Business Commons^™

Ohs In China-Work In Progress, Rowan Cahill, Di Kelly

Rowan Cahill

This article explores the barriers and challenges to effective implementation of occupational health and safety regulation (OHS), and occupational exposure limits (OELs) in China in order to identify the lessons for social science scholars and activists. It finds that formal labour legislation, including occupational health and safety legislation is relatively extensive, but rarely effectively realised. This has partly been because of the pace of political and economic transformation in China. As a result, the soft infrastructure of skills and knowledge necessary for an active, effective and genuinely protective OHS system are inchoate, and often, as OHS awareness has grown, firms' …

E-Government Challenge In Disaster Evacuation Response: The Role Of Rfid Technology In Building Safe And Secure Local Communities, A. Chatfield, S. F. Wamba, T. Hirokazu

Faculty of Informatics - Papers (Archive)

While geographic information systems (GIS) can provide information on the static locations of critical infrastructure and evacuation routes, they do not provide the dynamically changing locations of things and people on the move. In contrast, radio frequency identification (RFID) wireless network technology can automatically identify and track the movement of assets (i.e., fire engines, ambulances, and rescue workers) and vulnerable citizens on the move (i.e., the elderly and the disabled), and hence providing local governments and communities with real-time information and enhanced decision-making capabilities, during chaotic disaster response operations (i.e., evacuation). Although the potential high impact and strategic value of …

Rfid-Enabled Warehouse Process Optimization In The Tpl Industry, S. F. Wamba, A. T. Chatfield

Faculty of Informatics - Papers (Archive)

Using the value chain model and a longitudinal real-world case study of a third-party logistics (TPL) supply chain, this study provides support for the enabling role of RFID technology in effecting warehouse process optimization. Furthermore, the findings of our study reveal the RFID technology implementation costs as the key inhibitors factor of RFID widespread adoption and usage among suppliers.

Rfid-Enabled Inventory Control Optimization: A Proof Of Concept In A Small-To-Medium Retailer, H. Dane, Katina Michael, S. F. Wamba

Faculty of Informatics - Papers (Archive)

This study examines the impact of radio-frequency identification (RFID) technology on the inventory control practices of a small-to-medium retailer using a proof of concept (PoC) approach. The exploratory study was conducted using a single case study of a hardware retailer stocking 5000 product lines provided by 110 active suppliers. To analyze the present mode of operation, procedural documents, semi-structured interviews and a participant observation was conducted. The basis for the proof of concept was a future mode of operation using a quasi-experimental design. Results indicate that in a small-to-medium retail environment, RFID technology could act as a loss prevention mechanism, …

An Investigation Of Theory And Its Application In Investment Management Education-Case Of Pakistan, Naveed Iqbal, Searat Ali, Kashif Ur Rehman, Mehmood Shah, Zeeshan Akbar

Faculty of Business - Papers (Archive)

Deviation of theory from practice is the burning question of the present age. As, numerous efforts have been commenced in multi programs to inspect this prevailing disparity between knowledge and practice at different venues. This study also aims to investigate the theory practice variation in the context of investment management education on the territory of Pakistan-what is taught by the investment academics in the universities to what is used by the investment professionals in the market. The data was collected from the sample of 30 investment academics and 23 investment professionals by using convenience non probability sampling technique. The sample …

Embedding Professionally Relevant Learning In The Business Curriculum Through Industry Engagement, Michael Zanko, Theo Papadopoulos, Eveline Fallshaw, Tracy Taylor, Clare Woodley, Christine Armatas

Faculty of Commerce - Papers (Archive)

This paper reports on preliminary findings from an ALTC funded project on how to build curriculathat meet the needs of business students and employers of business graduates. The project grew outof an Australian Business Deans Council Teaching and Learning Network scoping study whichidentified widespread concern among industry, academic and professional associations about the lackof engagement with real world problems by business graduates. In the paper we discuss the need forindustry engagement, define professionally relevant learning, and outline the study objectives andmethodology. We present a typology of industry engagement in the curriculum that emerged from ourfieldwork, and tools that business faculties …

