The influence of fleet safety climate on occupational driver behaviours

The concepts of traffic safety culture and climate hold considerable impact on road safety outcomes. Data sourced from four Australian organisations revealed a five factor structure that was consistent with previous research, which were: management commitment; work demands; relationships; appropriateness of rules; and communication. Correlation and regression analyses were conducted to identify which aspects of fleet safety climate were related to driver behaviours. The findings suggest that organisations may be able to reduce the likelihood of employees engaging in unsafe driving behaviours as a result of fatigue or distractions through increasing aspects of fleet safety climate, including: management commitment; level of trust; safety communication; appropriateness of work demands; and appropriateness of safety policies and procedures. To assist practitioners in enhancing fleet safety climate and managing occupational road risks, recommendations are made based on these findings, such as fostering a supportive environment of mutual responsibility.

From styling to strategy : transforming an Australian manufacturing SME's perception of design

This thesis explores the shift in perception of design from a styling and product-focused tool, towards a holistic strategic approach within a small to medium sized manufacturing company. This research is significant because it demonstrates how design tools and approaches can be used within business to translate theory into operational, strategic and cultural outcomes. The outcomes of this research will encourage other businesses to take on similar design-led projects with the ultimate goal of employing design as a means to create a sustainable competitive advantage.

The ‘Good Eater’ : modelling maternal perception of food fussiness in Australian toddlers – the NOURISH and SAIDI cohorts

Purpose Food refusal is part of normal toddler development due to an innate ability to self-regulate energy intake and the onset of neophobia. For parents, this ‘fussy’ stage causes great concern, prompting use of coercive feeding practices which ignore a child’s own hunger and satiety cues, promoting overeating and overweight. This analysis defines characteristics of the ‘good eater’ using latent variable structural equation modelling and the relationship with maternal perception of her child as a fussy eater. Methods Mothers in the control group of the NOURISH and South Australian Infants Dietary Intake studies (n=332) completed a self-administered questionnaire - when child was age 12-16 months - describing refusal of familiar and unfamiliar foods and maternal perception as fussy/not fussy. Weight-for-age z-score (WAZ) was derived from weight measured by study staff. Questionnaire items and WAZ were combined in AMOS to represent the latent variable the ‘good eater’. Results/findings Mean age(sd) of children was 13.8(1.3) months, mean WAZ(sd), .58(.86) and 49% were male. The ‘good eater’ was represented by higher WAZ, a child that hardly ever refuses food, hardly ever refuses familiar food, and willing to eat unfamiliar foods (x2/df=2.80, GFI=.98, RMSEA=.07(.03-.12), CFI=.96). The ‘good eater’ was inversely associated with maternal perception of her child as a fussy eater (β=-.64, p<.05). Conclusions Toddlers displaying characteristics of a ‘good eater’ are not perceived as fussy, but these characteristics, especially higher WAZ, may be undesirable in the context of obesity prevention. Clinicians can promote food refusal as normal and even desirable in healthy young children.

Resilience of water supply systems in meeting the challenges posed by climate change and population growth

This research project provides a scientifically robust approach for assessing the resilience of water supply systems, which are critical infrastructure, to impacts of climate change and population growth. An approach for the identification of trigger points that allows timely and appropriate management actions to be taken to avoid catastrophic system failure is an important outcome of this project. In the current absence of a formal method to evaluate the resilience of a water supply system, the approach developed in this study was based on the characterisation of resilience of a water supply system to a range of surrogate measures. Accordingly, a set of indicators are proposed to evaluate system behaviour and logistic regression analysis was used to assess system behaviour under predicted rainfall, storage and demand conditions.

Work and family : the perception of balance among female teachers in northern Malaysia

Women’s participation in paid employment has become a common scenario even in non-western developing countries. For example in Malaysia, the trend is growing although the traditional gender role remains strong in Malaysian society. Even though working, women are still expected to assume major responsibilities at home. Thus, as opposed to men, women in this society face the challenge to satisfactorily balance work and family. This study was carried out to explore how Malaysian women perceive the meaning of a balanced work-family life. Sampling women teachers, the interview findings revealed that work-family balance was mainly perceived in terms of an individual’s ‘ability to fulfill role obligation’ appropriately in both the work and family domains. A few participants also viewed balance in the context of role satisfaction and role interference. Overall, the results support the assumption in the literature that perceptions of work-family experience are not universal, rather, the construct of work-family balance is culture-specific.

Mainstreaming biophilic urbanism in Australian cities : a response to climate change, resource shortages and population pressures

This thesis explored how biophilic urbanism, or the integration of natural features into increasingly dense urban environments, has become mainstream in cities around the world. Fourteen factors uncovered through a case study investigation provide insight for decision makers and change agents in Australia to use biophilic urbanism to address impacts of population growth, climate change and resource shortages. The thesis uses an inductive research approach to explore how barriers to the integration of multi-functional vegetated and water design elements into the built environment, such that these become and standard inclusions in urban design and development processes.

Are we there yet? Early education responding to the challenges of climate disruption and sustainability

We are now in ‘The Critical Decade’ (Steffen & Hughes, 2013) when the world’s peoples must make strong choices if we are to avert the worst impacts of climate disruption. Yet, addressing climate disruption, challenging though this is, is not humanity’s biggest problem – rather, climate disruption is a symptom of unsustainable development models that depend on continuous economic growth that shape how we live.

Children's advertising literacy for advergames : perception of the game as advertising

This study examined whether children recognized advergames as a type of advertising and the efficacy of an advertising literacy program. Results indicated that without the advertising literacy education, about three-quarters of the children did not recognize advergames as a type of advertising. However, those with advertising literacy education showed a significantly enhanced understanding. Also, a series of mediation tests showed that recognition of advertising was an indirect-only mediator between the advertising literacy and skeptical attitudes toward advertising. Only those who viewed the advergame as a type of advertising demonstrated more skeptical attitudes toward it.

