ACE research briefing paper 001 : the role of family in new business start-ups

This report uses data from the first two years of the CAUSEE study and focuses on the role of family in new business start-ups. While CAUSEE was not designed specifically to probe deeply into family matters the study does reveal interesting information on family orientated aspects including parental role models, family involvement on the start-up team, and family as a source of funding and advice. These findings can also be related to other information gathered as part of the comprehensive phone interviews that are used to gather the research data for CAUSEE. Furthermore we are also able to compare firm founders and 'Regular' nascent firm and young firm start-ups with their 'High Potential' counterparts in terms of their degrees of family involvement. Unless otherwise stated any differences or effects we comment on are 'statistically significant' at the five per cent level - that is, they are likely to reflect true differences or effects in the entire population of Australian start-ups.

From domestic violence to sustainable employment

International research has found that domestic violence is a significant barrier to accessing and sustaining work (Lloyd and Taluc 1999, 385; Browne et al. 1999, 398). In the Australian context, the Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research reports that between 6 and 9 per cent of Australian women aged 18 and over are physically assaulted each year and that more than half of all women in Australia experience sexual or physical violence across their adult lifetime. Such behaviour has been estimated to cost $8.1 billion, of which $4.4 billion is estimated to be borne by the victims themselves, $1.2 billion by the general community and smaller amounts by friends and family and various levels of government (Access Economics 2004). This assessment underestimates the costs of domestic violence in terms of the inability of those who have experienced domestic violence to move into and secure sustainable employment options. Despite these statistics there is a dearth of Australian research focussing on the link between domestic violence and its impact on long-term sustainable employment for those who have been subjected to such violence. This paper explores the issue of domestic violence and access to work opportunities. In so doing, it links the work of Gianakos (1999) and her Career Development theory with that of Bandura‘s (1989) Social Cognitive Career Theory to develop a framework which would provide a pathway to enable those who have suffered domestic violence to achieve sustainable employment and economic independence.

The influence of family ownership on the quality of accounting information

This article explores the quality of accounting information in listed family firms. The authors exploit the features of the Italian equitymarket characterizd by high ownership concentration across all tpes of firms to disentangle the effects of family ownership from other major block holders on the quality of accounting information. The findings document that family firms convey financial information of higher quality compared to the nonfamily peers. Furthermore the authors provide evidence that the determinants of accounting quality differ across family and nonfamily firms.

Ownership structure and business evaluation practices in family SMEs : evidence from empirical research in Italy

This paper presents early results from a pilot project which aims to investigate the relationship between proprietary structure of small and medium- sized Italian family firms and their owners’ orientation towards a “business evaluation process”. Evidence from many studies point out the importance of family business in a worldwide economic environment: in Italy 93% of the businesses are represented by family firms; 98% of them have less than 50 employees (Italian Association of Family Firms, 2004) so we judged family SMEs as a relevant field of investigation. In this study we assume a broad definition of family business as “a firm whose control (50% of shares or voting rights) is closely held by the members of the same family” (Corbetta,1995). “Business evaluation process” is intended here both as “continuous evaluation process” (which is the expression of a well developed managerial attitude) or as an “immediate valuation” (i.e. in the case of new shareholder’s entrance, share exchange among siblings, etc). We set two hypotheses to be tested in this paper: the first is “quantitative” and aims to verify whether the number of owners (independent variable) in a family firm is positively correlated to the business evaluation process. If a family firm is led by only one subject, it is more likely that personal values, culture and feelings may affect his choices more than “purely economic opportunities”; so there is less concern about monitoring economic performance or about the economic value of the firm. As the shareholders’ number increases, economic aspects in managing the firm grow in importance over the personal values and "value orientation" acquires a central role. The second hypothesis investigates if and to what extent the presence of “non- family members” among the owners affects their orientation to the business evaluation process. The “Cramer’s V” test has been used to test the hypotheses; both were not confirmed from these early results; next steps will lead to make an inferential analysis on a representative sample of the population.

