Alcohol and other drugs in construction

Evidence from the infrastructure and building sectors suggests issues of drugs and alcohol and its association with safety risk on construction sites. While most Australian jurisdictions have identified this as a critical safety issue, information is limited regarding the prevalence of alcohol and other drugs in the workplace and there is limited evidential guidance on how to effectively and efficiently address such an issue. A nationally consistent collaborative approach across the construction workforce - involving employers and employees; clients, unions; contractors and sub-contractors is required to engender a cultural change in the construction workforce – in a similar manner to the on-going initiative in securing a cultural change to drink-driving in our society where peer intervention and support is encouraged. A study to address these issues has three key objectives. Firstly, using the standard World Health Organisation Alcohol Use Disorders Identification Test (AUDIT), and a wide ranging set of structured interviews, a national qualitative and quantitative assessment of the use of drugs and alcohol is being undertaken. Secondly, the development of an appropriate industry policy with an adoption of an educative and rehabilitative approach is planned in consultation with employers and employees across the infrastructure and building sectors, with an aim of national adoption. Finally, an industry-specific cultural change management program will be developed through a nationally collaborative approach to reducing the risk of impaired performance on construction sites and increasing workers’ commitment to drugs and alcohol safety. The study outcomes stand to benefit not only occupational health and safety, through a greater understanding of the safety impacts of alcohol and other drugs at work, but also alcohol and drug use as a wider community health issue. This presentation will provide an analysis and discussion of the data collected in objective 1 and how the final results will inform the subsequent phases of the study.

Learning to lead : a social justice perspective on understanding elementary teacher leadership in Papua New Guinea

Leadership in elementary education is currently recognized as a political imperative in Papua New Guinea (PNG), as the nation develops strategies towards equitable access to schooling. One recent initiative aimed at building educational leadership was an intensive Australian Leadership Award Fellowship (ALAF) program funded by AusAID, involving a group of 10 teacher trainers from PNG. As part their involvement participants completed self-authored journal entries at the beginning and end of the leadership program. Participants were also involved in focus groups after completion of the initiative. Referring to the experiences of these teacher trainers, this paper draws on Nancy Fraser’s (2005, 2008) social justice framework to examine participants’ views of what constituted effective leadership in elementary education in PNG and how these views may have changed throughout the ALAF program. Key findings of this study included participants’ emphasis on relationships and valuing people in elementary education leadership contexts, participants’ concern about economic/financial barriers to effective leadership in the PNG context and participants’ perception of research as a way to support leadership roles.

IT governance in collaborative organizational structures

Organizations today engage in various forms of alliances to manage their existing business processes or to diversify into new processes to sustain their competitive positions. Many of today’s alliances use the IT resources as their backbone. The results of these alliances are collaborative organizational structures with little or no ownership stakes between the parties. The emergence of Web 2.0 tools is having a profound effect on the nature and form of these alliance structures. These alliances heavily depend on and make radical use of the IT resources in a collaborative environment. This situation requires a deeper understanding of the governance of these IT resources to ensure the sustainability of the collaborative organizational structures. This study reports on the first stage of this initiative. It suggest the types of IT governance structures required for collaborative organizational structures. Semi-structured interviews with senior executives who operate in such alliances reveal that co-created IT governance structures are necessary. Such structures include co-created IT-steering committees, cocreated operational committees, and inter-organizational performance management and communication systems. The findings pave the way for the development of a model for understanding approaches to governing IT and evaluating the effectiveness for such governance mechanisms in today’s IT dependent alliances.

Indigenous knowledge and effective parent–school partnerships : issues and insights

Towards the last decade of the last millennium, Indigenous knowledge was central to international scholarly debates relating to decolonising knowledge. Indigenous scholars, particularly those from Australia, New Zealand, Canada, and the United States, advanced many of these debates. They argued for Indigenous knowledge to be used as the epistemological standpoint for intellectual engagements and the methodology for resisting colonial constructions of the colonised other (Rigney 1997; Smith 1999, 2005). However, the challenge of engaging Indigenous knowledge to inform research and educational processes, in many respects, is still a contested debate in Western-oriented universities and institutions of higher education. This chapter discusses findings of the Parent–School Partnership Initiative (hereafter referred to as PSPI) project conducted by the Oodgeroo Unit staff and the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Education Focus Group for the Caboolture Shire, in South East Queensland. The state government sponsored initiative examined factors that promote and enhance parent–school engagement with students’ schooling, and contributed to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students’ learning and completion of secondary schooling within the participating schools. We argue in this chapter for the importance of recognising Indigenous knowledge and its place in enhancing parent–school partnerships.

