Inward exporting of professional services : lessons from an exploratory study of Australian educational firms

Inward export activities for services companies have been largely neglected in the literature. Little is known about how professional service firms export to overseas consumers who travel to the domestic market of the firm. This study utilizes a resource-based perspective (RBV) to explore the main barriers and drivers of export performance for professional education services. A case study of Australia’s education industry, as well as interviews with executives from four Australian education institutions, was conducted. Findings show that inward exporters confront most barriers in the domestic market where the service is provided, and drivers of export performance combine firm- and country-specific resources.

Professional ethics : the IT experience

IT professionals work in an environment which is under continual innovation, exerts a global influence and yet is relatively young. In such a context, how can professionals be effectively supported in their ethical practice? IT professional ethics has predominantly focussed on external standards or internal reasoning. However, attention also has to be paid to professionals’ experience of ethics, which influences how they interpret standards and construct reasoning. A comprehensive experience of ethics will embrace the professional’s inner circle, their employer, their client and humanity. In order to promote such a comprehensive view, we need to re-conceptualise a) the IT discipline, focussing on information users; b) professional ethics, adopting other-centred attitudes; and c) professional development, pursuing a change in lived experience. This book is written for those interested in professional ethics (practitioners, educators, professional bodies and employers), especially in the computing field.

A new look at leadership in collaborative networks : process catalysts

Collaborative networks have come to form a large part of the public sector’s strategy to address ongoing and often complex social problems. The relational power of networks, with its emphasis on trust, reciprocity and mutuality provides the mechanism to integrate previously dispersed and even competitive entities into a collective venture(Agranoff 2003; Agranoff and McGuire 2003; Mandell 1994; Mandell and Harrington 1999). It is argued that the refocusing of a single body of effort to a collective contributes to reducing duplication and overlap of services, maximizes increasingly scarce resources and contributes to solving intractable or 'wicked’problems (Clarke and Stewart 1997). Given the current proliferation of collaborative networks and the fact that they are likely to continue for some time, concerns with the management and leadership of such arrangements for optimal outcomes are increasingly relevant. This is especially important for public sector managers who are used to working in a top-down, hierarchical manner. While the management of networks (Agranoff and McGuire 2001, 2003), including collaborative or complex networks (Kickert et al. 1997; Koppenjan and Klijn 2004), has been the subject of considerable attention, there has been much less explicit discussion on leadership approaches in this context. It is argued in this chapter that the traditional use of the terms ‘leader’ or ‘leadership’ does not apply to collaborative networks. There are no ‘followers’ in collaborative networks or supervisor-subordinate relations. Instead there are equal, horizontal relationships that are focused on delivering systems change. In this way the emergent organizational forms such as collaborative networks challenge older models of leadership. However despite the questionable relevance of old leadership styles to the contemporary work environment, no clear alternative has come along to take its place.

Uncertainty avoidance: public sector clients and procurement selection

Purpose: Choosing the appropriate procurement system for construction projects is a complex and challenging task for clients particularly when professional advice has not been sought. To assist with the decision making process, a range of procurement selection tools and techniques have been developed by both academic and industry bodies. Public sector clients in Western Australia (WA) remain uncertain about the pairing of procurement method to bespoke construction project and how this decision will ultimately impact upon project success. This paper examines ‘how and why’ a public sector agency selected particular procurement methods. · Methodology/Approach: An analysis of two focus group workshops (with 18 senior project and policy managers involved with procurement selection) is reported upon · Findings: The traditional lump sum (TLS) method is still the preferred procurement path even though alternative forms such as design and construct, public-private-partnerships could optimize the project outcome. Paradoxically, workshop participants agreed that alternative procurement forms should be considered, but an embedded culture of uncertainty avoidance invariably meant that TLS methods were selected. Senior managers felt that only a limited number of contractors have the resources and experience to deliver projects using the nontraditional methods considered. · Research limitations/implications: The research identifies a need to develop a framework that public sector clients can use to select an appropriate procurement method. A procurement framework should be able to guide the decision-maker rather than provide a prescriptive solution. Learning from previous experiences with regard to procurement selection will further provide public sector clients with knowledge about how to best deliver their projects.

Principal preparation and training : a look at China and its issues

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to provide an understanding of principal preparation and training in China by providing a background discussion of principal preparation in a number of countries. As an illustration, it provides an overview of the curriculum used in the initial preparation of school principals at Beijing Normal University.-----Design/methodology/approach: The paper draws mainly on writing and research from China, Australia and the USA to explore principal preparation and training in China.-----Findings: In addition to providing a rich description of principal preparation in China, the paper's main findings comprise seven key challenges that confront China as it endeavours to provide quality principal preparation. These challenges include China's diversity and uneven social, cultural and educational development; limited resources in some regions throughout China; the place and importance of study tours for principal preparation; the teaching approach used to train principals; the process used for assessing principal learning during their training programs; the limited transfer of learning from the classroom to the school environment; and the timing of training for principals.-----Practical implications: Each of the challenges arising here raises important practical implications for developers of principal training programs.-----Originality/value: The paper paints a picture of principal preparation in China and raises a number of issues and challenges with which it continues to grapple. Of note is that China is not alone in facing some of these ongoing concerns.

