The Australian nonprofit sector legal and accounting almanac 2011

Summaries of legal cases, legislation and developments in law and accounting relevant to nonprofit organisations and charity law during 2011; including articles on special issues such as accounting standards and the chart of accounts; law reform (e.g. the new national regulator, the Australian Charities and Not-for-profits Commission); and taxation.

Assessing financial reporting comparability across institutional settings : the case of pension accounting

The drive for comparability of financial information is to enable users to distinguish similarities and differences in economic activities for an entity over time and between entities so that their resource allocation decisions are facilitated. With the increased globalisation of economic activities, the enhanced international comparability of financial statements is often used as an argument to advance the convergence of local accounting standards to international financial reporting standards (IFRS). Differences in the underlying economic substance of transactions between jurisdictions plus accounting standards allowing alternative treatments may render this expectation of increased comparability unrealistic. Motivated by observations that, as a construct, comparability is under-researched and not well understood, we develop a comparability framework that distinguishes between four types of comparability. In applying this comparability framework to pension accounting in the Australian and USA contexts, we highlight a dilemma: while regulators seek to increase the likelihood that similar events are accounted for similarly, an unintended consequence may be that preparers are forced to apply similar accounting treatment to events that are, in substance, different.

Give and take in major gift relationships

This article investigates the complex phenomenon of major gift giving to charitable institutions. Drawing on empirical evidence from interviews with 16 Australian major donors (who gave a single gift of at least AU$10,000 in 2008 or 2009), we seek to better understand donor expectations and (dis)satisfaction. Given growing need for social services, and the competition among nonprofit organisations (NPOs) to secure sustainable funding, this research is particularly timely. Currently, little is known about major donors’ expectations, wants and needs. Equity theory, with the concept of reciprocity at its core, was found to provide a useful framework for understanding these phenomena. A model of equitable major gift relationships was developed from the data, which portrays balanced relationships and identifies potential areas of dissatisfaction for major donors. We conclude by offering suggestions for NPOs seeking to understand the complexities of major gift relationships, with practical implications for meeting donors’ needs.

Third-order theory of spectacle lenses applied to correction of peripheral refractive errors

Purpose: To demonstrate that relatively simple third-order theory can provide a framework which shows how peripheral refraction can be manipulated by altering the forms of spectacle lenses. Method: Third-order equations were used to yield lens forms that correct peripheral power errors, either for the lenses alone or in combination with typical peripheral refractions of myopic eyes. These results were compared with those of finite ray-tracing. Results: The approximate forms of spherical and conicoidal lenses provided by third-order theory were flatter over a moderate myopic range than the forms obtained by rigorous raytracing. Lenses designed to correct peripheral refractive errors produced large errors when used with foveal vision and a rotating eye. Correcting astigmatism tended to give large errors in mean oblique error and vice versa. When only spherical lens forms are used, correction of the relative hypermetropic peripheral refractions of myopic eyes which are observed experimentally, or the provision of relative myopic peripheral refractions in such eyes, seems impossible in the majority of cases. Conclusion: The third-order spectacle lens design approach can readily be used to show trends in peripheral refraction.

Infrastructure transitions toward sustainability : a complex adaptive systems perspective

To ensure infrastructure assets are procured and maintained by government on behalf of citizens, appropriate policy and institutional architecture is needed, particularly if a fundamental shift to more sustainable infrastructure is the goal. The shift in recent years from competitive and resource-intensive procurement to more collaborative and sustainable approaches to infrastructure governance is considered a major transition in infrastructure procurement systems. In order to better understand this transition in infrastructure procurement arrangements, the concept of emergence from Complex Adaptive Systems (CAS) theory is offered as a key construct. Emergence holds that micro interactions can result in emergent macro order. Applying the concept of emergence to infrastructure procurement, this research examines how interaction of agents in individual projects can result in different industry structural characteristics. The paper concludes that CAS theory, and particularly the concept of ‘emergence’, provides a useful construct to understand infrastructure procurement dynamics and progress towards sustainability.

