Should I stay or should I go? The challenges and opportunities of moving between university systems

The scientific job market has evolved to a truly globalized market. This is epitomized not only by the English language being the de facto scientific language but also by the increasing share of native language journals that are being offered in multiple languages or have or will fully converted to English (such as, for example, the BISE journal in 2015). Similarly, a plethora of exchange programs exists that allow students and academic staff to visit other institutions and exchange knowledge, ideas, and learning opportunities. While student migration across scientific institutions is an established phenomenon (Gribble, 2008) with ample structures, policies, and schemes such as ERASMUS1 in place, academic staff migration between countries is still a challenge, even if exchange programs exist (Enders, 1998). One reason may be that different career paths, varying teaching loads and different evaluation schemes for what constitutes scientific excellence are notable. This also influences the decision of where to start and continue an academic career. While the university systems themselves have been examined previously (Galliers and Whitley, 2007; Lyytinen et al., 2007) and while there is knowledge about career requirements in different university systems (Dennis et al., 2006; Dean et al., 2011; Loos et al., 2013; Recker, 2013), we still do not know much about individual and contextual decisions of academics that either consider or execute a migration between university systems.

Study on dynamic system optimum assignment to establish marginal time equilibrium

Several analytical methods for Dynamic System Optimum (DSO) assignment have been proposed but they are basically classified into two kinds. This chapter attempts to establish DSO by equilbrating the path dynamic marginal time (DMT). The authors analyze the path DMT for a single path with tandem bottlenecks and showed that the path DMT is not the simple summation of DMT associated with each bottleneck along the path. Next, the authors examined the DMT of several paths passing through a common bottleneck. It is shown that the externality at the bottleneck is shared by the paths in proportion to their demand from the current time until the queue vanishes. This share of the externality is caused by the departure rate shift under first in first out (FIFO) and the externality propagates to the downstream bottlenecks. However, the externalities propagates to the downstream are calculated out if downstream bottlenecks exist. Therefore, the authors concluded that the path DMT can be evaluated without considering the propagation of the externalities, but just as in the evaluation of the path DMT for a single path passing through a series of bottlenecks between the origin and destination. Based on the DMT analysis, the authors finally proposed a heuristic solution algorithm and verified it by comparing the numerical solution with the analytical one.

Theory based production and project management

This paper gives an overview of an ongoing project endeavouring to advance theory-based production and project management, and the rationale for this approach is briefly justified. The status of the theoretical foundation of production management, project management and allied disciplines is discussed, with emphasis on metaphysical grounding of theories, as well as the nature of the heuristic solution method commonly used in these disciplines. Then, on-going work related to different aspects of production and project management is reviewed from both theoretical and practical orientation. Next, information systems agile project management is explored with a view to its re-use in generic project management. In production management, the consequences and implementation of a new, wider theoretical basis are analyzed. The theoretical implications and negative symptoms of the peculiarities of the construction industry for supply chains and supply chain management in construction are observed. Theoretical paths for improvements of inter-organisational relationships in construction which are fundamental for improvement of construction supply chains are described. To conclude, the observations made in this paper vis-à-vis production, project and supply chain management are related again to the theoretical basis of this paper, and finally directions for theory development and future research are given and discussed.

Multiple map hypotheses for planning and navigating in non-stationary environments

This paper presents a method to enable a mobile robot working in non-stationary environments to plan its path and localize within multiple map hypotheses simultaneously. The maps are generated using a long-term and short-term memory mechanism that ensures only persistent configurations in the environment are selected to create the maps. In order to evaluate the proposed method, experimentation is conducted in an office environment. Compared to navigation systems that use only one map, our system produces superior path planning and navigation in a non-stationary environment where paths can be blocked periodically, a common scenario which poses significant challenges for typical planners.

