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Publication Search Results

Now showing 1 - 10 of 54
  • (2005) Zhu, Liming; Aurum, Aybuke; Jeffery, David; Gorton, Ian
    Journal Article
    Software architecture evaluation involves evaluating different architecture design alternatives against multiple quality-attributes. These attributes typically have intrinsic conflicts and must be considered simultaneously in order to reach a final design decision. AHP (Analytic Hierarchy Process), an important decision making technique, has been leveraged to resolve such conflicts. AHP can help provide an overall ranking of design alternatives. However it lacks the capability to explicitly identify the exact tradeoffs being made and the relative size of these tradeoffs. Moreover, the ranking produced can be sensitive such that the smallest change in intermediate priority weights can alter the final order of design alternatives. In this paper, we propose several in-depth analysis techniques applicable to AHP to identify critical tradeoffs and sensitive points in the decision process. We apply our method to an example of a real-world distributed architecture presented in the literature. The results are promising in that they make important decision consequences explicit in terms of key design tradeoffs and the architecture`s capability to handle future quality attribute changes. These expose critical decisions which are otherwise too subtle to be detected in standard AHP results.

  • (2009) Kennan, Mary-Anne; Kingsley, Danny A
    Journal Article
    This paper provides the first full description of the status of Australian institutional repositories. Australia presents an interesting case because of the government’s support of institutional repositories and open access. A survey of all 39 Australian universities conducted in September 2008 shows that 32 institutions have active repositories and by end of 2009, 37 should have repositories. The total number of open access items has risen dramatically since January 2006. Five institutions reported they have an institution–wide open access mandate, and eight are planning to implement one. Only 20 universities have funding for their repository staff and 24 universities have funding for their repository platform, either as ongoing recurrent budgeting or absorbed into their institutions’ budgets. The remaining are still project funded. The platform most frequently used for Australian repositories is Fedora with Vital. Most of the remaining sites use EPrints or DSpace.

  • (2008) March, Roger St George; Wilkinson, Ian
    Journal Article
    Network and stakeholder analyses in tourism studies typically offer schema, typologies, and frameworks that contribute to the conceptual development of the subject area. What has been lacking is the managerial application of network research in tourism. This paper offers a method for investigating and conceptualising network relationships in a regional tourism district. The field work was undertaken in the Australian wine region of the Hunter Valley. The findings from are analysed using four different approaches to the conceptualisation and classification of inter-organisational relationships in a tourism region: (1) the application of a value net to the region’s stakeholders, (2) the generation of a partnership-activities matrix, (3) an ecological approach using Budowski’s (1976) typology and (4) identifying the competition for scarce resources among tourism stakeholders. Managerial implications for each approach are described.

  • (2011) Bednall, Timothy; Bove, Liliana
    Journal Article
    Although research into blood donor motivation abounds, most studies have typically focused on small sets of variables, used different terminology to label equivalent constructs, and have not attempted to generalize findings beyond their individual settings. The current study sought to synthesize past findings into a unified taxonomy of blood donation drivers and deterrents, and estimate the prevalence of each factor across the worldwide population of donors and eligible non-donors. Primary studies were collected and cross-validated categories of donation motivators and deterrents were developed. Proportions of first-time, repeat, lapsed, apheresis and eligible non-donors endorsing each category were calculated. In terms of motivators, first-time and repeat donors most frequently cited convenience, prosocial motivation and personal values; apheresis donors similarly cited the latter two motivators. Conversely, lapsed donors more often cited collection agency reputation, perceived need for donation, marketing communication and incentives as motivators. In terms of deterrents, both donors and non-donors most frequently referred to low self-efficacy to donate, low involvement, inconvenience, absence of marketing communication, ineffective incentives, lack of knowledge about donating, negative service experiences, and fear. The integration of past findings has yielded a comprehensive taxonomy of factors influencing blood donation, and has provided insight into the prevalence of each factor across multiple stages of donors’ careers. Implications for collection agencies are discussed.

  • (2008) Austin, Janet Elizabeth
    Journal Article
    Section 50 of the Australian Securities and Investments Commission Act 2001 (Cth) confers a wide power on the Australian Securities and Investment Commission (ASIC) to bring civil action in the name of the company or a class action for shareholders or investors for the recovery of damages for corporate misconduct. Despite its broad scope, this power has been little used by ASIC. Until the recent Westpoint litigation it appeared that this trend seemed set to continue due to the recent growth in ASIC’s arsenal of enforcement powers, in particular the ability to bring proceedings seeking civil penalties, together with what promises to be a new age of private enforcement of shareholders rights through class actions funded by litigation funding corporations. In the context of this likely expansion of private enforcement action and the current legislative framework of ASIC’s enforcement powers, this article will examine when ASIC should bring civil action under this provision.

