Business Commons^™

Reforming The Power Sector In Transition: Do Institutions Matter?, Rabindra Nepal, Tooraj Jamasb

Faculty of Business - Papers (Archive)

This paper aims to investigate the often poorly explored link between power sector reforms and wider institutional reforms in the economy across different groups of transition countries. We use panel-data econometrics based on bias corrected dynamic fixed effect analysis (LSDVC) to assess the impact of reforms on macroeconomic and power sector outcomes. The results indicate that power sector reform is highly inter-dependent with wider reforms in other sectors of the economy. The findings indicate that failure to harmonize inter-sector reforms leads to power sector reform measures being ineffective. We conclude that the success of power sector reforms in developing countries …

Roles And Potentials Of Renewable Energy In Less-Developed Economies: The Case Of Nepal, Rabindra Nepal

Faculty of Business - Papers (Archive)

Increasing the share of renewable energy in the national energy mix remains one of the major energy policy goals across many economies. This paper assesses the roles and potentials of renewable energy sources in less-developed economies while citing Nepal as an example. Renewable energy has a significant role to play in the electrification of rural areas in developing economies and contribute towards sustainable development. Realizing full potentials of renewable, however, requires addressing both the associated demand-side and supply-side constraints. Innovative subsidies and tax incentives, adequate entrepreneurial support, strengthening institutional arrangement and promoting local community-based organizations such as the cooperatives are …

Eva As Superior Performance Measurement Tool, Abdullah Al Mamun, Shazali Abu Mansor

Faculty of Business - Papers (Archive)

Prior to the East Asian financial crisis scholars found the necessity of a true financial performance measure in Malaysia. After more than one decade of the crisis Malaysian firms still stick with the conventional performance measures, which are criticised due to general accepted accounting principles. In this vein, this study aims to study a value based financial performance measure which can be adopted by the Malaysian firms over the conventional measures currently used. Economic Value Added (EVA) was introduced and advocated by Stern Stewart and Co. in 1982. This study intended to identify why EVA should be used as financial …

Are Big-Time Sports A Threat To Student Achievement?, Jason M. Lindo, Isaac D. Swensen, Glen R. Waddell

Faculty of Business - Papers (Archive)

We consider the relationship between collegiate football success and non-athlete student performance. We find that the team's success significantly reduces male grades relative to female grades, and only in fall quarters, which coincides with the football season. Using survey data, we find that males are more likely than females to increase alcohol consumption, decrease studying, and increase partying in response to the success of the team. Yet, females also report that their behavior is affected by athletic success, suggesting that their performance is likely impaired but that this effect is masked by the practice of grade curving.

Debating Sociomateriality: Entanglements, Imbrications, Disentangling, And Agential Cuts, Karlheinz Kautz, Tina Blegind Jensen

Faculty of Business - Papers (Archive)

Sociomateriality is on everyone's lips these days. Since Orlikowski (2006; 2007; 2009), together with Scott (Orlikowski and Scott 2008; Scott and Orlikowski 2009) first introduced this term in organisation studies and in information systems (IS) research, we count an impressive number of contributions on this topic along with calls for papers in renowned journals and conferences. Without going so far as to propose sociomateriality as the defining identity of the IS field, as suggested by Hassan and Hovorka (2011), we acknowledge that this new lens offers a way of challenging and expanding the prevailing modus operandi of the theoretical foundations …

Economic Growth: Technical Progress, Population Dynamics And Sustainability, Simone Marsiglio

Faculty of Business - Papers (Archive)

Economic growth is probably the most important goal of every policy intervention because of its wide consequences on the welfare of current and future generations. Because of the current crisis faced by several industrialized countries, this is probably much clearer today than in the past. In order to determine whether and which kind of public intervention can be taken to restore the growth process, the first step is understanding the relationship between different factors and economic growth. The goal of this brief paper is to shed some light on the mutual implications of growth and some of these factors: demography, …

Stochastic Shocks In A Two-Sector Solow Model, Simone Marsiglio

Faculty of Business - Papers (Archive)

We study a stochastic, discrete-time, two-sector growth model à la Solow (1956) characterised by perpetual growth. Assuming that exogenous i.i.d. shocks hit the physical production sector, we show that the capital dynamics can be converted, through an appropriate log-transformation, into an iterated function system converging to an invariant distribution supported on a Cantor set.

