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(2014)ThesisThe concept of model consistency is espoused as a guiding principle to balance the science and art of economic modelling. Striking a delicate balance between the theory and art of modelling is examined as a way to promote economics as a social science. This is accomplished by looking at more traditional approaches to economics, especially those encapsulated in consumer theory and the theory of the firm, and asking the question: â How can research based on these types of theory on the one hand be â scientificâ and on the other hand be responsive to â socialâ orientations such as the welfare of consumers and the profitability of firms?â A review of a diverse strand of literature shows that the significance of the methodology of model consistency has already been recognised in the macroeconomic context. However, application to the microeconomic context is rather limited. The approach is analogous to â measurement with theoryâ and may be seen as a response to the challenge that â measurement without theoryâ is as useful as â theory without measurementâ . It may also be seen as a way to address the Lucas Critique; a way to bring together theory and application, and as a good complement to experimental economics. The approach is quite suitable for consumer theory and producer theory alike. This is particularly so in a static decision-making context, where producer theory may be considered as a mirror image of consumer theory and the â atemporalâ economic problem of the firm can be analysed using similar techniques as those employed in consumer theory, especially in the single output case. Building upon the logical connection between the utility function and the single output production function, the ideas of consumer theory are carried over to the producer case through an appropriate use of duality theory. This thesis exploits the similarity between the unobservability of utility and the unobservability of â outputâ in a multi-output setting. Duality theory provides the desired rigour of economic science. The quality of its operationalisation is dependent upon the art of modelling. An appropriate mix of price index specification and statistical techniques is required to achieve the desired objectives.
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(2019)ThesisThis thesis investigates the issues facing public sector procurement projects, particularly the evolving complexities embedded within large procurement contracts where control of the fabrication process of the requested artefact rests wholly with the vendor. The purchaser normally does not get involved in the process of how the vendor constructs the artefact. Given this, it becomes crucial for the purchaser to specify the requirements clearly to reduce misinterpretation by the vendor. This thesis develops a set of techniques for requirement extraction and specification in the procurement process and provides approaches to avoid ambiguity through the application of decision theory, game theory, fuzzy logic, natural language processing, quality function deployment, and multi-criteria decision-making methods. The proposed methods are validated through four real world case studies.
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(2019)ThesisHuman rights (HRs) are increasingly perceived as a responsibility of business. However, if corporations want to address the full range of HRs demands of society—that is, if they are to respect, protect and promote HRs—they need to go beyond a defensive or negative approach focused on simply respecting HRs. They also need to respond with proactive or positive initiatives to protect and promote their stakeholders’ HRs. Hence, a critical question is whether corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiatives commonly adopted by listed corporations allow them to address this range of HRs demands of society. The primary aim of this thesis is to answer this question using Carroll’s (1979) CSR framework. I first conceptualise negative and positive HRs obligations as defensive and proactive corporate social responsiveness strategies (the second dimension of Carroll’s framework). This translates HRs obligations into business strategies for corporations. I then hypothesise and empirically test the relationships between CSR categories and defensive and proactive corporate approaches to HRs. The CSR categories used in the thesis mostly follow Carroll’s (1979) framework (discretionary, ethical and legal CSR). However, in place of Carroll’s economic CSR, I adopt instrumental CSR to include stakeholders’ values alongside shareholders’ economic interests. Political CSR is also added for an analysis of the political power of corporations. The proposed hypotheses are empirically tested using secondary longitudinal data from the Kinder, Lydenberg, Domini (KLD) and Compustat databases. The working sample includes 400 corporations during the period 1991–2015. The results show that while ethical and legal CSR may guide corporations to undertake defensive HRs approaches to respect HRs, instrumental and political CSR may allow corporations to adopt proactive HRs approaches that involve protecting and promoting HRs. The CSR categories of Carroll’s framework help to explain why corporations undertake defensive and proactive approaches to HRs and address the full range of HRs demands of society. This research contributes to both theory and practice by hypothesising and empirically testing the relationships between CSR categories and corporate HRs approaches using secondary data. A significant contribution of this thesis is to conceptualise HRs obligations as legitimate business strategies.
