Strategies to engage academics in assuring graduate attributes

Assurance of learning (AoL) is a predominant feature in both quality assurance and quality enhancement in higher education. The process may be used for program development, and to inform external accreditation and evaluation bodies. However, there is an obvious challenge in trying to get academic staff to buy into the benefits of the AoL process. This project conducted an audit across 25 Australian Business Schools. The majority of those interviewed stated that academic staff considered AoL to be extra work and viewed the process as a box ticking exercise for external bodies rather than sound educational practice. A change management process is required to promote the necessary cultural change to embed AoL into practice. This paper showcases some of the educational leadership strategies that have been successfully implemented across Australia to foster staff engagement in the AoL process. These include: strong senior management commitment and leadership demonstrating a constant and high level drive for staff engagement until AoL becomes an institutional norm; developing leadership and champions among unit and program level staff, to share practices and promote the benefits that come from engaging in the process; providing professional development opportunities to discuss and resolve difficulties and tensions around AoL; demonstrating success and effectiveness by selling staff on the evidence that AoL makes a difference; and making the process inclusive with academics collaborating in the development and implementation of the process.

Measuring voluntary dietary change in response to exercise : a focus on dietary fat

Traditional treatments for weight management have focussed on prescribed dietary restriction or regular exercise, or a combination of both. However recidivism for such prescribed treatments remains high, particularly among the overweight and obese. The aim of this thesis was to investigate voluntary dietary changes in the presence of prescribed mixed-mode exercise, conducted over 16 weeks. With the implementation of a single lifestyle change (exercise) it was postulated that the onerous burden of concomitant dietary and exercise compliance would be reduced, leading to voluntary lifestyle changes in such areas as diet. In addition, the failure of exercise as a single weight loss treatment has been reported to be due to compensatory energy intakes, although much of the evidence is from acute exercise studies, necessitating investigation of compensatory intakes during a long-term exercise intervention. Following 16 weeks of moderate intensity exercise, 30 overweight and obese (BMI≥25.00 kg.m-2) men and women showed small but statistically significant decreases in mean dietary fat intakes, without compensatory increases in other macronutrient or total energy intakes. Indeed total energy intakes were significantly lower for men and women following the exercise intervention, due to the decreases in dietary fat intakes. There was a risk that acceptance of the statistical validity of the small changes to dietary fat intakes may have constituted a Type 1 error, with false rejection of the Null hypothesis. Oro-sensory perceptions to changes in fat loads were therefore investigated to determine whether the measured dietary fat changes were detectable by the human palate. The ability to detect small changes in dietary fat provides sensory feedback for self-initiated dietary changes, but lean and overweight participants were unable to distinguish changes to fat loads of similar magnitudes to that measured in the exercise intervention study. Accuracy of the dietary measurement instrument was improved with the effects of random error (day-to-day variability) minimised with the use of a statistically validated 8-day, multiple-pass, 24 hour dietary recall instrument. However systematic error (underreporting) may have masked the magnitude of dietary change, particularly the reduction in dietary fat intakes. A purported biomarker (plasma Apolipoprotein A-IV) (apoA-IV) was subsequently investigated, to monitor systematic error in self-reported dietary intakes. Changes in plasma apoA-IV concentrations were directly correlated with increased and decreased changes to dietary fat intakes, suggesting that this objective marker may be a useful tool to improve the accuracy of dietary measurement in overweight and obese populations, who are susceptible to dietary underreporting.

An exploratory study of ethical dilemmas faced by academic leaders in three Australian universities

Being an academic in universities today is characterised by change and increasing complexity in response to a multitude of factors impacting on the university sector. Among the consequences of such changes are that many academics, and academic leaders in particular, are subjected to both increasing stress and scrutiny in many of the decisions they make. Some of these decisions require critical choices that involve contestation of values (including personal, professional, institutional, and community), resulting in ethical dilemmas for the decisionmakers. This article reports on an exploratory study into ethical dilemmas faced by middle-level academic leaders, drawing on the results of an on-line survey distributed to relevant academics in three universities in Australia. Here, middle-level academic leaders are defined as those holding course coordination roles, locating them between senior university staff and other academics on the one hand, and students on the other hand. As a consequence, these diverse groups of staff and students potentially have an array of conflicting interests in, and expectations on, middle-level academics’ decision-making processes. The findings of the study are clear: ethical dilemmas are evident, and commonly so, for many middle-level academic leaders. While exploratory in nature, the findings of this study suggest that much more attention to ethics and ethical dilemmas is needed in our universities.