Assetti proprietari e meccanismi di governance nelle imprese familiari [Finacial reporting in small family firms : searching for a new framework]

SOMMARIO: 1. La “governance” nelle aziende familiari: rilevanza, aspetti distintivi e criticità. 2. Il ruolo della compagine proprietaria nella definizione dei meccanismi di governo. 3. Composizione e funzioni del consiglio d’amministrazione. 4. I patti di famiglia come strumento di disciplina dei rapporti impresa-famiglia. 5. Considerazioni conclusive: prospettive di analisi e scenari futuri negli studi sulla governance delle imprese familiari.

Toward a better understanding of family enterprising

By integrating stewardship theory and entrepreneurial orientation perspectives we contribute to the understanding of the concept of family enterprising. Using excerpts from a single case study we provide insight into how a third generation Australian family has evolved and transformed by embracing the notion of family enterprising, which, we suggest, places them in a strong position for sustainability across generations.

Molecular analysis of the myosin gene family in Arabidopsis thaliana

Myosin is believed to act as the molecular motor for many actin-based motility processes in eukaryotes. It is becoming apparent that a single species may possess multiple myosin isoforms, and at least seven distinct classes of myosin have been identified from studies of animals, fungi, and protozoans. The complexity of the myosin heavy-chain gene family in higher plants was investigated by isolating and characterizing myosin genomic and cDNA clones from Arabidopsis thaliana. Six myosin-like genes were identified from three polymerase chain reaction (PCR) products (PCR1, PCR11, PCR43) and three cDNA clones (ATM2, MYA2, MYA3). Sequence comparisons of the deduced head domains suggest that these myosins are members of two major classes. Analysis of the overall structure of the ATM2 and MYA2 myosins shows that they are similar to the previously-identified ATM1 and MYA1 myosins, respectively. The MYA3 appears to possess a novel tail domain, with five IQ repeats, a six-member imperfect repeat, and a segment of unique sequence. Northern blot analyses indicate that some of the Arabidopsis myosin genes are preferentially expressed in different plant organs. Combined with previous studies, these results show that the Arabidopsis genome contains at least eight myosin-like genes representing two distinct classes.

Copyright law in the United Arab Emirates in the digital age

This article gives an overview of copyright law in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and critically evaluates its operation in the digital era, providing suggestions for reform.

Governing depression in law students and the shaping of legal personae

Since a recent Australian study found that university law students experience higher rates of depression than medical students and legal professionals (Kelk et al. 2009), the mental health of law students has increasingly become a target of government. To date, however, there has been no attempt to analyse these practices as an activity of government in advanced liberal societies. This paper addresses this imbalance by providing an initial analytics of the government of depression in law schools. It demonstrates how students are responsibilised to manage the risks and uncertainties of legal education by constructing resilient forms of personal and professional personae. It highlights that, in order to avoid depression, students are encouraged to shape not just their minds and bodies according to psychological and biomedical discourses, but are also to govern their ethical dispositions and become virtuous persons. This paper also argues that these forms of government are tied to advanced liberal forms of rule, as they position the law student as the locus of responsibility for depression, imply that depression is caused by an individual failing, and entrench students within responsibilising and entrepreneurial forms of subjectivity.

Contracting bubbles in Hele-Shaw cells with a power-law fluid

The problem of bubble contraction in a Hele-Shaw cell is studied for the case in which the surrounding fluid is of power-law type. A small perturbation of the radially symmetric problem is first considered, focussing on the behaviour just before the bubble vanishes, it being found that for shear-thinning fluids the radially symmetric solution is stable, while for shear-thickening fluids the aspect ratio of the bubble boundary increases. The borderline (Newtonian) case considered previously is neutrally stable, the bubble boundary becoming elliptic in shape with the eccentricity of the ellipse depending on the initial data. Further light is shed on the bubble contraction problem by considering a long thin Hele-Shaw cell: for early times the leading-order behaviour is one-dimensional in this limit; however, as the bubble contracts its evolution is ultimately determined by the solution of a Wiener-Hopf problem, the transition between the long-thin limit and the extinction limit in which the bubble vanishes being described by what is in effect a similarity solution of the second kind. This same solution describes the generic (slit-like) extinction behaviour for shear-thickening fluids, the interface profiles that generalise the ellipses that characterise the Newtonian case being constructed by the Wiener-Hopf calculation.

