The Interaction of lean and building information modeling in construction

Lean construction and building information modeling (BIM) are quite different initiatives, but both are having profound impacts on the construction industry. A rigorous analysis of the myriad specific interactions between them indicates that a synergy exists which, if properly understood in theoretical terms, can be exploited to improve construction processes beyond the degree to which it might be improved by application of either of these paradigms independently. Using a matrix that juxtaposes BIM functionalities with prescriptive lean construction principles, 56 interactions have been identified, all but four of which represent constructive interaction. Although evidence for the majority of these has been found, the matrix is not considered complete but rather a framework for research to explore the degree of validity of the interactions. Construction executives, managers, designers, and developers of information technology systems for construction can also benefit from the framework as an aid to recognizing the potential synergies when planning their lean and BIM adoption strategies.

When leadership meets organizational change : the influence of the top management team and supervisory leaders on change appraisals, change attitudes, and adjustment to change

Despite the importance of adaption and change for firm survival, the failure rate of organizational change efforts remains alarmingly high (Beer and Nohria, 2000; Kotter, 1995). In a recent global survey of over 3,000 executives,Meaney and Pung (2008) reported that two-thirds of executives indicated that their firm had failed to successfully implement organizational changes. Similarly, academic researchers have also concluded that difficulties in implementing and managing organizational change efforts often precipitate organizational crises (Probst and Raisch, 2005). As a result, attention has been directed to identify the factors that improve the likelihood of successfully implementing organizational change efforts. While there has been practitioner-oriented discussion around the pivotal role of workplace leaders in reducing resistance to change, only a limited number of empirical studies have examined relationships between leader behavior and employee change attitudes (e.g., Bommer, Rich, and Rubin, 2005; Herold, Caldwell, and Liu, 2008; Nemanich and Keller, 2007; Oreg and Berson, 2011). However...

What’s Mime got to do with it?

What has Mime got to do with Corporate Communication? As a professional Mime artist on both stage and screen for more than 25 years, the author has been adapting and applying the techniques of Mime to the corporate communication context over a number of years, coaching corporate CEO’s, Executives and Managers, representing both public and private sector corporations and organisations. This unusual inter-contextual skill transfer is the subject of both a book and series of VODCasts by the author (currently in the final stages of completion), which form part of the author’s Doctoral Research and from which this paper is substantially drawn. The author’s professional background is multi-disciplinary – encompassing theatre, television, media, music, tertiary education and corporate training contexts. It is also inter-disciplinary – concerned with the commonality of different artistic mediums and forms and how, where and why these professional disciplines: intersect; interact, and inform each other – and therefore how they support each other - rather than losing creative/professional opportunities because of areas where they might conflict. This paper examines in particular the physicality of presentation and communication – beyond ‘generic’ body-language analysis. It involves the analysis, manipulation and stylisation of human physicality to support and enhance individual inter-professional communication, and how mime performance skills specifically, inform that process. This paper discusses:- • how mime skills clarify and enhance inter-professional communication. • what adaptations need to be applied in that context • getting a ‘performance’ from ‘non-performers’

Australian patent enforcement : a proposal for an expert panel opinion

The Australian Government has been concerned “to find ways of making patent enforcement less of an issue” and to make it “cheaper, simpler and quicker to get fair and appropriate resolution for any dispute”. Major problems relating to patent enforcement in Australia have been identified as: the cost of legal proceedings; the lack of patent owners’ financial capacity to fund enforcement proceedings; delay; and uncertainty as to the outcome and lack of knowledge about the processes of enforcement. This paper considers some of the problems associated with patent enforcement in Australia and proposes an approach to patent litigation which is directed at alleviating some of the difficulties which have been identified. Specifically, it proposes a strategy designed to identify the parties’ risks at an early stage of patent litigation proceeding and facilitate an early resolution of the dispute.

Changing other people’s mind : creative entrepreneurs

Creative entrepreneurs, the business executives who operate in the creative industries sector of economy, possess distinctive characteristics that influence people around them due to the nature of creative industries, their position in the society and their relations with people within their business operation. While there is a large amount of research focusing on industry development; the research on creative entrepreneurs as a group is much less, let alone their influence on people associated with them. Through exploring literatures on entrepreneurship in creative industries, leadership with particular focus on charismatic and shared leadership, cognitive psychology and the psychology of entrepreneurship, this study integrates seemingly remote notions from different disciplines and concludes that creative entrepreneurs as a special group of entrepreneurs influence other people in their operational settings. These settings are culturally stimulating and provocative. Creative entrepreneurs change people’s way of thinking through their intrinsic attributes and nature of the creative industries.