Certainties and uncertainties : ethics and professional identities of early childhood educators

This study is an inquiry into the professional identity constructions of early childhood educators, where identity is conceptualised as social and contextual. Through a genealogical analysis of narratives of four Queensland early childhood teachers, the thesis renders as problematic universal and fixed notions of what it is to be an early childhood professional. The data are the four teachers’ professional life history narratives recounted through a series of conversational interviews with each participant. As they spoke about professionalism and ethics, these teachers struggled to locate themselves as professionals, as they drew on a number of dominant discourses available to them. These dominant discourses were located and mapped through analysis of the participants’ talk about relationships with parents, colleagues and authorities. Genealogical analysis enabled multiple readings of the ways in which the participants’ talk held together certainties and uncertainties, as they recounted their experiences and spoke of early childhood expertise, relational engagement and ethics. The thesis concludes with suggestions for ways to support early childhood teachers and pre-service teachers to both engage with and resist normative processes and expectations of professional identity construction. In so doing, multiple and contextual opportunities can be made available when it comes to being professional and ‘doing’ ethics. The thesis makes an argument for new possibilities for thinking and speaking professional identities that include both certainty and uncertainty, comfort and discomfort, and these seemingly oppositional terms are held together in tension, with an insistence that both are necessary and true. The use of provocations offers tools through which pre-service teachers, teachers and teacher educators can access new positions associated with certainties and uncertainties in professional identities. These new positions call for work that supports experiences of ‘de-comfort’ – that is, experiences that encourage early childhood educators to step away from the comfort zones that can become part of expertise, professional relationships and ethics embedded within normative representations of what it is to be an early childhood professional.

Transition into high school : a phenomenological study

Transition is a process of moving from the known to the unknown (Green, 1997) and transition from primary school to high school can be described in this way. In Australia, there is a two tiered system of primary and secondary schooling operating where school students typically undergo at least two transitions. Firstly, when they leave home to attend pre-school/primary school; and secondly, when they leave primary school to enter secondary school. Potentially some students may experience up to four transitions: from home to kindergarten to pre-school to primary school to secondary school while for a smaller number of students who attend P-12 schools, there may be only one transition: from home to preschool.

An in-depth study of a teacher engaged in an innovative primary science trial professional development project

The implementation of effective science programmes in primary schools is of continuing interest and concern for professional developers. As part of the Australian Academy of Science's approach to creating an awareness of Primary Investigations, a project team trialled a series of satellite television broadcasts of lessons related to two units of the curriculum for Year 3 and 4 children in 48 participating schools. The professional development project entitled Simply Science, included a focused component for the respective classroom teachers, which was also conducted by satellite. This paper reports the involvement of a Year 4 teacher in the project and describes her professional growth. Already an experienced and confident teacher, no quantitative changes in science teaching self efficacy were detected. However, her pedagogical content knowledge and confidence to teach science in the concept areas of matter and energy were enhanced. Changes in the teacher's views about the co-operative learning strategies espoused by Primary Investigations were also evident. Implications for the design of professional development programmes for primary science teachers are discussed.

Maternal support for autonomy : relationships with persistence for children with Down syndrome and typically developing children

Maternal behaviors and child mastery behaviors were examined in 25 children with Down syndrome and 43 typically developing children matched for mental age (24–36 months). During a shared problem-solving task, there were no group differences in maternal directiveness or support for autonomy, and mothers in the two groups used similar verbal strategies when helping their child. There were also no group differences in child mastery behaviors, measured as persistence with two optimally challenging tasks. However, the two groups differed in the relationships of maternal style with child persistence. Children with Down syndrome whose mothers were more supportive of their autonomy in the shared task displayed greater persistence when working independently on a challenging puzzle, while children of highly directive mothers displayed lower levels of persistence. For typically developing children, persistence was unrelated to maternal style, suggesting that mother behaviors may have different causes or consequences in the two groups.

The Order Fulfillment Process Model

This appendix describes the Order Fulfillment process followed by a fictitious company named Genko Oil. The process is freely inspired by the VICS (Voluntary Inter-industry Commerce Solutions) reference model1 and provides a demonstration of YAWL’s capabilities in modelling complex control-flow, data and resourcing requirements.

