Corporate reputation and financial performance : underlying dimensions of corporate reputation and their relation to sustained financial performance

This thesis examined the relationship between firms' corporate reputation and their future financial performance. Corporate reputation was represented by measuring the level of senior executives' attention to a number of intangible firm' resources (e.g. financial reputation, service culture) within firms' annual reports over a 17 year period. Initial findings suggested there was only a small relationship between reputation and future performance which lead to a reformulation of the problem. Reputation was posited to be a source of corporate resilience that helped firms with stronger reputations to sustain superior financial performance in times of difficulty, as well as allowing them to rebound more quickly from performance decline. Results suggest this interpretation of corporate reputation as well as indicating that industry sectors operate in different reputational 'domains' in which the relative importance of financial versus stakeholder aspects of corporate reputation varies.

Same songs, different wrapping : the rise of the compilation album

The commercial success of compilation albums has increased in markets both in North America and in Europe. The albums can be considered as a manifestation of a significant change within the music industry—among both producers and consumers of popular music. Based on sales figures and a number of interviews with senior decision‐makers in multinational music companies, we discuss some of the major drivers behind the development, and thereby give an important contribution to the existing body of knowledge on music industry dynamics.

Reluctantly virtual : modelling copyright industry dynamics

During the evolution of the music industry, developments in the media environment have required music firms to adapt in order to survive. Changes in broadcast radio programming during the 1950s; the Compact Cassette during the 1970s; and the deregulation of media ownership during the 1990s are all examples of changes which have heavily affected the music industry. This study explores similar contemporary dynamics, examines how decision makers in the music industry perceive and make sense of the developments, and reveals how they revise their business strategies, based on their mental models of the media environment. A qualitative system dynamics model is developed in order to support the reasoning brought forward by the study. The model is empirically grounded, but is also based on previous music industry research and a theoretical platform constituted by concepts from evolutionary economics and sociology of culture. The empirical data primarily consist of 36 personal interviews with decision makers in the American, British and Swedish music industrial ecosystems. The study argues that the model which is proposed, more effectively explains contemporary music industry dynamics than music industry models presented by previous research initiatives. Supported by the model, the study is able to show how “new” media outlets make old music business models obsolete and challenge the industry’s traditional power structures. It is no longer possible to expose music at one outlet (usually broadcast radio) in the hope that it will lead to sales of the same music at another (e.g. a compact disc). The study shows that many music industry decision makers still have not embraced the new logic, and have not yet challenged their traditional mental models of the media environment. Rather, they remain focused on preserving the pivotal role held by the CD and other physical distribution technologies. Further, the study shows that while many music firms remain attached to the old models, other firms, primarily music publishers, have accepted the transformation, and have reluctantly recognised the realities of a virtualised environment.

Knowledge unlatched : enabling open access for scholarly books

Although digital technology has made it possible for many more people to access content at no extra cost, fewer people than ever before are able to read the books written by university-based researchers. This workshop explores the role that open access licenses and collective action might play in reviving the scholarly monograph: a specialised area of academic publishing that has seen sales decline by more than 90 per cent over the past three decades. It also introduces Knowledge Unlatched an ambitious attempt to create an internationally coordinated, sustainable route to open access for scholarly books. Knowledge Unlatched is now in its pilot phase.

Consensus σ70 promoter prediction using hadoop

MapReduce frameworks such as Hadoop are well suited to handling large sets of data which can be processed separately and independently, with canonical applications in information retrieval and sales record analysis. Rapid advances in sequencing technology have ensured an explosion in the availability of genomic data, with a consequent rise in the importance of large scale comparative genomics, often involving operations and data relationships which deviate from the classical Map Reduce structure. This work examines the application of Hadoop to patterns of this nature, using as our focus a wellestablished workflow for identifying promoters - binding sites for regulatory proteins - Across multiple gene regions and organisms, coupled with the unifying step of assembling these results into a consensus sequence. Our approach demonstrates the utility of Hadoop for problems of this nature, showing how the tyranny of the "dominant decomposition" can be at least partially overcome. It also demonstrates how load balance and the granularity of parallelism can be optimized by pre-processing that splits and reorganizes input files, allowing a wide range of related problems to be brought under the same computational umbrella.