Speeding by young novice drivers : what can personal characteristics and psychosocial theory add to our understanding?

Purpose: Young novice drivers continue to be overrepresented in fatalities and injuries arising from crashes even with the introduction of countermeasures such as graduated driver licensing (GDL). Enhancing countermeasures requires a better understanding of the variables influencing risky driving. One of the most common risky behaviours performed by drivers of all ages is speeding, which is particularly risky for young novice drivers who, due to their driving inexperience, have difficulty in identifying and responding appropriately to road hazards. Psychosocial theory can improve our understanding of contributors to speeding, thereby informing countermeasure development and evaluation. This paper reports an application of Akers’ social learning theory (SLT), augmented by Gerrard and Gibbons’ prototype/willingness model (PWM), in addition to personal characteristics of age, gender, car ownership, and psychological traits/states of anxiety, depression, sensation seeking propensity and reward sensitivity, to examine the influences on self-reported speeding of young novice drivers with a Provisional (intermediate) licence in Queensland, Australia. Method: Young drivers (n = 378) recruited in 2010 for longitudinal research completed two surveys containing the Behaviour of Young Novice Drivers Scale, and reported their attitudes and behaviours as pre-Licence/Learner (Survey 1) and Provisional (Survey 2) drivers and their sociodemographic characteristics. Results: An Akers’ measurement model was created. Hierarchical multiple regressions revealed that (1) personal characteristics (PC) explained 20.3%; (2) the combination of PC and SLT explained 41.1%; and (3) the combination of PC, SLT and PWM explained 53.7% of variance in self-reported speeding. Whilst there appeared to be considerable shared variance, the significant predictors in the final model included gender, car ownership, reward sensitivity, depression, personal attitudes, and Learner speeding. Conclusions: These results highlight the capacity for psychosocial theory to improve our understanding of speeding by young novice drivers, revealing relationships between previous behaviour, attitudes, psychosocial characteristics and speeding. The findings suggest multi-faceted countermeasures should target the risky behaviour of Learners, and Learner supervisors should be encouraged to monitor their Learners’ driving speed. Novice drivers should be discouraged from developing risky attitudes towards speeding.

Collaborative academic/practitioner research in project management : theory and models

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to provide of a review of the theory and models underlying project management (PM) research degrees that encourage reflective learning. Design/methodology/approach – Review of the literature and reflection on the practice of being actively involved in conducting and supervising academic research and disseminating academic output. The paper argues the case for the potential usefulness of reflective academic research to PM practitioners. It also highlights theoretical drivers of and barriers to reflective academic research by PM practitioners. Findings – A reflective learning approach to research can drive practical results though it requires a great deal of commitment and support by both academic and industry partners. Practical implications – This paper suggests how PM practitioners can engage in academic research that has practical outcomes and how to be more effective at disseminating these research outcomes. Originality/value – Advanced academic degrees, in particular those completed by PM practitioners, can validate a valuable source of innovative ideas and approaches that should be more quickly absorbed into the PM profession’s sources of knowledge. The value of this paper is to critically review and facilitate a reduced adaptation time for implementation of useful reflective academic research to industry.

Juggling competing public values : resolving conflicting agendas in social procurement in Queensland

