Working abroad : competencies expatriates need to successfully cope with the intercultural experience

With the rapid increase in globalisation over the past two decades, an ever growing number of individuals are being expatriated overseas leading to increased contact in a business context among people from different cultural backgrounds (Zakaria, 2000). Unfortunately, there still appears to be a high incidence of expatriate failure. One of the most commonly cited factors to expatriate failure, is associated with cultural differences between the expatriate and host country nationals. In this paper, we discuss the impact that cultural differences can have on Australian expatriates in Asia and Thailand in particular and the intercultural competencies it is important for these expatriates to have to overcome these problems. Interviews with Australian expatriates and Thai nationals in Thailand, are used to provide practical examples of how the possession of these intercultural competencies will facilitate expatriates to successfully cope with the intercultural experience and reduce the likelihood of expatriate failure.

Electronic markets and service delivery: requisite competencies for virtual environments

Electronic markets have a short but dynamic history. How an electronic market can be successfully developed remains in dispute. There is a clear need to better understand the nature of electronic markets themselves and, in particular, to review important developments in their conceptualisation. To enable a deeper understanding of these issues, we decided to restrict our investigation to electronic markets in the agricultural export sector. Agribusiness is a natural early adopter of digital marketplaces because of the industry’s traditional reliance on markets and current take-up of global supply chain management (Wilkins, Swatman and Castleman, 2002). We review two portals from this sector that aimed to simplify access to regulatory documentation. The earlier implementation had its funding withdrawn after one year, whilst the more recently established portal is rapidly becoming a showcase project for the stakeholders. We use a composite theory based on Bijker (1995) and Nowotny et al (2001) to establish a framework for analysing our data. We also refer to a body of literature characterising intangible services and their design and its implications for emarket implementations. Our findings indicate that governance style is in fact closely related to the success or failure of specific sites. We also found support for earlier research indicating that expectations and understanding of electronic markets are still evolving.

A role for workforce competencies in evidence-based health promotion education

Education programs should be based on research about the knowledge and skills required for practice, rather than on intuition or tradition, but there is limited published curriculum research on health promotion education. This paper describes a case study of how workforce competencies have been used to assist evidence-based health promotion education in the areas of curriculum design, selection of assessment tasks and continuous quality assurance processes in an undergraduate program at an Australian university. A curriculum-competency mapping process successfully identified gaps and areas of overlap in an existing program. Previously published health promotion workforce competencies were effectively used in the process of selecting assessment items, providing clear guidelines for curriculum revision and a useful method to objectively assess competency content in an evidence informed framework. These health promotion workforce competencies constituted an additional tool to assess course quality. We recommend other tertiary institutions consider curriculum-competency mapping and curriculum based assessment selection as quality and evidence based curriculum review strategies.

Core competencies in information management education

Core competencies have long been discussed and developed in the literature of library science education and information systems education. However, for information management, a blending of these two disciplines, there has been much less discussion of core competencies. The purpose of this paper is to consolidate the sparse literature on information management educational competencies and to suggest a set of core competencies and educational outcomes that might be applied to curricula in both developed and developing countries.

Bridging the gap : competencies students should focus on during their cooperative experience to enhance employability

Cooperative education programmes aim to prepare students for the workplace by developing both generic and specific competencies that will enhance  employability. Researchers have investigated the competencies relevant to business, science and technology graduates (Coll & Zegward, 2006; Hodges & Burchell, 2003). However, there is little published research on the perceptions of the skills or graduate competencies that employers desire of sport and recreation graduates entering the workforce.

The aims of the study were to identify key competencies needed by third year sport and recreation degree students entering their cooperative placement as well as to identify the difference between student and graduate competencies. An online survey of sport and recreation industry supervisors was conducted. For comparison the survey was also completed by academic supervisors from AUT University. Supervisors were asked to rate the importance of specific competencies (adapted from Coll & Zegward, 2006) for the cooperative student and for the graduate.

To enhance employability in the sport and recreation industry, academic programmes within a university need to ensure that students are provided with opportunities to facilitate the development of competencies including the ability and willingness to learn, the use of initiative and personal organisational skills. Cooperative education experiences should be designed to provide opportunities for students to develop in the areas of relationship building as well as teamwork and cooperation in order to increase their likelihood of employment as graduates. It is important to identify and communicate to the tertiary education providers the needs of the industry in order to create successful cooperative education partnerships.