Nsw Local Council Investment Exposures, Gregory Jones, Graham D. Bowrey

Faculty of Commerce - Papers (Archive)

The decline in the sub-prime market in the United State of America in 2007 -2008 andthe corresponding decline in the market values of other financial investments has hada significant financial impact on many of the individuals and organisations whoparticipated in aggressively promoted investment schemes. The New South Wales(NSW) Local Government Councils was one such group of organisations impacted bythe decline in value of these types of investments. At the end of the 2006-2007financial year local councils in New South Wales had invested $590 million dollars instructured financial products such as collateralised debt obligations (CDO). By theend of January 2008, six …

Looking Anew At Women's Entrepreneurship: How The Family Firm Context And A Radical Subjectivist View Of Economics Helps Reshape Women's Entrepreneurship Research (Women Entrepreneurs In Family Business: A Radical Subjectivist View), Mary Barrett, Ken Moores

Faculty of Commerce - Papers (Archive)

As noted in a current call for papers (Entrepreneurship: Theory & Practice 2010), there has recently been a dramatic expansion of scholarly interest and activity in the field of women's entrepreneurship. The U.S. based Diana Project, to name just one research group in the field, has grown rapidly into a global network of researchers, generating numerous conferences, symposia, and publications. Journals such as Entrepreneurship: Theory & Practice and more specialised publications including Family Business Review have sponsored special issues on women's entrepreneurship, allowing scholars to synthesize insights in the field from empirical and conceptual work worldwide.

Towards Accounting Students Workplace Preparedness: A Unique Internship Approach, Bonnie Amelia Dean, Graham D. Bowrey, Michael D. Clements

Faculty of Commerce - Papers (Archive)

Undergraduate accounting students would benefit from the combined learning approach of simultaneous classroom and workplace experience to better prepare them for the challenges of industry. In the absence of teachers, subjects and assessment, students need to know how to learn by reflecting on their workplace knowledge and skills, both for professional growth and development, and to adapt to an ever-changing workplace environment. This paper presents a unique internship programme for business students, focusing on their learning beyond the classroom. The Commerce Internship Programme (CIP) developed and implemented at the University of Wollongong, Australia, offers a model for enhancing student engagement …

Absence Of Democracy And Gender Inequality In Education, Arusha V. Cooray, N Potrafke

Faculty of Commerce - Papers (Archive)

We investigate empirically how the degree of democracy affects gender equality in education. The dataset contains 66 countries from Asia, Africa, the Middle East and South America over the 1991-2008 period. The results indicate that democracy advances gender equality in education while conversely less democratic regimes discriminate in education against girls. Democratization therefore has an important role in gender equality in education of girls, which, in turn, has a positive influence on economic development and growth.

Political Connections, Founding Family Ownership And Leverage Decision Of Privately Owned Firms, Qigui Liu, Gary G. Tian

Faculty of Commerce - Papers (Archive)

In this paper, we examine the effect of political connections versus founding family ownership on the relationship between disproportional ownership structure and leverage decisions of privately owned firms listed in Chinese market. We find that disproportional ownership has positive effect on leverage, indicating that controlling shareholder tends to use both disproportional ownership structure and debt to expropriate. We also find that the interacted term between disproportional ownership and political connections has a positive impact on leverage ratio, and disproportional ownership structure is negatively related with leverage ratio of founding-family controlled firms, which indicate a substitute effect between political connections and …

The Impact Of Mobile Amusement Information On Use Behavior, Satisfaction, And Loyalty, Fumiyo N. Kondo, Jiro Hirata, Shahriar Akter

Faculty of Commerce - Papers (Archive)

