Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Management Control Systems For R&D Activities In Government Sector: A Case Of Indonesia, Parulian Silaen, Robert Williams

Faculty of Commerce - Papers (Archive)

Research and Development (R&D) organisation has different activity, employee’s characteristics, goals, and planning system from a non-R&D organisation. It requires Management Control Systems (MCS) that fit R&D activities. The study proposes four important core elements of MCS particularly for a R&D organisation: desired ends, actors, control implementation, and control tools. The study investigates the existence and the use of those core elements in R&D project from the Government units and the control systems implemented by three government units. The study finds the existence of desired ends to have qualitative characteristics and to use it to control the project direction and …

The Utility Of The Assessment Of Spirituality And Religious Sentiments (Aspires) Scale With Christians And Buddhists In Sri Lanka, R. Piedmont, M. B. Werdel, Mario Fernando

Faculty of Commerce - Papers (Archive)

The Assessment of Spirituality and Religious Sentiments (ASPIRES) Scale represents spirituality as a universal source of motivation. Psychometric evidence for this argument is demonstrated when scores on the scale remain reliable and structurally valid across cultures and religious contexts. The psychometric qualities of the ASPIRES was examined with in a diverse religious sample from Sri Lanka. The results demonstrated the structural validity and applicability of the measure within this ethnic group. The data provided further support for cross-cultural applicability of the instrument and for the assumption of spirituality as a universal aspect of the human experience.

Environmental Health And Choice Of Residence, Amnon Levy

Faculty of Commerce - Papers (Archive)

This paper analyses the relationships between the values and dispersion of residential properties and the environmental-health quality of their locations. It constructs residents' health-adjusted lifetime-utility function by combining satisfaction from consumption over the lifespan with risk to life from living in an environmentally unhealthy location. It employs this utility function to analyse willingness to pay for environmental-health quality, choice of location and residential dispersion and its relationship with income distribution.

Spotlights And Shadows: Preliminary Findings About The Experiences Of Women In Family Business Leadership Roles, Mary Barrett, Ken Moores

Faculty of Commerce - Papers (Archive)

In an earlier study (Moores & Barrett 2002) we found successful CEOs had learned leadership of family controlled businesses (FCBs) in a series of distinct learning phases. Because that study's sample did not include many women, our present study focuses on women in FCBs to better understand how they exercise leadership and entrepreneurship in the family firm context. Case study analysis of an international sample of women FCB leaders, using frameworks which avoid essentialist assumptions about women's and men's approach to leadership, suggests there are some characteristic ways women leaders learn FCB leadership and entrepreneurship roles. We have tentatively labelled …

Public Sector Gambling: Local Council Investment Exposures, Graham Bowrey, Greg Jones

Faculty of Commerce - Papers (Archive)

Local councils in New South Wales (NSW) have the authority to invest ratepayers' money that is not currently required for any other purpose by the council. At the end of 2006-07 financial year local councils in New South Wales had invested $590 million dollars in structured financial products such as collateralised debt obligations (CDO). By the end of January 2008, six months later, the market value of these investments dropped $200 million to $390 million. Since then the financial investment market has further significantly reduced with the value of the councils' investments losing many more millions of dollars. In NSW …

Form Over Substance, The Politics Of International Accounting Setting, Hajar Roudaki, Kathleen A. Cooper, Lee C. Moerman

Faculty of Commerce - Papers (Archive)

This paper lays the foundation of the move towards international standards and an international body being dependent upon the involvement of politics. Callon's translation model is adapted to develop the concept that the underling purposes and objectives that international bodies have been established by would not be achieved as a result of powerful players. According to Robson (1991, p.552) the "process of translation is common to many instances of accounting problematisation and accounting change"

Self-Congruity Theory In Volunteering, Melanie J. Randle, Sara Dolnicar

Faculty of Commerce - Papers (Archive)

According to self-congruity theory, people prefer brands that they associate with a set of personality traits which are similar to their own. This notion is widely accepted by consumer researchers and has been empirically tested in a number of commercial product and service contexts. It has not, however, been tested in the context of the third sector, particularly in relation to volunteering organisations. This study finds preliminary support for two hypotheses: (1) volunteers who prefer a specific volunteering organisation over others differ significantly in their self-concept; and (2) the self-concept of volunteers who prefer a specific volunteering organisation most closely …

A Welfare Analysis Of The Commonwealth Seniors Health Card, Peter M. Siminski

Faculty of Commerce - Papers (Archive)

The Commonwealth Seniors Health Card (CSHC) is a key element of a suite of benefits for Australia's 'self-funded retirees'. Its main component is a pharmaceutical concession, which is analysed as a form of public health insurance. The utility gain through risk-pooling is found to be negligible under conservative assumptions. The deadweight loss through moral hazard may be considerable. Finally, the CSHC may be seen as an inequitable transfer, because CSHC holders are a particularly wealthy population.