Assessing the immediate and short-term impact of flooding on residential property participant behaviour

The past decade has seen an increase in the number of significant natural disasters that have caused considerable loss of life as well as damage to all property markets in the affected areas. In many cases, these natural disasters have not only caused significant property damage, but in numerous cases, have resulted in the total destruction of the property in the location. With these disasters attracting considerable media attention, the public are more aware of where these affected property markets are, as well as the overall damage to properties that have been damaged or destroyed. This heightened level of awareness has to have an impact on the participants in the property market, whether a developer, vendor seller or investor. To assess this issue, a residential property market that has been affected by a significant natural disaster over the past 2 years has been analysed to determine the overall impact of the disaster on buyer, renter and vendor behaviour, as well as prices in these residential markets. This paper is based on data from the Brisbane flood in January 2011. This natural disaster resulted in loss of life and partial and total devastation of considerable residential property sectors. Data for the research have been based on the residential sales and rental listings for each week of the study period to determine the level of activity in the specific property sectors, and these are also compared to the median house prices for the various suburbs for the same period based on suburbs being either flood affected or flood free. As there are 48 suburbs included in the study, it has been possible to group these suburbs on a socio-economic basis to determine possible differences due to location and value. Data were accessed from realestate.com.au, a free real estate site that provides details of current rental and sales listings on a suburb basis, RP Data a commercial property sales database and the Australian Bureau of Statistics. The paper found that sales listings fell immediately after the flood in the affected areas, but there was no corresponding fall or increase in sales listings in the flood-free suburbs. There was a significant decrease in the number of rental listings follow the flood as affected parties sought alternate accommodation. The greatest fall in rental listings was in areas close to the flood-affected suburbs indicating the desire to be close to the flooded property during the repair period.

The music industry in an age of digital distribution

In 1999 the global recorded music industry had experienced a period of growth that had lasted for almost a quarter of a century. Approximately one billion records were sold worldwide in 1974, and by the end of the century, the number of records sold was more than three times as high. At the end of the nineties, spirits among record label executives were high and few music industry executives at this time expected that a team of teenage Internet hackers, led by Shawn Fanning (at the time a student at Northeastern University in Boston) would ignite the turbulent process that eventually would undermine the foundations of the industry.

For the Win : How Game Thinking Can Revolutionize Your Business

Millions flock to their computers, consoles, mobile phones, tablets, and social networks each day to play World of Warcraft, Farmville, Scrabble, and countless other games, generating billions in sales each year. The careful and skillful construction of these games is built on decades of research into human motivation and psychology: A well-designed game goes right to the motivational heart of the human psyche. In For the Win, authors Kevin Werbach and Dan Hunter argue persuasively that gamemakers need not be the only ones benefiting from game design. Werbach and Hunter are lawyers and World of Warcraft players who created the world’s first course on gamification at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. In their book, they reveal how game thinking—addressing problems like a game designer—can motivate employees and customers and create engaging experiences that can transform your business. For the Win reveals how a wide range of companies are successfully using game thinking. It also offers an explanation of when gamifying makes the most sense and a 6-step framework for using games for marketing, productivity enhancement, innovation, employee motivation, customer engagement, and more. In this informative guide, Werbach and Hunter reveal how game thinking can yield winning solutions to real-world business problems. Let the games begin!

The Interaction of lean and building information modeling in construction

Lean construction and building information modeling (BIM) are quite different initiatives, but both are having profound impacts on the construction industry. A rigorous analysis of the myriad specific interactions between them indicates that a synergy exists which, if properly understood in theoretical terms, can be exploited to improve construction processes beyond the degree to which it might be improved by application of either of these paradigms independently. Using a matrix that juxtaposes BIM functionalities with prescriptive lean construction principles, 56 interactions have been identified, all but four of which represent constructive interaction. Although evidence for the majority of these has been found, the matrix is not considered complete but rather a framework for research to explore the degree of validity of the interactions. Construction executives, managers, designers, and developers of information technology systems for construction can also benefit from the framework as an aid to recognizing the potential synergies when planning their lean and BIM adoption strategies.

When leadership meets organizational change : the influence of the top management team and supervisory leaders on change appraisals, change attitudes, and adjustment to change

Despite the importance of adaption and change for firm survival, the failure rate of organizational change efforts remains alarmingly high (Beer and Nohria, 2000; Kotter, 1995). In a recent global survey of over 3,000 executives,Meaney and Pung (2008) reported that two-thirds of executives indicated that their firm had failed to successfully implement organizational changes. Similarly, academic researchers have also concluded that difficulties in implementing and managing organizational change efforts often precipitate organizational crises (Probst and Raisch, 2005). As a result, attention has been directed to identify the factors that improve the likelihood of successfully implementing organizational change efforts. While there has been practitioner-oriented discussion around the pivotal role of workplace leaders in reducing resistance to change, only a limited number of empirical studies have examined relationships between leader behavior and employee change attitudes (e.g., Bommer, Rich, and Rubin, 2005; Herold, Caldwell, and Liu, 2008; Nemanich and Keller, 2007; Oreg and Berson, 2011). However...

What’s Mime got to do with it?

