Business Commons^™

Tourist Segment Compatibility, Katie Lazarevski, Sara Dolnicar

Faculty of Commerce - Papers (Archive)

Although market segmentation is used extensively by tourism researchers and industry, the problem of possible incompatibility of multiple segments has been widely ignored. Segment incompatibility limits the freedom of selecting a subset of attractive market segments to target thus representing a crucial consideration for the successful implementation of a market segmentation strategy. This study (1) discusses the problem of segment compatibility, (2) defines segment (in)compatibility, and (3) reports on factors which cause tourist (in)compatibility. Results indicated main factors are disrespect to environment, noisy people, attitude, meeting people, social atmosphere, information and advice. Practical implications for destination management are described.

An Investigation Of Tourists’ Patterns Of Obligation To Protect The Environment, Sara Dolnicar, Friedrich Leisch

Faculty of Commerce - Papers (Archive)

Destinations are increasingly concerned about the environmental sustainability of the local tourism industry. A number of authors have proposed a demand-driven approach to sustainable destination management as a complementary measure to traditional supply-sided interventions. However, there is little empirical evidence to support the feasibility of such a demand-driven approach. This study contributes to this gap by investigating whether individuals who feel morally obliged to behave in an environmentally friendly manner represent useful target segments for destination management aiming to improve the ecological sustainability of the local tourism industry. Results indicate that distinctly different moral obligation segments exist that differ in …

The New Researcher, Graham Bowrey

Faculty of Commerce - Papers (Archive)

Purpose This poem is a reflection of the processes and associated emotions early career academic researchers may experience in preparing, presenting and publishing their research. Design/methodology/approach: Fictional poem Findings: This poem highlights that the processes an early career academic researcher undertakes to publish his/her research isn’t necessarily the hardest lesson to learn. Rather the hardest lesson is learning to cope with the mix of emotions they will experience during the process. Research Implications: Provides early career academic researchers, and their supervisors, a guide of what they can expect to experience during the first few years during their research. Originality/Value A …

The Place Of Self-Actualisation In Workplace Spirituality: Evidence From Sri Lanka, Mario Fernando, V. Nilakant

Faculty of Commerce - Papers (Archive)

The aim of this paper is to develop a self-actualizing spirituality model. It examines the place of self-actualization in the experience of workplace spirituality of Sri Lankan business leaders. The primary method of data collection was in-depth and face-to-face interviews with 13 Sri Lankan business leaders. Within the qualitative tradition and case study method, grounded theory and data triangulation were used to analyze the data. The findings suggest that when the business leaders experience workplace spirituality, they commonly project a need to grow, become and evolve towards the ideal (ought) self. This need is primarily driven by a desire to …

Preparing Accountants For Today’S Global Business Environment: The Role Of Emotional Intelligence In Accounting Education, G. E. Jones, A. Abraham

Faculty of Commerce - Papers (Archive)

The tasks and skills that are required of accounting practitioners in today’s global business environment have changed significantly since the early 1990s. Accounting practitioners are no longer merely required to undertake the tasks necessary for information provision, such as bookkeeping, data analysis and tax preparation. Instead, their roles are now extended to encompass information facilitation, thus repositioning them as knowledge professionals rather than accounting technicians. This includes a greater emphasis on the components of emotional intelligence. However, accounting students are generally not aware of this expanded role. Thus students who are attracted into accounting courses may not possess the appropriate …

The Low Stability Of Brand-Attribute Associations Is Partly Due To Market Research Methodology, Sara Dolnicar, J. R. Rossiter

Faculty of Commerce - Papers (Archive)

Using an experiment built into a longitudinal survey, we demonstrate that the low stability of consumers’ brand-attribute associations (see Rungie et al., 2005) can be partly explained by the prevailing methods used in market research, which can often lead consumers to construct temporary associations. To increase the proportion of stable brand-attribute associations, we recommend the following improvements in market research methods: use of a shorter, brand-prompted attribute association task; inclusion of an “don’t know this brand” option to isolate ratings of brands unknown to the individual; omission of the standard instruction to guess when uncertain; and, in cross-cultural studies, translation …

Long- And Short-Run Determinants Of The Demand For Money In The Asian-Pacific Countries: An Empirical Panel Investigation, Abbas Valadkhani

Faculty of Commerce - Papers (Archive)

This paper examines the long- and short-run determinants of the demand for money in six countries in the Asian-Pacific region using panel data (1975-2002). Various country-specific coefficients are allowed to capture inter-country heterogeneities. Consistent with theoretical postulates, it is found that (a) the demand for money in the long-run positively responds to real income and inversely to the interest rate spread, inflation, the real effective exchange rate, and the US real interest rate; (b) the long-run income elasticity is greater than unity; and (c) both the currency substitution and capital mobility hypotheses hold only in the long run.