Introduction. Locating men in the work-life nexus

In the last two decades there has been a plethora of research on a range of subjects collectively and rhetorically known as ‘work-life balance’. The bulk of this research, which spans disciplines including feminist sociology, industrial relations and management, has focused on the significant concerns of employed women and/or dual career couples. Less attention has been devoted to scholarship which explicitly examines men and masculinities in this context. Meanwhile, public and organizational discourse is largely espoused in gender neutral terms, often neglecting salient gendered issues which differentially impact the ability of women and men to successfully integrate their work and non-work lives. This edited book brings together empirical studies of the work-life nexus with a specific focus on men’s working time arrangements, how men navigate and traverse paid work and family commitments, and the impact of public and organizational policies on men’s participation in work, leisure, and other life domains. The book is innovative in that it presents both macro (institutional, how policy affects practice) and micro (individual, from men’s own perspectives) level studies, allowing for a rich and contrasting exploration of how men’s participation in paid work and other domains is divided, conflicted, or integrated. The essays in this volume address issues of fundamental social, labor market, and economic change which have occurred over the last 20 years and which have profoundly affected the way work, care, leisure and community have evolved in different contexts. Taking an international focus, Men, Wage Work and Family contrasts various public and organizational policies and how these policies impact men’s opportunities and participation in paid work and non-work domains in industrialised countries in Europe, North America, and Australia.

Negative change and job outcomes : the impact of subjective fit in public sector health care organization

There is an ongoing level of organizational-wide change (such as empowerment and downsizing) occurring within the Australian health care sector. However, there is a paucity of empirical evidence on how public and nonprofit sector nurses cope with these organizational-wide change initiatives and their consequences on individual and work outcomes. This will be the primary aim of the current paper. To this end, a path model is developed base on an integration of existing theoretical perspectives on occupational stress, change management, and person-organizational fit. Data were collected from 252 public and not-for-profit sector nurses. The path analysis suggests that public and nonprofit nurses experience positive and negative change initiatives. Negative change initiatives resulted in an increase in the level of administrative-related stressors. Nurses with more congruent values report less experience with administrative stressors. As nurses experienced more administrative stressors, they tend to report more job dissatisfaction. Nurses whose values were more congruent during organizational change reported higher level of psychological wellbeing. Nurses who were had higher level of psychological wellbeing were found to have higher job satisfaction, which subsequently led to a higher level of organizational commitment.

Transforming organizational leadership : a schema change perspective

Successful organizational transformation typically requires transformed leadership; that is, fundamental changes in the implicit leadership schema that underpin observed organizational leadership practice. The purpose of this study is to elaborate leadership schema change theory by investigating a case study in which the CEO of a public infrastructure organization sought to transform traditional organizational leadership to facilitate wider organization transformation. Data were generated through focus groups and semi-structured interviews at four points over a three-year period. Our findings suggest that (a) change leader initiatives do not necessarily activate the cognitive processing required to achieve leadership schema change, (b) collective schema change, defined in terms of the system of beliefs and values underlying the new leading-managing schema did not occur, however, (c) sub-schema change did occur. The research contributes to existing literature on implicit leadership schema change in three main ways. First, we provide a schema change framework to guide current and future research on schema change. Second, we highlight the role that both change leader initiatives and individual and social processing play in schema change. Finally, we stress the role of teleological processes in leadership schema change.

Assessment of “change in flexibility method” in structural health monitoring systems

The modern structural diagnosis process is rely on vibration characteristics to assess safer serviceability level of the structure. This paper examines the potential of change in flexibility method to use in damage detection process and two main practical constraints associated with it. The first constraint addressed in this paper is reduction in number of data acquisition points due to limited number of sensors. Results conclude that accuracy of the change in flexibility method is influenced by the number of data acquisition points/sensor locations in real structures. Secondly, the effect of higher modes on damage detection process has been studied. This addresses the difficulty of extracting higher order modal data with available sensors. Four damage indices have been presented to identify their potential of damage detection with respect to different locations and severity of damage. A simply supported beam with two degrees of freedom at each node is considered only for a single damage cases throughout the paper.

Investigating the dynamics of the psychological contract : how and why individuals' contract beliefs change

