Is the public sector ready to collaborate? Human resource implications of collaborative Arrangements

Relational governance arrangements across agencies and sectors have become prevalent as a means for government to become more responsive and effective in addressing complex, large scale or ‘wicked’ problems. The primary characteristic of such ‘collaborative’ arrangements is the utilisation of the joint capacities of multiple organisations to achieve collaborative advantage, which Huxham (1993) defines as the attainment of creative outcomes that are beyond the ability of single agencies to achieve. Attaining collaborative advantage requires organisations to develop collaborative capabilities that prepare organisations for collaborative practice (Huxham, 1993b). Further, collaborations require considerable investment of staff effort that could potentially be used beneficially elsewhere by both the government and non-government organisations involved in collaboration (Keast and Mandell, 2010). Collaborative arrangements to deliver services therefore requires a reconsideration of the way in which resources, including human resources, are conceptualised and deployed as well as changes to both the structure of public service agencies and the systems and processes by which they operate (Keast, forthcoming). A main aim of academic research and theorising has been to explore and define the requisite characteristics to achieve collaborative advantage. Such research has tended to focus on definitional, structural (Turrini, Cristofoli, Frosini, & Nasi, 2009) and organisational (Huxham, 1993) aspects and less on the roles government plays within cross-organisational or cross-sectoral arrangements. Ferlie and Steane (2002) note that there has been a general trend towards management led reforms of public agencies including the HRM practices utilised. Such trends have been significantly influenced by New Public Management (NPM) ideology with limited consideration to the implications for HRM practice in collaborative, rather than market contexts. Utilising case study data of a suite of collaborative efforts in Queensland, Australia, collected over a decade, this paper presents an examination of the network roles government agencies undertake. Implications for HRM in public sector agencies working within networked arrangements are drawn and implications for job design, recruitment, deployment and staff development are presented. The paper also makes theoretical advances in our understanding of Strategic Human Resource Management (SHRM) in network settings. While networks form part of the strategic armoury of government, networks operate to achieve collaborative advantage. SHRM with its focus on competitive advantage is argued to be appropriate in market situations, however is not an ideal conceptualisation in network situations. Commencing with an overview of literature on networks and network effectiveness, the paper presents the case studies and methodology; provides findings from the case studies in regard to the roles of government to achieve collaborative advantage and implications for HRM practice are presented. Implications for SHRM are considered.

Natural convection in a triangular enclosure due to non-uniform cooling on top

Natural convection in a triangular enclosure subject to non-uniformly cooling at the inclined surfaces and uniformly heating at the base is investigated numerically. The numerical simulations of the unsteady flows over a range of Rayleigh numbers and aspect ratios are carried out using Finite Volume Method. Since the upper surface is cooled and the bottom surface is heated, the air flow in the enclosure is potentially unstable to Rayleigh Benard instability. It is revealed that the transient flow development in the enclosure can be classified into three distinct stages; an early stage, a transitional stage and a steady stage. It is also found that the flow inside the enclosure strongly depends on the governing parameters, Rayleigh number and aspect ratio. The asymmetric behaviour of the flow about the geometric centre line is discussed in detailed. The heat transfer through the roof and the ceiling as a form of Nusselt number is also reported in this study.

Melanoma cell invasiveness is regulated by miR-211 suppression of the BRN2 transcription factor

To identify microRNAs potentially involved in melanomagenesis, we compared microRNA expression profiles between melanoma cell lines and cultured melanocytes. The most differentially expressed microRNA between the normal and tumor cell lines was miR-211. We focused on this pigment-cell-enriched miRNA as it is derived from the microphthalmia-associated transcription factor (MITF)-regulated gene, TRPM1 (melastatin). We find that miR-211 expression is greatly decreased in melanoma cells and melanoblasts compared to melanocytes. Bioinformatic analysis identified a large number of potential targets of miR-211, including POU3F2 (BRN2). Inhibition of miR-211 in normal melanocytes resulted in increased BRN2 protein, indicating that endogenous miR-211 represses BRN2 in differentiated cells. Over-expression of miR-211 in melanoma cell lines changed the invasive potential of the cells in vitro through directly targeting BRN2 translation. We propose a model for the apparent non-overlapping expression levels of BRN2 and MITF in melanoma, mediated by miR-211 expression.

