Workplace mobbing : experiences in the public sector

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

Public sector strategy classification system for shared service identification

The purpose of this conceptual paper is to address the lack of consistent means through which strategies are identified and discussed across theoretical perspectives in the field of business strategy. A standardised referencing system is offered to codify the means by which strategies can be identified, from which new business services and information systems may be derived. This taxonomy was developed using qualitative content analysis study of government agencies’ strategic plans. This taxonomy is useful for identifying strategy formation and determining gaps and opportunities. Managers will benefit from a more transparent strategic design process that reduces ambiguity, aids in identifying and correcting gaps in strategy formulation, and fosters enhanced strategic analysis. Key benefits to academics are the improved dialogue in strategic management field and suggest that progress in the field requires that fundamentals of strategy formulation and classification be considered more carefully. Finally, the formalization of strategy can lead to the clear identification of new business services, which inform ICT investment decisions and shared service prioritisation.

Evaluating the benefits of public bicycle schemes needs to be undertaken carefully

A letter in response to an article by David Rojas-Rueda, Audrey de Nazelle, Marko Tainio, Mark J Nieuwenhuijsen, The health risks and benefits of cycling in urban environments compared with car use: health impact assessment study. BMJ 2011;343:doi:10.1136/bmj.d4521 (Published 4 August 2011) This paper sets out to compare the health benefits of the Bicing scheme (Barcelona's public bicycle share scheme) with possible risks associated with increased bicycle riding. The key variables used by the researchers include physical activity, exposure to air pollution and road traffic injury. The authors rightly identify that although traffic congestion is often a major motivator behind the establishment of public bicycle share schemes (PBSS), the health benefits may well be the largest single benefit of such schemes. Certainly PBSS appear to be one of the most effective methods of increasing the number of bicycle trips across a population, providing additional transport options and improving awareness of the possibilities bicycles offer urban transport systems. Overall, the paper is a useful addition to the literature, in that it has attempted to assess the health benefits of a large scale PBSS and weighed these against potential risks related to cyclists exposure to air pollution and road traffic injuries. Unfortunately a fundamentally flawed assumption related to the proportion of Bicing trips replacing car journeys invalidates the results of this paper. A future paper with up to date data would create a significant contribution to this emerging area within the field of sustainable transport.

Domains of rural social work practice

Even though there is substantial agreement about the nature of rural contexts, practice principles, and factors influencing practice we still do not have a framework for organising this knowledge in a way that can directly inform the practitioner in their day-to-day work. In this paper, we introduce the concepts 'practice domains', 'domain location', and 'domain alignment' that, taken together, provide such a framework. We suggest that each practitioner works within a number of practice domains. A domain is a discourse about practice comprising narratives about how a social worker should practise and which factors they should take most account of in their practice decision making. Each practitioner, and each practice process, can be located somewhere within each domain (domain location) and also situated amongst domains according to their relative alignment with each of them (domain alignment). In this paper, we present this framework and show how it is useful for practitioners in understanding practice, identifying factors influencing it, and making practice decisions in immediate, concrete situations.

What it means to become a public relations professional: student perceptions of professional identity through real-world learning

Public relations educators need new solutions to prepare students to become tomorrow's practitioner today. Managers and employers in the new creative workforce (McWilliam, 2008) expect graduates to be problem solvers, critical and creative thinkers, reflective, and self reliant (Barrie, 2008; David, 2004). Enabling students to develop these attributes requires a collaborative and creative approach to pedagogy (Jeffrey & Craft, 2001, 2004). A model for the next generation of public relations education was developed to integrate industry partnerships as a way to bridge pedagogy and professional practice. The model suggests (a) that industry partnerships be embedded in learning activities, (b) that assessment items be considered on a continuum and delivered incrementally across a course of study, and (c) that connections between classroom and workplace activities are clearly signposted for students.

Do Australian public and nonprofit nurses cope with administrative stressors?

