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(2005)Journal ArticleSoftware 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.
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(2006)Journal ArticlePublished 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.
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(2006)Journal ArticleTo 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.
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(2003)Journal ArticleThis study examines how the termination of superannuation investment mandates contributes to the departure of top fund managers in companies delegated the portfolio management role. Terminations of superannuation plan mandates increase the probability of a fund company changing the responsible fund manager. Objective-adjusted returns are also significant managerial turnover considerations. These results illustrate that significant losses of superannuation fund clients act as an external control mechanism in the investment management industry that complements internal managerial performance measures.
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(2004)Journal ArticleThis study investigates the alleged disintermediation of banks’ traditional deposit-taking in favour of investment management activities. Using data on Australian bank-affiliated funds and a nine-year record of the parent banks’ liability balances, this study finds that managed funds do not displace bank liabilities. Prudential capital adequacy requirements dissuade banks from using in-house managed investments as indirect conduits for raising funds in the same manner as deposit-taking.
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(2005)Journal ArticleWe examine the impact of several factors on the selection of portfolio managers for Australian pension plan mandates. Performance measures do not affect the probability of a mandate allocation. Pension sponsors tend to choose managers with top-quartile five-year performance who have recently beaten a market benchmark. Management expenses have a negative impact on a manager’s chances. A surprising result is sponsors’ tolerance for high portfolio trading costs. Mandates are spread across manager investment styles. The style and institutional attributes of preferred managers suggest trustees’ reputation and prudential concerns matter, particularly for the aggregate annual mandate allocations.
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(2006)Journal ArticlePurpose – This paper aims to examine mutual fund investors' response to mergers of Australian mutual fund companies. Design/methodology/approach – Two matching-control techniques are employed to analyse the impact of mergers on excess money in and out of open and closed funds involved in the transactions. The paper employs cross-sectional regression analyses to examine the impact of mergers on different types of parties to mergers. Findings – The results suggest that mergers are not accompanied by increased money flows. Instead investors withdraw from the target funds prior to and after the merger. Funds belonging to specialist mutual fund companies record more gains in assets under management than declines following mergers, and that money inflow gains at competing funds induce reductions of management expense ratios at target funds. Research limitations/implications – This paper studies mergers in only one industry in a single country. Future studies may extend to other industries and economies. Originality/value – This paper extends prior research on the flow effects of mergers at individual fund level by considering the issue at the corporate level.
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(2006)Journal ArticleThis paper reports the findings of an exploratory study of position vacant announcements appropriate for library and information studies (LIS) graduates appearing in the Sydney Morning Herald over a four week period in each of the following years: 2004, 1994, 1984 and 1974. The period studied witnessed change-demanding developments in information technologies as well as changes in workplace conditions and client expectations. The study collected data on the demands of employers as expressed through job advertisements that included data on work status (full-time, part-time, contract, casual), qualifications and the experience required of the information professional at the selected timeslots. To investigate similarities and differences between periods a content analysis and co-word analysis of the job advertisements was undertaken. The ads indicated a movement from simple advertisements in 1974 inviting applications for reference or technical services librarians, to complex and specialised positions being advertised in 2004 where the most called for attributes were interpersonal skills and behavioural characteristics.
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(2005)Journal ArticlePurpose – To provide a social-theoretic framework which explains how e-commerce affects social conditions, such as availability of information and equality of access to information, influences actors’ behavior, shapes e-commerce business models, and in turn impacts industry structure. Design/methodology/approach – Empirical investigation based on one-hour interviews with owners/managers of nine vehicle dealerships and six vehicle buyers in a large US metropolitan region. The hermeneutic method of understanding was used, involving a circular process from research design and attentiveness to data, to data collection and interpretation. This circular process exemplified the dialectic relationship between the theoretical framework (derived from Habermas’s Theory of Communicative Action) and empirical data, through which interpretation and theoretical explanations grounded in the data emerged. Findings – Demonstrates that e-commerce gives rise to increasing competition among the dealers, decreasing prices and migration of competition to price, decreasing profitability of the average dealer, and erosion of traditional sources of competitive advantage. Moreover, e-commerce emancipates and empowers vehicle purchasers while reducing the power of automobile dealers. Research limitations/implications – The research findings focus on the effects of e-commerce on the automobile distribution industry. However, one could argue that a number of the findings extend to other retailing-based industries. Practical implications – The paper illustrates a research methodology that may be useful to study other e-commerce applications. Originality/value – This paper illustrates the application of Habermas’s Theory of Communicative Action to studying the effect of e-commerce.
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(2006)Journal ArticleWe investigate the effects of the Reserve Bank of Australia's foreign exchange interventions on the USD/AUD market and 90-day and 10-year interest rate futures markets for the period July 1986–December 2003. Using recently released revised and updated intervention data, we investigate contemporaneous and disaggregated intervention influences and find significant evidence for (i) intervention effectiveness in moderating the contemporaneous exchange rate movements especially if interventions were cumulative and large, (ii) exchange rate volatility reducing effect with a day's lag, (iii) undesirable interest rate movements following interventions in some periods compromising monetary policy effectiveness, and (iv) a volatility reducing effect of cumulative interventions in the 90-day rate, and a volatility increasing effect of large interventions in both the 90-day and 10-year rate futures. These findings are a unique and significant contribution to the prevailing literature as they demonstrate that the RBA's interventions matter not only for the foreign exchange market but also for the debt markets.