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(2019)ThesisStrategy implementation in organisations is a fundamental management challenge because of the risk of miscommunicating goals and activities. Communication practices influence how strategy is implemented in an organisation by translating, coordinating and reporting on work activities to align them with goals. Organisations, by their very nature, must be differentiated which leads to the fundamental challenge of how to communicate information across organisational structures/boundaries. Poor practices to facilitate appropriate information flows across structures can result in strategy being misunderstood and, consequently, actions may not be aligned with strategic goals. Communicating appropriate information in a strategic context involves staff interpreting goals in meaningful ways. Using a theoretical framework, synthesised from Giddens’ Structuration Theory, the Theory of Strategic Action Field, Luhmann’s Theory of Episodes, and the Knowledge-Based View, this thesis investigates how staff communicate meaningful information for effective strategic implementation. To investigate this phenomenon, the research question was developed to investigate how communicative practices align staff activities with strategic goals across organisational structures. Utilising an interpretivist research paradigm, the analysis focuses on the themes of organisational strategy, structure and communicative practices. A multiple case study method is used to explore four business units within a large Australian Federal Government Department. The results show that staff find it very difficult to share information that is tailored across structures for shared meaning. Communicative practices were performed in organisational siloes and activities were not integrated with wider goals. The findings of the case study demonstrate that information communicated among staff did not help them to relate, make sense of information, or contribute to building shared meaning. The contribution of this thesis lies in synthesising a set of theoretical approaches and applying this framework to communicative practices in complex organisational settings. Utilising the framework, the thesis analyses and proposes project, programme and portfolio processes as a knowledge-based practical solution to structure communicative practices across organisational structures.
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(2019)ThesisInfluencing multiple stakeholders is essential for individuals operating in supply networks. Recent research tends to confuse influence tactics (i.e. short-term influence appeals) with strategic influence (i.e. long-term resource investments intended to build trust, social networks and mutual understanding). The current literature does not explain how these two notions of influence interact or how they are related. Using an ethnographic case study drawing on interviews, meeting observations, and focus group data, this thesis addresses the question How does the use of strategic interpersonal influence affect tactical interpersonal influence within the Australian Defence Supply Network (ADSN)? This thesis makes three contributions. Firstly, the study proposes a strategic, resource-allocation perspective to study interpersonal influence. It defines strategic interpersonal influence as a set of deliberate resource investments, made by influencers, with a long-term objective of enhancing their ability to exert interpersonal influence effectively. This thesis proposes that strategic interpersonal influence comprises five types of resource investments: relational, empathic, developmental, adaptational and informational. Secondly, the study proposes that strategic interpersonal influence contributes to social capital in terms of trust, social networks, mutual obligations and shared meanings, and leads to the development of five influencer identities: partner, predator, problem-solver, specialist, and networker. Together, social capital and influencer identities affect an influencer s ability to exert tactical interpersonal influence. Thirdly, the study proposes that tactical interpersonal influence consists not only of rational and emotional appeals embedded in specific messages but also of the influence channels which are the messengers who carry those messages. The findings explain the relationship between strategic interpersonal influence and tactical interpersonal influence and highlight the strategic importance of investing resources to build the social capital and develop the identities that can enhance the effectiveness of influence tactics. They also highlight the importance of selecting influence channels, as well as influence appeals, when planning influence tactics. Thereby, the study provides guidance to managers on taking a longer-term strategic perspective on exercising influence in supply networks, especially in relation to sales strategy decisions and project management decisions.
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(2019)ThesisRisk management is paramount for managing risks in supply chains. Although supply chain risk management involves identifying, assessing and predicting uncertain events, no particular strategy has been developed that considers both internal and external risk activities related to an organisation while managing it. This PhD thesis focuses on developing an intelligent decision support system that can identify essential risk labels related to operations, the features of service level agreement related to them and estimate risk levels based on analysing both the internal and external risk events in supply chains. This thesis provides the following three significant contributions to research on developing an intelligent decision support system for risk management in different supply chains. The first major contribution is the collection and analysis of the supply chain data obtained from different firms, with historical data and expert views used to determine the risk labels and evaluate the significance of features and their relation to the risk labels. More importantly, information from service level agreements and experts are used to create data sources for training and validating association rule mining and fuzzy inference techniques. The second significant contribution is that the critical features of risk labels are selected from data sources using emerging association patterns, which is integrated with association rule mining to determine the information related to the risk labels. The results show that this mechanism is better than other approaches for predicting risk labels from the data sources of supply chains. The third key contribution is the development of a fuzzy inference decision support system that can quantify the occurrence of risk labels based on the features selected using the emerging association patterns mechanism. The results obtained from its application on the collected data show that it outperforms existing techniques as it can accurately measure the severity of risk levels related to the risk labels and assist organisations in mitigating risk events and improving their market profits.