The nursing profession in Australia and other OECD countries such as the USA and the UK, have focused on ways to recruit and retain nurses (e.g., Bartram, Joiner, & Stanton, 2004). Research has shown that the most common factors impacting negatively on retention include sources of nursing stress such as workload and work environment. While the literature has shown that nursing staff encounter these stressors, studies do not examine the effects of stress caused by an increasing degree of administrative demand placed on nurses, caused by the new public management (NPM) reform in public and nonprofit (PNP) health care organizations. At best, some studies have alluded to some aspects of administrative related stressors (vis-a-vis nursing related stressors such as death, sickness, etc), but they have not been examined in any detail. Similarly, extant research has not examined how nurses cope with these administrative stressors. These will be the main aims of the present study.

Neo-planning: Location-based social media to engage Australia’s new digital locals

Community engagement with time poor and seemingly apathetic citizens continues to challenge local governments. Capturing the attention of a digitally literate community who are technology and socially savvy adds a new quality to this challenge. Community engagement is resource and time intensive, yet local governments have to manage on continually tightened budgets. The benefits of assisting citizens in taking ownership in making their community and city a better place to live in collaboration with planners and local governments are well established. This study investigates a new collaborative form of civic participation and engagement for urban planning that employs in-place digital augmentation. It enhances people’s experience of physical spaces with digital technologies that are directly accessible within that space, in particular through interaction with mobile phones and public displays. The study developed and deployed a system called Discussions in Space (DIS) in conjunction with a major urban planning project in Brisbane. Planners used the system to ask local residents planning-related questions via a public screen, and passers-by sent responses via SMS or Twitter onto the screen for others to read and reflect, hence encouraging in-situ, real-time, civic discourse. The low barrier of entry proved to be successful in engaging a wide range of residents who are generally not heard due to their lack of time or interest. The system also reflected positively on the local government for reaching out in this way. Challenges and implications of the short-texted and ephemeral nature of this medium were evaluated in two focus groups with urban planners. The paper concludes with an analysis of the planners’ feedback evaluating the merits of the data generated by the system to better engage with Australia’s new digital locals.

The risks and returns of new public management : political business

Purpose – This article aims to consider success in terms of the financial returns and risks of new public management (NPM) in state-owned enterprises (SOEs). Design/methodology/approach – Financial returns of New Zealand SOEs were examined through a review of their annual reports over a five-year period. Dimensions of risk were examined through interviews conducted in two phases over a two-year period with senior executives from 12 of the (then) 17 SOEs operating in New Zealand. Findings – Findings indicate the potential for SOEs to operate as profitable government investments, with clear support for positive financial returns under NPM. However, variations noted within individual SOEs also indicate that profitable and commercial operations may not be possible in all cases. An examination of the risks associated with SOEs’ operations reveals a number of dimensions of risk, encompassing financial, political (including regulatory), reputational, and public accountability aspects. Practical implications – There is a need for an enhanced awareness on the part of internal and external stakeholders (such as the government and general public) of the risks SOEs face in pursuing higher levels of profitability. Also required, is a more acute understanding on the part of internal and external stakeholders (e.g. government and the public) of the need for SOEs to manage the range of risks identified, given the potentially delicate balance between risk and return. Originality/value – While previous studies have considered the financial returns of SOEs, or the risks faced by the public sector in terms of accountability, few have addressed the two issues collectively in a single context.

An efficient public key management regime for vehicular ad hoc networks (VANETS)