Population Dynamics And Utilitarian Criteria In The Lucas - Uzawa Model, Simone Marsiglio, Davide La Torre

Faculty of Business - Papers (Archive)

This paper introduces population growth in the Uzawa-Lucas model, analyzing the implications of the choice of the welfare criterion on the model's outcome. Traditional growth theory assumes population growth to be exponential, but this is not a realistic assumption (see Brida and Accinelli, 2007). We model exogenous population change by a generic function of population size. We show that a unique non-trivial equilibrium exists and the economy converges towards it along a saddle path, independently of population dynamics. What is affected by the type of population dynamics is the dimension of the stable manifold, which can be one or two, …

Why Do Patients Having Coronary Artery Bypass Grafts Have Different Costs Or Length Of Stay? An Analysis Across 10 European Countries, James Gaughan, Conrad Kobel, Caroline Linhart, Anne Mason, Andrew Street, Padraic Ward

Faculty of Business - Papers (Archive)

We analyse variations in cost or length of stay (LoS) for 66 587 patients from 10 European countries receiving a coronary artery bypass graft (CABG) procedure. In five of these countries, variations in cost are analysed using log-linear models. In the other five countries, negative binomial regression models are used to explore variations in LoS. We compare how well each country's diagnosis-related group (DRG) system and a set of patient-level characteristics explain these variations. The most important explanatory factors are the total number of diagnoses and procedures, although no clear effects are evident for our CABG-specific diagnostic and procedural variables. …

Do You See What I See? The Role Of Technology In Talent Identification, Sharna L. Wiblen, Kristine Dery, David Grant

Faculty of Business - Papers (Archive)

This paper applies a social constructivist lens to understand more about the ways in which technology shapes our understanding of talent management, in particular the processes of talent identification. Specifically, it examines similarities and differences in the identification of talent across a range of business units at a large professional services firm. The findings show that while objective evaluations of talent based on data and information were possible using talent-related technology, managers had subjective and widely different understandings of what constituted talent at the organisation and how to go about identifying it. These different understandings, based on organisational context, personal …

Idiosyncratic Volatility, Australian Stock Returns And Economy Conditions: Role Of Idiosyncratic Volatility In Asset Pricing For Australian Stock Markets, Bin Liu, Amalia Di Iorio

Faculty of Business - Papers (Archive)

This study examines the importance of idiosyncratic volatility in asset pricing for Australian stock returns from 1993 to 2010. We form an idiosyncratic volatility mimicking factor. In the presence of the Fama-French three-factor we find that the idiosyncratic volatility mimicking factor is priced in Australian stock returns over the sample period, implying that this type of volatility is significant in the pricing of Australian stocks. Further, we find that idiosyncratic volatility is priced during both economy expansions and contractions and our model captures greater variations in Australian stock returns during expansions than contractions.

Moral Hazard With Random Participation, Guillaume Roger

Faculty of Business - Papers (Archive)

This paper studies a principal-agent problem of moral hazard, in which the outside option is stochastic. This renders the agent's participation decision random from the perspective of the principal. The participation cost is no longer defined in terms of the agent's outside option but in terms of the principal's marginal benefit of participation. The optimal contract (i) entails information rents; (ii) features a trade-off between participation probability and rents and (iii) induces a lower effort than the standard model. Random participation results in weaker incentives and in twofold (ex ante) welfare losses. Menus of contracts (screening mechanisms) are not helpful …

Hr On The Line: Human Resource Managers' Contribution To Organisational Value And Workplace Performance, Paul J. Gollan

Faculty of Business - Papers (Archive)

