerce - Papers (Archive)

Since its increase in popularity in the 1990’s, mainstream knowledge management research has grappled with problems of capturing, storing and disseminating knowledge in order to support growth and learning in organisations. Attempts by management to impose knowledge management initiatives often ignore the fact that, as knowledge workers, many employees possess a huge array of work-related tacit knowledge, which cannot readily be made explicit through formal enterprise knowledge management systems and processes. Informal collaborative software, known as Wikis, may provide a more appropriate knowledge management capability and environment to capture tacit knowledge. However Wikis are only now moving from the social …

Logic Of An Australia-South Africa Fta, Ann T. Hodgkinson, Andre C. Jordaan

Faculty of Commerce - Papers (Archive)

Australia, previously a strong supporter of multilateral trade liberalisation, recently began negotiating a series of free trade agreements with countries in the Asia-Pacific region.

Computer Play, Young Children And The Development Of Higher Order Thinking: Exploring The Possibilities, Irina M. Verenikina, Janice A. Herrington

Faculty of Commerce - Papers (Archive)

The aim of this paper is to explore and review current understanding of the potential of computer play to enhance young children’s cognitive development, as compared to the developmental value of traditional make-believe play in which children spontaneously engage during their early childhood years. Theories of play have identified many ways in which traditional play may advance children’s cognitive, social and emotional development. Recently, much traditional childhood play is being replaced by time spent on computer play, and often from a very early age. To produce software that is appealing to young children, designers aim to present content in a …

Genetic And Metabolic Predictors Of Chemosensitivity In Oligodendroglial Neoplasms, C Walker, B Haylock, D. Husband, K A. Joyce, David L. Fildes, M D. Jenkinson, Trevor A. Smith, J Broome, K Kopitzki, D G. Du Plessis, J Prosser, S Vinjamuri, P C. Warnke

Faculty of Commerce - Papers (Archive)

The −1p/−19q genotype predicts chemosensitivity in oligodendroglial neoplasms, but some with intact 1p/19q also respond and not all with 1p/19q loss derive durable benefit from chemotherapy. We have evaluated the predictive and prognostic significance of pretherapy ²⁰¹Tl and ¹⁸F-FDG SPECT and genotype in 38 primary and 10 recurrent oligodendroglial neoplasms following PCV chemotherapy. 1p/19q loss was seen in 8/15 OII, 6/15 OAII, 7/7 OIII, 3/11 OAIII and was associated with response (Fisher-Exact: P=0.000) and prolonged progression-free (log-rank: P=0.002) and overall survival (OS) (log-rank: P=0.0048). Response was unrelated to metabolism, with tumours with high or low …

Overcoming Organisational Resistance To Using Wiki Technology For Knowledge Management, Charmaine C. Pfaff, Helen M. Hasan

Faculty of Commerce - Papers (Archive)

Although Wikis emerged in the public domain more than a decade ago, a number of business organisations are now discovering the advantages of using Wiki technology to manage knowledge. However, there are many who are not convinced about the merits of this relatively new Wiki technology and are not yet prepared to risk its adoption because it exhibits many ideas that have yet to be tested and many issues that have yet to be resolved. This paper studies the merits of using a Wiki for knowledge management. While some cases of corporate adoption of Wiki technology have been reported, cases …

National Efficiency, Military Accounting And The Business Of War, Warwick Funnell

Faculty of Commerce - Papers (Archive)

Costly administrative failures during the South African War were shown by several official investigations to be associated with ineffective and deceptive accounting systems administered from the War Office. They were regarded also as symptomatic of a deterioration in the efficiency of British business and government. To retrieve Britain's greatness a movement of national efficiency sought to raise efficiency levels in all areas of British national life. Fundamental to the reforms that they advocated were a strong British empire and an efficient army. Thus, military administrators were urged to apply the methods of commerce to the business of war. Amongst the …

An Investigation Into The Reward Systems And Performance Management Of Us And Japanese Companies In Vietnam, Anne Cox

Faculty of Commerce - Papers (Archive)

This paper aims to examine the interaction between country of origin and country of operation, effects in determining human resource management (HRM) policies and practices in multinationals (MNCs) in the context of globalisation.

Embedding Social Processes Into Agent-Oriented Conceptual Models, Rodney J. Clarke, Aneesh Krishna

Faculty of Commerce - Papers (Archive)

This paper describes how theories and methods for determining structural and functional patterns of communication in organisational settings can be applied to developing Agent-Oriented Conceptual Modelling, In particular we show how social processes in the form of genres- routine patterns of communication-can be embedded into Strategic Dependency diagrams used in the i* Framework. The research uses an entirely unforeseen relationship between communication theory in organisations and agent-based systems promoting agent based models that are easier to verify, more robust and portable. An example of this kind of conceptual modelling is provided and used as the basis for deriving a partial …

A Conceptual Model Of The Factors Affecting The Choice Of Nonprofit Organisation By Large Corporations In Australia, John Cantrell, Elias Kyriazis, Gary I. Noble, Jennifer Algie