Exploring the impact of shared domain knowledge on strategic alignment in the Australian public sector

In this age of ever-increasing information technology (IT) driven environments, governments/or public sector organisations (PSOs) are expected to demonstrate the business value of the investment in IT and take advantage of the opportunities offered by technological advancements. Strategic alignment (SA) emerged as a mechanism to bridge the gap between business and IT missions, objectives, and plans in order to ensure value optimisation from investment in IT and enhance organisational performance. However, achieving and sustaining SA remains a challenge requiring even more agility nowadays to keep up with turbulent organisational environments. The shared domain knowledge (SDK) between the IT department and other diverse organisational groups is considered as one of the factors influencing the successful implementation of SA. However, SDK in PSOs has received relatively little empirical attention. This paper presents findings from a study which investigated the influence of SDK on SA within organisations in the Australian public sector. The developed research model examined the relationship of SDK between business and IT domains with SA using a survey of 56 public sector professionals and executives. A key research contribution is the empirical demonstration that increasing levels of SDK between IT and business groups leads to increased SA.

How innovation and R&D happen in the upstream oil & gas industry : insights from a global survey

Few would disagree that the upstream oil & gas industry has become more technology-intensive over the years. But how does innovation happen in the industry? Specifically, what ideas and inputs flow from which parts of the sector׳s value network, and where do these inputs go? And how do firms and organizations from different countries contribute differently to this process? This paper puts forward the results of a survey designed to shed light on these questions. Carried out in collaboration with the Society of Petroleum Engineers (SPE), the survey was sent to 469 executives and senior managers who played a significant role with regard to R&D and/or technology deployment in their respective business units. A total of 199 responses were received from a broad range of organizations and countries around the world. Several interesting themes and trends emerge from the results, including: (1) service companies tend to file considerably more patents per innovation than other types of organization; (2) over 63% of the deployed innovations reported in the survey originated in service companies; (3) neither universities nor government-led research organizations were considered to be valuable sources of new information and knowledge in the industry׳s R&D initiatives, and; (4) despite the increasing degree of globalization in the marketplace, the USA still plays an extremely dominant role in the industry׳s overall R&D and technology deployment activities. By providing a detailed and objective snapshot of how innovation happens in the upstream oil & gas sector, this paper provides a valuable foundation for future investigations and discussions aimed at improving how R&D and technology deployment are managed within the industry. The methodology did result in a coverage bias within the survey, however, and the limitations arising from this are explored.

Superstars as drivers of organizational identification : empirical findings from professional soccer

This paper examines the effect of superstars on external stakeholders’ organizational identification through the lens of sport. Drawing on social identity theory and the concept of organizational identification, as well as on role model theories and superstar economics, several hypotheses are developed regarding the influence of soccer stars on their fans’ degree of team identification. Using a proprietary data set that combines archival data on professional German soccer players and clubs with survey data on more than 1,400 soccer fans, this study finds evidence for a positive effect of superstar characteristics and role model perception. Moreover, it is found that players who qualify for the definition of a superstar are more important to fans of established teams than to fans of unsuccessful teams. The player's club tenure, however, seems to have no influence on fans’ team identification. It is further argued that the effect of soccer stars on their fans is comparable to that of executives on external stakeholders, and hence, the results are applied to the business domain. The results of this study contribute to existing research by extending the list of personnel-related determinants of organizational identification.

A study of the informal interactions between audit committees and internal auditors in Australia

This paper finds evidence for the growing importance of informal interactions between the internal audit function and the audit committee (AC) in Australia – a relatively unexplored topic in the literature – using a survey of Chief Audit Executives (CAEs). It also describes the nature of these informal interactions. The most innovative elements of this paper are the findings that certain personal characteristics of CAEs, the specific knowledge and expertise of the AC chair, as well as some of the AC chair’s personal characteristics are associated with the existence (and increase) of informal interactions.

Informal interactions between audit committees and internal audit functions : exploratory evidence and directions for future research

Purpose – This paper aims to recognise the importance of informal processes within corporate governance and complement existing research in this area by investigating factors associated with the existence of informal interactions between audit committees and internal audit functions and in providing directions for future research. Design/methodology/approach – To examine the existence and drivers of informal interactions between audit committees and internal audit functions, this paper relies on a questionnaire survey of chief audit executives (CAEs) in the UK from listed and non-listed, as well as financial and non-financial, companies. While prior qualitative research suggests that informal interactions do take place, most of the evidence is based on particular organisational setting or on a very small range of interviews. The use of a questionnaire enabled the examination of the existence of internal interactions across a relatively larger number of entities. Findings – The paper finds evidence of audit committees and internal audit functions engaging in informal interactions in addition to formal pre-scheduled regular meetings. Informal interactions complement formal meetings with the audit committee and as such represent additional opportunities for the audit committees to monitor internal audit functions. Audit committees’ informal interactions are significantly and positively associated with audit committee independence, audit chair’s knowledge and experience, and internal audit quality. Originality/value – The results demonstrate the importance of the background of the audit committee chair for the effectiveness of the governance process. This is possibly the first paper to examine the relationship between audit committee quality and internal audit, on the existence and driver of informal interactions. Policy makers should recognize that in addition to formal mechanisms, informal processes, such as communication outside of formal pre-scheduled meetings, play a significant role in corporate governance.