The conceptual and operational compatibility of data breach notification and information privacy laws

Mandatory data breach notification laws are a novel and potentially important legal instrument regarding organisational protection of personal information. These laws require organisations that have suffered a data breach involving personal information to notify those persons that may be affected, and potentially government authorities, about the breach. The Australian Law Reform Commission (ALRC) has proposed the creation of a mandatory data breach notification scheme, implemented via amendments to the Privacy Act 1988 (Cth). However, the conceptual differences between data breach notification law and information privacy law are such that it is questionable whether a data breach notification scheme can be solely implemented via an information privacy law. Accordingly, this thesis by publications investigated, through six journal articles, the extent to which data breach notification law was conceptually and operationally compatible with information privacy law. The assessment of compatibility began with the identification of key issues related to data breach notification law. The first article, Stakeholder Perspectives Regarding the Mandatory Notification of Australian Data Breaches started this stage of the research which concluded in the second article, The Mandatory Notification of Data Breaches: Issues Arising for Australian and EU Legal Developments (‘Mandatory Notification‘). A key issue that emerged was whether data breach notification was itself an information privacy issue. This notion guided the remaining research and focused attention towards the next stage of research, an examination of the conceptual and operational foundations of both laws. The second article, Mandatory Notification and the third article, Encryption Safe Harbours and Data Breach Notification Laws did so from the perspective of data breach notification law. The fourth article, The Conceptual Basis of Personal Information in Australian Privacy Law and the fifth article, Privacy Invasive Geo-Mashups: Privacy 2.0 and the Limits of First Generation Information Privacy Laws did so for information privacy law. The final article, Contextualizing the Tensions and Weaknesses of Information Privacy and Data Breach Notification Laws synthesised previous research findings within the framework of contextualisation, principally developed by Nissenbaum. The examination of conceptual and operational foundations revealed tensions between both laws and shared weaknesses within both laws. First, the distinction between sectoral and comprehensive information privacy legal regimes was important as it shaped the development of US data breach notification laws and their subsequent implementable scope in other jurisdictions. Second, the sectoral versus comprehensive distinction produced different emphases in relation to data breach notification thus leading to different forms of remedy. The prime example is the distinction between market-based initiatives found in US data breach notification laws compared to rights-based protections found in the EU and Australia. Third, both laws are predicated on the regulation of personal information exchange processes even though both laws regulate this process from different perspectives, namely, a context independent or context dependent approach. Fourth, both laws have limited notions of harm that is further constrained by restrictive accountability frameworks. The findings of the research suggest that data breach notification is more compatible with information privacy law in some respects than others. Apparent compatibilities clearly exist as both laws have an interest in the protection of personal information. However, this thesis revealed that ostensible similarities are founded on some significant differences. Data breach notification law is either a comprehensive facet to a sectoral approach or a sectoral adjunct to a comprehensive regime. However, whilst there are fundamental differences between both laws they are not so great to make them incompatible with each other. The similarities between both laws are sufficient to forge compatibilities but it is likely that the distinctions between them will produce anomalies particularly if both laws are applied from a perspective that negates contextualisation.

Impact of a data warehouse model for improved decision-making process in healthcare

