The legitimation and reproduction of discourse-practice gaps in work-life balance

Purpose - Critical scholarship on work-life balance (WLB) and its associated practices maintains that workplace flexibility is more than a quasi-functionalist response to contemporary problems faced by individuals, families or organisations. Beginning with Fleetwood’s contention that WLB discourses have become "detached" from their associated practices, this paper explores how workplace practices support or challenge dominant WLB discourses evident in socio-cultural, political and organisational sources. Design/methodology/approach - We analyse individual and group interview transcripts derived from 122 white-collar employees in two different organisational contexts (one public, one private) in the construction industry in Australia. Findings - Four major themes were identified in the data which illustrate discourse practice gaps. First, the demands facing this particular industry/ sector were framed as heightened and unique. Second, productivity was prioritised, dominating employees’ care-giving and lifestyle concerns. Third, employees’ caring responsibilities were communicated as personal and individual choices. Fourth, commitment and efficiency were judged on the basis of presence in the workplace. Research limitations/implications - Even in industries that have embraced WLB, workplace practices legitimate and reinforce the status quo, and maintain a gap between the promises of WLB and its potential to ameliorate conflict and assist workers to span the boundaries of paid work and other life domains. Originality/value - While the practices demonstrated in the research are focused on one industry, the study provides a critical analysis of how the contextually-influenced meaning of WLB is constructed, created and contested in these workplaces and the effects it produces.

Efficient route update and maintenance processes for multipath routing in large-scale industrial wireless sensor networks

Reliable communications is one of the major concerns in wireless sensor networks (WSNs). Multipath routing is an effective way to improve communication reliability in WSNs. However, most of existing multipath routing protocols for sensor networks are reactive and require dynamic route discovery. If there are many sensor nodes from a source to a destination, the route discovery process will create a long end-to-end transmission delay, which causes difficulties in some time-critical applications. To overcome this difficulty, the efficient route update and maintenance processes are proposed in this paper. It aims to limit the amount of routing overhead with two-tier routing architecture and introduce the combination of piggyback and trigger update to replace the periodic update process, which is the main source of unnecessary routing overhead. Simulations are carried out to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed processes in improvement of total amount of routing overhead over existing popular routing protocols.

Improving the efficiency of high power piezoelectric transducers for industrial applications

Most high-power ultrasound applications are driven by two-level inverters. However, the broad spectral content of the two-level pulse results in undesired harmonics that can decrease the performance of the system significantly. On the other hand, it is crucial to excite the piezoelectric devices at their main resonant frequency in order to have maximum energy conversion. Therefore a high-quality, low-distorted power signal is needed to excite the high-power piezoelectric transducer at its resonant frequency. This study proposes an efficient approach to develop the performance of high-power ultrasonic applications using multilevel inverters along with a frequency estimation algorithm. In this method, the resonant frequencies are estimated based on relative minimums of the piezoelectric impedance frequency response. The algorithm follows the resonant frequency variation and adapts the multilevel inverter reference frequency to drive an ultrasound transducer at high power. Extensive simulation and experimental results indicate the effectiveness of the proposed approach.

Knowledge sharing for strengthening manufacturing operation and business performance

Manufacturing companies have strived to enhance managerial and technical capabilities to improve business performance. Building these capabilities requires effective share of knowledge - the strategic resource. Specifically, knowledge sharing (KS) between different manufacturing departments can improve manufacturing processes since leveraging organisational knowledge plays an enssential role in achieving competitive advantage. This paper presents an empirical investigation into the impact of KS on the effectiveness of supply chain management (SCM) and the product development process (PDP) in achieving desired business performance (BP). A questionnaire survey was administered from electronic manufacturing companies operating in Taiwan. 168 valid responses were received and used to statistically examine the relationships between the concepts (SCM, PDP, KS, BP). The study findings reveal that within the Taiwanese electronic manufacturing companies KS is an essential enabler for facilitating the effectiveness of SCM and PDP in achieving desired BP.

A hierarchical structural model of assessing innovation and project performance

Research in construction innovation highlights construction industry as having many barriers and resistance to innovations and suggests that it needs champions. A hierarchical structural model is presented, to assess the impact of the role of the project manager (PM) on the levels of innovation and project performance. The model adopts the structural equation modelling technique and uses the survey data collected from PMs and project team members working for general contractors in Singapore. The model fits well to the observed data, accounting for 24%, 37% and 49% of the variance in championing behaviour, the level of innovation and project performance, respectively. The results of this study show the importance of the championing role of PMs in construction innovation. However, in order to increase their effectiveness, such a role should be complemented by their competency and professionalism, tactical use of influence tactics, and decision authority. Moreover, senior management should provide adequate resources and a sustained support to innovation and create a conducive environment or organizational culture that nurtures and facilitates the PM’s role in the construction project as a champion of innovation.

