The comprehensive Australian Study of entrepreneurial emergence (CAUSEE) high potential nascent entrepreneurs : some preliminary findings

Principal Topic The Comprehensive Australian Study of Entrepreneurial Emergence (CAUSEE) represents the first Australian study to employ and extend the longitudinal and large scale systematic research developed for the Panel Study of Entrepreneurial Dynamics (PSED) in the US (Gartner, Shaver, Carter and Reynolds, 2004; Reynolds, 2007). This research approach addresses several shortcomings of other data sets including under coverage; selection bias; memory decay and hindsight bias, and lack of time separation between the assessment of causes and their assumed effects (Johnson et al 2006; Davidsson 2006). However, a remaining problem is that any a random sample of start-ups will be dominated by low potential, imitative ventures. In recognition of this issue CAUSEE supplemented PSED-type random samples with theoretically representative samples of the 'high potential' emerging ventures employing a unique methodology using novel multiple screening criteria. We define new ''high-potential'' ventures as new entrepreneurial innovative ventures with high aspirations and potential for growth. This distinguishes them from those ''lifestyle'' imitative businesses that start small and remain intentionally small (Timmons, 1986). CAUSEE is providing the opportunity to explore, for the first time, if process and outcomes of high potentials differ from those of traditional lifestyle firms. This will allows us to compare process and outcome attributes of the random sample with the high potential over sample of new firms and young firms. The attributes in which we will examine potential differences will include source of funding, and internationalisation. This is interesting both in terms of helping to explain why different outcomes occur but also in terms of assistance to future policymaking, given that high growth potential firms are increasingly becoming the focus of government intervention in economic development policies around the world. The first wave of data of a four year longitudinal study has been collected using these samples, allowing us to also provide some initial analysis on which to continue further research. The aim of this paper therefore is to present some selected preliminary results from the first wave of the data collection, with comparisons of high potential with lifestyle firms. We expect to see owing to greater resource requirements and higher risk profiles, more use of venture capital and angel investment, and more internationalisation activity to assist in recouping investment and to overcome Australia's smaller economic markets Methodology/Key Propositions In order to develop the samples of 'high potential' in the NF and YF categories a set of qualification criteria were developed. Specifically, to qualify, firms as nascent or young high potentials, we used multiple, partly compensating screening criteria related to the human capital and aspirations of the founders as well as the novelty of the venture idea, and venture high technology. A variety of techniques were also employed to develop a multi level dataset of sources to develop leads and firm details. A dataset was generated from a variety of websites including major stakeholders including the Federal and State Governments, Australian Chamber of Commerce, University Commercialisation Offices, Patent and Trademark Attorneys, Government Awards and Industry Awards in Entrepreneurship and Innovation, Industry lead associations, Venture Capital Association, Innovation directories including Australian Technology Showcase, Business and Entrepreneurs Magazines including BRW and Anthill. In total, over 480 industry, association, government and award sources were generated in this process. Of these, 74 discrete sources generated high potentials that fufilled the criteria. 1116 firms were contacted as high potential cases. 331 cases agreed to participate in the screener, with 279 firms (134 nascents, and 140 young firms) successfully passing the high potential criteria. 222 Firms (108 Nascents and 113 Young firms) completed the full interview. For the general sample CAUSEE conducts screening phone interviews with a very large number of adult members of households randomly selected through random digit dialing using screening questions which determine whether respondents qualify as 'nascent entrepreneurs'. CAUSEE additionally targets 'young firms' those that commenced trading from 2004 or later. This process yielded 977 Nascent Firms (3.4%) and 1,011 Young Firms (3.6%). These were directed to the full length interview (40-60 minutes) either directly following the screener or later by appointment. The full length interviews were completed by 594 NF and 514 YF cases. These are the cases we will use in the comparative analysis in this report. Results and Implications The results for this paper are based on Wave one of the survey which has been completed and the data obtained. It is expected that the findings will assist in beginning to develop an understanding of high potential nascent and young firms in Australia, how they differ from the larger lifestyle entrepreneur group that makes up the vast majority of the new firms created each year, and the elements that may contribute to turning high potential growth status into high growth realities. The results have implications for Government in the design of better conditions for the creation of new business, firms who assist high potentials in developing better advice programs in line with a better understanding of their needs and requirements, individuals who may be considering becoming entrepreneurs in high potential arenas and existing entrepreneurs make better decisions.