Leveraging value within IT-backed collaborative alliances

Organizations today make radical use of the IT resources to sustain or better their existing competitive position. One such initiative is forming alliances on a shared IT backbone with partners of their value chain. We term these alliances the collaborative organizational structures (COS). Regardless of the nature of engagement with IT resources, organizations will require unique competencies to obtain performance-differentiating value from these IT resources. In a collaborative environment, these competencies would be a result of the synergy between the alliances’ unique competences. We call these the inter-firm IT-related capabilities. The resource centric theoretical frameworks suggest a trajectory of competence development and the structure of inter-firm competencies, but does not inform on the nature of these competencies. We employ an interpretive design to suggest three inter-firm IT-related capabilities for IT-backed collaborative alliances. We discuss these capabilities in this research and suggest that their effectiveness be measured directly against the collaborative rent, and indirectly against the firm-level performance of the alliance partners. This forms a model of leveraging and evaluating value within IT-backed collaborative alliances.

Developing a framework for planning healthy communities : the Logan Beaudesert health decision support system

In the last few decades, the focus on building healthy communities has grown significantly (Ashton, 2009). There is growing evidence that new approaches to planning are required to address the challenges faced by contemporary communities. These approaches need to be based on timely access to local information and collaborative planning processes (Murray, 2006; Scotch & Parmanto, 2006; Ashton, 2009; Kazda et al., 2009). However, there is little research to inform the methods that can support this type of responsive, local, collaborative and consultative health planning (Northridge et al., 2003). Some research justifies the use of decision support systems (DSS) as a tool to support planning for healthy communities. DSS have been found to increase collaboration between stakeholders and communities, improve the accuracy and quality of the decision-making process, and improve the availability of data and information for health decision-makers (Nobre et al., 1997; Cromley & McLafferty, 2002; Waring et al., 2005). Geographic information systems (GIS) have been suggested as an innovative method by which to implement DSS because they promote new ways of thinking about evidence and facilitate a broader understanding of communities. Furthermore, literature has indicated that online environments can have a positive impact on decision-making by enabling access to information by a broader audience (Kingston et al., 2001). However, only limited research has examined the implementation and impact of online DSS in the health planning field. Previous studies have emphasised the lack of effective information management systems and an absence of frameworks to guide the way in which information is used to promote informed decisions in health planning. It has become imperative to develop innovative approaches, frameworks and methods to support health planning. Thus, to address these identified gaps in the knowledge, this study aims to develop a conceptual planning framework for creating healthy communities and examine the impact of DSS in the Logan Beaudesert area. Specifically, the study aims to identify the key elements and domains of information that are needed to develop healthy communities, to develop a conceptual planning framework for creating healthy communities, to collaboratively develop and implement an online GIS-based Health DSS (i.e., HDSS), and to examine the impact of the HDSS on local decision-making processes. The study is based on a real-world case study of a community-based initiative that was established to improve public health outcomes and promote new ways of addressing chronic disease. The study involved the development of an online GIS-based health decision support system (HDSS), which was applied in the Logan Beaudesert region of Queensland, Australia. A planning framework was developed to account for the way in which information could be organised to contribute to a healthy community. The decision support system was developed within a unique settings-based initiative Logan Beaudesert Health Coalition (LBHC) designed to plan and improve the health capacity of Logan Beaudesert area in Queensland, Australia. This setting provided a suitable platform to apply a participatory research design to the development and implementation of the HDSS. Therefore, the HDSS was a pilot study examined the impact of this collaborative process, and the subsequent implementation of the HDSS on the way decision-making was perceived across the LBHC. As for the method, based on a systematic literature review, a comprehensive planning framework for creating healthy communities has been developed. This was followed by using a mixed method design, data were collected through both qualitative and quantitative methods. Specifically, data were collected by adopting a participatory action research (PAR) approach (i.e., PAR intervention) that informed the development and conceptualisation of the HDSS. A pre- and post-design was then used to determine the impact of the HDSS on decision-making. The findings of this study revealed a meaningful framework for organising information to guide planning for healthy communities. This conceptual framework provided a comprehensive system within which to organise existing data. The PAR process was useful in engaging stakeholders and decision-making in the development and implementation of the online GIS-based DSS. Through three PAR cycles, this study resulted in heightened awareness of online GIS-based DSS and openness to its implementation. It resulted in the development of a tailored system (i.e., HDSS) that addressed the local information and planning needs of the LBHC. In addition, the implementation of the DSS resulted in improved decision- making and greater satisfaction with decisions within the LBHC. For example, the study illustrated the culture in which decisions were made before and after the PAR intervention and what improvements have been observed after the application of the HDSS. In general, the findings indicated that decision-making processes are not merely informed (consequent of using the HDSS tool), but they also enhance the overall sense of ‗collaboration‘ in the health planning practice. For example, it was found that PAR intervention had a positive impact on the way decisions were made. The study revealed important features of the HDSS development and implementation process that will contribute to future research. Thus, the overall findings suggest that the HDSS is an effective tool, which would play an important role in the future for significantly improving the health planning practice.