The health system is one sector dealing with a deluge of complex data. Many healthcare organisations struggle to utilise these volumes of health data effectively and efficiently. Also, there are many healthcare organisations, which still have stand-alone systems, not integrated for management of information and decision-making. This shows, there is a need for an effective system to capture, collate and distribute this health data. Therefore, implementing the data warehouse concept in healthcare is potentially one of the solutions to integrate health data. Data warehousing has been used to support business intelligence and decision-making in many other sectors such as the engineering, defence and retail sectors. The research problem that is going to be addressed is, "how can data warehousing assist the decision-making process in healthcare". To address this problem the researcher has narrowed an investigation focusing on a cardiac surgery unit. This research used the cardiac surgery unit at the Prince Charles Hospital (TPCH) as the case study. The cardiac surgery unit at TPCH uses a stand-alone database of patient clinical data, which supports clinical audit, service management and research functions. However, much of the time, the interaction between the cardiac surgery unit information system with other units is minimal. There is a limited and basic two-way interaction with other clinical and administrative databases at TPCH which support decision-making processes. The aims of this research are to investigate what decision-making issues are faced by the healthcare professionals with the current information systems and how decision-making might be improved within this healthcare setting by implementing an aligned data warehouse model or models. As a part of the research the researcher will propose and develop a suitable data warehouse prototype based on the cardiac surgery unit needs and integrating the Intensive Care Unit database, Clinical Costing unit database (Transition II) and Quality and Safety unit database [electronic discharge summary (e-DS)]. The goal is to improve the current decision-making processes. The main objectives of this research are to improve access to integrated clinical and financial data, providing potentially better information for decision-making for both improved from the questionnaire and by referring to the literature, the results indicate a centralised data warehouse model for the cardiac surgery unit at this stage. A centralised data warehouse model addresses current needs and can also be upgraded to an enterprise wide warehouse model or federated data warehouse model as discussed in the many consulted publications. The data warehouse prototype was able to be developed using SAS enterprise data integration studio 4.2 and the data was analysed using SAS enterprise edition 4.3. In the final stage, the data warehouse prototype was evaluated by collecting feedback from the end users. This was achieved by using output created from the data warehouse prototype as examples of the data desired and possible in a data warehouse environment. According to the feedback collected from the end users, implementation of a data warehouse was seen to be a useful tool to inform management options, provide a more complete representation of factors related to a decision scenario and potentially reduce information product development time. However, there are many constraints exist in this research. For example the technical issues such as data incompatibilities, integration of the cardiac surgery database and e-DS database servers and also, Queensland Health information restrictions (Queensland Health information related policies, patient data confidentiality and ethics requirements), limited availability of support from IT technical staff and time restrictions. These factors have influenced the process for the warehouse model development, necessitating an incremental approach. This highlights the presence of many practical barriers to data warehousing and integration at the clinical service level. Limitations included the use of a small convenience sample of survey respondents, and a single site case report study design. As mentioned previously, the proposed data warehouse is a prototype and was developed using only four database repositories. Despite this constraint, the research demonstrates that by implementing a data warehouse at the service level, decision-making is supported and data quality issues related to access and availability can be reduced, providing many benefits. Output reports produced from the data warehouse prototype demonstrated usefulness for the improvement of decision-making in the management of clinical services, and quality and safety monitoring for better clinical care. However, in the future, the centralised model selected can be upgraded to an enterprise wide architecture by integrating with additional hospital units’ databases.

Negotiation 2.0 in the twitter age : using Web 2.0 applications to facilitate successful negotiation outcomes

The high-pressure, cross-cultural, cross-factional and frequently cross-national nature of contemporary negotiation means that there are a number of clements potentially hampering efforts to achieve successful negotiation outcomes from face-to-face interactions. These hindrances include: resource scarcity (for example, finances, technology and facilities), time scarcity, geographical separation, lack of a COnl1110n language and an inability to Inaintain a consistent ongoing dialogue.

Searching for salvation: An analysis of US religious searching on the World Wide Web

The goals of this research were to answer three questions. How predominant is religious searching online? How do people interact with Web search engines when searching for religious information? How effective are these interactions in locating relevant information? Specifically, referring to a US demographic, we analyzed five data sets from Web search engine, collected between 1997 and 2005, of over a million queries each in order to investigate religious searching on the Web. Results point to four key findings. First, there is no evidence of a decrease in religious Web-searching behaviors. Religious interest is a persistent topic of Web searching. Second, those seeking religious information on the Web are becoming slightly more interactive in their searching. Third, there is no evidence for a move away from mainstream religions toward non-mainstream religions since the majority of the search terms are associated with established religions. Fourth, our work does not support the hypothesis that traditional religious affiliation is associated with lower adoption of or sophistication with technology. These factors point to the Web as a potentially usefully communication medium for a variety of religious organizations. © 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Biomaterials in orthopedic bone plates : a review

This paper aims to review biomaterials used in manufacturing bone plates including advances in recent years and prospect in the future. It has found among all biomaterials, currently titanium and stainless steel alloys are the most common in production of bone plates. Other biomaterials such as Mg alloys, Ta alloys, SMAs, carbon fiber composites and bioceramics are potentially suitable for bone plates because of their advantages in biocompatibility, bioactivity and biodegradability. However, today either they are not used in bone plates or have limited applications in only some flexible small-size implants. This problem is mainly related to their poor mechanical properties. Additionally, production processes play an effective role. Therefore, in the future, further studies should be conducted to solve these problems and make them feasible for heavy-duty bone plates.