Course experiences, satisfaction and career intent of final year pre-registration Australian pharmacy students

Background In Australia, the profession of pharmacy has undergone many changes to adapt to the needs of the community. In recent years, concerns have been raised with evidence emerging of workforce saturation in traditional pharmacy practice sectors. It is not known how current final year pharmacy students’ perceive the different pharmacy career paths in this changing environment. Hence investigating students’ current experiences with their pharmacy course, interaction with the profession and developing an understanding of their career intentions would be an important step, as these students would make up a large proportion of future pharmacy workforce Objective The objective of this study was thus to investigate final year students’ career perspectives and the reasons for choosing pharmacy, satisfaction with this choice of pharmacy as a tertiary course and a possible future career, factors affecting satisfaction and intention of future career paths. Methods A quantitative cross sectional survey of final year students from 3 Australian universities followed by a qualitative semi-structured interview of a convenience sample of final year students from the University of Sydney. Results ‘Interest in health and medicine’ was the most important reason for choosing pharmacy (n=238). The majority of students were ‘somewhat satisfied’ with the choice of pharmacy (35.7%) as a course and possible future career. Positive associations were found between satisfaction and reasons for joining pharmacy such as ‘felt pharmacy is a good profession’ (p=0.003) while negative associations included ‘joined pharmacy as a gateway to medicine or dentistry’ (p=0.001). Quantitate and qualitative results showed the most frequent perception of community pharmacy was ‘changing’ while hospital and pharmaceutical industry was described as ‘competitive’ and ‘research’ respectively. The highest career intention was community followed by hospital pharmacy. Conclusion Complex factors including university experiences are involved in shaping students’ satisfaction and perception of career. This may relate to challenges in the community pharmacy sector, job opportunities in hospital and limited understanding of the pharmaceutical industry. The results offer insight for the profession in terms of entry into various roles and also to pharmacy educators for their roles in shaping curricula and placement experiences that attract future graduates to defined career pathways in pharmacy.

Aligning off-balance sheet risk, on-balance sheet risk and audit fees: a PLS path modelling analysis

This study focuses on using the partial least squares (PLS) path modelling technique in archival auditing research by replicating the data and research questions from prior bank audit fee studies. PLS path modelling allows for inter-correlations among audit fee determinants by establishing latent constructs and multiple relationship paths in one simultaneous PLS path model. Endogeneity concerns about auditor choice can also be addressed with PLS path modelling. With a sample of US bank holding companies for the period 2003-2009, we examine the associations among on-balance sheet financial risks, off-balance sheet risks and audit fees, and also address the pervasive client size effect, and the effect of the self-selection of auditors. The results endorse the dominating effect of size on audit fees, both directly and indirectly via its impacts on other audit fee determinants. By simultaneously considering the self-selection of auditors, we still find audit fee premiums on Big N auditors, which is the second important factor on audit fee determination. On-balance-sheet financial risk measures in terms of capital adequacy, loan composition, earnings and asset quality performance have positive impacts on audit fees. After allowing for the positive influence of on-balance sheet financial risks and entity size on off-balance sheet risk, the off-balance sheet risk measure, SECRISK, is still positively associated with bank audit fees, both before and after the onset of the financial crisis. The consistent results from this study compared with prior literature provide supporting evidence and enhance confidence on the application of this new research technique in archival accounting studies.

Aligning off-balance sheet risk, on-balance sheet risk and audit fees: a PLS path modelling analysis

This study focuses on using the partial least squares (PLS) path modelling methodology in archival auditing research by replicating the data and research questions from prior bank audit fee studies. PLS path modelling allows for inter-correlations among audit fee determinants by establishing latent constructs and multiple relationship paths in one simultaneous PLS path model. Endogeneity concerns about auditor choice can also be addressed with PLS path modelling. With a sample of US bank holding companies for the period 2003-2009, we examine the associations among on-balance sheet financial risks, off-balance sheet risks and audit fees, and also address the pervasive client size effect, and the effect of the self-selection of auditors. The results endorse the dominating effect of size on audit fees, both directly and indirectly via its impacts on other audit fee determinants. By simultaneously considering the self-selection of auditors, we still find audit fee premiums on Big N auditors, which is the second important factor on audit fee determination. On-balance-sheet financial risk measures in terms of capital adequacy, loan composition, earnings and asset quality performance have positive impacts on audit fees. After allowing for the positive influence of on-balance sheet financial risks and entity size on off-balance sheet risk, the off-balance sheet risk measure, SECRISK, is still positively associated with bank audit fees, both before and after the onset of the financial crisis. The consistent results from this study compared with prior literature provide supporting evidence and enhance confidence on the application of this new research technique in archival accounting studies.

