Executive and organisational leadership development in universities : exploring key elements and perceptions

Organisational and leadership development is said to be one of the most challenging and important activities facing universities, particularly in the current environment of fast-paced change and accelerated age-related attrition. Succession leadership development being timely, the purpose of this study was to explore the nature of leadership development most suited to meeting the leadership and organisational development challenges for contemporary universities. A blend of literature-based and empirical research was undertaken. This resulted in seven papers submitted to internationally refereed journals; five papers published, one in press, and one under review. Six of these are sole authored papers and one is a co-authored paper. The papers identify some of the issues and challenges facing the tertiary sector. They shed light on factors influencing executive and organisational leadership development deriving from the literature review and from empirical research reporting the views of current university leaders. The papers and submission document herein include recommendations and suggested models informing executive and organisational leadership development in universities. The "Lantern" model - an Illuminated Model for Organisational Leadership Development - is a key original conceptual model framing the study.

The conceptualisation, sensitivity and measurement of holding costs and other selected elements impacting housing affordability (Literature review and research methodology for confirmation of PhD candidature)

It is widely held that strong relationships exist between housing, economic status, and well being. This is exemplified by widespread housing stock surpluses in many countries which threaten to destabilise numerous aspects related to individuals and community. However, the position of housing demand and supply is not consistent. The Australian position provides a distinct contrast whereby seemingly inexorable housing demand generally remains a critical issue affecting the socio-economic landscape. Underpinned by high levels of immigration, and further buoyed by sustained historically low interest rates, increasing income levels, and increased government assistance for first home buyers, this strong housing demand ensures elements related to housing affordability continue to gain prominence. A significant, but less visible factor impacting housing affordability – particularly new housing development – relates to holding costs. These costs are in many ways “hidden” and cannot always be easily identified. Although it is only one contributor, the nature and extent of its impact requires elucidation. In its simplest form, it commences with a calculation of the interest or opportunity cost of land holding. However, there is significantly more complexity for major new developments - particularly greenfield property development. Preliminary analysis conducted by the author suggests that even small shifts in primary factors impacting holding costs can appreciably affect housing affordability – and notably, to a greater extent than commonly held. Even so, their importance and perceived high level impact can be gauged from the unprecedented level of attention policy makers have given them over recent years. This may be evidenced by the embedding of specific strategies to address burgeoning holding costs (and particularly those cost savings associated with streamlining regulatory assessment) within statutory instruments such as the Queensland Housing Affordability Strategy, and the South East Queensland Regional Plan. However, several key issues require investigation. Firstly, the computation and methodology behind the calculation of holding costs varies widely. In fact, it is not only variable, but in some instances completely ignored. Secondly, some ambiguity exists in terms of the inclusion of various elements of holding costs, thereby affecting the assessment of their relative contribution. Perhaps this may in part be explained by their nature: such costs are not always immediately apparent. Some forms of holding costs are not as visible as the more tangible cost items associated with greenfield development such as regulatory fees, government taxes, acquisition costs, selling fees, commissions and others. Holding costs are also more difficult to evaluate since for the most part they must be ultimately assessed over time in an ever-changing environment, based on their strong relationship with opportunity cost which is in turn dependant, inter alia, upon prevailing inflation and / or interest rates. By extending research in the general area of housing affordability, this thesis seeks to provide a more detailed investigation of those elements related to holding costs, and in so doing determine the size of their impact specifically on the end user. This will involve the development of soundly based economic and econometric models which seek to clarify the componentry impacts of holding costs. Ultimately, there are significant policy implications in relation to the framework used in Australian jurisdictions that promote, retain, or otherwise maximise, the opportunities for affordable housing.