Environmental reporting in the Australian mining industry : complying with regulation or meeting international best practice?

It is nearly 10 years since the introduction of s 299(1)(f) Corporations Act , which requires the disclosure of information regarding a company's environmental performance within its annual report. This provision has generated considerable debate in the years since its introduction, fundamentally between proponents of either a voluntary or mandatory environmental reporting framework. This study examines the adequacy of the current regulatory framework. The environmental reporting practices of 24 listed companies in the resources industries are assessed relative to a standard set by the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) Sustainability Reporting Guidelines. These Guidelines are argued to represent "international best practice" in environmental reporting and a "scorecard" approach is used to score the quality of disclosure according to this voluntary benchmark. Larger companies in the sample tend to report environmental information over and above the level required by legislation. Some, but not all companies present a stand-alone environmental/sustainability report. However, smaller companies provide minimal information in compliance with s 299(1)(f) . The findings indicate that "international best practice" environmental reporting is unlikely to be achieved by Australian companies under the current regulatory framework. In the current regulatory environment that scrutinises s 299(1)(f) , this article provides some preliminary evidence of the quality of disclosures generated in the Australian market.

Co-management to solve homelessness : wicked solutions to wicked problems

While governments are engaged in developing social policy responses to address wicked issues such as poverty, homelessness, drug addiction and crime, long term resolution of these issues through government policy making and state-based programmatic action has remained elusive. The use of vehicles for joint action and partnership between government and the community sector such as co-management has been offered as a way of harnessing productive capability and innovative capacity of both these sectors to resolve these complex problems. However, it is suggested that while there is a well advanced agenda with the intent for collaboration and partnership, working with the models for undertaking this joint action are not well understood and have not been fully developed or evaluated. This chapter examines new approaches to resolving the wicked issue of homelessness through applying the lens of co-management to understand the complexities of this issue and its resolution. The chapter analyses an attempt to move away from traditional bureaucratic structures of welfare departments, operating through single functional ‘silos’ to a new horizontal ‘hub-based’ model of service delivery that seeks to integrate actors across many different service areas and organizations. The chapter explores case studies of co-management in the establishment, development and operation of service hubs to address homelessness. We argue that the response to homelessness needs a ‘wicked solution’ that goes beyond simply providing shelter to those in need. The case of the hub models of community sector organizations working across organizational boundaries is evaluated to determine whether this approach can be considered successful co-managing of an innovative initiative, and understanding the requirements for developing, improving and extending this model. The role of the third sector in co-managing public services is examined through the in-depth case studies and the results are presented together with an assessment of how co-management can contribute to service quality and service management in public services.