Organisations within the not-for-profit sector provide services to individuals and groups government and for-profit organisations cannot or will not consider. This response by the not-for-profit sector to market failure and government failure is a well understood contribution to society by the nonprofit sector. Over time, this response has resulted in the development of a vibrant and rich agglomeration of services and programs that operate under a myriad of philosophical stances, service orientations, client groupings and operational capacities. In Australia, these organisations and services provide social support and service assistance to many people in the community; often targeting their assistance to clients facing the most difficult of clients with complex problems. Initially, in undertaking this role, the not-for-profit sector received limited sponsorship from government, relying on primarily on public donations to fund the delivery of services. (Lyons 2001). Over time governments assumed greater responsibility in the form of service grants to particular groups: ‘the worthy poor’. More recently, government has engaged in widespread procurement of services from the not-for-profit sector, which specify the nature of the outcomes to be achieved and, to a degree, the way in which the services will be provided. A consequence of this growing shift to a more marketised model of service contracting, often offered-up under the label of enhanced collaborative practice, has been increased competitiveness between agencies that had previously worked well together (Keast and Brown, 2006). One of the challenges which emerge from the procurement of services by government from third sector organisations is that public values such as effectiveness, efficiency, transparency and professionalism can be neglected (Jørgensen and Bozeman 2002), although this is not always the case (Brown, Furneaux and Gudmundsson 2012). While some approaches to the examination of social procurement - the intentional purchasing of social outcomes (Furneaux and Barraket 2011) - assumes that public values are lost in social procurement arrangements (Bozeman 2002; Jørgensen and Bozeman 2002), alternative approach suggest such inevitability is not the case. Instead, social procurement is seen to involve a set of tensions (Brown, Potoski and Slyke 2006) or a set of trade offs (Charles et al. 2007), which must be managed, and through such management, public values can be potentially safeguarded (Bruin and Dicke 2006). The potential trade-offs of public values in social procurement is an area in need of further research, and one which carries both theoretical and practical significance. Additionally, the juxtaposition of policies – horizontal integration and vertical efficiency – results in a complex, crowded and contested policy and practice environment (Keast et al., 2007),, with the potential for set of unintentional consequences arising from these arrangements. Further the involvement of for-profit, non-profit, and hybrid organisations such as social enterprises, adds further complexity in the number of different organisational forms engaged in service delivery on behalf of government. To address this issue, this paper uses information gleaned from a state-wide survey of not-for-profit organisations in Queensland, Australia which included within its focus organisational size, operational scope, funding arrangements and governance/management approaches. Supplementing this information is qualitative data derived from 17 focus groups and 120 interviews conducted over ten years of study of this sector. The findings contribute to greater understanding of the practice and theory of the future provision of social services.

Transition to day care for older people in Taiwan : a grounded theory study

Adult day care centres provide a means whereby frail or disabled older people can remain living at home particularly when their family care-givers engage in waged work. In Taiwan, adult day care services appear to meet the cultural needs of both older people and their families for whom filial care is vital. Little research attention has been paid to the use of day care services in Taiwan, the uptake rate of which is low. This grounded theory study explored the ways in which older people and family care-givers construct meanings around the use of day care services in Taiwan. Forty-four semi-structured interviews were undertaken with older people, care-givers and day care centre managers. The findings from grounded theory data analysis bring focus to the assumptions and structures that underpin the process of transition to day care services. A key feature of this process is the reconstruction of personal identity as both the older people and family care-givers work to make sense of the relationship between the self and a changing social structure. Reconstructing identity in a shifting world is the core category of the study and reflects a process of reframing whereby older people came to new definitions of social responsibility and independence within the context of the day care centre. Similarly, the family care-givers actively reformulated the concept of filial piety as they interacted with and interpreted the changes in economic and social conditions in Taiwan.

An investigation of market segmentation theory and its impact on effective fundraising

This paper presents the findings of an indepth study into the effects and success of marketing segmentation, target marketing and fundraising. Organisations are constantly seeking new ways and more efficient means to raise funds so that they can fulfill their objectives. These organisations review and evaluate their resources to gain competitive advantage and increased fundraising success...

Homo- and heteronuclear meso,meso-(E)-Ethene-1,2-diyl-Linked Diporphyrins : preparation, X-ray crystal structure, electronic absorption and emission spectra and density functional theory calculations