Charity law reforms : overview of progress since 2001

In the UK, Singapore, Canada, New Zealand and Australia, as in many other jurisdictions, charity law is rooted in the common law and anchored on the Statute of Charitable Uses 1601. The Pemsel classification of charitable purposes was uniformly accepted, and together with a shared and growing pool of judicial precedents, aided by the ‘spirit and intendment’ rule, has subsequently allowed the law to develop along much the same lines. In recent years, all the above jurisdictions have embarked on law reform processes designed to strengthen regulatory processes and to statutorily define and encode common law concepts. The reform outcomes are now to be found in a batch of national charity statutes which reflect interesting differences in the extent to which their respective governments have been prepared to balance the modernising of charitable purposes and other common law concepts alongside the customary concern to tighten the regulatory framework.

Modernising charity : steps to an alternative architecture for common law charity jurisprudence

This chapter addresses the question, how can the common law concept of charity law be modernised? There are difficulties with the present jurisprudential conception. The focus of the chapter is not on those difficulties, however, but rather on the development of an alternative architecture for common law jurisprudence. The conclusion to which the chapter comes is that charity law can be modernised by a series of steps to include all civil society organisations. It is possible if the ‘technical’ definition of charitable purpose is abandoned in favour of a contemporary, not technical concept of charitiable purpose. This conclusion is reached by proposing a framework, developed from the common law concept of charities, that reconciles into a cohesive jurisprudential architecture all of the laws applying to civil society organisations, not just charities. In this section, first the argument is contextualised in an idea of society and located in a gap in legal theory. An analogy is then offered to introduce the problems in the legal theory applying, not just to charities, but more broadly to civil society organisations. The substantive challenge of mapping an alternative jurisprudence is then taken in steps. The final substantive section conceptualises the changes inherent in a move beyond charities to a jurisprudence centred on civil society organisations and how this would bring legal theory into line with sectoral analysis in other disciplines.

Legislative proposals to codify directors' liability for insolvent trading in Hong Kong : a 10-year journey

Hong Kong is a modern global city with a reputation for well-regulated financial markets, but for years, the government had been trying to enact laws on corporate rescue procedures with relatively little success. It is under the pretext of the Global Financial Crisis, the threat of a future economic meltdown gave the Hong Kong government the impetus to revisit this issue. This third attempt to codify statutory obligations on directors’ liability for insolvent trading has been criticised for either setting the standards too high or low for directors trading whilst insolvent. There is also some reservation given the beliefs and values of directors in Chinese family-owned and controlled companies. These companies would most likely trade out the difficult times. Nevertheless, this does not negate from the fact that the enactment of corporate rescue procedures in Hong Kong in 2010 is a momentous achievement for the Hong Kong government.

Law autonomy and advance directives

The principle of autonomy underpins legal regulation of advance directives that refuse life-sustaining medical treatment. The primacy of autonomy in this domain is recognised expressly in the case law, through judicial pronouncement, and implicitly in most Australian jurisdictions, through enactment into statute of the right to make an advance directive. This article seeks to justify autonomy as an appropriate principle for regulating advance directives and relies on three arguments: the necessity of autonomy in a liberal democracy; the primacy of autonomy in medical ethics discourse; and the uncontested importance of autonomy in the law on contemporaneous refusal of medical treatment. This article also responds to key criticisms that autonomy is not an appropriate organising principle to underpin legal regulation of advance directives.

