Strategic issues for the Not-for-profit sector

Bringing together some of Australia’s leading and emerging researchers studying different aspects of the not-for-profit (NFP) sector, Strategic Issues in the Not-for-Profit Sector draws on original Australian and comparative research to provide a spirited exploration of strategic issues facing NFP organisations. A diverse, vital and ever-growing sector in Australia, the NFP sector provides the organisational framework through which many of the most disadvantaged in the community receive access to services and support. However, pressures such as a changing composition, an erosion of financial sustainability, the need to professionalise, and demographic trends affecting patterns of volunteering have put pressure on the NFP sector to innovate and grow in new directions. Strategic Issues in the Not-for-Profit Sector considers the local and global drivers of change, as well as the industry, policy and community imperatives impacting upon NFP sustainability, providing a unique insight into not only the strategic issues, but also strategic responses emerging within the sector.

The cultural production sector in Manchester

A quantitative and qualitative review of the cultural industries in Manchester at the end of the 1990s

Workplace mobbing : experiences in the public sector

This paper discusses the counterproductive behaviour of ‘workplace mobbing’ where gossip, rumour, innuendo, and malicious accusations are reported to unfairly target and discredit targeted workers. The discussion is based on an Australian study of reports from public sector employees who self identified as targets of workplace mobbing. The behaviours are typically covert and are sometimes instigated and perpetuated by management. In focusing on three themes that emerged from the interview study, the paper discusses the sometimes toxic nature of public sector culture, mobbing behaviours and workplace expulsion. It also discusses some recommended regulatory and organizational responses that could potentially reduce the occurrence of such behaviours.

Workplace mobbing : expulsion, exclusion, and transformation

The issue of workplace bullying has received considerable attention in recent times in both the academic literature and in the print and electronic media. The stereotypical bullying scenario can be described as the “bully boss” model, where those in more senior positions tend to bully the staff they supervise. By way of contrast, this paper presents the findings of a three year exemplarian action research study into the lesser known phenomenon of workplace mobbing. Consistent with grounded theory methods, the findings are discussed in the context of emergent propositions in relation to the broader social, cultural, and organisational factors that can perpetuate workplace mobbing in the public sector.

Productivity, Technical and Efficiency Change in Singapore’s Services Sector, 2005 to 2008

The current study was motivated by statements made by the Economic Strategies Committee that Singapore’s recent productivity levels in services were well below countries such as the US, Japan and Hong Kong. Massive employment of foreign workers was cited as the reason for poor productivity levels. To shed more light on Singapore’s falling productivity, a nonparametric Malmquist productivity index was employed which provides measures of productivity change, technical change and efficiency change. The findings reveal that growth in total factor productivity was attributed to technical change with no improvement in efficiency change. Such results suggest that gains from TFP were input-driven rather than from a ‘best-practice’ approach such as improvements in operations or better resource allocation.

Dinuclear Ru-Cu complexes : electronic characterisation and application to dye-sensitised solar cells

Dye-sensitised solar cells have emerged as an important developing technology for low-cost solar energy conversion and a crucial element of these is the dye, responsible for light harvesting and control of interfacial electron-transfer processes.[1] A number of examples of dye exist in the literature which link a ruthenium polypyridyl complex to another platinum group metal complex such as Ru (II), Os (II), Re (I) or Rh (III) via a bridging ligand.[2-6] These systems are often referred to as heterosupramolecular triads when adsorbed on the surface of TiO2 as the semiconductor becomes an active component in the system. A number of problems can arise with these types of sensitisers, for example if a flexible linker, e.g. bis-pyridylethane, is used to couple the two complexes it can be hard to control the orientation of the whole dye. This may lead to the resultant dye cation hole being closer to the surface than desired, and hence the long-lived charge-separated state is not achieved. In addition the size of these dyes may be much larger than that of a mononuclear complex and can lead to poor pore filling on the TiO2 and lower dye coverage, leading to a lower efficiency cell.[7] Despite these issues, efficient charge-separation has been achieved with polynuclear complexes and a long-lived state on the millisecond timescale has been observed for a trinuclear ruthenium complex.[8]