Business Commons^™

Hard To Reach: Examining The National Disability Insurance Scheme Experience - A Case Study In Wollongong, Freda C. Hui, Corinne L. Cortese, Mona Nikidehaghani, Sandra H. Chapple, Kellie M. Mccombie

Faculty of Business - Papers (Archive)

We report on interviews conducted to examine the effectiveness of the Australian National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS). Our aims were to assess the effectiveness of the NDIS in communicating with people with disabilities who are socio‐economically disadvantaged, to consider the types of assistance required, and to provide recommendations to improve the NDIS. Our interviewees are characterised as ‘hard to reach’, a cohort that is missing out on benefits they might receive under the NDIS because of the socioeconomic disadvantage that compounds their disability hardship. Some of our key findings were that many of our interviewees were unaware of the NDIS, …

Affordance Theory And E-Books: Evaluating The E-Reading Experience Using Netnography, John D'Ambra, Concepcion S. Wilson, Shahriar Akter

Sydney Business School - Papers

E-books have changed the business of book publishing and the reading experience of the general public. Dedicated e-readers and other smart devices are integral to e-books offering affordances to overcome the physical limitations of print book and to provide the functionality of information technology. Using netnography, comments by online readers to articles in The New York Times and Scientific American were analysed and coded by themes identified in the literature of e-books versus print books. An Affordance Theory approach was used to provide insights into the readers' perceptions of real and actual affordances and the value delivered by these affordances. …

Parent's Conception And Experience Of Calling In Child Rearing: A Qualitative Analysis, Justin C. Coulson, Lindsay G. Oades, Gerard J. Stoyles

Sydney Business School - Papers

The concept of "calling" has evolved from a religiously oriented description of occupation to an integrated, broad, and multidimensional construct that is associated with optimal vocational outcomes, personal fulfillment and meaning, and contribution to the "greater good." This article investigates the relevance of calling in the parental domain and explores the experience of calling in child rearing. Using interpretative phenomenological analysis, 11 qualitative, semistructured interviews were conducted with mothers and fathers. Different parents were interviewed at three distinct developmental time points in their child(ren)'s lives: while their child was an infant (<2 >years), while their children were of primary school …

Leadership Styles And Company Performance: The Experience Of Owner-Managers Of Smes, Palli Mulla K A Chandrakumara, Anura De Zoysa, Athula S. Manawaduge

Faculty of Commerce - Papers (Archive)

Leadership styles of owner-managers were explored in the context of a developingcountry in South Asia with a view to examining their impact on financial performanceof SMEs. It was justified that the study has both theoretical and contextualsignificance. Data were collected from 204 companies in Sri Lanka by adopting mixedmethodologies that consisted of both qualitative and qualitative approaches.Descriptive statistics and correlation coefficient were used in the analysis. The findingsrevealed that the existence of three main leadership styles in the sample, namely;entrepreneurial, managerial, and mix of both entrepreneurial and managerialleaderships. The analysis indicated that 60 percent of firms had increased financialperformance, while …

Impact Of Individual Characteristics And Cultural Values On Citizenship And Task Performance: Experience Of Non-Academic Employees Of Universities, Anil Chandrakumara, Subashimi Senevirathne

Sydney Business School - Papers

This study examines the impact of individual characteristics and cultural values on citizenship and task performance (CTP) of non-academic staff members of Sri Lankan universities. Literature review provides conceptual support for the proposed links between individual characteristics, cultural values, and CTP. Survey strategy was adopted and a questionnaire was distributed among 125 employees of five universities. Analysis was based on 72 usable returned questionnaires. ANOVA, correlation and regression analyses were performed in order to examine the proposed impact.

