Business Commons^™

Careers And Organisational Objectives: Managing Competing Interests In Cooperative Research Centres, Sam Garrett-Jones, Tim Turpin, Kieren Diment

Faculty of Commerce - Papers (Archive)

Research of potential socio-economic value is often conducted within cross-sector (government, university, business) centres. There has been growing interest among science policy researchers in seeking to understand the organizational dilemmas confronted in cross-sector research collaboration. While there is clearly a coalition of interests among partners engaged with collaborative research their broader organizational objectives and strategies may converge, diverge, or even compete. Yet little empirical evidence exists on (a) how individual researchers perceive the benefits of their participation, (b) how far the structures and functions of particular collaborative R&D centres coalesce around of researchers’ expectations and, (c) what problems arise for …

How To Use Qualitative Research To Design A Managerially Useful E-Service Questionnaire, John R. Rossiter

Faculty of Commerce - Papers (Archive)

E-service questionnaires must be content-aligned with the company or organization’s customer relationship management system (CRM). Four phases of qualitative research will ensure this alignment. The first phase is a qualitatively evaluative search of the practitioner literature on e-retailing, both B2B and B2C, and on CRM so as to capture evolving knowledge in both fields. The second phase is individual depth interviews (IDIs) with potential, current, and lapsed customers to map their e-interactive behavior and experiences. The third phase is dyadic depth interviews (DDIs) with the marketing manager and the website designer to fully understand the company’s current and potential e-service …

Informing Destination Recommender Systems Design And Evaluation Through Quantitative Research, Ulrike Gretzel, Yeong-Hyeon Hwang, Daniel Fesenmaier

Faculty of Commerce - Papers (Archive)

Purpose - Destination recommender systems need to become truly human-centric in their design and functionality. This requires a profound understanding of human interactions with technology as well as human behavior related to information search and decision-making in the context of travel and tourism. This paper seeks to review relevant theories that can support the development and evaluation of destination recommender systems and to discuss how quantitative research can inform such theory building and testing. Design/methodology/approach - Based on a review of information search and decision-making literatures, a framework for the development of destination recommender systems is proposed and the implications …

Cross-Sector Research Collaboration In Australia: The Cooperative Research Centres Program At The Crossroads, Tim Turpin, Samuel Garrett-Jones, Richard Woolley

Faculty of Commerce - Papers (Archive)

In this article we trace changes in the institutional and social dynamics that have steered cross-sector R&D collaboration in Australia. Public policy provided the initial push toward cross-sector collaboration. The Cooperative Research Centres (CRC) Program is Australia's most longstanding national arrangement for industry-university-government research collaboration. Over the past two decades the program has grown to become the dominant model for cross-sector R&D cooperation in the country. Because of the size of the program in the Australian innovation system it has also become a major focus for debate about science policy. Universities have now institutionalised this imperative in all sorts of …

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.

The Caqda Paradox: A Divergence Between Research Method And Analytical Tool, Michael Jones, Kieren Diment

Faculty of Commerce - Papers (Archive)

A wide range of software tools are available to assist researchers with the process of qualitative data analysis. These include tools that emphasise manual handling of data, (e.g. NVivo, Atlas.ti) and tools that provide some automated analysis based on statistical properties of texts (e.g. Leximancer). These tools are enhancing research, making research activities less complex and tedious, and rendering the process more transparent and portable (Dohan et al. 1998; Welsh 2002; Andrew et al. 2007; Jones 2007). The use of these tools in published works over the last five to ten years has become increasingly more evident. However, in many …

Was The Copenhagen Summit Doomed From The Start? Some Insights From Green Is Research, Helen M. Hasan, C Dwyer

Faculty of Commerce - Papers (Archive)

At the 2009 Copenhagen Summit on Climate Change, COP15, so many contradictory demands were apparent that it is doubtful whether it produced many useful outcomes. In this paper we question whether it, and summits like it, may be inherently doomed to fall short of expectations. With its experience of the intrinsic contradictions within socio-technical systems, the Information System’s profession may provide some insights into complex issues such as climate change. IS research has often demonstrated that imposed top-down solutions rarely provide the most promising way to approach highly complex problems. On the other hand, bottom-up emergent processes, though less politically …