What has Mime got to do with Corporate Communication? As a professional Mime artist on both stage and screen for more than 25 years, the author has been adapting and applying the techniques of Mime to the corporate communication context over a number of years, coaching corporate CEO’s, Executives and Managers, representing both public and private sector corporations and organisations. This unusual inter-contextual skill transfer is the subject of both a book and series of VODCasts by the author (currently in the final stages of completion), which form part of the author’s Doctoral Research and from which this paper is substantially drawn. The author’s professional background is multi-disciplinary – encompassing theatre, television, media, music, tertiary education and corporate training contexts. It is also inter-disciplinary – concerned with the commonality of different artistic mediums and forms and how, where and why these professional disciplines: intersect; interact, and inform each other – and therefore how they support each other - rather than losing creative/professional opportunities because of areas where they might conflict. This paper examines in particular the physicality of presentation and communication – beyond ‘generic’ body-language analysis. It involves the analysis, manipulation and stylisation of human physicality to support and enhance individual inter-professional communication, and how mime performance skills specifically, inform that process. This paper discusses:- • how mime skills clarify and enhance inter-professional communication. • what adaptations need to be applied in that context • getting a ‘performance’ from ‘non-performers’

Balancing organizational and professional commitments in professional service firms : the HR practices that matter

Due to their potential to positively influence sales quality and performance and reduce employee turnover in service organizations, HR practices targeting employee commitment have received considerable attention in the HRM literature in recent years. Parallel to this, there has been increasing focus on the nature of commitment, and in particular the existence of multiple commitment foci. In this paper, we examine how HR practices influence professionals' commitment to their organization, to their profession or to both organization and profession, in a qualitative study of three Danish financial investment firms. Our findings suggest that in professional service firms, HR practices encourage high levels of organizational commitment primarily and most often through their influence on professional commitment and that HR practices related to flexible work design are essential in creating balance between an employee's commitment to organization and commitment to their profession. Further, the findings suggest that these same HR practices may foster such high levels of professional commitment that labor turnover will increase when opportunities for pursuing professional goals afforded by work design are restricted.

Bank audit fees and asset securitization risks

Using the lens of audit pricing, we provide insights into auditors’ behaviors in relation to the risk of asset securitizations to bank holding companies in a period encompassing the Global Financial Crisis (GFC) and the introduction of the accounting standards FAS 166 and FAS 167. Using US bank holding company data from 2003 to 2011, we find significant and positive associations between asset securitization risks and audit fees. We find that auditors appear to focus on different aspects of asset securitization risks after the onset of the GFC, and increase their attention to the systemic risks facing bank holding companies in general. After the implementation of FAS 166 and FAS 167, which removed the discretion to treat asset securitizations as sales and required the consolidation of the accounts of special purpose entities, asset securitization risks no longer have a significant effect on audit fees.

Is Australia ready for biosimilars?

The biosimilars market is potentially the single fastest growing pharmaceutical sector with an estimated worth of US$67bn in global sales by 2020. This market generally refers to larger molecule, biological, protein-based pharmaceuticals which have lost its patent. This has stimulated the emergence of non-conventional pharmaceutical investors such as Fujifilm and Samsung as well as host countries such as Brazil, Mexico, China, India, South Korea, Turkey and Russia, which view biosimilars as a key macroeconomic driver of growth. Internationally, the European Medicines Agency has led the regulation of the quality, safety and efficacy of biosimilars; however, many countries have developed their own biosimilar regulatory frameworks. Despite the similarity of these with European guidelines, differences do exist across jurisdictions and have implications for cross-jurisdictional registration and regulation. The consideration of biosimilar regulation, however, demands attention beyond quality, safety and efficacy. The potential implications of extended patent protection, international trade and globalisation require a congruent policy approach to their regulation. Notwithstanding the fact that Australia is a relatively small pharmaceutical market and that there are only 14 biosimilar products currently approved for use, Australia’s geographical proximity to pharm-emerging countries and its trade relation with the major pharmaceutical markets have positioned Australia in a unique position to influence international development and regulation of biosimilars. Australia’s National Medicines Policy (2000) potentially provides the foundation for a partnership approach to biosimilar regulation, minimise duplication of regulatory efforts while at the same time fostering a viable pharmaceutical industry.

The drive towards user-centred engineering in automotive design

Falling sales in Europe and increasing global competition is forcing automotive manufacturers to develop a customer-based approach to differentiate themselves from the similarly technologically-optimised crowd. In spite of this new approach, automotive firms are still firmly entrenched in their reliance upon technology-driven innovation, to design, develop and manufacture their products, placing customer focus on a downstream sales role. However the time-honoured technology-driven approach to vehicle design and manufacture is coming into question, with the increasing importance of accounting for consumer needs pushing automotive engineers to include the user in their designs. The following paper examines the challenges and opportunities for a single global automotive manufacturer that arise in seeking to adopt a user-centred approach to vehicle design amongst technical employees. As part of an embedded case study, engineers from this manufacturer were interviewed in order to gauge the challenges, barriers and opportunities for the adoption of user-centred design tools within the engineering design process. The analysis of these interviews led to the proposal of the need for a new role within automotive manufacturers, the “designeer”, to bridge the divide between designers and engineers and allow the engineering process to transition from a technology-driven to a user- centred approach.