The relationship between satisfaction and loyalty has been well explored in services marketing or customer relationship management. In this study, the authors studied the relationship of 7 types of service variables under “amusement” factor. Amusement is one of the three factors extracted from 21 mobile information services. Among many different frameworks of satisfaction-loyalty, we used the framework of “past use behavior” on “satisfaction”, and then of “satisfaction” on “continued use intention” (or loyalty), resulting in a strong support of the existing model with positive significant influence on the both paths. Further, our research reveals that, on the both paths, there …

Service Quality Of Mhealth: Development And Validation Of A Hierarchical Model Using Pls, Shahriar Akter, John D'Ambra, Pradeep Ray

Faculty of Commerce - Papers (Archive)

Advancing research on service quality requires clarifying the theoretical conceptualizations and validating an integrated service quality model. The purpose of this study is to facilitate and elucidate practical issues and decisions related to the development of a hierarchical service quality model in mobile health (mHealth) services research. Conceptually, it extends theory by reframing service quality as a reflective, hierarchical construct and modeling its impact on satisfaction, intention to continue using and quality of life. Empirically, it confirms that PLS path modeling can be used to estimate the parameters of a higher order construct and its association with subsequent consequential latent …

Are There Smaller Leverage Effects In Less-Developed Markets? Evidence From An Oil Exporting Country, Mosayeb Phalavani, Parinaz Ezzati

Faculty of Commerce - Papers (Archive)

Abstract: Problem statement: This study uses daily data from the Tehran Stock Market (TSM) to illustrate the nature of stock market volatility in an undeveloped and young stock market. Although most studies suggest that a negative shock to stock prices will generate more volatility than a positive shock of equal magnitude but there is no evidence of asymmetric effect in TSM. Determine the nature of stock market volatility in an oil exporting country. Approach: Trading in Tehran Stock Market (TSM) is based on orders sent by the brokers. The data consist of 2375 daily observations of the closing value of …

Radio Frequency Identification: A Case For Health Care, Sylvain Bureau, Markus Bick, Selwyn Piramuthu, Yannick Meiller, Wei Zhou, Samuel Fosso Wamba

Faculty of Commerce - Papers (Archive)

The use of RFID tags in healthcare applications has been gaining momentum over the past decade. This is partly due to recent advances in information technology and the need to reduce errors while simultaneously improving the efficiency of the system. We, at the RFID European Lab, have been studying various aspects of RFID implementations in healthcare environment over the past several years. The potential for RFID implementations in healthcare environment is enormous. We consider several such opportunities and identify possible extensions.

The Effect Of Motherhood On Wages And Wage Growth: Evidence For Australia, Tanya Livermore, Joan R. Rodgers, Peter Siminski

Faculty of Commerce - Papers (Archive)

Labour market theory provides several reasons why mothers are likely to earn lower hourly wages than non-mothers. However, the size of any motherhood penalty is an empirical matter and the evidence for Australia is limited. This article examines the effect of motherhood on Australian women’s wages and wage growth using a series of panel-data models. Based on data from the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia survey, an unexplained motherhood wage penalty of around 5 per cent for one child, and 9 per cent for two or more children, is found. Further analysis suggests that the wage penalty emerges …

User Perceived Service Quality Of M-Health Services In Developing Countries, Shahriar Akter, John D'Ambra, Pradeep Ray

Faculty of Commerce - Papers (Archive)

Health challenges present arguably the most significant barrier to sustainable global development. The introduction of ICT in healthcare, especially the application of mobile communications, has created the potential to transform healthcare delivery by making it more accessible, affordable and effective across the developing world. However, there is growing concerns about the quality of such services with regard to the robustness of the service delivery platform, knowledge and competence of the provider, privacy and security of information and above all, their effects on satisfaction, future use intentions and quality of life. The aim of this paper is to explore, analyze and …

The Spread Of Ict Innovation In Accounting Education, Sam H. Jebeile, Indra Abeysekera

Faculty of Commerce - Papers (Archive)