The mechanical response of the ovine lumbar anulus fibrosus to uniaxial, biaxial and shear loads

Analytical and computational models of the intervertebral disc (IVD) are commonly employed to enhance understanding of the biomechanics of the human spine and spinal motion segments. The accuracy of these models in predicting physiological behaviour of the spine is intrinsically reliant on the accuracy of the material constitutive representations employed to represent the spinal tissues. There is a paucity of detailed mechanical data describing the material response of the reinforced­ground matrix in the anulus fibrosus of the IVD. In the present study, the ‘reinforced­ground matrix’ was defined as the matrix with the collagen fibres embedded but not actively bearing axial load, thus incorporating the contribution of the fibre-fibre and fibre-matrix interactions. To determine mechanical parameters for the anulus ground matrix, mechanical tests were carried out on specimens of ovine anulus, under unconfined uniaxial compression, simple shear and biaxial compression. Test specimens of ovine anulus fibrosus were obtained with an adjacent layer of vertebral bone/cartilage on the superior and inferior specimen surface. Specimen geometry was such that there were no continuous collagen fibres coupling the two endplates. Samples were subdivided according to disc region - anterior, lateral and posterior - to determine the regional inhomogeneity in the anulus mechanical response. Specimens were loaded at a strain rate sufficient to avoid fluid outflow from the tissue and typical stress-strain responses under the initial load application and under repeated loading were determined for each of the three loading types. The response of the anulus tissue to the initial and repeated load cycles was significantly different for all load types, except biaxial compression in the anterior anulus. Since the maximum applied strain exceeded the damage strain for the tissue, experimental results for repeated loading reflected the mechanical ability of the tissue to carry load, subsequent to the initiation of damage. To our knowledge, this is the first study to provide experimental data describing the response of the ‘reinforced­ground matrix’ to biaxial compression. Additionally, it is novel in defining a study objective to determine the regionally inhomogeneous response of the ‘reinforced­ground matrix’ under an extensive range of loading conditions suitable for mechanical characterisation of the tissue. The results presented facilitate the development of more detailed and comprehensive constitutive descriptions for the large strain nonlinear elastic or hyperelastic response of the anulus ground matrix.

Sustainable airport infrastructure : balancing infrastructures for the airport metropolis

Ongoing financial, environmental and political adjustments have shifted the role of large international airports. Many airports are expanding from a narrow concentration on operating as transportation centres to becoming economic hubs. By working together, airports and other industry sectors can contribute to and facilitate not only economic prosperity, but create social advantage for local and regional areas in new ways. This transformation of the function and orientation of airports has been termed the aerotropolis or airport metropolis, where the airport is recognised as an economic centre with land uses that link local and global markets. This chapter contends that the conversion of an airport into a sustainable airport metropolis requires more than just industry clustering and the existence of hard physical infrastructure. Attention must also be directed to the creation and on-going development of social infrastructure within proximate areas and the maximisation of connectivity flows within and between infrastructure elements. It concludes that the establishment of an interactive and interdependent infrastructure trilogy of hard, soft and social infrastructures provides the necessary balance to the airport metropolis to ensure sustainable development. This chapter provides the start of an operating framework to integrate and harness the infrastructure trilogy to enable the achievement of optimal and sustainable social and economic advantage from airport cities.

Demonstrating the safety and performance of a velocity sourced series elastic actuator

Actuators with deliberately added compliant elements in the transmission system are often described as improving the safety of the actuator at the detriment of the performance. We show that our variant of the Series Elastic Actuator topology, the Velocity Sourced Series Elastic Actuator, has well defined performance characteristics that make for improvements in safety and performance over conventional high impedance actuators. The improvement in performance was principally achieved by having tight velocity control of the DC motor that acts as the mechanical power source for the actuator. Results for performance are given for point to point transition times, while results for safety are based on empirical assessment of the Head Injury Criterion during collisions.