Homo-and heteronuclear meso,meso-(E)-ethene-1,2-diyl-linked diporphyrins have been prepared by the Suzuki coupling of porphyrinylboronates and iodovinylporphyrins. Combinations comprising 5,10,15-triphenylporphyrin (TriPP) on both ends of the ethene-1,2-diyl bridge M 210 (M 2=H 2/Ni, Ni 2, Ni/Zn, H 4, H 2Zn, Zn 2) and 5,15-bis(3,5-di-tert-butylphenyl)porphyrinato-nickel(II) on one end and H 2, Ni, and ZnTriPP on the other (M 211), enable the first studies of this class of compounds possessing intrinsic polarity. The compounds were characterized by electronic absorption and steady state emission spectra, 1H NMR spectra, and for the Ni 2 bis(TriPP) complex Ni 210, single crystal X-ray structure determination. The crystal structure shows ruffled distortions of the porphyrin rings, typical of Ni II porphyrins, and the (E)-C 2H 2 bridge makes a dihedral angle of 50° with the mean planes of the macrocycles. The result is a stepped parallel arrangement of the porphyrin rings. The dihedral angles in the solid state reflect the interplay of steric and electronic effects of the bridge on interporphyrin communication. The emission spectra in particular, suggest energy transfer across the bridge is fast in conformations in which the bridge is nearly coplanar with the rings. Comparisons of the fluorescence behaviour of H 410 and H 2Ni10 show strong quenching of the free base fluorescence when the complex is excited at the lower energy component of the Soret band, a feature associated in the literature with more planar conformations. TDDFT calculations on the gas-phase optimized geometry of Ni 210 reproduce the features of the experimental electronic absorption spectrum within 0.1 eV. © 2012 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim.

From 'Neighbours' to 'Packed to the Rafters': accounting for longevity in the evolution of Aussie soaps

If there is one television programming staple for which Australian television drama is known internationally, it is the long-running television soap, with Neighbours (originally produced by Grundy in 1985) lauded as 'the most outstanding example of Australian series export' (Cunningham and Jacka, 1996). Twenty-five years on, this program still airs on domestic and international TV schedules five days a week, despite waning popularity with local Australian audiences. Considering past interest in the success and longevity of this soap, it is apposite to look again at the continuing progress of Neighbours foremost as a global brand. In comparison, Packed to the Rafters is treated here as a contemporary version of familiar Aussie themes related to everyday middle-class suburbia, populated with blue skies and feel-good characters expressing wholesome family values, but with a stylistic innovation defined here as domestic realism. As part of the production ecology of the late 2000s, Packed to the Rafters demonstrates the considerable role for local drama productions as loss leaders and flagship programming for commercial free-to-air networks up against an increasingly difficult domestic market.

Accounting for calibration uncertainty in phylogenetic estimation of evolutionary divergence times

The estimation of phylogenetic divergence times from sequence data is an important component of many molecular evolutionary studies. There is now a general appreciation that the procedure of divergence dating is considerably more complex than that initially described in the 1960s by Zuckerkandl and Pauling (1962, 1965). In particular, there has been much critical attention toward the assumption of a global molecular clock, resulting in the development of increasingly sophisticated techniques for inferring divergence times from sequence data. In response to the documentation of widespread departures from clocklike behavior, a variety of local- and relaxed-clock methods have been proposed and implemented. Local-clock methods permit different molecular clocks in different parts of the phylogenetic tree, thereby retaining the advantages of the classical molecular clock while casting off the restrictive assumption of a single, global rate of substitution (Rambaut and Bromham 1998; Yoder and Yang 2000).