Mission Or Money? Competitive Challenges Facing Public Sector Nonprofit Organisations In An Institutionalised Environment., Sara Dolnicar, H. J. Irvine, K. Lazarevski

Faculty of Commerce - Papers (Archive)

This paper exposes the impact of competitive grant funding on public sector nonprofit volunteer organisations, using institutional theory to explain developments within this sector. A conceptual model is developed from which five propositions are derived. Bushcare units, in experiencing institutional pressures, respond in ways that affect their culture, structure and routines, resulting in the possibility that their mission will be compromised. In the process of targeting competitive grants, preparing grant applications, managing increased reporting requirements and recruiting volunteers, Bushcare units should apply a mission “filter” to ensure their mission is not compromised in the pursuit of money. Bushcare New South …

Assessing The Prerequisite Of Successful Csr Implementation: Are Consumers Aware Of Csr Initiatives?, Alan Pomering, Sara Dolnicar

Faculty of Commerce - Papers (Archive)

Corporate social responsibility has received a large amount of research attention over the last decade. Results indicate that consumers are influenced by corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiatives of businesses if they are aware of them. Whether consumers are in fact aware of CSR initiatives, however, has not been studied in the past. This ‘missing link’ in CSR research makes the conclusions that CSR affects consumer behaviour questionable. Consequently, a number of researchers (e.g. Maignan 2001; Mohr, Webb, and Harris 2001) have called for empirical studies to determine the extent to which consumers are actually aware of the CSR records of …

An Empirical Analysis Of Sustainability Of Trade Deficit: Evidence From Sri Lanka, Nelson Perera, R. Verma

Faculty of Commerce - Papers (Archive)

In this paper, the long-run relationship between Sri Lankan exports and imports during the period 1950 to 2006 is examined using unit root tests and cointegration techniques that allow for an endogenously determined structural break. The results failed to support the existence of a long-run equilibrium between exports and imports in Sri Lanka. This finding questions the effectiveness of Sri Lanka’s current long-term macroeconomic policies and suggests that Sri Lanka is in violation of its international budget constraint.

A Profile Of The Non-Executive Directors Of Australia's Largest Public Companies, C. L. Cortese, G. Bowrey

Faculty of Commerce - Papers (Archive)

This paper presents a profile of the non-executive directors of Australia’s largest public companies. Using descriptive data, it assesses the extent to which these companies adhere to the requirements set down in the Australian Stock Exchange’s Principles of Good Corporate Governance. In particular, board structure and composition is evaluated, and levels of remuneration and independence among non-executive directors are assessed. The paper concludes with a discussion of the need for independence and questions whether competence, among other characteristics, is a more valuable characteristic of a non-executive director than independence.

Corporate Social Responsibility Reporting In Hong Kong: Case Study Of Three Note-Issuing Banks (2003-2006), F. Hui, G. Bowrey

Faculty of Commerce - Papers (Archive)

The increasing public concern on the state of the world’s environment and the impact of mankind on the ecology of the world has lead to the increased scrutiny of the operations and performance of organisations. Organisations are now expected to be able to demonstrate that they are aware and are addressing the impact of their operations, both direct and indirect, on the environment and society in general. Financial institutions due to the nature of their business generally do not contribute directly to the degradation of the environment however they do provide the funds for many organisations’ projects which do directly …

International Trade And Regional Income Convergence: The Asean-5 Evidence, K. Jayanthakumaran, R. Verma

Faculty of Commerce - Papers (Archive)

This paper intends to show that that multilateralism and regionalism are complementary and that regional income convergence is likely with the like-minded and committed regionalism that often has links geographically and culturally. In this direction this paper examines the association between international trade, income per capita, regional income convergence in ASEAN-5 by applying the LP (Lumsdaine and Papell, 1997) approach, which allows two endogenous structural breaks. The paper further explores the causal relationships among the above variables by using Granger causality tests. We used intra-ASEAN-5’s (of the 5 founding counties) historical data by isolating the following different historical policy interventions: …

Survival Strategies And Characteristics Of Start-Ups: An Empirical Study From The New Zealand It Industry, Shamika Almeida, Mario Fernando

Faculty of Commerce - Papers (Archive)

The purpose of this paper is to report the findings of an exploratory study on the characteristics of New Zealand start up IT firms that survived the dot.com collapse. The paper is based on the in-depth interviews of nine entrepreneurs of start-up IT firms in New Zealand. The findings reveal how moderate strategy types influence survival, and what core organizational characteristics influenced the realisation of these strategies. These findings indicate that the firms that survived projected characteristics of holistic strategic balance, mastering resources and unifying focus. Successful firms made purposeful choices on resource allocations and realized moderately simple strategies. In …