Process configuration in YAWL

This chapter describes how the YAWL meta-model was extended to support the definition of variation points. These variation points can be used to describe different variants of a YAWL process model in a unified, configurable model. The model can then be configured to suit the needs of specific settings, e.g. for a new organization of project.

Building an ontology and process architecture for engineering asset management

Historically, asset management focused primarily on the reliability and maintainability of assets; organisations have since then accepted the notion that a much larger array of processes govern the life and use of an asset. With this, asset management’s new paradigm seeks a holistic, multi-disciplinary approach to the management of physical assets. A growing number of organisations now seek to develop integrated asset management frameworks and bodies of knowledge. This research seeks to complement existing outputs of the mentioned organisations through the development of an asset management ontology. Ontologies define a common vocabulary for both researchers and practitioners who need to share information in a chosen domain. A by-product of ontology development is the realisation of a process architecture, of which there is also no evidence in published literature. To develop the ontology and subsequent asset management process architecture, a standard knowledge-engineering methodology is followed. This involves text analysis, definition and classification of terms and visualisation through an appropriate tool (in this case, the Protégé application was used). The result of this research is the first attempt at developing an asset management ontology and process architecture.

An international perspective on bereavement related concepts

This paper reports on part of a study which was aimed at assessing the views of leading researchers, theorists or clinicians working in the field of bereavement on key issues including, as reported here, concepts of different forms of grief as well as favoured theoretical orientations. Of a range of conceptual models the most favoured, by a large margin, were attachment theory and the psychodynamic model. The views of the “experts’ were canvassed with respect to the use of seven selected terms used to denote some variant of the grieving process. There was, on the part of the respondents, reasonable support for the syndromes of “delayed’, “chronic’, “anticipatory’ and “absent’ grief. “Inhibited’ and “unresolved’ grief tended to be described using one of the four terms already supported, while the use of the term “distorted grief’ attracted little support.

Dancing between diversity and consistency : refining assessment in postgraduate degrees in dance

This publication is the culmination of a 2 year Australian Learning and Teaching Council's Project Priority Programs Research Grant which investigates key issues and challenges in developing flexible guidelines lines for best practice in Australian Doctoral and Masters by Research Examination, encompassing the two modes of investigation, written and multi-modal (practice-led/based) theses, their distinctiveness and their potential interplay. The aims of the project were to address issues of assessment legitimacy raised by the entry of practice-orientated dance studies into Australian higher degrees; examine literal embodiment and presence, as opposed to cultural studies about states of embodiment; foreground the validity of questions around subjectivity and corporeal intelligence/s and the reliability of artistic/aesthetic communications, and finally to celebrate ‘performance mastery’(Melrose 2003) as a rigorous and legitimate mode of higher research. The project began with questions which centred around: the functions of higher degree dance research; concepts of 'master-ness’ and ‘doctorateness’; the kinds of languages, structures and processes which may guide candidates, supervisors, examiners and research personnel; the purpose of evaluation/examination; addressing positive and negative attributes of examination. Finally the study examined ways in which academic/professional, writing/dancing, tradition/creation and diversity/consistency relationships might be fostered to embrace change. Over two years, the authors undertook a qualitative national study encompassing a triangulation of semi-structured face to face interviews and industry forums to gather views from the profession, together with an analysis of existing guidelines, and recent literature in the field. The most significant primary data emerged from 74 qualitative interviews with supervisors, examiners, research deans and administrators, and candidates in dance and more broadly across the creative arts. Qualitative data gathered from the two primary sources, was coded and analysed using the NVivo software program. Further perspectives were drawn from international consultant and dance researcher Susan Melrose, as well as publications in the field, and initial feedback from a draft document circulated at the World Dance Alliance Global Summit in July 2008 in Brisbane. Refinement of data occurred in a continual sifting process until the final publication was produced. This process resulted in a set of guidelines in the form of a complex dynamic system for both product and process oriented outcomes of multi-modal theses, along with short position papers on issues which arose from the research such as contested definitions, embodiment and ephemerality, ‘liveness’ in performance research higher degrees, dissolving theory/practice binaries, the relationship between academe and industry, documenting practices and a re-consideration of the viva voce.

Configurable multi-perspective business process models

A configurable process model provides a consolidated view of a family of business processes. It promotes the reuse of proven practices by providing analysts with a generic modelling artifact from which to derive individual process models. Unfortunately, the scope of existing notations for configurable process modelling is restricted, thus hindering their applicability. Specifically, these notations focus on capturing tasks and control-flow dependencies, neglecting equally important ingredients of business processes such as data and resources. This research fills this gap by proposing a configurable process modelling notation incorporating features for capturing resources, data and physical objects involved in the performance of tasks. The proposal has been implemented in a toolset that assists analysts during the configuration phase and guarantees the correctness of the resulting process models. The approach has been validated by means of a case study from the film industry.