Pro bono partnerships in environmental law : enhancing outcomes for universities and CLCs

CLE can be a life-changing event in a law student’s education. It can open their eyes to the day-to-day operation of justice and provide them with examples of possible career paths they may never have thought existed. Yet it can also provide long-term benefits for CLCs and academics. Recent CLE models have moved towards partnerships with external organisations and away from on-site legal clinics. Some examples have exhibited success with a multidisciplinary approach involving students from non-law disciplines to provide a holistic approach to a CLC’s needs. Such a multidisciplinary approach is of particular benefit in community lawyering clinics where students are engaged in social change lawyering. The QUT/EDO partnership presents a new model in the environmental clinic landscape in Australia. Initial feedback suggests that the clinic has assisted students in gaining insight into the access to justice issues arising from mining activities and to raise the level of understanding and awareness among community members of their legal rights to protect the environment. Looking at ways to increase partnerships between universities and CLCs is of vital importance in the future, given recent federal government CLC funding cuts. The legal clinic model has great potential to evolve and contribute in ensuring the continued operation of legal initiatives to protect the environment in the public interest.

No worries – we’ll take care of it!! An examination into managing equality and inclusivity in multicultural Australia

This paper explores the various paths to equality and inclusivity developed in the past 40 years within the Australian workplace with a view to critically examining their capability of addressing diversity and equality within the cultural needs of a unique society. A society which struggles to overcome the tyranny of distance and a colonial past as it takes its place in the world as a global 1st world economy country in what is often considered ‘the global north’ despite its geographical location. Findings indicate that despite various legislative and non-legislative approaches including anti-discrimination; affirmative action; equal opportunity; managing diversity and more recently gender equality, the individual members of the many diverse groups in the Australian workplace still experience inferior work conditions and work opportunities.

Long-term exploration and tours for energy constrained robots with online proprioceptive traversability estimation

This paper is concerned with how a localised and energy-constrained robot can maximise its time in the field by taking paths and tours that minimise its energy expenditure. A significant component of a robot's energy is expended on mobility and is a function of terrain traversability. We estimate traversability online from data sensed by the robot as it moves, and use this to generate maps, explore and ultimately converge on minimum energy tours of the environment. We provide results of detailed simulations and parameter studies that show the efficacy of this approach for a robot moving over terrain with unknown traversability as well as a number of a priori unknown hard obstacles.

Investigating early childhood education for sustainability : insights from history and literature

Seemingly straightforward tasks often have a way of becoming complex. This was the case for our guest editorial team charged with creating Early Childhood Australia’s Best of Sustainability publication drawn from the the Australasian Journal of Early Childhood and Every Child. The complexities we encountered ranged from the varied terminologies and understandings of constructs such as education for sustainable development, environmental education and education for sustainability, through to the fundamental lack of published research on which to draw as the basis for a special issue. It is timely to explore these complexities as we face the global challenges of The Critical Decade (DCCEE, 2011) including rising sea levels, extreme weather events and food security. At a local level, the early childhood field in Australia is seeking to interpret sustainability with systemic support from the National Quality Standards(NQS) (ACECQA, 2011), while elsewhere environmental/sustainability education is encouraged through national curricula documents (for example, Singapore Ministry of Education, 2008; Swedish National Agency for Education,2010; Ministry of Education of Korea, 2011). Both The Critical Decade and the NQS provide imperatives to drive early childhood education’s engagement with sustainability. In other words, sustainability in early childhood education is no longer optional, but essential (Elliott, 2010). While some twenty years of advocacy has led to this somewhat subdued celebratory position, in this publication we do recognise the historical contexts that have led to early childhood education for sustainability (ECEfS), as we (Elliott & Davis) phrase it, becoming almost ‘mainstream not marginal’ (Davis, 1999)— a stitching together of the isolated ‘patches of green’, first identified a decade ago by Elliott (NSW EPA, 2003). Here we weave together, through these articles, a story of the evolving history of ECEfS from our particular perspective. In so doing, we also acknowledge that there are other perspectives or ‘paths’ for this field as identified by Edwards and Cutter-McKenzie in their concluding paper to this compilation.