The public management issues of access to electronic gaming machines (EGMs) : a case study of policy in Victoria, its effects and requirements for evaluation

Wynne and Schaffer (2003) have highlighted both the strong growth of gambling activity in recent years, and the revenue streams this has generated for governments and communities. Gambling activities and the revenues derived from them have, unsurprisingly, therefore also been seen as a way in which to increase economic development in deprived areas (Jinkner-Lloyd, 1996). Consequently, according to Brown et al (2003), gambling is now a large taxation revenue earner for many western governments, at both federal and state levels, worldwide (for example UK, USA, Australia). In size and importance, the Australian gambling industry in particular has grown significantly over the last three decades, experiencing a fourfold increase in real gambling turnover. There are, however, also concerns expressed about gambling and Electronic Gaming in particular, as illustrated in economic, social and ethical terms in Oddo (1997). There are also spatial aspects to understanding these issues. Marshall’s (1998) study, for example, highlights that benefits from gambling are more likely to accrue at the macro as opposed to the local level, because of centralised tax gathering and spending of tax revenues, whilst localities may suffer from displacement of activities with higher multipliers than the institutions with EGMs that replace them. This also highlights a regional context of costs, where benefits accrue to the centre, but the costs accrue to the regions and localities, as simultaneously resources leave those communities through both the gambling activities themselves (in the form of revenue for the EGM owners), and the government (through taxes).

Listening to nature : acoustic monitoring of the environment

The requirement to monitor the rapid pace of environmental change due to global warming and to human development is producing large volumes of data but placing much stress on the capacity of ecologists to store, analyse and visualise that data. To date, much of the data has been provided by low level sensors monitoring soil moisture, dissolved nutrients, light intensity, gas composition and the like. However, a significant part of an ecologist’s work is to obtain information about species diversity, distributions and relationships. This task typically requires the physical presence of an ecologist in the field, listening and watching for species of interest. It is an extremely difficult task to automate because of the higher order difficulties in bandwidth, data management and intelligent analysis if one wishes to emulate the highly trained eyes and ears of an ecologist. This paper is concerned with just one part of the bigger challenge of environmental monitoring – the acquisition and analysis of acoustic recordings of the environment. Our intention is to provide helpful tools to ecologists – tools that apply information technologies and computational technologies to all aspects of the acoustic environment. The on-line system which we are building in conjunction with ecologists offers an integrated approach to recording, data management and analysis. The ecologists we work with have different requirements and therefore we have adopted the toolbox approach, that is, we offer a number of different web services that can be concatenated according to need. In particular, one group of ecologists is concerned with identifying the presence or absence of species and their distributions in time and space. Another group, motivated by legislative requirements for measuring habitat condition, are interested in summary indices of environmental health. In both case, the key issues are scalability and automation.

Sustainability and the Building Code of Australia

This was a two-stage project to inform the Australian property and construction industry generally, and to provide the Australian Building Codes Board (ABCB) with information to allow it to determine whether or not sustainability requirements are necessary in the Future Building Code of Australia (BCA21). Research objectives included: examine overseas sustainability requirements for buildings and outline the reason why it is controlled and regulated in the particular country, state, principality etc. examine studies focusing on sustainability developments in buildings in Australia and overseas identify potential issues and implications associated with sustainable building requirements provide advice on whether provisions are necessary in the BCA21 to make buildings sustainable if the study determines there is a need for sustainability requirements in the BCA21, the study was to demonstrate the need to control and regulate along with the method to control and regulate. This research was broken down into two stages. Stage 1 was a literature review of international requirements as well as current thinking and practice for sustainable building developments. Stage 2 identified issues and implications of sustainability requirements for buildings and advice on whether provisions are necessary in the BCA21. This stage included workshops in all capital cities and involved key stakeholders, such as regulators, local government and representatives from key associations. This final report brings together the work of both stages, along with a searchable internet database of references and a series of nine key recommendations.