Perceiving and pursuing novelty : a grounded theory of adolescent creativity

Creativity plays an increasingly important role in our personal, social, educational, and community lives. For adolescents, creativity can enable self-expression, be a means of pushing boundaries, and assist learning, achievement, and completion of everyday tasks. Moreover, adolescents who demonstrate creativity can potentially enhance their capacity to face unknown future challenges, address mounting social and ecological issues in our global society, and improve their career opportunities and contribution to the economy. For these reasons, creativity is an essential capacity for young people in their present and future, and is highlighted as a priority in current educational policy nationally and internationally. Despite growing recognition of creativity’s importance and attention to creativity in research, the creative experience from the perspectives of the creators themselves and the creativity of adolescents are neglected fields of study. Hence, this research investigated adolescents’ self-reported experiences of creativity to improve understandings of their creative processes and manifestations, and how these can be supported or inhibited. Although some aspects of creativity have been extensively researched, there were no comprehensive, multidisciplinary theoretical frameworks of adolescent creativity to provide a foundation for this study. Therefore, a grounded theory methodology was adopted for the purpose of constructing a new theory to describe and explain adolescents’ creativity in a range of domains. The study’s constructivist-interpretivist perspective viewed the data and findings as interpretations of adolescents’ creative experiences, co-constructed by the participants and the researcher. The research was conducted in two academically selective high schools in Australia: one arts school, and one science, mathematics, and technology school. Twenty adolescent participants (10 from each school) were selected using theoretical sampling. Data were collected via focus groups, individual interviews, an online discussion forum, and email communications. Grounded theory methods informed a process of concurrent data collection and analysis; each iteration of analysis informed subsequent data collection. Findings portray creativity as it was perceived and experienced by participants, presented in a Grounded Theory of Adolescent Creativity. The Grounded Theory of Adolescent Creativity comprises a core category, Perceiving and Pursuing Novelty: Not the Norm, which linked all findings in the study. This core category explains how creativity involved adolescents perceiving stimuli and experiences differently, approaching tasks or life unconventionally, and pursuing novel ideas to create outcomes that are not the norm when compared with outcomes by peers. Elaboration of the core category is provided by the major categories of findings. That is, adolescent creativity entailed utilising a network of Sub-Processes of Creativity, using strategies for Managing Constraints and Challenges, and drawing on different Approaches to Creativity – adaptation, transfer, synthesis, and genesis – to apply the sub-processes and produce creative outcomes. Potentially, there were Effects of Creativity on Creators and Audiences, depending on the adolescent and the task. Three Types of Creativity were identified as the manifestations of the creative process: creative personal expression, creative boundary pushing, and creative task achievement. Interactions among adolescents’ dispositions and environments were influential in their creativity. Patterns and variations of these interactions revealed a framework of four Contexts for Creativity that offered different levels of support for creativity: high creative disposition–supportive environment; high creative disposition–inhibiting environment; low creative disposition–supportive environment; and low creative disposition–inhibiting environment. These contexts represent dimensional ranges of how dispositions and environments supported or inhibited creativity, and reveal that the optimal context for creativity differed depending on the adolescent, task, domain, and environment. This study makes four main contributions, which have methodological and theoretical implications for researchers, as well as practical implications for adolescents, parents, teachers, policy and curriculum developers, and other interested stakeholders who aim to foster the creativity of adolescents. First, this study contributes methodologically through its constructivist-interpretivist grounded theory methodology combining the grounded theory approaches of Corbin and Strauss (2008) and Charmaz (2006). Innovative data collection was also demonstrated through integration of data from online and face-to-face interactions with adolescents, within the grounded theory design. These methodological contributions have broad applicability to researchers examining complex constructs and processes, and with populations who integrate multimedia as a natural form of communication. Second, applicable to creativity in diverse domains, the Grounded Theory of Adolescent Creativity supports a hybrid view of creativity as both domain-general and domain-specific. A third major contribution was identification of a new form of creativity, educational creativity (ed-c), which categorises creativity for learning or achievement within the constraints of formal educational contexts. These theoretical contributions inform further research about creativity in different domains or multidisciplinary areas, and with populations engaged in formal education. However, the key contribution of this research is that it presents an original Theory and Model of Adolescent Creativity to explain the complex, multifaceted phenomenon of adolescents’ creative experiences.

Collaborative organisational structures : implications for the accounting profession

The IT systems drive the financial reporting processes in modern business environments. The result is an integrative system of initialing, authorizing, recording, and processing of financial transactions. This IT-related change inextricably links to the overall financial reporting process, requiring a deeper level of understanding and commitment. Firm’s IT governance initiatives provide this commitment by enforcing controls to IT components to ensure compliance to overall financial reporting requirements. The IT governance institute (ITGI) and other authorities have developed a number of frameworks and guidelines (e.g., COBIT) to help management in managing IT-intensive processes.