The overall objective of this thesis is to explore how and why the content of individuals' psychological contracts changes over time. The contract is generally understood as "individual beliefs, shaped by the organisation, regarding the terms of an exchange agreement between individuals and their organisation" (Rousseau, 1995, p. 9). With an overall study sampling frame of 320 graduate organisational newcomers, a mixed method longitudinal research design comprised of three sequential, inter-related studies is employed in order to capture the change process. From the 15 semi-structured interviews conducted in Study 1, the key findings included identifying a relatively high degree of mutuality between employees' and their managers' reciprocal contract beliefs around the time of organisational entry. Also, at this time, individuals had developed specific components of their contract content through a mix of social network information (regarding broader employment expectations) and perceptions of various elements of their particular organisation's reputation (for more firm-specific expectations). Study 2 utilised a four-wave survey approach (available to the full sampling frame) over the 14 months following organisational entry to explore the 'shape' of individuals' contract change trajectories and the role of four theorised change predictors in driving these trajectories. The predictors represented an organisational-level informational cue (perceptions of corporate reputation), a dyadic-level informational cue (perceptions of manager-employee relationship quality) and two individual difference variables (affect and hardiness). Through the use of individual growth modelling, the findings showed differences in the general change patterns across contract content components of perceived employer (exhibiting generally quadratic change patterns) and employee (exhibiting generally no-change patterns) obligations. Further, individuals differentially used the predictor variables to construct beliefs about specific contract content. While both organisational- and dyadic-level cues were focused upon to construct employer obligation beliefs, organisational-level cues and individual difference variables were focused upon to construct employee obligation beliefs. Through undertaking 26 semi-structured interviews, Study 3 focused upon gaining a richer understanding of why participants' contracts changed, or otherwise, over the study period, with a particular focus upon the roles of breach and violation. Breach refers to an employee's perception that an employer obligation has not been met and violation refers to the negative and affective employee reactions which may ensue following a breach. The main contribution of these findings was identifying that subsequent to a breach or violation event a range of 'remediation effects' could be activated by employees which, depending upon their effectiveness, served to instigate either breach or contract repair or both. These effects mostly instigated broader contract repair and were generally cognitive strategies enacted by an individual to re-evaluate the breach situation and re-focus upon other positive aspects of the employment relationship. As such, the findings offered new evidence for a clear distinction between remedial effects which serve to only repair the breach (and thus the contract) and effects which only repair the contract more broadly; however, when effective, both resulted in individuals again viewing their employment relationships positively. Overall, in response to the overarching research question of this thesis, how and why individuals' psychological contract beliefs change, individuals do indeed draw upon various information sources, particularly at the organisational-level, as cues or guides in shaping their contract content. Further, the 'shapes' of the changes in beliefs about employer and employee obligations generally follow different, and not necessarily linear, trajectories over time. Finally, both breach and violation and also remedial actions, which address these occurrences either by remedying the breach itself (and thus the contract) or the contract only, play central roles in guiding individuals' contract changes to greater or lesser degrees. The findings from the thesis provide both academics and practitioners with greater insights into how employees construct their contract beliefs over time, the salient informational cues used to do this and how the effects of breach and violation can be mitigated through creating an environment which facilitates the use of effective remediation strategies.

Anthropogenic landscape change promotes asymmetric dispersal and limits regional patch occupancy in a spatially structured bird population

1. Local extinctions in habitat patches and asymmetric dispersal between patches are key processes structuring animal populations in heterogeneous environments. Effective landscape conservation requires an understanding of how habitat loss and fragmentation influence demographic processes within populations and movement between populations. 2. We used patch occupancy surveys and molecular data for a rainforest bird, the logrunner (Orthonyx temminckii), to determine (i) the effects of landscape change and patch structure on local extinction; (ii) the asymmetry of emigration and immigration rates; (iii) the relative influence of local and between-population landscapes on asymmetric emigration and immigration; and (iv) the relative contributions of habitat loss and habitat fragmentation to asymmetric emigration and immigration. 3. Whether or not a patch was occupied by logrunners was primarily determined by the isolation of that patch. After controlling for patch isolation, patch occupancy declined in landscapes experiencing high levels of rainforest loss over the last 100 years. Habitat loss and fragmentation over the last century was more important than the current pattern of patch isolation alone, which suggested that immigration from neighbouring patches was unable to prevent local extinction in highly modified landscapes. 4. We discovered that dispersal between logrunner populations is highly asymmetric. Emigration rates were 39% lower when local landscapes were fragmented, but emigration was not limited by the structure of the between-population landscapes. In contrast, immigration was 37% greater when local landscapes were fragmented and was lower when the between-population landscapes were fragmented. Rainforest fragmentation influenced asymmetric dispersal to a greater extent than did rainforest loss, and a 60% reduction in mean patch area was capable of switching a population from being a net exporter to a net importer of dispersing logrunners. 5. The synergistic effects of landscape change on species occurrence and asymmetric dispersal have important implications for conservation. Conservation measures that maintain large patch sizes in the landscape may promote asymmetric dispersal from intact to fragmented landscapes and allow rainforest bird populations to persist in fragmented and degraded landscapes. These sink populations could form the kernel of source populations given sufficient habitat restoration. However, the success of this rescue effect will depend on the quality of the between-population landscapes.