This article examines the professional identity and role of human resource managers in fostering and implementing strategies that encourage high workplace performance.Workplace performance affects Australian competitiveness and this is the first detailed empirical analysis of Australian HR managers that combines case studies and survey methods. This research seeks to provide more in-depth knowledge and understanding of HR managers and line managers and how the HR function can contribute to high workplace performance. Overall this research suggests that while the HR function is likely to change in the future, its role is not diminishing in organisational decision-making. In particular, the HR …

Images As Mediating Texts In Annual Reports: The Case Of China Mobile, Xun Gong, Sudhir C. Lodh, Kathleen M. Rudkin

Faculty of Business - Papers (Archive)

Purpose: This study explores the dual ideological influences that the socialist political regime and the globalised market economy have on the visual images in accounting annual reports in the Chinese context. It also investigates how the visual discourse, in turn, constitutes and sustains competing ideological messages.

Design/Methodology/approach: Based on the 2010 annual report of China Mobile Limited, A critical discourse analysis is conducted at three levels. At the public discourse level, three areas of interest are drawn in interpreting the connotations of the visual discourse, including (1) Davison's (2010) rhetorical codes (physical, dress, spatial, and interpersonal); (2) two Chinese cultural …

Out-Of-Sample Stock Return Predictability In Australia, Yiwen Dou, David R. Gallagher, David Schneider, Terry S. Walter

Faculty of Business - Papers (Archive)

We provide one of the first comprehensive studies on out-of-sample stock returns predictability in Australia. While most of the empirically well-known predictive variables fail to generate out-of-sample predictability, we document a significant out-of-sample prediction in forecasting ahead one-year and, to a lesser extent, one-quarter future excess returns, using a combination forecast of variables. We also find improved asset allocation using the combination forecast of these predictors. The combining methods are useful in predicting sector premia. Specifically, a sector rotation strategy relying on the combining methods outperforms the market by 3.27% per annum on a risk-adjusted basis.

The Organizational Virtuousness Of Strategic Corporate Social Responsibility: A Case Study Of The Sri Lankan Family-Owned Enterprise Mas Holdings, Mario Fernando, Shamika Almeida

Faculty of Business - Papers (Archive)

Relatively little is known about strategic corporate social responsibility (CSR) in Asian companies. In the post-tsunami period, the authors interviewed 23 senior executives at ten prominent companies in Sri Lanka. Nine of the companies responded to the tsunami with philanthropy based CSR initiatives. Interviews with three senior executives at the family-owned enterprise MAS Holdings revealed an explicitly strategic CSR approach. MAS Holdings, an apparel manufacturer owned by three brothers, is Victoria Secret's lead strategic partner and an ethical buying source for other well-known apparel retailers. This paper examines the organizational virtuousness of MAS Holdings' strategic CSR initiatives. The analysis uses …

Online User-Generated Content For Travel Planning - Different For Different Kinds Of Trips?, Anja Simms

Faculty of Business - Papers (Archive)

Travellers are increasingly turning to online user-generated content for vacation planning. Previous studies have looked at a variety of factors to explain differing levels of social media consumption between travellers. Previous research, however, has not examined the role of the role of trip characteristics (such as familiarity with a destination, location of a destination, trip length, travel planning lead time, and travel party composition) in this context. This study found that trip characteristics seem to play a key role when it comes to travellers' engagement with user-generated content for travel planning - a higher percentage of travellers turned to user-generated …

Managing Collaboration Across Boundaries In Health Information Technology Projects, Karin H. Garrety, Andrew Dalley, Ian Mcloughlin, Rob Wilson, Ping Yu

Faculty of Business - Papers (Archive)

One reason that it is so difficult to build electronic systems for collecting and sharing health information is that their design and implementation requires clear goals and a great deal of collaboration among people from diverse social and occupational worlds. This paper uses empirical examples from two Australian health informatics projects to illustrate the importance of boundary objects and boundary spanning activities in facilitating the high degree of collaboration required for the design and implementation of workable systems.