Faculty of Commerce - Papers (Archive)

This paper develops a new conceptualisation of corporate giving which advances our knowledge in the field of nonprofit marketing through the development of a model which assists in identifying the drivers of corporate giving in Australia. Existing conceptualisations are limited in that the commercial realities of corporate life and the pressures that many organizations face in achieving concrete outcomes from their giving behaviour have not been properly reflected in research results. In an environment of increased competition amongst nonprofits for donations in terms of money, resources, and volunteers the better understanding of how and why corporations give will enable nonprofit …

Politics And Collaboration During Npd Projects, Elias Kyriazis, Graham Massey

Faculty of Commerce - Papers (Archive)

Effective cross-functional relationships (CFRs) are a key success factor in developing successful new products for many companies. This paper adds to our existing knowledge on the Marketing/R&D CFR by examining the effects of communication behaviours, micropolitics and interpersonal trust on the dependent variable, interpersonal collaborative behaviour during NPD activities. Interpersonal collaboration is seen as a higher level of working relationship which incorporates a "volitional" and "trusting" aspect to working relationships. Our findings reveal that the perception of the Marketing Manager as a political ally has a positive effects on interpersonal collaborative behaviour. Further, affect-based trust has a strong effect on …

Pragmatically Understanding Stakeholder Relationships And Action, Sally Davenport, Shirley R. Leitch

Faculty of Commerce - Papers (Archive)

Stakeholder research attempts to address the role and impact of stakeholder relationships in organizational life. Stakeholders act in response to an issue that arises in the relationship with the organization. Using the example of Bioreg, an organization that manages approvals for genetically modified organisms, we explore the role of the impact of an issue on stakeholder mobilization. Organizations are, in general, more adept at dealing with the 'rational' interest-based actions of stakeholders but are not well equipped for responding to identity-based stakeholder responses, yet the threshold for identity-based mobilization is lower than that for interest-based action. Based on the Issue-Impact-Action …

Organisational Factors And It Professionals' View Of Wireless Network Vulnerability Assessments, Keir Dyce, Mary Barrett

Faculty of Commerce - Papers (Archive)

The paper reports on a survey-based study of Australian computer security professionals' use of and opinions about two types of wireless vulnerability assessment (WNV A): wireless monitoring and penetration testing. An initially surprising finding was how little both types are used, despite the ease with which wireless networks can be attacked, and the lack of clear obstacles to using them.

In the light of aspects of organisational culture, including decision-making style and professional identity, the survey findings become more explicable. Senior management, and even IT staff themselves, may still hold a traditional, 'wired network' view of their organisation. 'Culture' may …

A Methodology For Integrating Artificial Intelligence Into A Quality Management Teaching Environment, Xuesong Chi, Trevor A. Spedding

Faculty of Commerce - Papers (Archive)

Management flight simulators provide a “microworld” in which users control an organization in a realistic environment without the need to disturb the real system. This paper presents a web-based intelligent virtual learning environment to enhance the education of engineering management students in quality management and statistical process control techniques. The paper introduces the structure and methodology for building this online learning environment. The simulated environment is based on an innovative approach which incorporates a Fuzzy Adaptive Resonance Theory Neural Network to enable students to obtain the best response by automatically identifying out of control conditions.

A Comparative Study Of Public Domain Supervised Classifier Performance On The Uci Database, Peter W. Eklund, A Hoang

Faculty of Commerce - Papers (Archive)

This paper surveys three classes of public domain supervised learning algorihms and performs comparative analysis of their performance against 29 of the University California Irvine machine learning datasets.

Taking Care Of (E)-Business? Australian It Professionals' Views Of Wireless Network Vulnerability Assessments, Keir Dyce, Mary Barrett

Faculty of Commerce - Papers (Archive)

M-commerce, a growing sub-category of E-business, allows business to be done 'anywhere, anytime'. However security of wireless devices remains problematic. It is unclear whether protocols to alleviate security problems, such as wireless vulnerability assessments (WNVAs), are being used or are effective. The paper reports on a survey-based study of Australian computer security professionals' use of and opinions about two types of WNVA: wireless monitoring and penetration testing. An initially surprising finding was how little both types are used, despite the ease with which wireless networks can be attacked and the fact that penetration testing is fairly well understood. In the …

The Play Of Power And Politics In Innovation And Hrm, Michael Zanko, Richard Badham, Paul Couchman, Maren Schubert

Faculty of Commerce - Papers (Archive)

This paper analyses the human resource management (HRM) practices involved in the implementation of a process innovation approach to product development (concurrent engineering (CE)) in the Australian subsidiary of a multinational firm engaged in military defence electronics. According to the research literature, almost all aspects of managing product development under a CE approach are linked to people management. Yet in this particular case, other than project team structure, the prescriptive HRM dimensions of CE were conspicuously absent in the implementation process. This absence is explained by the play of power and politics involving stakeholders analysed over an 18 month period. …