From selfies to climate change : the #G20 debate on Twitter

The G20 Summit that brought many of the world’s most important leaders to Brisbane last weekend was also a major Twitter event. Australian and international users expressed their concerns over the appearance of Russian warships off the Queensland coast, shared selfies from German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s impromptu visit to Brisbane’s Caxton St nightlife hub and called for action on issues ranging from Ebola to climate change...

Emerging Planning Frameworks for Climate Adaptation

This chapter focuses on the more strategic activities that lead people in the regional community to decide how they want to respond to climate change. Such strategic activities include analysing, prioritising and deciding upon the best course of action. Planning for climate adaptation (usually seen to include the setting of visions and objectives, the determination of key strategies and the monitoring of broad outcomes) encompasses the strategic activities involved in the system of governance for climate adaptation. Planning occurs at all scales from global to the business, property, family and even individual scales. Applying a rapid appraisal technique, this chapter analyses the system of planning for climate adaptation as it relates to the achievement of adaptation outcomes within the Wet Tropics Cluster. It finds that some aspects of the system are healthier than others, and identifies several actions that regional NRM bodies may consider (either collectively or individually) to enhance adaptation outcomes by improving the planning system within the cluster.

Age-related changes in perception of movement in driving scenes

Purpose Age-related changes in motion sensitivity have been found to relate to reductions in various indices of driving performance and safety. The aim of this study was to investigate the basis of this relationship in terms of determining which aspects of motion perception are most relevant to driving. Methods Participants included 61 regular drivers (age range 22–87 years). Visual performance was measured binocularly. Measures included visual acuity, contrast sensitivity and motion sensitivity assessed using four different approaches: (1) threshold minimum drift rate for a drifting Gabor patch, (2) Dmin from a random dot display, (3) threshold coherence from a random dot display, and (4) threshold drift rate for a second-order (contrast modulated) sinusoidal grating. Participants then completed the Hazard Perception Test (HPT) in which they were required to identify moving hazards in videos of real driving scenes, and also a Direction of Heading task (DOH) in which they identified deviations from normal lane keeping in brief videos of driving filmed from the interior of a vehicle. Results In bivariate correlation analyses, all motion sensitivity measures significantly declined with age. Motion coherence thresholds, and minimum drift rate threshold for the first-order stimulus (Gabor patch) both significantly predicted HPT performance even after controlling for age, visual acuity and contrast sensitivity. Bootstrap mediation analysis showed that individual differences in DOH accuracy partly explained these relationships, where those individuals with poorer motion sensitivity on the coherence and Gabor tests showed decreased ability to perceive deviations in motion in the driving videos, which related in turn to their ability to detect the moving hazards. Conclusions The ability to detect subtle movements in the driving environment (as determined by the DOH task) may be an important contributor to effective hazard perception, and is associated with age, and an individuals' performance on tests of motion sensitivity. The locus of the processing deficits appears to lie in first-order, rather than second-order motion pathways.

Making climate change manageable : how accounting constructs new power-knowledge regimes

This paper examines the modern power of accounting to permeate new spheres and create new objects by examining how climate change becomes a new category for accounting’s attention. It outlines the socio-political problem space where accounting and climate change connect by tracing the emergence of the UK’s Climate Change Act (2008) to a specifically modern calculating attitude described here as ‘managing by the numbers’. It suggests the intersection of accounting and climate change was made possible by accounting’s role in tying disciplinary subjectivities and objectivities together whilst operating simultaneously at the level of individuals, organisations and government. Such that when faced with new unknowns we revert to previous ways of managing we have come to know and experienced throughout our formative years in schools, hospitals, firms and government departments. In this way, accounting’s emergence in the domain of managing climate change implies a transformation that cannot be explained merely as a practical response to a global warming problem, but rather as an example of a new power-knowledge regime that makes possible the management and control of a new organisational phenomenon called climate change.

Managing climate change ‘by the numbers’ in a UK energy company

This paper examines how ideas and practices of accounting come together in turning the abstract concept of climate change into a new non-financial performance measure in a large energy company in the UK. It develops the notion of ‘governmental management’ to explain how the firm’s carbon dioxide emissions were transformed into a new organisational object that could be made quantifiable, measureable and ultimately manageable because of the modern power of accounting in tying disciplinary subjectivities and objectivities together whilst operating simultaneously at the level of individual and the organisation. Examining these interrelations highlights the constitutive nature of accounting in creating not just new categories for accounting’s attention, but in turn new organisational knowledge and knowledge experts in the making up accounting for climate change. Significantly, it appears these new knowledge experts are no longer accountants: which may help explain accounting’s evolution into evermore spheres of influence as we increasingly choose to manage our world ‘by the numbers’.

Toward a model for forming psychological safety climate in construction project management

The nature of construction projects and their delivery exposes participants to accidents and dangers. Safety climate serves as a frame of reference for employees to make sense of safety measures in the workplace and adapt their behaviors. Though safety climate research abounds, fewer efforts are made to investigate the formation of a safety climate. An effort to explore forming psychological safety climate, an operationalization of safety climate at the individual level, is an appropriate starting point. Taking the view that projects are social processes, this paper develops a conceptual framework of forming the psychological safety climate, and provides a preliminary validation. The model suggests that management can create the desired psychological safety climate by efforts from structural, perceptual, interactive, and cultural perspectives. Future empirical research can be built on the model to provide a more comprehensive and coherent picture of the determinants of safety climate.