This paper conveys the findings of a study conducted to evaluate the initiation of an interactive online computer-assisted learning module, called WEBLEARN, in an undergraduate introductory accounting course at an Australian university. The purpose was to aid students in the preparation of cash flow statements, a topic that from the student perspective is usually considered fairly difficult. Following the pilot of the module, student responses were collected via questionnaire in order to evaluate their perceptions regarding the WEBLEARN module. Diffusion of innovations theory was utilized as a framework for assessing student responses and to guide further development of modules in …

Ability, Gender, And Performance Standards: Evidence From Academic Probation, Jason M. Lindo, Nicholas J. Sanders, Philip Oreopoulos

Faculty of Business - Papers (Archive)

We use a regression discontinuity design to examine students' responses to being placed on academic probation. Consistent with a model of introducing performance standards, we find that being placed on probation at the end of the first year discourages some students from returning to school while improving the GPAs of those who do. We find heterogeneous responses across prior academic performance, gender, and native language, and discuss these results within the context of the model. We also find negative effects on graduation rates, particularly for students with the highest high school grades.

Reward Through Collective Reflection: An Autoethnography, Bonnie Amelia Dean, Michael Clements

Faculty of Business - Papers (Archive)

This paper provides an exemplar to teachers and professionals for engaging with collective reflection techniques for vocational development and identity consciousness. Drawing on concepts of col lective reflection and autoethnography, this paper explores the journey of our academic teaching team through a combination of individual reflections, diaries and recollections that occurred during the application process of a teaching and learning award. This salient journey enabled us to reflect on 'what we do' and challenged us to deeply consider 'why we do it'. This experience has consequently had considerable impact on how we conduct our internship programme, how we view ourselves …

Endogenous Technological Progress In A Multi-Sector Growth Model, Davide La Torre, Simone Marsiglio

Faculty of Business - Papers (Archive)

This paper presents an endogenous growth model driven by human capital, where human capital can be allocated across three sectors: the production of the final consumption good, the educational sector and the production of technological capital (in the form of knowledge or ideas). In our model, which also includes public expenditure and population growth, labor augmenting technical progress is endogenous and this enriches the transitional dynamics of the economy. With respect to ideas-based growth models, we assume knowledge is produced according to a neoclassical technology, combining ideas and human capital. Such an assumption is motivated by empirical works showing the …

The Ownership And Ownership Concentration? The Impact On The Performance Of China's Firms, Shiguang Ma, Tony Naughton, Gary G. Tian

Faculty of Business - Papers (Archive)

This paper investigates the impact of ownership and ownership concentration on the performance of China's listed firms. By recognizing the differences between ownership and ownership concentration, and between total ownership concentration and tradable ownership concentration, we find that ownership concentration is more powerful than any category of ownership in determining firm performance and that it has approximately positive linear relations with firm value. The tradable ownership concentration has a more significant and positive influence on firm performance than total ownership concentration. The highest level of firm performance is approached when a firm is characterized with both total ownership concentration and …

Regression Tree Construction By Bootstrap: Model Search For Drg-Systems Applied To Austrian Health-Data, Thomas Grubinger, Conrad Kobel, Karl Peter Pfeiffer

Faculty of Business - Papers (Archive)

Background. DRG-systems are used to allocate resources fairly to hospitals based on their performance. Statistically, this allocation is based on simple rules that can be modeled with regression trees. However, the resulting models often have to be adjusted manually to be medically reasonable and ethical. Methods. Despite the possibility of manual, performance degenerating adaptations of the original model, alternative trees are systematically searched. The bootstrap-based method bumping is used to build diverse and accurate regression tree models for DRG-systems. A two-step model selection approach is proposed. First, a reasonable model complexity is chosen, based on statistical, medical and economical considerations. …

The Size Of The Government And Economic Growth: An Empirical Study Of Sri Lanka, Shanaka Herath

Faculty of Business - Papers (Archive)

Growth models are fundamentally of two fold; the neoclassical growth model, also known as the exogenous growth model developed primarily by Solow (1956) and the new growth theory, also known as the endogenous growth model, pioneered by Romer (1986), Lucas (1988), Barro (1990) and Rebelo (1991).