Simultaneous localization and planning on multiple map hypotheses

This paper presents a novel method to rank map hypotheses by the quality of localization they afford. The highest ranked hypothesis at any moment becomes the active representation that is used to guide the robot to its goal location. A single static representation is insufficient for navigation in dynamic environments where paths can be blocked periodically, a common scenario which poses significant challenges for typical planners. In our approach we simultaneously rank multiple map hypotheses by the influence that localization in each of them has on locally accurate odometry. This is done online for the current locally accurate window by formulating a factor graph of odometry relaxed by localization constraints. Comparison of the resulting perturbed odometry of each hypothesis with the original odometry yields a score that can be used to rank map hypotheses by their utility. We deploy the proposed approach on a real robot navigating a structurally noisy office environment. The configuration of the environment is physically altered outside the robots sensory horizon during navigation tasks to demonstrate the proposed approach of hypothesis selection.

Gender and entrepreneurial performance : testing a holistic framework

The aim of this study was to test a holistic framework for assessing new venture performance outcomes that incorporates the impact of gender on internal resource availability (human, financial and social capital) and how, in turn, this impacts: the entrepreneurs’ goals; the investment (both money and time) they make in their new ventures; and the performance outcomes of those ventures. Our results indicate that a majority of the paths examined (using structural equation modeling) are significant and in the expected direction. For example: an entrepreneur’s human capital (comprising management work experience, start-up experience and industry experience) is significantly related to her/his growth goal (in terms of employee numbers); the entrepreneur’s growth goal is positively related to the time invested in the new venture; and the time invested in the new venture is positively related to new venture outcomes.

Self-efficacy moderation and mediation roles on BPSD and social support influences on subjective caregiver burden in Chinese spouse caregivers of dementia patients

Background: This study aims to explore moderation and mediation roles of caregiver self-efficacy between subjective caregiver burden and (a) behavioral and psychological symptoms (BPSD) of dementia; and (b) social support. Methods: A cross-sectional study with 137 spouse caregivers of dementia patients was conducted in Shanghai. We collected demographic information for the caregiver–patient dyads, as well as information associated with dementia-related impairments, caregiver social support, caregiver self-efficacy, and SF-36. Results: Multiple regression analysis showed that caregiver self-efficacy was a moderator both between BPSD and subjective caregiver burden, and social support and subjective caregiver burden. Results also showed a partial mediation effect of caregiver self-efficacy on the impact of BPSD on subjective caregiver burden, and a mediation effect of social support on subjective caregiver burden. Caregiver self-efficacy and subjective burden significantly influenced BPSD and social support. Conclusion: Caregiver self-efficacy played an important role in the paths by which the two factors influenced subjective burden. Enhancing caregiver self-efficacy for symptom management (particularly BPSD) can be an essential strategy for determining interventions to support dementia caregivers in China, and possibly in other countries.

Homing by path integration when a locomotion trajectory crosses itself

Path integration is a process with which navigators derive their current position and orientation by integrating self-motion signals along a locomotion trajectory. It has been suggested that path integration becomes disproportionately erroneous when the trajectory crosses itself. However, there is a possibility that this previous finding was confounded by effects of the length of a traveled path and the amount of turns experienced along the path, two factors that are known to affect path integration performance. The present study was designed to investigate whether the crossover of a locomotion trajectory truly increases errors of path integration. In an experiment, blindfolded human navigators were guided along four paths that varied in their lengths and turns, and attempted to walk directly back to the beginning of the paths. Only one of the four paths contained a crossover. Results showed that errors yielded from the path containing the crossover were not always larger than those observed in other paths, and the errors were attributed solely to the effects of longer path lengths or greater degrees of turns. These results demonstrated that path crossover does not always cause significant disruption in path integration processes. Implications of the present findings for models of path integration are discussed.