A Commentary On 'The Order Of Teaching Accounting Topics - Why Do Most Textbooks End With The Beginning?', A. Abraham

Faculty of Commerce - Papers (Archive)

This paper deals with an issue of relevance to all those involved in teaching accounting from a student-centred perspective – the order in which topics should be introduced to students in an introductory accounting subject. The stated purpose of the paper is “to stimulate debate” (p. 9). In order to do this, the author presents an argument for her proposed ordering for the introduction of topics and then reports the results of her analysis of the sequencing of chapters in twenty three selected textbooks. These two distinct sections of the paper will be discussed first separately and then drawn together …

Price And Demand: What Do 3pl Customers Really Want?, Tim Coltman

Faculty of Commerce - Papers (Archive)

Successful companies understand what their customers want and are able to reverse engineer their supply chains to meet this demand in ways that make business sense. Less successful companies often find it hard to obtain a good understanding of what their customer’s value, and spend considerable time hustling to do things that are not fully appreciated by their customers. The lessons here are quite straightforward; rewards accrue to those organizations that are “best” able to match “appropriate” supply chain activities to the latent needs of their customers.

The Struggle To Develop Accounting Practices In The Australian Girl Guides, 1945-9: A Microhistorical Approach, A. Abraham

Faculty of Commerce - Papers (Archive)

There has been limited accounting history research in the areas of nonprofit organisations and women in a non-business environment. This paper addresses these two gaps by considering accounting history in a large female-managed nonprofit organisation, the Australian Girl Guides Association (GGA). To do this the paper uses a microhistorical reconstruction of an individual to penetrate underlying motivations (Parker, 1999, p. 31) and to allow the reader “to draw conclusions from a story that illustrates a fragment of peoples’ lives and activities” (Williams, 1999, p. 75) by revealing what would otherwise be unknown about the struggle to develop appropriate accounting practices …

Government And Family Guanxi In Chinese Private Enterprises, Guibin Zhang, Zhong Qin

Faculty of Commerce - Papers (Archive)

Domestic private enterprises have dramatically re-emerged in China's unique transition from a planned to a market-oriented economy, where the private sector plays an increasingly important role. Over the last quarter of a century, there has been a decline in 'red-hat' enterprises and an increased dominance of family businesses among private enterprises.This paper employs the concept of trust, which stems from traditional culture and comprises two important components (government and family), to investigate the changing patterns of corporate governance. The core argument of this paper is that family trust is replacing government trust within Chinese private enterprises. The study of the …

The Effect Of Funding Changes On Public Sector Nonprofit Organizations: The Case Of Bushcare Nsw, Katie Cliff, H. J. Irvine, Sara Dolnicar

Faculty of Commerce - Papers (Archive)

Research into nonprofit organizations abounds, but not much is known about public sector nonprofit organizations. Recent funding incentives in Australia have led to significant changes in the market environment for such organizations. This study describes these market changes and explores the reactions of one environmental public sector nonprofit organization, Bushcare NSW, to these changes. This paper contends that, within this institutional environment, nonprofit organizations more successful in attracting large amounts of external funding have better administrative structures in place, whereas those less successful find themselves confronted with burdensome administrative duties. Neo-institutional theory provides a theoretical basis for this empirical investigation. …

Structural Limits Of Capacity And Implications For Visibility, Ted Watts, Carol J. Mcnair, Vicki Baard, Lidija Polutnik

Faculty of Commerce - Papers (Archive)

Purpose - This paper fills the gap between defining and measuring the productive limits of a machine or system, and the impact of various assumptions about the productive potential of the nature and informativeness of capacity cost management systems. The authors focused on the various ways in which multi-dimensional limits (for example, time, space, volume and/or value-creating ability) can be used to define productive capacity. Specifically, our research suggests that the limits used in establishing the capacity cost management system restrict the amount and nature of the information the system is capable of providing to management.

Justification – Two reasons …

Are Green Tourists A Managerially Useful Target Segment?, Sara Dolnicar, K. Matus

Faculty of Commerce - Papers (Archive)

Environmental sustainability in tourism has received significant attention among destination managers and researchers alike. Yet the range of measures proposed to reduce the environmental footprint of tourists at a destination remains limited to measures taken at the destination, as opposed to marketing measures which aim to attract truly green tourists. The potential of using green tourist as a market segment, however, has not been established to date.
We review published profiles of green tourists and assess the managerial usefulness of this segment using theoretical criteria of segment attractiveness. Results indicate that much is known about the distinctive characteristics of green …

Social Innovation, Sustainable Futures And Commercial Concerns: People, Profits And Social Well-Being, Patrick M. Dawson, L. Daniel

Faculty of Commerce - Papers (Archive)