Reframe QUT's evaluation framework : a case study of planning, policy and positioning leading to educational best practice

Every university in Australia has a set of policies that guide the institution in its educational practices, however, the policies are often developed in isolation to each other. Now imagine a space where policies are evidence-based, refined annually, cohesively interrelated, and meet stakeholders’ needs. Is this happenstance or the result of good planning? Culturally, Queensland University of Technology (QUT) is a risk-averse institution that takes pride in its financial solvency and is always keen to know “how are we going?” With a twenty-year history of annual reporting that assures the quality of course performance through multiple lines of evidence, QUT’s Learning and Teaching Unit went one step further and strategically aligned a suite of policies that take into consideration the needs of their stakeholders, collaborate with other areas across the institution and use multiple lines of evidence to inform curriculum decision-making. In QUT’s experience, strategic planning can lead to policy that is designed to meet stakeholders’ needs, not manage them; where decision-making is supported by evidence, not rhetoric; where all feedback is incorporated, not ignored; and where policies are cohesively interrelated, not isolated. While many may call this ‘policy nirvana’, QUT has positioned itself to demonstrate good educational practice through Reframe, its evaluation framework. In this case, best practice was achieved through the application of a theory of change and a design-led logic model that allows for transition to other institutions with different cultural specificity. The evaluation approach follows Seldin’s (2003) notion to offer depth and breadth to the evaluation framework along with Berk’s (2005) concept of multiple lines of evidence. In summary, this paper offers university executives, academics, planning and quality staff an opportunity to understand the critical steps that lead to strategic planning and design of evidence-based educational policy that positions a university for best practice in learning and teaching.

Making the profitable transition towards sustainable business practice

The last three decades have been difficult for companies and industry. In an increasingly competitive international business climate with shifting national environmental regulations, higher standards are being demanded by the consumer and community groups, not-to-mention the escalating cost of primary resources such as water, steel and minerals. The cause of these pressures is the traditional notion held by business executives and engineers that there is an inherent trade off between eco-efficiency and improving the economic bottom line. However there is significant evidence and examples of best practice to show that there is in fact no trade-off between the environment and the economy if sustainable development through continual improvement is adopted. It is highly possible therefore for companies to make a profitable transition towards sustainable business practice, where along the transition significant business opportunities can be taken advantage of. Companies are by their very nature dynamic, influential and highly capable of adapting to change. Making an organisational transformation to a sustainable business is not outside the capacity of the typical company, who know much of what is needed already to change their activities to satisfy current market demands while achieving competitiveness. However in order to make the transition towards sustainable business practice companies require some key mechanisms such as accurate information on methodologies and opportunities, understanding of the financial and non-financial incentives, permission from stakeholders and shareholders, understanding of the emerging market opportunities, a critical mass of leaders in their sector and demonstrated case studies, and awarding appropriate risk-taking activities undertaken by engineers and CEOs. Satisfying these requirements will adopt an innovative culture within the company that strives for continual improvement and successfully transforms itself to achieve competitiveness in the 21st Century. This paper will summarise the experiences of The Natural Edge Project (TNEP) and its partners in assisting organisations to make a profitable transition towards sustainable business practice through several initiatives. The Natural Advantage of Nations publication provides the critical information required by business leaders and engineers to set the context of sustainable business practice. The Profiting in a Carbon Constrained World report, developed with Natural Capitalism Inc led by Hunter Lovins, summarises the opportunities available to companies to take advantage of the carbon trading market mechanisms such as the Chicago Climate Exchange and European Climate Exchange. The Sustainability Helix then guides the company through the transition by identifying the key tools and methodologies required by companies to reduce environmental loading while dramatically improving resource productivity and achieving competitiveness. Finally, the Engineering Sustainable Solutions Program delivers the key engineering information required by companies and university departments to deliver sustainable engineering solutions. The initiatives are of varying complexity and level of application, however all are designed to provide key staff the critical information required to make a profitable transition towards sustainable business practice. It is then their responsibility to apply and teach their knowledge to the rest of the organisation.