Mapping The Archive: An Examination Of Research Reported In Ajll 2000-2005, Pauline J. Harris, Janice B. Turbill, Lisa K. Kervin, Kathryn Harden-Thew

Faculty of Commerce - Papers (Archive)

Amidst commissioned research reports and policy reforms in literacy education, this paper examines research reported in the 2000–2005 archive of the Australian Journal of Language and Literacy (AJLL). This focus arises from the selective inclusion of literacy research in recent literacy education policy reform documents in Australia and overseas and the exclusion of other research, including research from this AJLL 2000/5 archive. Given the high national and international standing of AJLL, we felt it was timely and important to engage in a retrospective mapping exercise with this collection of research and critically examine its relationship to literacy education policy. So …

Embedding Notions Of Community In The Teaching-Research Nexus: A Case Study, Mario Fernando, Peter D. Mclean

Faculty of Commerce - Papers (Archive)

Becoming aware of the variety of ways academics and students experience and apply research in higher education empowers higher education providers, policy makers and academics to become more reflective and critical of the environment in which learning is taking place. Significant shifts in commerce higher education pedagogy that value community engagement as a bridge to holistic education and sustainable social change are taking place. With the increasing need to integrate the community into the teaching-research nexus, social responsibility is moving to the forefront of commerce higher education. The paper is based on the findings of a teaching and learning scholar …

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 …

Ranking And Clustering Of The Faculties Of Commerce Research Performance In Australia, Simon Ville, Abbas Valadkhani

Faculty of Commerce - Papers (Archive)

There is a growing policy focus in Australian higher education on quantitative research performance assessment. However, most of the analysis has addressed aggregate performance at the institutional level, an approach inconsistent with recent policy emphasis on diversity among universities and one that ignores performance variations across disciplines. Using averaged and all available data for 2000-2004, cluster analysis is used to classify Australian Commerce Faculties into groups that exhibit similar research performance, measured by publication, PhD completion and secured competitive research grant funding. We also use factor analysis to generate full-multidimensional rankings within the resulting two or three clusters. It is …

Discipline-Specific Forecasting Of Research Output In Australian Universities, Abbas Valadkhani, Simon Ville

Faculty of Commerce - Papers (Archive)

This article presents a cross-sectional model for forecasting research output across the Australian university system. It builds upon an existing literature that focuses either on institutional comparisons or studies of specific subjects, by providing discipline-specific results across all of the 10 major disciplinary areas as defined by Australia's Department of Education, Science and Training. The model draws upon four (highly significant) discipline-specific explanatory variables; staff size, research expenditure, PhD completions and student-staff ratios to predict the output of refereed articles.

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 …

Customer Orientation In An Australian Public Service Agency And Its Effect On Public Service Motives: Developing A Research Study, Christa Wood

Faculty of Commerce - Papers (Archive)

The Australian public service has experienced dramatic changes during the last few decades. One of the changes is the push for public servants to behave in accordance with private sector principles, such as customer service orientation. This paper is developing a research study that aims to analyse the motivational forces that enable (or disable) the behavioural changes of public servants and what impact (if any) those changes have on traditional public service motives. The study intends to use an extended expectancy-valence model together with a public service motive measurement scale to identify if there are relationships between motivational forces, customer …

The Case Study Methodology In Place Management Research And Practice, Gregory M. Kerr, Gary I. Noble, John Glynn

Faculty of Commerce - Papers (Archive)

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to assist those in the relatively new field of place management to undertake sound and appropriate research for which there is a current need. Approach: This paper identifies and provides an interpretation of key terms associated with research in the social and behavioural sciences and then recommends the case study methodology as being appropriate for research in place management. Findings: Based on a review of the literature this paper offers a viewpoint about the meaning and application of the terms ‘methodology’, ‘methods,’ ‘ways’, ‘strategies’ and ‘approaches’ when they are applied to research. Research …

What Determines The Research Output Of Australian Universities?, Abbas Valadkhani, Simon Ville

Faculty of Commerce - Papers (Archive)

This paper develops and estimates a cross-sectional model for forecasting research output across the Australian university system. It builds upon an existing literature that focuses either on institutional comparisons or studies of specific subjects, by providing discipline-specific results across all of the ten major disciplinary areas as defined by Australias Department of Education, Science and Training (DEST). The model draws upon four discipline-specific explanatory variables; staff size, research expenditure, PhD completions, and student-staff ratios to predict output of refereed articles. When compared with actual averaged output for 2000-2004, the results are highly statistically significant.