  • (2008) Harris, Jason; Hargovan, Anil; Austin, Janet Elizabeth
    Journal Article
    The conventional view of corporate regulation is that corporations are to be managed for the benefit of their shareholders. The general law and statutory duties of directors and officers reflect this “shareholder primacy norm”, with duties formulated to prevent directors acting otherwise than in the interests of shareholders. However, the general law and statutory duties are not identical. The remedies and enforcement mechanisms differ considerably, which raises the question as to whether the public enforcement of statutory duties carries with it a public interest mandate that general law duties do not. This article considers what role the public interest should have in enforcing statutory duties and whether such a role represents a challenge to the dominant shareholder primacy norm of corporate law. This issue is highly topical as recent decisions have suggested that the statutory duties of directors and officers are limited in their scope to protecting the interests of shareholders, even to the detriment of the public interest. We contest that viewpoint and argue that, at least in relation to statutory duties, directors and officers have obligations that extend beyond the narrow conception of the protection of shareholder wealth.

  • (2008) Parwada, Jerry
    Journal Article
    Fund managers` bias toward geographically proximate securities is a well-researched phenomenon, yet the origins of managers` location choices have received little empirical scrutiny. This paper traces the employment and geographic heritage of 358 entrepreneurial fund managers and analyzes the determinants of where they locate their firms and stock selections. The evidence suggests that start-ups tend to be based close to the origins of their founders and in regions with more investment management firms, banking establishments, and large institutional money managers. New money managers show a strong local bias in their equity holdings, three times the levels previously documented for mutual funds. The propensity to invest closer to home correlates strongly with the presence of sub-advisory opportunities from institutional investors in the vicinity. While home bias levels between managers who relocate with their start-ups and the rest of the entrepreneurs are similar, preferences for stocks that were formally local persist.

  • (2006) Parwada, Jerry; Faff, Robert
    Journal Article
    Published star ratings for managed funds, issued by independent agencies, are increasing in popularity, coverage in the academic literature, and influence as measured by the market share and money inflow dominance of rated funds. Hypothesising that fund ratings serve as a proxy for a fund's reputation, this article examines the managed fund inflow effect of the awarding of an initial rating by ASSIRT, Australia's largest fund rating agency. Retail equity funds record significant unexpected size changes at the announcement of the initial rating and over a one-year post-rating analysis period. Wholesale fund sizes take over six months to show the inflow effects of a ratings initiation. Cash and fixed interest funds exhibit volatile size changes whose pattern does not bear a significant relationship to the initial rating phenomenon. Finally, fund management expense ratios remain stable after the rating.

  • (2006) Kennan, Mary Anne; Wilson, Concepción
    Journal Article
    To review the current literature and discussion on institutional repository (IR) and open access (OA) issues, to provide examples from the Information Systems (IS) literature, and to propose the use of IS literature and further research to inform understanding of institutional repository implementations for library managers. Methodology/Approach: Recent literature is reviewed to provide the background to, and current issues in, the development of institutional repositories to support open access to refereed research output. Practical implications: Existing research is identified, as are areas for potential research. Brief examples from IS literature are provided which may provide strategies for libraries and other organisations to speed up their implementation of IR to provide access to, and management of, their own institutions refereed research output. Value of paper: The paper brings together recent opinion and research on IR and OA to provide librarians and other information managers with a review of the field, and proposes research on IR and OA building on existing IS as well as information management and librarianship research.

  • (2008) Wilson, Concepcion Shimizu; Tenopir, Carol
    Journal Article
    This study assessed the intermix of local citation analysis and survey of journal use and reading patterns for evaluating an academic library's research collection. Journal articles and their cited references from faculties at the University of New South Wales were downloaded from the Web of Science (WoS) and journal impact factors from the Journal Citation Reports. The survey of the University of New South Wales (UNSW) academic staff asked both reader-related and reading-related questions. Both methods showed that academics in medicine published more and had more coauthors per paper than academics in the other faculties; however, when correlated with the number of students and academic staff, science published more and engineering published in higher impact journals. When "recalled" numbers of articles published were compared to "actual" numbers, all faculties over-estimated their productivity by nearly two-fold. The distribution of cited serial references was highly skewed with over half of the titles cited only once. The survey results corresponded with U.S. university surveys with one exception: Engineering academics reported the highest number of article readings and read mostly for research related activities. Citation analysis data showed that the UNSW library provided the majority of journals in which researchers published and cited, mostly in electronic formats. However, the availability of non-journal cited sources was low. The joint methods provided both confirmatory and contradictory results and proved useful in evaluating library research collections.