Marketing competencies : a cross-cultural study in a multinational company

Most research into international marketing focuses on the differences in markets across countries and cultures in terms of the variation in customers and products involved. Arguably, if different products are developed and offered to different customers, then the roles and requirements of marketing employees may reflect these differences also. This research study used self-report measures by marketing employees in a large multinational automotive company in Australia and Britain. Using structural equation modelling, the study found that the relationship between individual marketing competencies and marketing performance varied across countries, suggesting that there may be cultural differences that influence both the role of managers in improving performance, and the degree to which a marketing employee’s intention to perform results in actual performance.

Using competencies in human resource management : case studies in Australian companies

This study investigated the use of competencies for human resource management in seven Australian companies. Despite advocacy for the use of competencies by Government Committees and Task Forces (For example Carmichael (1992), Mayer, (1992) and Karpin, 1995), and the existence of competency standards for eighty per cent of the Australian workforce, the competency approach has not been widely adopted. A review of the literature indicated that the term competency had several meanings with different implications for its use depending on the meaning. The study looked at how individuals have defined the term and applied the approach to human resource management practices. Interviews were conducted with Human Resource and Training managers, and operative staff in companies using competencies. How they defined the term, described the rationale for using competencies, and applied competencies to selection, training, performance appraisal and remuneration were determined. Case studies were written for each company to describe their particular application of competencies. Competencies were found to be defined in several ways by those interviewed. Some advantages of using competencies in human resource management applications were found. The amount of work involved in introducing the competency approach was described as a reason why competencies have not been more widely adopted.

Core health promotion competencies in Australia : are they compatible with climate change action?

Issues addressed: Health promotion principles for practice are closely aligned with that of environmental sustainability. Health promotion practitioners are well positioned to take action on climate change. However, there has been scant discussion about practice synergies and subsequently the type and nature of professional competencies that underpin such action.

Methods: This commentary uses the Australian Health Promotion Association (AHPA) national core competencies for Health Promotion Practitioners as a basis to examine the synergies between climate change and health promotion action.

Results: We demonstrate that AHPA core competencies, such as program planning, evaluation and partnership building, are highly compatible for implementing climate change mitigation and adaptation strategies. We use food security examples to illustrate this case.

Conclusions: There appears to be considerable synergy between climate change and health promotion action. This should be a key focus of future health promotion competency development in Australia.

Health promotion and climate change : exploring the core competencies required for action

Climate change poses serious threats to human health and well-being. It exacerbates existing health inequities, impacts on the social determinants of health and disproportionately affects vulnerable populations. In the Australian region these include remote Aboriginal communities, Pacific Island countries and people with low incomes. Given health promotion’s remit to protect and promote health, it should be well placed to respond to emerging climate-related health challenges. Yet, to date, there has been little evidence to demonstrate this. This paper draws on the findings of a qualitative study conducted in Victoria, Australia to highlight that; while there is clearly a role for health promotion in climate change mitigation and adaptation at the national and international levels, there is also a need for the engagement of health promoters at the community level. This raises several key issues for health promotion practice. To be better prepared to respond to climate change, health promotion practitioners first need to re-engage with the central tenets of the Ottawa Charter, namely the interconnectedness of humans and the natural environment and, secondly, the need to adopt ideas and frameworks from the sustainability field. The findings also open up a discussion for paradigmatic shifts in health promotion thinking and acting in the context of climate change.

Positioning people with intellectual disabilities as the experts : enhancing pre-service teachers’ competencies in teaching for diversity

The need for graduate teachers to own their professional responsibilities to engage successfully with students with special educational needs (SENs) in mainstream classrooms has been recognised in educational policies and programmes in many countries for well over two decades. Despite wide-ranging research, questions remain as to how pre-service education courses can help beginning teachers to develop the required commitment, knowledge and pedagogies to feel confident in teaching students with disabilities. Challenges to find new ways to enhance pre-service teachers’ familiarity with special needs children, overcome resistance from some towards including SEN students in mainstream classrooms and develop a sense of efficacy in teaching are common to many programmes. In this paper, we report on a pilot study where adults with intellectual disabilities, as members of a community theatre, were positioned as the experts and explored their schooling experiences and personal biographies with soon-to-be graduate teachers in a 3 h workshop. Taking the lead and working collaboratively with the workshop participants, members of Fusion Theatre used drama activities to develop understandings of strategies that helped them to learn. By challenging the traditional power relationships between those labelled as ‘disabled’ and those who would be teachers, the workshop helped the participants to engage on many levels. Here, we report on the data, analyse the findings and discuss implications for other pre-service programmes.