The primary goal of the Vehicular Ad Hoc Network (VANET) is to provide real-time safety-related messages to motorists to enhance road safety. Accessing and disseminating safety-related information through the use of wireless communications technology in VANETs should be secured, as motorists may make critical decisions in dealing with an emergency situation based on the received information. If security concerns are not addressed in developing VANET systems, an adversary can tamper with, or suppress, the unprotected message to mislead motorists to cause traffic accidents and hazards. Current research on secure messaging in VANETs focuses on employing the certificate-based Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) scheme to support message encryption and digital signing. The security overhead of such a scheme, however, creates a transmission delay and introduces a time-consuming verification process to VANET communications. This thesis has proposed a novel public key verification and management approach for VANETs; namely, the Public Key Registry (PKR) regime. Compared to the VANET PKI scheme, this new approach can satisfy necessary security requirements with improved performance and scalability, and at a lower cost by reducing the security overheads of message transmission and eliminating digital certificate deployment and maintenance issues. The proposed PKR regime consists of the required infrastructure components, rules for public key management and verification, and a set of interactions and associated behaviours to meet these rule requirements. This is achieved through a system design as a logic process model with functional specifications. The PKR regime can be used as development guidelines for conforming implementations. An analysis and evaluation of the proposed PKR regime includes security features assessment, analysis of the security overhead of message transmission, transmission latency, processing latency, and scalability of the proposed PKR regime. Compared to certificate-based PKI approaches, the proposed PKR regime can maintain the necessary security requirements, significantly reduce the security overhead by approximately 70%, and improve the performance by 98%. Meanwhile, the result of the scalability evaluation shows that the latency of employing the proposed PKR regime stays much lower at approximately 15 milliseconds, whether operating in a huge or small environment. It is therefore believed that this research will create a new dimension to the provision of secure messaging services in VANETs.

The importance of organisational culture to improve a project selection process : case of public infrastructure project in Indonesia

Project selection is a decision-making process that is not merely influenced by technical aspects but also by the people who involved in the process. Organisational culture is described as a set of values and norms that are shared by people within the organisation that affects the way they interact with each other and with stakeholders from outside the organisation. The aim of this paper is to emphasize the importance of organisational culture on improving the quality of decisions in the project selection process, in addition to the influence of technical aspects of a project. The discussion is based on an extensive literature review and, as such, represents the first part of a research agenda investigating the impact of organisational culture on the project selection process applicable specifically to road infrastructure contracts. Four existing models of organisational culture (Denison 1990; Cameron and Quinn 2006; Hofstede 2001; Glaser et al 1987) are discussed and reviewed in view of their use in the larger research project to investigate the impact of culture on identified critical elements of decision-making. An understating of the way organisational culture impacts on project selection will increase the likelihood in future of relevant government departments selecting projects that achieve their stated organisational goals.

Challenges facing sustainable housing in Saudi Arabia : a current study showing the level of public awareness

Sustainable housing implementation requires strong support from the public, government and the housing industry. Lack of public awareness and understanding of the language and the meaning of sustainable housing may cause lack of public support. Salama stated that "sustainability or sustainable design is simply a rephrasing of some of the forgotten values of traditional architecture and urbanism"(Salama 2007). This exploratory paper examines public awareness of sustainable housing in Saudi Arabia. In developing countries, like Saudi Arabia, which have been experiencing a rapid rate of urbanisation, sustainable concept intervention is essential due to the scarcity of resources (Reffat 2004a). Sustainable building methods include the full use of the site design, passive solar design, natural light and ventilation. This paper reports on an exploratory survey on understanding the potential of the implementation of sustainable housing in Saudi Arabia. The main problem is that more than half of respondents were not aware of sustainable housing. Thus, one of the recommendations from the survey is to educate the public by using local media to inform people of the benefits of sustainable implementation to both new and existing housing stock.

Globally networked public spheres? The Australian media reaction to WikiLeaks

The global release of 250,000 US Embassy diplomatic cables to selected media sites worldwide through the WikiLeaks website, was arguably the major global media event of 2010. As well as the implications of the content of the cables for international politics and diplomacy, the actions of WikiLeaks and its controversial editor-in-chief, the Australian Julian Assange, bring together a range of arguments about how the media, news and journalism are being transformed in the 21st century. This paper will focus on the reactions of Australian online news media sites to the release of the diplomatic cables by WikiLeaks, including both the online sites of established news outlets such as The Australian, Sydney Morning Herald and The Age, the ABC’s The Drum site, and online-only sites such as Crikey, New Matilda and On Line Opinion. The study focuses on opinion and commentary rather than straight news reportage, and analysis is framed around three issues: WikiLeaks and international diplomacy; implications of WikiLeaks for journalism; and WikiLeaks and democracy, including debates about the organisation and the ethics of its own practice. It also whether a “WikiLeaks Effect” has wider implications for how journalism is conducted in the future, particularly the method of ‘redaction’ of large amounts of computational data.