Pre-clinical evaluation of amphiphilic silicone oligomers for scar remediation

The formation of hypertrophic scars is a frequent outcome of wound repair and often requires further therapy with treatments such as silicone gel sheets (SGS; Perkins et al., 1983). Although widely used, knowledge regarding SGS and their mechanism of action on hypertrophic scars is limited. Furthermore, SGS require consistent application for at least twelve hours a day for up to twelve consecutive months, beginning as soon as wound reepithelialisation has occurred. Preliminary research at QUT has shown that some species of silicone present in SGS have the ability to permeate into collagen gel skin mimetics upon exposure. An analogue of these species, GP226, was found to decrease both collagen synthesis and the total amount of collagen present following exposure to cultures of cells derived from hypertrophic scars. This silicone of interest was a crude mixture of silicone species, which resolved into five fractions of different molecular weight. These five fractions were found to have differing effects on collagen synthesis and cell viability following exposure to fibroblasts derived from hypertrophic scars (HSF), keloid scars (KF) and normal skin (nHSF and nKF). The research performed herein continues to further assess the potential of GP226 and its fractions for scar remediation by determining in more detail its effects on HSF, KF, nHSF, nKF and human keratinocytes (HK) in terms of cell viability and proliferation at various time points. Through these studies it was revealed that Fraction IV was the most active fraction as it induced a reduction in cell viability and proliferation most similar to that observed with GP226. Cells undergoing apoptosis were also detected in HSF cultures exposed to GP226 and Fraction IV using the Tunel assay (Roche). These investigations were difficult to pursue further as the fractionation process used for GP226 was labour-intensive and time inefficient. Therefore a number of silicones with similar structure to Fraction IV were synthesised and screened for their effect following application to HSF and nHSF. PDMS7-g-PEG7, a silicone-PEG copolymer of low molecular weight and low hydrophilic-lipophilic balance factor, was found to be the most effective at reducing cell proliferation and inducing apoptosis in cultures of HSF, nHSF and HK. Further studies investigated gene expression through microarray and superarray techniques and demonstrated that many genes are differentially expressed in HSF following treatment with GP226, Fraction IV and PDMS7-g-PEG7. In brief, it was demonstrated that genes for TGFβ1 and TNF are not differentially regulated while genes for AIFM2, IL8, NSMAF, SMAD7, TRAF3 and IGF2R show increased expression (>1.8 fold change) following treatment with PDMS7-g-PEG7. In addition, genes for αSMA, TRAF2, COL1A1 and COL3A1 have decreased expression (>-1.8 fold change) following treatment with GP226, Fraction IV and PDMS7-g-PEG7. The data obtained suggest that many different pathways related to apoptosis and collagen synthesis are affected in HSF following exposure to PDMS7-g-PEG7. The significance is that silicone-PEG copolymers, such as GP226, Fraction IV and PDMS7-g-PEG7, could potentially be a non-invasive substitute to apoptosis-inducing chemical agents that are currently used as scar treatments. It is anticipated that these findings will ultimately contribute to the development of a novel scar therapy with faster action and improved outcomes for patients suffering from hypertrophic scars.

Linking perceived value of mobile marketing with the experiential consumption of mobile phones

Purpose – This study examines the nature of consumers’ perceptions of the value they derive from the everyday experiential consumption of mobile phones and how mobile marketing (m-marketing) can potentially enhance these value perceptions. Methodology – Q methodology is used to examine how consumers’ subjective perceptions and opinions are shared at a collective level. Forty participants undertook two Q sorts and the data was analysed using PQ-method. Findings – The first Q sort identified three profiles of perceived value: the Mobile Pragmatists, the Mobile Connectors and the Mobile Revellers. The second Q sort identified two profiles of perceived value of m-marketing: one emerging from the shared opinions of the Mobile Pragmatists and the Mobile Connectors, and the second from the Mobile Revellers. Implications/limitations – The findings show how consumers can be segmented based on their contextualised perceived value of consuming mobile phones and how the potential for m-marketing is perceived in ways that can enhance these value perceptions. Limitations relate to deriving statements for the Q sorts and the generalisability of the results. Practical implications – The findings highlight ways to tailor m-marketing strategies to complement consumers’ perceptions of the value offered through their mobile phones. Originality/value of paper – The study contributes to the literature through using Q methodology to examine two subjective areas of consumer behaviour, experiential consumption and consumer perceived value. Keywords mobile phones, mobile phone marketing, consumer perceived value, Q methodology, experiential consumption Classification Research paper