Correlating vehicle forces and track profile

A research project was conducted at Queensland University of Technology on the relationship between the forces at the wheel-rail interface in track and the rate of degradation of track. Data for the study was obtained from an instrumented vehicle which ran repeatedly over a section of Queensland Rail's track in Central Queensland over a 6-month period. The wheel-rail forces had to be correlated with the elements of roughness in the test track profile, which were measured with a variety of equipment. At low frequencies, there was strong correlation between forces and profile, as expected, but diminishing correlation as frequencies increased.

A vibration based method to update axial shortening of load bearing elements

Axial shortening in vertical load bearing elements of reinforced concrete high-rise buildings is caused by the time dependent effects of shrinkage, creep and elastic shortening of concrete under loads. Such phenomenon has to be predicted at design stage and then updated during and after construction of the buildings in order to provide mitigation against the adverse effects of differential axial shortening among the elements. Existing measuring methods for updating previous predictions of axial shortening pose problems. With this in mind, a innovative procedure with a vibration based parameter called axial shortening index is proposed to update axial shortening of vertical elements based on variations in vibration characteristics of the buildings. This paper presents the development of the procedure and illustrates it through a numerical example of an unsymmetrical high-rise building with two outrigger and belt systems. Results indicate that the method has the capability to capture influence of different tributary areas, shear walls of outrigger and belt systems as well as the geometric complexity of the building.

A point interpolation method with locally smoothed strain field (PIM-LS2) for mechanics problems using triangular mesh

A point interpolation method with locally smoothed strain field (PIM-LS2) is developed for mechanics problems using a triangular background mesh. In the PIM-LS2, the strain within each sub-cell of a nodal domain is assumed to be the average strain over the adjacent sub-cells of the neighboring element sharing the same field node. We prove theoretically that the energy norm of the smoothed strain field in PIM-LS2 is equivalent to that of the compatible strain field, and then prove that the solution of the PIM- LS2 converges to the exact solution of the original strong form. Furthermore, the softening effects of PIM-LS2 to system and the effects of the number of sub-cells that participated in the smoothing operation on the convergence of PIM-LS2 are investigated. Intensive numerical studies verify the convergence, softening effects and bound properties of the PIM-LS2, and show that the very ‘‘tight’’ lower and upper bound solutions can be obtained using PIM-LS2.

Mechanical properties of thin sol-gel films

This thesis presents a study of the mechanical properties of thin films. The main aim was to determine the properties of sol-gel derived coatings. These films are used in a range of different applications and are known to be quite porous. Very little work has been carried out in this area and in order to study the mechanical properties of sol-gel films, some of the work was carried out on magnetron sputtered metal coatings in order to validate the techniques developed in this work. The main part of the work has concentrated on the development of various bending techniques to study the elastic modulus of the thin films, including both a small scale three-point bending, as well as a novel bi-axial bending technique based on a disk resting on three supporting balls. The bending techniques involve a load being applied to the sample being tested and the bending response to this force being recorded. These experiments were carried out using an ultra micro indentation system with very sensitive force and depth recording capabilities. By analysing the result of these forces and deflections using existing theories of elasticity, the elastic modulus may be determined. In addition to the bi-axial bending study, a finite element analysis of the stress distribution in a disk during bending was carried out. The results from the bi-axial bending tests of the magnetron sputtered films was confirmed by ultra micro indentation tests, giving information of the hardness and elastic modulus of the films. It was found that while the three point bending method gave acceptable results for uncoated steel substrates, it was very susceptible to slight deformations of the substrate. Improvements were made by more careful preparation of the substrates in order to avoid deformation. However the technique still failed to give reasonable results for coated specimens. In contrast, biaxial bending gave very reliable results even for very thin films and this technique was also found to be useful for determination of the properties of sol-gel coatings. In addition, an ultra micro indentation study of the hardness and elastic modulus of sol-gel films was conducted. This study included conventionally fired films as well as films ion implanted in a range of doses. The indentation tests showed that for implantation of H⁺ ions at doses exceeding 3x10¹⁶ ions/cm², the mechanical properties closely resembled those of films that were conventionally fired to 450°C.