Changes In Poverty Rates During The Howard Era, Joan R. Rodgers, Peter Siminski, James Bishop

Faculty of Commerce - Papers (Archive)

This article considers changes in poverty rates under the Howard government. We also make three methodological contributions. We consider the statistical significance of the estimated changes in poverty. We propose a decomposition technique that reconciles the trends in absolute and relative poverty. We also use 'poverty profiles', which illustrate sensitivity to alternative poverty lines. We find decreases in absolute poverty and increases in relative poverty, both of which are statistically significant over a range of poverty lines. At a poverty line equal to half of the median income, the increase in relative poverty is statistically significant for all people and …

Value For Money? Neo-Liberalism In New South Wales Prisons, Jane L. Andrew, Damien Cahill

Faculty of Commerce - Papers (Archive)

The NSW prison sector has undergone considerable reform over the last ten years. The NSW government now oversees the operation of publicly managed prisons, one privately managed prison and a number of new public prisons operating under the new 'Way Forward' management model. In order to establish which approach to prison management offered the best value for money, the NSW government undertook a 'value for money' assessment in 2005. In this article, we argue the cost accounting information is privileged in the assessment process. However, we contend that this information was limited and partial, and provided a poor basis on …

How Buyers And Sellers Value B2b Relationships: A Relationship Value Continuum For Internet Based Exchange, Michael D. Clements

Faculty of Commerce - Papers (Archive)

The internet as a vehicle for engaging two parties around a transaction is more prolific than any previous information system. With the speed and accessibility of information on products and services available at the touch of a button, it is the awareness of open information sharing, the acceptance of moving customer loyalty, and the changing of buyer/seller relationships that is the focus of this research. This paper introduces and proposes the concept of a relationship value continuum between buyers and sellers in business to business relationships, as an important mechanism for maintaining and developing buyer/seller relationships both off and online. …

Managerial Compensation, Ownership Structure And Firm Performance In China's Listed Firms, Xiaofei Pan, Gary G. Tian, Shiguang Ma, Aelee Jun, Qingliang Tang

Faculty of Commerce - Papers (Archive)

This paper investigates managerial compensation and its relationship with firm performance in China's listed firms. In China, the largest shareholder dominates other shareholders, controls the firm and therefore exercises substantial impacts on manager compensation. After controlling for other firm and industry characteristics, we find that manager remuneration is greater and pay-performance relation is stronger for privately-controlled firms than for state-controlled firms. We also document that state-controlled firms exercise performance-based manager incentive schemes, which is contrary to evidence found in some earlier studies. Our results also indicate that top executives in firms with a foreign ownership are more highly compensated, relative …

A Longitudinal Study Of The Use Of The Web By Regional Tourism Organisations (Rtos) In Australia, Lois Burgess, Belinda Parrish, Joan Cooper, Carole Alcock

Faculty of Commerce - Papers (Archive)

The information-intensive nature of the tourism and travel industry suggests an important role for Web technology in the promotion and marketing of tourist destinations. The rapid development of the Internet is also having profound impacts on the industry. In fact, travel and tourism has become the single largest category of products sold over the Internet (Tourism White Paper, 2007). With reports of travel purchases and reservations being one of the fastest growing segments of the Internet community it is no surprise that the number of tourism operators on the Web has increased considerably over the past few years. This paper …

Contributions Of Longitudinal Data To Poverty Measurement In Australia, Joan R. Rodgers, John L. Rodgers

Faculty of Commerce - Papers (Archive)

Chronic poverty is of greater social consequence than transitory poverty but its measurement requires longitudinal data. This article uses six waves of data from the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia Survey to explore the extent to which longitudinal data contribute to what is known about poverty from cross-section data. We find an imperfect correspondence between people's annual poverty status and chronic poverty status. Consequently, policies that aim to reduce chronic poverty using means-tested benefits may be partially misdirected if beneficiaries are identified using annual income. Furthermore, some households experiencing chronic poverty may fall through the safety net.

Response Style Contamination Of Student Evaluation Data, Sara Dolnicar, Bettina Grun

Faculty of Commerce - Papers (Archive)

Student evaluation surveys provide instructors with feedback regarding development opportunities and they form the basis of promotion and tenure decisions. Student evaluations have been extensively studied, but one dimension hitherto neglected is the actual measurement aspect: which questions to ask, how to ask them, and what answer options to offer to students to get the most valid results. This study investigates whether cross-cultural response styles affect the validity of student evaluations. If they do, then the student mix in a class can affect an instructor's evaluation, potentially producing biased feedback and prompting inappropriate decisions by university committees. This article discusses …

Drinking Water From Alternative Water Sources: Differences In Beliefs, Social Norms And Factors Of Perceived Behavioural Control Across Eight Australian Locations, Sara Dolnicar, Anna Hurlimann