Professionalism And Social Networking: Can Patients, Physicians, Nurses, And Supervisors All Be "Friends?", Joy Peluchette, Katherine Karl, Alberto Coustasse, Dennis Emmett

Faculty of Business - Papers (Archive)

The purpose of this study was to examine the use of social networking (Facebook) among nurse anesthetists. We examined whether they would have concerns about their supervisor, patients, or physicians seeing their Facebook profile. We also examined their attitudes related to maintaining professional boundaries with regard to the initiation or receipt of Facebook "friend" requests from their supervisor, patients, or physicians they work with. Our respondents consisted of 103 nurses currently enrolled in a graduate-level nurse anesthetist program. All respondents had a minimum of 2 years of work experience in critical care nursing. Most respondents were found to be neutral …

Dispossession, Human Security, And Undocumented Migration: Narrative Accounts Of Afghani And Sri Lankan Tamil Asylum Seekers, Ruchira Ganguly-Scrase, Lynnaire Sheridan

Faculty of Business - Papers (Archive)

In the globalised world of the twenty-first century, material and symbolic goods travel relatively freely across national borders. At the same time, movements of people, or at least particular categories of people, are becoming increasingly understood as a problem in need of control (Briskman and Cemlyn 2005; de Haas 2007; Turner 2010). Migration has become 'one of the most controversial areas of policy and practice facing virtually all countries' (Crawley 2006: 25). Perceptions of porous boundaries and unlimited opportunities coexist in the public imaginary with hardened attitudes towards desperate humans who seek to cross-national borders without authorisation by receiving states. …

Political Connection, Founder-Manager And Their Impact On Tunneling In China's Listed Firms, Liangbo Ma, Shiguang Ma, Gary G. Tian

Faculty of Business - Papers (Archive)

Reciprocal relationship, often regarded as mutually beneficial and secure, can actually be destructive and result in inefficiency. We provide evidence of such double-blade by studying the impact of political connection on corporate governance. Private firms in countries where the government controls the allocation of resources have incentives to seek political connections by hiring politicians or ex-politicians as top executives. Such political capital, however, may turn into political constraint when the CEOs fail to perform but use connections to entrench themselves. We take advantage of the unique setting in China to illustrate this argument. We show that politically connected CEOs have …

Australian Banks Performance During The Global Financial Crisis: An Analysis On The Efficiency And Productivity, Shima Hassan Zadeh Forughi, Anura De Zoysa

Faculty of Business - Papers (Archive)

The banking industry plays a crucial role in the financial system and economic development of any country. Thus, the evaluation of its efficiency is of great importance. The present thesis analyses the impact of different phases of the recent banking crisis on Australian banks with a view to identifying problem areas in the banking sector and to provide directions for policy improvements.

A multiple-stage approach based on Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) is utilized in this study to investigate the level of efficiency and productivity of the Australian banks over a 7 year period. This analysis consists of the following five …

Building A Matrix In The Students' Mind Through Embedding Cross-Disciplinarity In Innovative Capstone Courses, Michael Zanko, Jan Turbill, Christopher Sykes, Belinda Gibbons, Lee Moerman, Trevor Spedding

Faculty of Business - Papers (Archive)

Universities are increasingly looking to round off undergraduate business degrees with a capstone course that provides students with learning experiences that synthesise prior knowledge, skills and abilities acquired throughout their degree and that leads them to look forward to the transition to the world of employment and professional careers. Capstone courses are also widely employed by universities as an efficient and effective basis for the justified assurance of overall degree learning goals/outcomes often for external professional, international or governmental accreditation purposes. In this paper, we take a closer look at these increasingly important capstone courses as part of a multi-university …

Increasing Demands On Information Systems And Infrastructures For Complex Decision-Making, Helen Hasan, Stephen Smith

Faculty of Business - Papers (Archive)

To extend the development of cumulative theory on the enduring themes of Information Systems (IS), we take an historical perspective of a core topic within the field, namely Decision Support Systems (DSS). Motivated by the complexity of strategic decision-making within the Climate Change Working Group of the State Government of New South Wales, we conducted a content analysis of IT strategy documentation from 1989 to the present. In our analysis of the resulting concept maps we observe the increasing dynamism and complexity of DSS over this period and suggest that we are now entering a critical era for IS in …