An Assessment Of The Research Performance Of Commerce Faculties In Australia, Abbas Valadkhani, Simon Ville

Faculty of Commerce - Papers (Archive)

There is a growing policy focus in Australian higher education on quantitative research performance assessment. However, most of the analysis has addressed aggregate performance at the institutional level, an approach inconsistent with recent policy emphasis on diversity among universities, and one that ignores performance variations across disciplines. We use cluster analysis to classify one of the ten broad fields of education, that is, management and commerce. Using averaged and available data for 2000-2004 on various research measures, partial rankings are provided. Factor analysis is utilised to generate full-multidimensional rankings within the resulting clusters. Our results show that low total research …

Missing In Action: Research On Occupational Health And Safety Management In Organizations, Michael Zanko

Faculty of Commerce - Papers (Archive)

The enormous problem of workplace injuries and deaths continues to beset countries. Reflexive OHS regulation often places primary responsibility on employers’ management of OHS in organizations. This paper seeks to ascertain how OHS management at the organizational level has been treated in the research literature. A review of leading journals (13 in management, 6 in HRM) from 1994 to 2005 showed OHS management to be largely missing as the subject or field of study. Naturally, the OHS literature was more fruitful: 5 main categories were identified. However, there was little in the way nuanced explanation of OHS management at the …

Interorganizational Dynamics In Collaboration In University-Industry Research Projects: Context, Politics And Social Construction, Michael Zanko, Richard Badham, Karin H. Garrety

Faculty of Commerce - Papers (Archive)

University-industry partnerships (UIPs) are widely viewed as essential in leveraging research capability and economic performance in organizations and the nation as a whole. In Australia, as in many other countries, the national government commits significant funds to such ‘strategic’ collaborations. Despite this interest, there is still a relatively poor understanding of the interorganizational dynamics of these industry and university partnerships and their projects. This paper examines such dynamics by focusing on a management-related research project we were involved in negotiating and undertaking with industry partner managers over a four-year period. Of particular relevance was the complex interplay between UIP politics, …

Relative Values And Complementarity Of Online And Offline Interactions In Consumer Buying Behaviour: A Proposed Research Plan To Study Purchasing Of A Consumer Service Product Bundle, Robert G. Grant

Faculty of Commerce - Papers (Archive)

Current research into online consumer behaviour seems to be limited in two respects, firstly it treats online interaction as a stand-alone phenomenon and secondly it focuses on discrete steps in consumer processes, neglecting links between the steps. This paper proposes a research method to investigate relative values and complementarity between online and offline interactions in a consumer's buying process, examining differences within and between steps. A range of information source types and functional resource options will be researched for both effectiveness and efficiency benefits as well as emotional preferences for both online and offline interactions.

The research will focus on …

Ranking Australian Economics Departments By Research Productivity, Frank V. Neri, Joan R. Rodgers

Faculty of Commerce - Papers (Archive)

This study ranks Australian economics departments according to the average research productivity of their academic staff during 1996-2002. It also ranks departments according to the variability of research productivity among their members, the assumption being that, ceteris paribus, the less variable is productivity within a department, the better. Research productivity is found to be highly skewed within all departments. A few departments have high average research productivity because of just one or two highly productive members. However, in general, research productivity is more evenly distributed within those departments that have relatively high average research productivity than within departments with relatively …

Qualitative Case Study Research: A Research Project On Employee Participation In The Malaysian Private Sector, Balakrishnan Parasuraman

Faculty of Commerce - Papers (Archive)

Employee participation is one of the important fields in industrial relations. Research on employee participation in Malaysia is usually conducted through large-scale surveys and quasi-experiments and only focuses on the public sector. Therefore, this research instead uses a qualitative case study approach in investigating employee participation practices in private sector companies in Malaysia. This paper discusses aspects of the methodology of case study research and qualitative data collection and the theory and arguments affecting the choice of research and data gathering strategy in this research. Concludes that carrying out qualitative case study research, in the author's experience, is first and …

Qualitative Case Study Research In Africa And Asia: Challenges And Prospects, Bubaker Shareia, Balakrishnan Parasuraman, Bernadine Cantrick-Brooks

Faculty of Commerce - Papers (Archive)