Multifractal characterisation and analysis of complex networks

Complex networks have been studied extensively due to their relevance to many real-world systems such as the world-wide web, the internet, biological and social systems. During the past two decades, studies of such networks in different fields have produced many significant results concerning their structures, topological properties, and dynamics. Three well-known properties of complex networks are scale-free degree distribution, small-world effect and self-similarity. The search for additional meaningful properties and the relationships among these properties is an active area of current research. This thesis investigates a newer aspect of complex networks, namely their multifractality, which is an extension of the concept of selfsimilarity. The first part of the thesis aims to confirm that the study of properties of complex networks can be expanded to a wider field including more complex weighted networks. Those real networks that have been shown to possess the self-similarity property in the existing literature are all unweighted networks. We use the proteinprotein interaction (PPI) networks as a key example to show that their weighted networks inherit the self-similarity from the original unweighted networks. Firstly, we confirm that the random sequential box-covering algorithm is an effective tool to compute the fractal dimension of complex networks. This is demonstrated on the Homo sapiens and E. coli PPI networks as well as their skeletons. Our results verify that the fractal dimension of the skeleton is smaller than that of the original network due to the shortest distance between nodes is larger in the skeleton, hence for a fixed box-size more boxes will be needed to cover the skeleton. Then we adopt the iterative scoring method to generate weighted PPI networks of five species, namely Homo sapiens, E. coli, yeast, C. elegans and Arabidopsis Thaliana. By using the random sequential box-covering algorithm, we calculate the fractal dimensions for both the original unweighted PPI networks and the generated weighted networks. The results show that self-similarity is still present in generated weighted PPI networks. This implication will be useful for our treatment of the networks in the third part of the thesis. The second part of the thesis aims to explore the multifractal behavior of different complex networks. Fractals such as the Cantor set, the Koch curve and the Sierspinski gasket are homogeneous since these fractals consist of a geometrical figure which repeats on an ever-reduced scale. Fractal analysis is a useful method for their study. However, real-world fractals are not homogeneous; there is rarely an identical motif repeated on all scales. Their singularity may vary on different subsets; implying that these objects are multifractal. Multifractal analysis is a useful way to systematically characterize the spatial heterogeneity of both theoretical and experimental fractal patterns. However, the tools for multifractal analysis of objects in Euclidean space are not suitable for complex networks. In this thesis, we propose a new box covering algorithm for multifractal analysis of complex networks. This algorithm is demonstrated in the computation of the generalized fractal dimensions of some theoretical networks, namely scale-free networks, small-world networks, random networks, and a kind of real networks, namely PPI networks of different species. Our main finding is the existence of multifractality in scale-free networks and PPI networks, while the multifractal behaviour is not confirmed for small-world networks and random networks. As another application, we generate gene interactions networks for patients and healthy people using the correlation coefficients between microarrays of different genes. Our results confirm the existence of multifractality in gene interactions networks. This multifractal analysis then provides a potentially useful tool for gene clustering and identification. The third part of the thesis aims to investigate the topological properties of networks constructed from time series. Characterizing complicated dynamics from time series is a fundamental problem of continuing interest in a wide variety of fields. Recent works indicate that complex network theory can be a powerful tool to analyse time series. Many existing methods for transforming time series into complex networks share a common feature: they define the connectivity of a complex network by the mutual proximity of different parts (e.g., individual states, state vectors, or cycles) of a single trajectory. In this thesis, we propose a new method to construct networks of time series: we define nodes by vectors of a certain length in the time series, and weight of edges between any two nodes by the Euclidean distance between the corresponding two vectors. We apply this method to build networks for fractional Brownian motions, whose long-range dependence is characterised by their Hurst exponent. We verify the validity of this method by showing that time series with stronger correlation, hence larger Hurst exponent, tend to have smaller fractal dimension, hence smoother sample paths. We then construct networks via the technique of horizontal visibility graph (HVG), which has been widely used recently. We confirm a known linear relationship between the Hurst exponent of fractional Brownian motion and the fractal dimension of the corresponding HVG network. In the first application, we apply our newly developed box-covering algorithm to calculate the generalized fractal dimensions of the HVG networks of fractional Brownian motions as well as those for binomial cascades and five bacterial genomes. The results confirm the monoscaling of fractional Brownian motion and the multifractality of the rest. As an additional application, we discuss the resilience of networks constructed from time series via two different approaches: visibility graph and horizontal visibility graph. Our finding is that the degree distribution of VG networks of fractional Brownian motions is scale-free (i.e., having a power law) meaning that one needs to destroy a large percentage of nodes before the network collapses into isolated parts; while for HVG networks of fractional Brownian motions, the degree distribution has exponential tails, implying that HVG networks would not survive the same kind of attack.