The Potential Pitfalls Of Transferring Constructs Across Cultural Settings: Experience From Npd Research In Australia, Janette K. Rowland, Elias Kyriazis

Faculty of Commerce - Papers (Archive)

The purpose of this paper is to discuss the research design and methodology choices in the field of Marketing Management in order to choose the best “fit” for the authors’ research on developing a climate of trust within the new product development process. Many researchers often use constructs developed and empirically tested in other cultural contexts. This often allows for interesting cross-cultural comparisons. While useful, this paper cautions on the blind application of constructs and survey instruments. Reporting on experience from exploratory research carried out in the context of the NPD process in Australian manufacturing firms, we show the potential …

Call Auction Transparency And Market Liquidity: The Shanghai Experience, Dionigi Gerace, Gary G. Tian, Willa Hua-Qing Zheng

Faculty of Commerce - Papers (Archive)

On July 1 2006, the Shanghai Stock Exchange (SHSE) changed its pre-market openingauction system from an entirely black box into a more transparent system with indicativeauction prices, indicative equilibrium volume and indicative unexecuted volumedisseminated in real time throughout the pre-opening period. This paper use the naturalexperiment offered by SHSE to investigate the impact of opening call transparency onmarket liquidity. The dynamics of the opening process and its impact on trading activityfor the rest of the day is of interest to traders because traders can either cluster their tradesduring the non-trading period or withhold their orders until the market opens. We …

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 …

Beyond Ecotourism: The Environmentally Responsible Tourist In The General Travel Experience, Sara Dolnicar, Patrick Long

Faculty of Commerce - Papers (Archive)

A shift of attention from the dominant product-orientation in environmentally sustainable tourism to a demand-orientation has been suggested as a way of minimising the effects of the inherent trade-offs the tourism industry faces between maximization of profits and investment in environmental sustainability. The success of such an approach depends on the existence of a class of tourists who are not only motivated to take care of the natural surroundings of the host destination, whether they are travelling in an ecotourism or general tourism context, but also represent an economically attractive market segment.

Optimising User Acceptance Of Mandated Mobile Health Systems (Mhs): The Epoc (Electronic Point-Of-Care) Project Experience, Lois Burgess, Joan Cooper, Jason P. Sargent

Faculty of Commerce - Papers (Archive)

From a clinical perspective, the use of mobile technologies such as Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs) within hospital environments is not new. A paradigm shift however, is underway towards the acceptance and utility of such systems within community-based healthcare environments. Notwithstanding, introducing new technologies and associated work practices has intrinsic risks which must be addressed. In situations where end-users of a system are traditionally averse to technology through entrenched paper-based work practices (for example, community health workers), the process of managing change bears considerable determination in system implementation success. The authors propose a novel approach to end user acceptance within the …

Turning Marketing Promises Into Business Value: The Experience Of An Industrial Sme, Victoria Little, Judith Motion, Rod Brodie, Richard Brookes

Faculty of Commerce - Papers (Archive)

How can businesses create more value for their customers and shareholders? One way of understanding this task is to apply the promises framework: promises made to customers, promises kept, and promises enabled. Traditionally marketers made the promises, leaving keeping and enabling activities to other departments (e.g. logistics, manufacturing and customer service) and to senior management. However, marketers are increasingly acknowledging that creating and delivering value to customers requires a synchronised effort from the whole firm, not only marketers.

An Exploratory Study Into The Giving Behaviour Of Small To Medium Enterprises (Smes): An Australian Experience, Gary I. Noble

Faculty of Commerce - Papers (Archive)

A constant growth in the number of non-profit organisations (NPOs) over the past decade has also meant an increase in competition between NPOs for ongoing support. In this environment and without the marketing resources of their national and international counterparts many smaller NPOs do not attract the same level of individual or corporate support as their larger NPO rivals. Evidence suggests an alternative source of support for these smaller NPOs is often small to medium enterprises (SMEs).

This paper argues that although there is a considerable body of literature on the giving behaviour of individuals, and to a lesser extent …

Accelerating New Product Development: The Experience Of Concurrent Engineering In Australia, Paul Couchman

Faculty of Commerce - Papers (Archive)

Concurrent engineering (CE) is a distinctive approach to the organisation and management of new product development (NPD) which seeks to achieve cross-functional integration, product life cycle design integration and high levels of project task concurrence in order to reduce development lead times. To address the limited research to date on CE in the Asia-Pacific region, the paper presents findings from a survey of Australian manufacturers (n = 150) and from five in-depth case studies on the application of CE in Australia. The survey found that just over one-half (54%) of the companies surveyed used CE to some extent and that, …