Much of the literature on research design has focussed on research conducted in developed, uni-cultural or primarily English speaking countries. Studies of qualitative case study research, the challenges and prospects, have been embedded in Western/Euro-centric society and social theories. Although there have been some theoretical studies, few empirical studies have been conducted to explore the nature of the challenges of qualitative case study in Africa and Asia. These challenges include cultural and language issues affecting access to companies and respondent issues and data analysis and financial issues. The authors while conducting qualitative case study research in Libya and Malaysia faced …

Some International Benchmarks For Evaluating Australian Health And Medical Research, Samuel Garrett-Jones, Brian Wixted, Tim Turpin

Faculty of Commerce - Papers (Archive)

Recent experience in Australia has seen the requirement by the federal Department of Finance and Administration to conduct output pricing reviews of government agencies including research organisations. Health and medical research, while generally regarded as an important ‘public good’, is now pressed by the same demands as other research fields to account for public investments in terms of value of outcomes and value for investment. This paper reports on current trends towards international benchmarking of health and medical research performance. Comparative data from overseas show unique aspects of the Australian health and medical research funding system. The paper suggests possible …

Science For Life: An Evaluation Of New Zealand's Health Research Investment System Based On International Benchmarks, Samuel Garrett-Jones, Tim Turpin, Brian Wixted

Faculty of Commerce - Papers (Archive)

During the past decade there have been major developments in the way that research investments have been monitored and evaluated. While there are differences in the ways governments fund research around the world, and a diversity of approaches to evaluation, there are a number of common themes that can be observed in national experiences. As the importance of evaluation increases, the gap between current practice and best practice becomes more significant, and the need for comparative study and methods development grows. Current international ‘better-practice’ approaches to research evaluation and performance indicators reflect two important considerations. First, they make a clear …

Cracks In The Egg: Improving Performance Measures In Business Incubator Research, Barbara Cornelius, Rekha Bhabra-Remedios

Faculty of Commerce - Papers (Archive)

Early research into business incubators focused on describing how they were operated and what activities were undertaken to assist in the survival of tenant firms. The only measures of effective operation were based upon the economic agenda of those sponsoring the incubators, that is, whether jobs were created and firms successfully developed beyond the protected incubator environment. The theoretical considerations used by researchers were, as a consequence, limited largely to either economic or fmancial models of performance. Much can be learned, however, from the management literature, which examines performance through organisational theory. It is suggested that further research into incubator …

You Are The Rats: Action Research, Academic Forums And The Reflective Practice Of Professional Bricoleurs, Andrew J. Sense, Richard Badham

Faculty of Commerce - Papers (Archive)

"I saw the University as helping us to reflect on what we are doing- they are the expert reflectors. This is particularly what I saw as X's role. Sometimes his inteIjections go above their heads, and his nine words or less, statements need to have some explanation, and I should feed this back to him. I also see the University as playing a visionary role, helping to show us new things, about what is possible. I don't see the University as helping to pull the team together - that is when it gets confusing. They are observing us, they are …

International Trends In Evaluating University Research Outcomes: What Lessons For Australia, Samuel Garrett-Jones

Faculty of Commerce - Papers (Archive)

An international study compared methods used to monitor and evaluate the outcomes of university research in the United States, Canada, the Netherlands and elsewhere. It aimed to provide a foundation for improving the evaluation of research and research training in Australian universities. Evaluation methods were considered in terms of their audience, the type of outputs, outcomes or impacts being measured, and the types of research funding support schemes to which they were applied. The study found that Australian research agencies are generally in line with ‘common practice’ in the countries studied, and in some cases in advance of it. The …

Some Recent Developments In The Evaluation Of University Research Outcomes In The United Kingdom, Samuel Garrett-Jones, David K. Aylward

Faculty of Commerce - Papers (Archive)

Three specific recent developments in the evaluation of UK university research—the Research Assessment Exercise, the common performance indicators for the research councils, and the ‘evaluation portfolio’ of the Economic and Social Research Council — are described, and how they work in practice is examined. As in other countries, we find some tension between the criteria of excellence and socioeconomic benefit in valuing research outcomes. Driven by government policy, the primacy of peer evaluation based on publications is being strongly augmented by methods and performance measures that attempt to capture the broader benefits and impacts of academic research within the context …