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(2017)ThesisSpares determination is the process of determining what spare parts, in the right quantity and when they are required, to support the maintenance of a physical asset such as a ship. With an understanding of the configuration and mean time between failures of an asset’s components, organisations are able to determine the maintenance and parts required to keep it at the required level of availability. Feedback through use should further enhance asset knowledge leading to more efficient and effective spares determination. The thesis presents evidence that organisations are ignoring theory in acquisition and feedback loops in asset operation, rendering their spares determination inefficient and ineffective. A significant gap in spares determination knowledge was found that indicated that factors such as culture, leadership and demographics (human factors) may explain why the theory was not being applied. The project used a mixed methods approach. The quantitative phase consisted of a workforce survey conducted across 14 different business units (n=219) in the Australian Department of Defence. Responses were analysed through multiple regression with spares determination performance statistics. Statistical models supported the proposition, with approximately 50% of the sample’s variation explained by human factors. Surprisingly, the models indicated that theory was being applied to drive effectiveness not efficiency as it was designed. These unexpected results were explained by the qualitative phase of the project, which included a total of 25 semi-structured interviews of personnel from four business units. These found dominant military ‘can-do’ culture which emphasised effectiveness to drive asset availability at the expense of efficiency. Where transformational leadership existed, entrepreneurial behaviours where modelling, experimentation and planning provided more effective spares determination. These business units also overcame a series of organisational issues preventing better performance. The thesis quantified the large impact of human factors on spares determination performance. It found that organisational culture and transformational leadership were the factors that had the greatest influence on spares determination efficiency and effectiveness. These findings provide an opportunity for further theoretical and practical development of asset management and integrated logistics support that should yield a substantial increase in spares determination performance.
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(2019)ThesisSporting institutions are well-known for being male-dominated, with women’s participation gradually emerging through the latter half of the 20th century. Many of the rules and regulations imposed and implemented by sports governing bodies across the 20th century have been demonstrated to be biased against sportswomen. However, the establishment of the anti-doping policy and its implementation through the World Anti-Doping Code (WADC) in the early 21st century is anticipated to be consistent with the global consensus aimed at achieving gender equity across practices and, in particular, sporting practice. The WADC, with the core values of protecting the health of athletes and promoting equality, adopted a ‘gender neutral’ approach by omitting any mention of gender. Accordingly, all athletes, irrespective of their gender are subjected to the same rules and implementations. This raises the question “to what extent does a gender neutral WADC promote or hinder gender equity in sport?” Consequently, this study investigated the gender impact of the WADC, based on a mixed-method comparative case study approach, in the Australian sporting context. Three interrelated phases were carried out through conducting semi-structured interviews with 10 Subject Matter Experts, 20 women athletes and their support personnel, and also a survey of 159 respondents from both genders. The results are analysed using Korvajärvi’s conceptual approach to gender neutrality in organisations and Bourdieu’s theory of practice. These theoretical perspectives provide an insight into the interaction of gender and power within the field of anti-doping and sport and, consequently, provide an insight into how the WADC implicitly maintains male domination through the application of gender neutrality. The findings show that gender neutrality in the WAD policy fails to adequately respond to the gender-based issues of women athletes, with regards to the physical and emotional challenges they encounter as a result of the regulations and administration of the Code. The pursuit of sameness through gender neutrality in anti-doping policy leads to inequitable outcomes for women. Thus, the study demonstrates that, despite being a 21st century policy, WADA’s anti-doping policy appears to confirm that gender neutrality in policy conceals masculine domination by emphasising sameness at the expense of gender equity.
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(2014)ThesisAverage house prices in China over the last two decades to 2009 have increased at an annual rate of 11 percent. At the same time, the housing market has undergone a transition from socialist planned system to one where prices are determined through the interaction between supply and demand. The spectacular property boom in China over the past decade has been influenced by a myriad of factors – some of which are investigated in this thesis. This thesis is that the contemporary housing market is driven more by market forces than the remnants of a past when planning and political patronage took centre stage (discussed in Chapter 3). Further evidences are gleaned from econometric implementation of a fixed effect panel model that incorporates determinants on the demand and the supply side: the estimated model explains 85% of the changes in housing prices for the period 1998 to 2011 (discussed in Chapter 4). A special phenomenon “mother-in-law” effect in China which has the largest statistical impact on housing prices has also been investigated (discussed in Chapter 5). In big cities such as Beijing, the estimates from a rational expectation model shows that housing prices deviate significantly from market fundamentals, suggesting the existence of price-bubbles (discussed in Chapter 6). Finally, a qualitative analysis of data collected from a purpose-designed and administered survey corroborates the afore-mentioned findings (discussed in Chapter 7). The findings of the study have important policy implications for China (discussed in Chapter 8). First, the decreasing number of impending marriages will, ceteris paribus, dampen future housing demand. Second, evidences of a housing-bubble in Beijing calls for policy interventions. Evidence of their success, however, is limited. These empirical findings based on the household-level survey data drawn for the Peoples’ Republic of China (PRC) and for Beijing city have lessons for China and similar nations undergoing a transition from planning to market systems.