Potential retrofitting of existing campus buildings to green buildings

Green building is building that the focus is to maximize the energy efficiency and resources used. While, retrofitting is the process of renovate or refurnish the existing building. Therefore by retrofit existing buildings that comply with green building requirement, it improves the environmental attributes of the buildings. In Malaysia, existing buildings and its communities contribute over 40% of green house gases to the environment. This paper describes a study that explores the potential to retrofit existing campus buildings that response to sustainable green building standard. A validation survey was carried out and the data collected was analysed using SPSS in order to confirm the significance of retrofitting Universiti Teknologi Malaysia (UTM) buildings toward green building initiative. The results show that all the twenty eight identified green elements recorded average index of higher than 3.5 which means that there is significant needs to retrofit the existing buildings to green buildings. This study concludes that it is urgently need for the campus to response to green building requirements in order to achieve higher energy effeciency and this can be done through effective etrofitting of existing buildings.

Through the viewfinder : using multimedia techniques to engage Latino youth in community planning

This chapter reviews common barriers to community engagement for Latino youth and suggests ways to move beyond those barriers by empowering them to communicate their experiences, address the challenges they face, and develop recommendations for making their community more youth-friendly. As a case study, this chapter describes a program called Youth FACE IT (Youth Fostering Active Community Engagement for Integration and Transformation)in Boulder County, Colorado. The program enables Latino youth to engage in critical dialogue and participate in a community-based initiative. The chapter concludes by explaining specific strategies that planners can use to support active community engagement and develop a future generation of planners and engaged community members that reflects emerging demographics.

Flexible airport terminal design : towards a framework

Flexibility is a key driver of any successful design, specifically in highly unpredictable environment such as airport terminal. Ever growing aviation industry requires airport terminals to be planned and constructed in such a way that will allow flexibility for future design, alteration and redevelopment. The concept of flexibility in terminal design is a relatively new initiative, where existing rules or guidelines are not adequate to assist designers. A shift towards flexible design concept would allow terminal buildings to be designed to accommodate future changes and to make passengers’ journey as simple, timely and hassle free as possible. Currently available research indicates that a theoretical framework on flexible design approach for airport terminals would facilitate the future design process. The generic principles of flexibility are investigated in the current research to incorporate flexible design approaches within the process of an airport terminal design. A conceptual framework is proposed herein, which is expected to ascertain flexibility to current passenger terminal facilities within their corresponding locations as well as in future design and expansion.

An action research approach for the professional development of Vietnamese nurse educators

Nurse education in Viet Nam is undergoing substantial reform. In order to facilitate the change, in 2007 the Viet Nam Nurses Association formed a collaborative partnership with the School of Nursing and Midwifery at an Australia university. This collaboration gave rise to the Viet Nam Nursing Capacity Building Project under the leadership of Professor Genevieve Gray, funded by the Atlantic Philanthropies. The new four year competency based nursing curriculum frame is expected to be implemented in September 2011 following approval by the Viet Nam Ministry of Education. The focus of this paper is the Teaching Fellowships Program, an initiative of the Viet Nam Nursing Capacity Building Project, developed to help meet the challenges associated with leading and dealing with the curriculum change. The paper explores the development of the program and justifies an action research approach, illuminates key issues, and briefly refers to changes to the next fellowship program.

Putting the cart before the horse? Driving student engagement through first year career identity development in a large multidisciplinary creative industries cohort

It is now widely accepted that first year students benefit from pedagogies which mediate and support their transitions to university, and assist them to develop an adaptive student identity. We present an initiative which takes an alternative and additional approach to this way of viewing the first year experience. Based on research into creative industries career trajectories, this initiative focuses on the establishment of nascent career identity and professional self-concept amongst 600 first semester Bachelor of Creative Industries (BCI) students at QUT. The BCI is offered as a three year undergraduate program involving self-selection of majors, minors and electives, and also as a four year double degree with Business and Law faculties. Students engage in a scaffolded process of initial career visioning and reflective course planning, based on their own industry and careers research, guided by industry-active academic and careers staff, and drawing upon the experiences of final year students.