Adapting to the work-life interface : the influence of individual differences, work and family on well-being, mental health and work engagement

Bronfenbrenner.s Bioecological Model, expressed as the developmental equation, D f PPCT, is the theoretical framework for two studies that bring together diverse strands of psychology to study the work-life interface of working adults. Occupational and organizational psychology is focused on the demands and resources of work and family, without emphasising the individual in detail. Health and personality psychology examine the individual but without emphasis on the individual.s work and family roles. The current research used Bronfenbrenner.s theoretical framework to combine individual differences, work and family to understand how these factors influence the working adult.s psychological functioning. Competent development has been defined as high well-being (measured as life satisfaction and psychological well-being) and high work engagement (as work vigour, work dedication and absorption in work) and as the absence of mental illness (as depression, anxiety and stress) and the absence of burnout (as emotional exhaustion, cynicism and professional efficacy). Study 1 and 2 were linked, with Study 1 as a cross-sectional survey and Study 2, a prospective panel study that followed on from the data used in Study1. Participants were recruited from a university and from a large public hospital to take part in a 3-wave, online study where they completed identical surveys at 3-4 month intervals (N = 470 at Time 1 and N = 198 at Time 3). In Study 1, hierarchical multiple regressions were used to assess the effects of individual differences (Block 1, e.g. dispositional optimism, coping self-efficacy, perceived control of time, humour), work and family variables (Block 2, e.g. affective commitment, skill discretion, work hours, children, marital status, family demands) and the work-life interface (Block 3, e.g. direction and quality of spillover between roles, work-life balance) on the outcomes. There were a mosaic of predictors of the outcomes with a group of seven that were the most frequent significant predictors and which represented the individual (dispositional optimism and coping self-efficacy), the workplace (skill discretion, affective commitment and job autonomy) and the work-life interface (negative work-to-family spillover and negative family-to-work spillover). Interestingly, gender and working hours were not important predictors. The effects of job social support, generally and for work-life issues, perceived control of time and egalitarian gender roles on the outcomes were mediated by negative work-to-family spillover, particularly for emotional exhaustion. Further, the effect of negative spillover on depression, anxiety and work engagement was moderated by the individual.s personal and workplace resources. Study 2 modelled the longitudinal relationships between the group of the seven most frequent predictors and the outcomes. Using a set of non-nested models, the relative influences of concurrent functioning, stability and change over time were assessed. The modelling began with models at Time 1, which formed the basis for confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) to establish the underlying relationships between the variables and calculate the composite variables for the longitudinal models. The CFAs were well fitting with few modifications to ensure good fit. However, using burnout and work engagement together required additional analyses to resolve poor fit, with one factor (representing a continuum from burnout to work engagement) being the only acceptable solution. Five different longitudinal models were investigated as the Well-Being, Mental Distress, Well-Being-Mental Health, Work Engagement and Integrated models using differing combinations of the outcomes. The best fitting model for each was a reciprocal model that was trimmed of trivial paths. The strongest paths were the synchronous correlations and the paths within variables over time. The reciprocal paths were more variable with weak to mild effects. There was evidence of gain and loss spirals between the variables over time, with a slight net gain in resources that may provide the mechanism for the accumulation of psychological advantage over a lifetime. The longitudinal models also showed that there are leverage points at which personal, psychological and managerial interventions can be targeted to bolster the individual and provide supportive workplace conditions that also minimise negative spillover. Bronfenbrenner.s developmental equation has been a useful framework for the current research, showing the importance of the person as central to the individual.s experience of the work-life interface. By taking control of their own life, the individual can craft a life path that is most suited to their own needs. Competent developmental outcomes were most likely where the person was optimistic and had high self-efficacy, worked in a job that they were attached to and which allowed them to use their talents and without too much negative spillover between their work and family domains. In this way, individuals had greater well-being, better mental health and greater work engagement at any one time and across time.