QGECE research on delineation of Australian geothermal resources

The geology/reservoir program of the Queensland Geothermal Energy Centre of Excellence (QGECE) has the mission to improve the existing knowledge and develop new innovative scientific approaches for the identification of geothermal resources in Australia, with a particular focus on Queensland. Specifically, the QGECE geology/reservoir program is currently (1) producing a comprehensive geochemical dataset for high heat producing rocks, (2) conducting detailed mineralogical and geochronological studies of granites and hydrothermal alteration minerals, and ; (3) investigating the Cooper Basin representing a superb natural laboratory for understanding of radiogenic heat enrichment process and possible involvement of mantle heat flow. Seven research projects have been established, which are being conducted largely as PhD studies. In the preliminary studies, high quality and valuable results were obtained to address the research topics of understanding the causes and timing of heat producing element enrichment.

A proposed Australian industrial control system security curriculum

The security of industrial control systems in critical infrastructure is a concern for the Australian government and other nations. There is a need to provide local Australian training and education for both control system engineers and information technology professionals. This paper proposes a postgraduate curriculum of four courses to provide knowledge and skills to protect critical infrastructure industrial control systems. Our curriculum is unique in that it provides security awareness but also the advanced skills required for security specialists in this area. We are aware that in the Australian context there is a cultural gap between the thinking of control system engineers who are responsible for maintaining and designing critical infrastructure and information technology professionals who are responsible for protecting these systems from cyber attacks. Our curriculum aims to bridge this gap by providing theoretical and practical exercises that will raise the awareness and preparedness of both groups of professionals.

Overvoltage prevention in LV smart grid using customer resources coordination

Voltage rise is one of the main factors which limits the capacity of Low Voltage (LV) network to accommodate more Renewable Energy (RE) sources. This paper proposes a robust and effective approach to coordinate customers’ resources and manage voltage rise in residential LV networks. PV is considered as the customer RE source. The suggested coordination approach in this paper includes both localized control strategy, based on local measurement, and distributed control strategy based on consensus algorithm. This approach can completely avoid maximum permissible voltage limit violation. A typical residential LV network is used as the case study where the simulated results are shown to verify the effectiveness of the proposed approach.

Stratospheric dust collections : valuable resources for space and atmospheric scientists

Collections of solid particles from the Earths' stratosphere have been a significant part of atmospheric research programs since 1965 [1], but it has only been in the past decade that space-related disciplines have provided the impetus for a continued interest in these collections. Early research on specific particle types collected from the stratosphere established that interplanetary dust particles (IDP's) can be collected efficiently and in reasonable abundance using flat-plate collectors [2-4]. The tenacity of Brownlee and co-workers in this subfield of cosmochemistry has led to the establishment of a successful IDP collection and analysis program (using flat-plate collectors on high-flying aircraft) based on samples available for distribution from Johnson Space Center [5]. Other stratospheric collections are made, but the program at JSC offers a unique opportunity to study well-documented, individual particles (or groups of particles) from a wide variety of sources [6]. The nature of the collection and curation process, as well as the timeliness of some sampling periods [7], ensures that all data obtained from stratospheric particles is a valuable resource for scientists from a wide range of disciplines. A few examples of the uses of these stratospheric dust collections are outlined below.

Conflicts over protection of marine living resources : the ‘Volga Case’ revisited

Non-traditional maritime security concerns have become more importantthan ever in the post-Cold War era. Naval forces of most developedcountries are more concerned about these threats than conventional war.One of the main maritime security issues for many countries in the world isillegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing in the marine area. Withthese burgeoning issues comes the potential for a large number of disputesinvolving international law. In early 2002, a long-line fishing vessel under aRussian flag –the Volga, was detained by Australian authorities a few hundred meters outside the Exclusive Economic Zone of Australia’s Heard and McDonald Islands in the Southern Ocean. The vessel was reportedly engaged in illegal fishing. This incident gave birth to litigation in international and Australian courts. Apart from these cases, Russia also announced separate litigation against Australia for violation of Articles 111and 87 of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (NCLOS).Considering the outcome of these cases, this article critically examines thecharacteristics of litigation as a strategy for pacific settlement of disputesover marine living resources. Using the Volga Case as an example, thisarticle explores some issues related to the judicial settlement of disputes over marine living resources. This article demonstrates that the legal certainty of winning a case may not be the only factor influencing the strategy for settlement of an international dispute.

Collaborative design learning for traditional crafts industry

Traditional craft industries need assistance with being transformed into creative industries; as such a transformation will support them to face the future competitive global market. Assistance such as advisory programs should serve long-term benefit for crafts industries as well as optimize self-help potential. Advisory programs using participatory methods will enable craftspeople and stakeholders to reveal resources and potencies, such as socio-cultural value, tradition and other kind of heritages, to generate new innovative ideas of craft design in a sustainable way.

Research supervision of international students in engineering and information technology disciplines (Resources)

This report provides an overview of the results of a collaborative research project titled "A model for research supervision of international students in engineering and information technology disciplines". This project aimed to identify factors influencing the success of culturally and linguistically diverse (CALD) higher degree research (HDR) students in the fields of Engineering and Information Technology at three Australian Universities: Queensland University of Technology, The University of Western Australia and Curtin University.