This paper draws attention to the growing interest in social innovations as they seek to improve the well being of people, communities and society. Social innovations are recognised as the development of new concepts, strategies and tools that support individuals and groups to achieve improved well-being. We examine here the growing interest in social innovation before turning our attention to more theoretical and conceptual concerns. We examine the link between the social and technical dimensions of innovation and identify how the scope of our definition is important in delineating our phenomena of interest. Some of the earlier academic work on …

‘Primary Care' Presentations At Emergency Departments - Rates And Reasons By Age And Sex, Peter M. Siminski, Andrew J. Bezzina, L. P. Lago, Kathy Eagar

Faculty of Commerce - Papers (Archive)

'Primary care' presentations at Emergency Departments (EDs) have been the subject of much attention in recent years. This paper is a demographic analysis of such presentations in New South Wales EDs and of self-reported reasons for presentation.

Trends In Primary Care Presentations At Emergency Departments In New South Wales (1999-2006), Peter M. Siminski, Andrew J. Bezzina, L. P. Lago, Kathy Eagar

Faculty of Commerce - Papers (Archive)

This paper examines trends in potential ‘primary care’ presentations at EDs, comparing these with other ED presentations and to primary care attendances in the community.
Methods
The study draws on EDIS data (Emergency Department Information System), which at December 2005 covered 76 per cent of attendances in New South Wales, and MBS data from Medicare Australia. Annual counts of potential ‘primary care’ presentations to EDs are compared with those of other ED presentations and to primary care presentations in the community. Changes in the percentage of ED presentations that are potentially for primary care are examined, as are changes in …

Segmenting Tourists Based On Satisfaction And Satisfaction Patterns, Sara Dolnicar, H. Le

Faculty of Commerce - Papers (Archive)

Market segmentation has a long history in empirical tourism research. So does satisfaction research. Yet, little work has been done at the cross-roads of these two areas. This chapter makes a step towards filling this gap by (1) reviewing prior work in data-driven market segmentation with a specific focus on satisfaction, (2) analysing managerial recommendations resulting from these studies, and (3) providing empirical examples of how commonsense and data-driven segmentation studies could be conducted using satisfaction as discriminating criterion between tourists.

Challenging “Factor Cluster Segmentation”, Sara Dolnicar, Bettina Grun

Faculty of Commerce - Papers (Archive)

The concept of market segmentation has been widely accepted and warmly embraced both by tourism industry and academia. In tourism research, this increased interest in segmentation studies has led to the emergence of a standard research approach. Most notably a concept referred to as “Factor Cluster Segmentation” has been broadly adopted. The aim of this paper is to demonstrate that this approach is not generally the best procedure to identify homogeneous groups of individuals (market segments).

Do Australian Investment And Savings Behave Procyclically?, Arusha V. Cooray, B. Felmingham

Faculty of Commerce - Papers (Archive)

This study uses spectral analysis to examine the behaviour of Australian savings and investment and their synchronisation with the business cycle over the period September 1959 to December 2005. The results reveal that the major cyclical components of savings and investment cohere strongly. Further, savings coheres strongly with the business cycle suggesting that Australian savings is procyclical. Investment also exhibits a procyclical pattern although the evidence of this is weaker

Are Australia's Savings And Investment Fractionally Cointegrated?, Arusha V. Cooray, B. Felmingham

Faculty of Commerce - Papers (Archive)

This paper uses an Autoregressive Fractionally Integrated Moving Average (ARFIMA) process to determine if Australia’s savings and investment are fractionally cointegrated. The study finds the two series to be fractionally cointegrated implying that deviations from equilibrium are persistent.

Back To The Future For Km: The Case For Sensible Organisation, Helen M. Hasan

Faculty of Commerce - Papers (Archive)

There are many times in our brave new web-based world that we seem to have lost the art of making common sense decisions and judgements. The current organisational environment begs an agenda for KM that rediscovers values from the past, fulfilling the promise of ‘sensible organisation’. In research over the past eight years, a great team of colleagues and I have explored various factors that contribute to the creation of intellectual, social and emotional capital in enterprises and communities, reinforcing our position that most innovative work involving new knowledge creation takes place in cooperative, self-directed teams. The proposed concept ‘sensible …

Real Interest Rate Interdependence Among The G7 Nations: Does Real Interest Parity Hold?, Bruce Felmingham, Arusha V. Cooray

Faculty of Commerce - Papers (Archive)

We evaluate the extent of real interest rate interdependence among three month treasury bill rates of the G7. Monthly data over the period 1970(1) to 2003(12) is subjected to recursive estimation of a cointegrating equation. The evidence suggests a high degree of interdependence between the G7 interest rates with the degree of integration increasing over the sample period. Tests for parameter constancy highlight the disruptive effects of the first oil price shock although the impacts on financial markets of the September 11 and the attack occurrence of the Asian crisis have limited impacts. The evidence for the presence of a …