Faculty of Commerce - Papers (Archive)

Australia is facing serious challenges in the management of water in various urban and regional locations. Two popular responses to these challenges are increasing supply through alternative water sources such as recycled and desalinated water. However, significant gaps exist in our knowledge of community attitudes to these alternative sources of water, particularly for potable use. This paper reports results from an Australian study of community attitudes to alternative water sources. Sixty six qualitative interviews were held at eight locations with distinctly different water situations. This paper explores all three antecedents to the behaviour of drinking recycled water and desalinated water …

The Power Of History: Accounting Standard Setting And The Extractive Industries In Australia, C. L. Cortese

Faculty of Commerce - Papers (Archive)

The application of accounting standards assists in the production of financial information that is used as the basis for decision making by a wide variety of stakeholders. Viewed in this way, the process of setting accounting standards is critical because it will ultimately generate information that will shape people’s behaviour. Accounting standard setting processes have been analysed, applauded, and critiqued by many scholars in recent decades. Lobbying efforts of constituents have been scrutinised, the standard setting processes in different geographic regions have been analysed and compared, and the economic consequences of proposed accounting alternatives have been identified and debated.

Visualizing Cluster Results Using Package Flexclust And Friends, Friedrich Leisch

Faculty of Commerce - Papers (Archive)

Centroid-based partitioning cluster analysis is a popular method for segmenting data into more homo- geneous subgroups. Visualization can help tremendously to understand the positions of these subgroups relative to each other in higher dimensional spaces and to assess the quality of partitions. In this talk we present several improvements on existing cluster displays using neighborhood graphs with edge weights based on cluster separation and convex hulls of inner and outer cluster regions. Using symbols or complete high-level plots in the nodes of the graph help to understand the association of background variables and clusters. A new display called shadow-stars can …

A Generalized Motif Bicluster Algorithm, Sebastian Kaiser, Friedrich Leisch

Faculty of Commerce - Papers (Archive)

In many application domains different clusters in data may be defined by different sets of variables. E.g., in maketing one group of consumers could mainly be concerned about price and technical features of a product, while others care most about design and how \cool" the product is (almost regardless of the price). Standard clustering algorithms use all variables for all clusters and hence may fail to detect such structures in the data. Biclustering is the simultaneous clustering of columns and rows in a data set: each cluster is defined by a different subset of variables, these subsets can of course …

From Spider-Man To Hero - Archetypal Analysis In R, Manuel Eugster, Friedrich Leisch

Faculty of Commerce - Papers (Archive)

Archetypal analysis has the aim to represent observations in a multivariate data set as convex combinations of extremal points. This approach was introduced by Cutler and Breiman (1994); they defined the concrete problem, laid out the theoretical foundations and presented an algorithm written in Fortran. In this paper we present the R package archetypes which is available on the Comprehensive R Archive Network. The package provides an implementation of the archetypal analysis algorithm within R and different exploratory tools to analyze the algorithm during its execution and its final result. The application of the package is demonstrated on two examples.

Dynamic Pricing Support Systems For Diy Retailers - A Case Study From Austria, Martin Natter, Thomas K. Reutterer, Andreas Mild

Faculty of Commerce - Papers (Archive)

Merchandise managers have long dreamt of automated dynamic systems to help them make well-informed pricing decisions. However, such systems have proved as elusive as the Holy Grail - until now, that is. The story of an Austrian DIY retailer shows often undetected opportunities to use valuable information, hidden in retailers' data warehouses, on consumer reactions to previous price changes in order to make automatic pricing and promotion decisions.

Financial Planning In Australia: Industry Or Profession?, Brian Murphy, Ted Watts

Faculty of Commerce - Papers (Archive)

Purpose - This paper tests whether financial planning in Australia remains an industry or can be considered a profession Design/Method/Approach - A set of attributes of professionalism were derived from the literature-public/societal responsibility, a systematic body of theory, professional authority and ethical responsibility - sample of 78 financial planners were asked to provide attitude statements relating to professionalism as well as demographic information of their business. Findings - Evidence from the attitude statements provide by the respondents to the attributes of professionalism failed to achieve a satisfactory level of professionalism for any attribute. Research limitations - The financial services operators …

A Decision-Support Tool For Recommending Promising Categories For Targeted Promotions, Els Breugelmans, Yasemin Boztug, Thomas K. Reutterer

Faculty of Commerce - Papers (Archive)

When making marketing mix decisions, marketing managers of companies that offer a broad range of product categories, such as traditional offline and online retailers, mail-order companies, or financial service providers, often need to select one or a few focal categories out of all the possible ones offered. This interest is further fuelled by opportunities offered by the Internet or modern customer loyalty programs using smart card technologies, making it easier as well as cheaper for companies to implement micromarketing strategies.