Towards A Green Is Taxonomy, Helen Hasan, Alemayehu Molla, Vanessa Cooper

Faculty of Business - Papers (Archive)

This paper proposes a set of categories and topics to guide the formation of a taxonomy of Green IS in an endeavor to stimulate efforts to determine the scope and content the field. The resulting taxonomy will complement the SIGGreen Statement of basic Green IS principles. The suggested categories for the taxonomy presented in this paper include the greening of core IS activities supplemented with additional topics drawn from the emerging body of Green IS literature, outcomes of workshops, conference presentations and meetings of SIGGreen as well as the authors experience and communication with fellow members of SIGGreen. It is …

An Analysis Of Mature Aged Female Participation In New South Wales Regional Labour Markets, Natalie Akmacic, Martin O'Brien

Faculty of Business - Papers (Archive)

The analysis of regional markets has surfaced as an important emerging area of economic research in recent years. In particular, economists have attempted to explain the factors behind divergent trends in different regions' growth, migration, structural change and employment. With this in mind, the focus of this paper is to explore the trends in regional labour force participation for mature females over the period 1992 to present. The labour force participation of this group is particularly relevant in the context of Australia's ageing population. To analyse mature age participation we utilise ANOVA to determine the differences between various Australian regions …

Divergent Approaches To Investment: A Tale Of Three Local Councils, Greg Jones, Ciorstan Smark, Anne Abraham

Faculty of Business - Papers (Archive)

The Global Financial Crisis of 2008 led to a substantial write-down in the value of investments such as Collateralised Debt Obligations (CDOs) with one class of investors being NSW local councils. This paper analyses interviews with three local councils, each of which took a substantially different approach to CDO investment. It adopts the lens of Bourdieu's Theory of Practice to describe and explain behaviour regarding decisions to invest (or not) in CDOs, and how these decisions impacted on them. Interesting themes arise regarding differing views on the appropriate role of local councils, and on the degree and form of "capital" …

The Changing Pattern Of State Workers' Labour Resistance In Shaanxi Province, China, Zhiming Cheng

Faculty of Business - Papers (Archive)

State workers in China have been suffering multiple negative shocks due to state sector reforms and massive lay-offs since the 1990s. One of their responses has been to engage in conventional forms of rightful resistance to assert their rights and benefits. The recent development of such labour resistance, however, has been less studied. This paper examines the recent collective rights action among state workers in Shaanxi province to examine the evolving pattern of resistance that changed from relatively non-threatening to radical, and from offline to a mixture of real-life and cyberspace actions. Because the recent movements directly challenged the authoritarian …

Living Arrangements And Income Poverty, Joan R. Rodgers

Faculty of Business - Papers (Archive)

Australians' living arrangements have changed over the last several decades. Greater proportions of households contain only one person, a couple or a single-parent family. Such demographic trends have implications for poverty, which is identified at the household level. This paper explores the relationship between the depth of poverty and household type using longitudinal, unit-record data. Lone persons and single parents are the poorest. Poverty increases significantly at the beginning of a spell of living alone regardless of previous living arrangements but especially for people leaving the household of their parent(s). Except for the elderly, poverty decreases significantly at the end …

Mhealth: A Better Alternative For Healthcare In Developing Countries, Saradhi Motamarri, Shahriar Akter, Pradeep Ray, Chung-Li Tseng

Faculty of Business - Papers (Archive)

Propelled by the continual improvements in mobile wireless communications, mobile health (mHealth) is emerging as a significant player in addition to conventional services. Health care Researchers have focused on quality which is an antecedent to service design. There is a significant gap in the literature with respect to both inter and intra health care service delivery systems. A quantitative comparison of health care services provides insights into whether service alternatives are distinguishable from each other and if so, what factors contribute to the differentiation from the patients' perspective. With this motivation, a multiple discriminant analysis is performed on various health …