Distribution Revolution: Conversations about the Digital Future of Film and Television

Distribution Revolution is a collection of interviews with leading film and TV professionals concerning the many ways that digital delivery systems are transforming the entertainment business. These interviews provide lively insider accounts from studio executives, distribution professionals, and creative talent of the tumultuous transformation of film and TV in the digital era. The first section features interviews with top executives at major Hollywood studios, providing a window into the big-picture concerns of media conglomerates with respect to changing business models, revenue streams, and audience behaviors. The second focuses on innovative enterprises that are providing path-breaking models for new modes of content creation, curation, and distribution—creatively meshing the strategies and practices of Hollywood and Silicon Valley. And the final section offers insights from creative talent whose professional practices, compensation, and everyday working conditions have been transformed over the past ten years. Taken together, these interviews demonstrate that virtually every aspect of the film and television businesses is being affected by the digital distribution revolution, a revolution that has likely just begun. Interviewees include: • Gary Newman, Chairman, 20th Century Fox Television • Kelly Summers, Former Vice President, Global Business Development and New Media Strategy, Walt Disney Studios • Thomas Gewecke, Chief Digital Officer and Executive Vice President, Strategy and Business Development, Warner Bros. Entertainment • Ted Sarandos, Chief Content Officer, Netflix • Felicia D. Henderson, Writer-Producer, Soul Food, Gossip Girl • Dick Wolf, Executive Producer and Creator, Law & Order

Introduction to "Business innovation and disruption in the music industry"

Similar to most other creative industries, the evolution of the music industry is heavily shaped by media technologies. This was equally true in 1999, when the global recorded music industry had experienced two decades of continuous growth largely driven by the rapid transition from vinyl records to Compact Discs. The transition encouraged avid music listeners to purchase much of their music collections all over again in order to listen to their favourite music with ‘digital sound’. As a consequence of this successful product innovation, recorded music sales (unit measure) more than doubled between the early 1980s and the end of the 1990s. It was with this backdrop that the first peer-to-peer file sharing service was developed and released to the mainstream music market in 1999 by the college student Shawn Fanning. The service was named Napster and it marks the beginning of an era that is now a classic example of how an innovation is able to disrupt an entire industry and make large swathes of existing industry competences obsolete. File sharing services such as Napster, followed by a range of similar services in its path, reduced physical unit sales in the music industry to levels that had not been seen since the 1970s. The severe impact of the internet on physical sales shocked many music industry executives who spent much of the 2000s vigorously trying to reverse the decline and make the disruptive technologies go away. At the end, they learned that their efforts were to no avail and the impact on the music industry proved to be transformative, irreversible and, to many music industry professionals, also devastating. Thousands of people lost their livelihood, large and small music companies have folded or been forced into mergers or acquisitions. But as always during periods of disruption, the past 15 years have also been very innovative, spurring a plethora of new music business models. These new business models have mainly emerged outside the music industry and the innovators have been often been required to be both persuasive and persistent in order to get acceptance from the risk-averse and cash-poor music industry establishment. Apple was one such change agent that in 2003 was the first company to open up a functioning and legal market for online music. iTunes Music Store was the first online retail outlet that was able to offer the music catalogues from all the major music companies; it used an entirely novel pricing model, and it allowed consumers to de-bundle the music album and only buy the songs that they actually liked. Songs had previously been bundled by physical necessity as discs or cassettes, but with iTunes Music Store, the institutionalized album bundle slowly started to fall apart. The consequences had an immediate impact on music retailing and within just a few years, many brick and mortar record stores were forced out of business in markets across the world. The transformation also had disruptive consequences beyond music retailing and redefined music companies’ organizational structures, work processes and routines, as well as professional roles. iTunes Music Store in one sense was a disruptive innovation, but it was at the same time relatively incremental, since the major labels’ positions and power structures remained largely unscathed. The rights holders still controlled their intellectual properties and the structures that guided the royalties paid per song that was sold were predictable, transparent and in line with established music industry practices.

Women in leadership: An analysis of the gender pay gap in ASX-listed firms

This study provides evidence that after several decades of fighting for equal pay for equal work, an unexplained gender pay gap remains amongst senior executives in ASX-listed firms. After controlling for a large suite of personal, occupational and firm observables, we find female senior executives receive, on average, 22.58 percent less in base salary for the period 2002–2013. When executives are awarded performance-based pay, females receive on average 16.47 percent less in cash bonus and 18.21 percent less in long-term incentives than males. The results are robust to using firm fixed effects and propensity-score matching. Blinder–Oaxaca decomposition results show that the mean pay gap cannot be attributed to gender differences in attributes, including job titles. Instead, the results point to differences in returns on firm-specific variables, in particular firm risk.