These recent developments have lead to a shift in the managerial requirements of direct marketers: they want to find out …

Understanding The Australian Environmental Volunteering Market: A Basis For Behavioural Change And A Sustainable Future, Melanie J. Randle, Sara Dolnicar

Faculty of Commerce - Papers (Archive)

The world is facing an environmental crisis. Long-term environmental sustainability requires social change: individuals need to take personal responsibility for the environment and change their behaviour. Environmental volunteering organisations play a key role in this process: they create opportunities for individuals to improve their natural environment, they facilitate behavioural change. Successful facilitation of behavioural change requires in-depth understanding of the environmental volunteering market to identify those individuals most likely to volunteer, compete successfully and create targeted, motivating marketing campaigns. The present study (1) assesses the usefulness of a novel method (PBMS) to explore volunteering markets, and (2) provides insight into …

Do Organisational Characteristics Explain The Differences Between Drivers Of Ict Adoption In Rural And Urban General Practices In Australia, Robert C. Macgregor, Peter N. Hyland, Charles Harvie

Faculty of Commerce - Papers (Archive)

A number of studies have compared general medical practices in rural locations with those in urban locations. Some of these studies have concentrated on the reasons why a GP might choose to work in a rural or urban setting. Others have examined the type of work required to be undertaken by medical professionals. Increasing use of information and communications technology (ICT) in medical practices has led to some studies examining their use in rural as well as urban settings. However, little if any research has examined whether ICT adoption drivers differ between rural and urban GPs based on their organisational …

"Making Connections": Insights Into Relationship Marketing From The Australasian Stock And Station Agent Industry, Simon Ville

Faculty of Commerce - Papers (Archive)

Relationship marketing has received little attention from business historians who have favored the study of branding, associational advertising, market research, and the role of marketing agencies, particularly in relation to modern consumer manufacturing. Although the term relationship marketing is of recent origin, we analyze its practice under a different guise, "connections", over several centuries: we draw on the extensive archival evidence of a rural business services industry in Australia and New Zealand. Relationship marketing's emphasis upon close and enduring individual customer relationships mitigated uncertainty of performance and behaviour, on both sides of the transaction, created by a long and geographically …

A Jack Of All Trades? - Aligning Policy, Mission And Structure In Cooperative Research Centres, Samuel E. Garrett-Jones, Tim Turpin

Faculty of Commerce - Papers (Archive)

The Cooperative Research Centres (CRC) program has become the dominant model for "triple helix" cross-sector R&D cooperation in Australia. By comparison with more specialised programs in other countries the CRC program covers a very broad range of fields and objectives and might be described as a "jack of all trades". We argue that this "one size fits all" approach has become a limiting factor in the further development of cross-sector collaboration. Based on a range of prior empirical studies of CRCs we explore the environmental factors which shape the organizational structure of CRCs and identify the points of flexibility required …

Understanding Behaviour To Inform Water Supply Management In Developed Nations - A Review Of Literature, Conceptual Model And Research Agenda, Anna Hurlimann, Sara Dolnicar, Petra Meyer

Faculty of Commerce - Papers (Archive)

Water is a scarce resource in many parts of the developed world. Two solutions are possible to address water scarcity: conservation of existing resources, or the further production of water from new sources e.g. through recycling of wastewater or desalination of seawater. However, the main hurdle to implementation of many of these solutions is often viewed as a lack of public willingness to adopt these alternative water behaviours. Research in this area is therefore crucial. Yet, and possibly due to the interdisciplinary nature of such research, there is currently no comprehensive overview of what has been done before. This study …

Co-Creating Corporate Knowledge With A Wiki, Joseph A. Meloche, Helen M. Hasan, David Willis, Charmaine Pfaff, Yan Qi

Faculty of Commerce - Papers (Archive)

Wikis have a growing reputation on the open Internet for producing evolving stores of shared knowledge. However, such democratic systems are often treated with suspicion within corporations for management, legal, social, and other reasons. This article describes a field study of a corporate Wiki that has been developed to capture, and make available, organisational knowledge in a large manufacturing company as an initiative of their Knowledge Management (KM) program. As this approach to KM is a controversial and rapidly changing phenomenon, a Q Methodology research approach was selected to uncover employees- subjective attitudes to the Wiki. Activity Theory was used …

A Gaming System Experience For Work In Heterogeneous, Self-Directed Teams, Kate Crawford, Helen M. Hasan

Faculty of Commerce - Papers (Archive)

In the face of increased complexity in the social, commercial and operational contexts of their operations, many organisations are endeavouring to change from the bureaucratic model of the Industrial Age to a community of self-organising teams more suitable for the Knowledge Age. In defence operations, this involves a change from a command and control model to a more network centric and distributed model of decision making for teams in the field. However, managers are often confused as to how best to prepare workers to operate in loosely coupled networks of self-directed teams. There is also a need for more knowledge …