When is a spinoff the best way to pursue a radical innovation? Insights from Shell technology ventures

The technology and innovation management literature offers somewhat conflicting evidence with regards to the formation of spinoff companies for radically new technologies. Sometimes spinoffs seem to be a very effective strategy—but not always. An obvious question emerges: under what conditions is a spinoff the best way to pursue a radical technology? This paper sheds light on this question by presenting case study evidence from spinoff firms within the Shell Technology Ventures portfolio. The data point to industry clockspeed as a potentially important variable in the decision to create a spinoff or not.

The two faces of normative commitment : a qualitative study of the dual nature of normative commitment

Organisational commitment is extensively represented in the human resource management and organisational behaviour literature as a key factor in the relationship between employees and their organisations. Although Allen and Meyer (1990) noted that an employee can experience the three components of organisational commitment simultaneously, in terms of commitment profiles, the majority of studies have looked at the antecedents and outcomes of affective, continuance, and normative commitment independently. There is still only limited research that has investigated the nature of commitment profiles and their implications for employee work-related behaviours (Gellatly Meyer and Luchak 2006; Herscovitch & Meyer 2002; Somers 2010; Wasti 2005). An area where the commitment profiles approach potentially provides new insights is on the nature of normative commitment.

The role of near adaptation in myopia development

Prolonged near work is associated with myopia development in children and young adults but the reason underlying this association is unknown. Two potentially important factors are the near work induced ocular adaptations of contrast and accommodative adaptation. This study measured the degrees of contrast and accommodative adaptation during and following reading in myopic and emmetropic children and young adults in Singapore, where myopia is highly prevalent. Reading caused significantly greater contrast and accommodative adaptations in myopic children and myopic young adults compared to that measured in emmetropes of comparable ages. The adaptations were greater in magnitude in children than young adults, suggesting that children are more susceptible to ocular changes induced by reading and thus are potentially at greater risk of adverse refractive outcomes from these adaptations. In addition to the magnitude of the adaptations the regression time of these adaptations, (i.e. their durations) are also important. Longer accommodative adaptation regression times were measured for myopic children than for emmetropic children. Although the regression of contrast adaptation was not measured, its duration may likewise be important. The refractive effects of both of these adaptations are likely to be cumulative across the day and this could promote myopia in susceptible individuals performing considerable amounts of near work. Whether the type of text read affected the magnitude of the adaptations was also explored. Given the high prevalence of myopia in Chinese children and the fact that Chinese text is more complicated to write than English text, it was hypothesized that Chinese text would induce greater adaptation. However, both Chinese and English text produced similar amounts of accommodative and contrast adaptation in young adult subjects. We propose that children who spend prolonged periods reading at a young age are most vulnerable to near work induced adaptations and hence near work induced myopia. Both Chinese and English texts produce these effects and we propose that these adaptations are likely to occur for all types of common reading texts.

Attraction and retention in rural and remote communities

Attracting and retaining a skilled labour force is a critical yet complex issue for rural and remote communities. This article reports the findings of a study investigating the current approaches to recruitment and retention in two separate Australian regions. Building on previously developed models, the research analyses the roles employers and the wider communities are playing, or potentially could play, in addressing issues that influence labour shortages. The findings of the research highlight the complexities of employee attraction and retention and emphasise the need for communities and businesses to work together to overcome labour shortages in rural and remote locations.