Employability And Marketing Education : Insights From The United Kingdom, Troy W. Heffernan, Weizhe Feng, Robert Angell, Yan Fang

Faculty of Business - Papers (Archive)

The importance of developing employability attributes within university graduates is gaining rapid momentum in the UK. One reason for this is that employers in the UK are disappointed by the quality of graduates moving into the workforce; this sentiment has also been echoed by the UK Government. With this in mind, attempts have been made to identify general attributes that lead to employability. However, to-date limited research has been undertaken to identify the key employability attributes for marketing graduates. Consequently, this study explores and identifies the key attributes for marketing graduates from an employer's perspective. Further, in-depth interviews with marketing …

Dividend Stability In A Unique Environment, Khamis Al-Yahyaee, Toan Pham, Terry S. Walter

Faculty of Business - Papers (Archive)

Purpose - This paper aims to examine the stability of dividend policy using a unique data set.

Design/methodology/approach - The paper is based on the Lintner model that is used to test the dividend smoothing behavior. The specific econometric method used for panel data is Tobit regression.

Findings - The evidence shows that Omani firms adopt a policy of smoothing dividends. This stability of dividends does not support the predictions suggested by the high bank leverage, absence of taxes, and the variability of dividend payments in Oman.

Research limitations/implications - This study highlights the need for further research in order …

Investment Manager Skill In Small-Cap Equities, Cong Chen, Carole Comerton-Forde, David R. Gallagher, Terry S. Walter

Faculty of Business - Papers (Archive)

Using a representative sample of monthly portfolio holdings and daily trades, this study presents unique evidence of significant stock selection skill amongst institutional small-cap equity managers on a risk-adjusted basis. Of particular importance is the magnitude of the performance generated by fund managers in our sample. Aggregate four-factor and five-factor alphas are 68 and 59.6 basis points per month before management expenses and tax, respectively. The evidence from holdings and transaction-based metrics of performance also reveals that small-cap equity managers possess superior stock selection ability, from both a statistical and economic perspective. Our results are robust to the deduction of …

Transaction Costs And Institutional Trading In Small-Cap Equity Funds, Carole Comerton-Forde, David R. Gallagher, Jumana Nahhas, Terry S. Walter

Faculty of Business - Papers (Archive)

This paper examines the magnitude and determinants of trading costs for small-cap funds in Australia. The total price impact for these funds is 0.99% (-0.34%) for purchases (sales). This is considerably larger than costs reported in prior literature. Both purchases and sales exhibit price continuations after the trade package, consistent with an information effect. Although we do not observe the directional asymmetry typically shown in the literature, the magnitude of the total and permanent effects for purchases is larger than for sales. We also show that price impact is related to fund inflows and outflows.

Acceptance Of Water Alternatives In Australia, A. Hurlimann, Sara Dolnicar

Faculty of Commerce - Papers (Archive)

In a nationally representative study with a sample size of 1495, Australian residents were asked about attitudes to recycled and desalinated water, including a question on likelihood to relocate because of water supply. This was highest when there was insufficient water to meet their needs, followed by when recycled water was introduced into their supply, then the introduction of desalinated water. The scenario where residents had to rely on self-purified rain water from a tank had the lowest level of relocation intention. The results indicate that the increased provision of rainwater tanks may be the most publically acceptable water alternative …

Evaluation Of Structure And Reproducibility Of Cluster Solutions Using The Bootstrap, Sara Dolnicar, F. Leisch

Faculty of Commerce - Papers (Archive)

Segmentation results derived using cluster analysis depend on (1) the structure of the data and (2) algorithm parameters. Typically neither the data structure is assessed in advance of clustering nor is the sensitivity of the analysis to changes in algorithm parameters. We propose a benchmarking framework based on bootstrapping techniques that accounts for sample and algorithm randomness. This provides much needed guidance both to data analysts and users of clustering solutions regarding the choice of the final clusters from computations which are exploratory in nature.