Citizen journalism as social networking : reporting the 2007 Australian Federal Election

One of the perceived Achilles heels of online citizen journalism is its perceived inability to conduct investigative and first-hand reporting. A number of projects have recently addressed this problem, with varying success: the U.S.-based Assignment Zero was described as "a highly satisfying failure" (Howe 2007), while the German MyHeimat.de appears to have been thoroughly successful in attracting a strong community of contributors, even to the point of being able to generate print versions of its content, distributed free of charge to households in selected German cities. In Australia, citizen journalism played a prominent part in covering the federal elections held on 24 November 2007; news bloggers and public opinion Websites provided a strong counterpoint to the mainstream media coverage of the election campaign (Bruns et al., 2007). Youdecide2007.org, a collaboration between researchers at Queensland University of Technology and media practitioners at the public service broadcaster SBS, the public opinion site On Line Opinion, and technology company Cisco Systems, was developed as a dedicated space for a specifically hyperlocal coverage of the election campaign in each of Australia's 150 electorates from the urban sprawls of Sydney and Brisbane to the sparsely populated remote regions of outback Australia. YD07 provided training materials for would-be citizen journalists and encouraged them to contribute electorate profiles, interview candidates, and conduct vox-pops with citizens in their local area. The site developed a strong following especially in its home state of Queensland, and its interviewers influenced national public debate by uncovering the sometimes controversial personal views of mainstream and fringe candidates. At the same time, the success of YD07 was limited by external constraints determined by campaign timing and institutional frameworks. As part of a continuing action research cycle, lessons learnt from Youdecide2007.org are going to be translated into further iterations of the project, which will cover the local government elections in the Australian state of Queensland, to be held in March 2008, and developments subsequent to these elections. This paper will present research outcomes from the Youdecide2007.org project. In particular, it will examine the roles of staff contributors and citizen journalists in attracting members, providing information, promoting discussion, and fostering community on the site: early indications from a study of interaction data on the site indicate notably different contribution patterns and effects for staff and citizen participants, which may point towards the possibility of developing more explicit pro-am collaboration models in line with the Pro-Am phenomenon outlined by Leadbeater & Miller (2004). The paper will outline strengths and weaknesses of the Youdecide model and highlight requirements for the successful development of active citizen journalism communities. In doing so, it will also evaluate the feasibility of hyperlocal citizen journalism approaches, and their interrelationship with broader regional, state, and national journalism in both its citizen and industrial forms.

Does pedagogy still rule?

Theories on teaching and learning for adult learners are constantly being reviewed and discussed in the higher educational environment. Theories are not static and appear to be in a constant developmental process. This paper discusses three of these theories: pedagogy, andragogy and heutagogy. It is argued that although educators engage in many of the principles of either student-centered (andragogy) and self-determined (heutagogy) learning, it is not possible to fully implement either theory. The two main limitations are the requirements of both internal and external stakeholders, such as accrediting bodies and requirements to assess all student learning. A reversion to teacher-centered learning (pedagogy) ensues. In summary, we engage in many action-oriented learning activities but revert to teacher-centered approaches in terms of content and assessment.

Professional ethics : the IT experience

IT professionals work in an environment which is under continual innovation, exerts a global influence and yet is relatively young. In such a context, how can professionals be effectively supported in their ethical practice? IT professional ethics has predominantly focussed on external standards or internal reasoning. However, attention also has to be paid to professionals’ experience of ethics, which influences how they interpret standards and construct reasoning. A comprehensive experience of ethics will embrace the professional’s inner circle, their employer, their client and humanity. In order to promote such a comprehensive view, we need to re-conceptualise a) the IT discipline, focussing on information users; b) professional ethics, adopting other-centred attitudes; and c) professional development, pursuing a change in lived experience. This book is written for those interested in professional ethics (practitioners, educators, professional bodies and employers), especially in the computing field.

Multi-Outcome Construction Policies : Industry-Focused Research Summary

The Multi-outcomes Construction Policies research project, funded by the Cooperative Research Centre for Construction Innovation (Project 2006-036-A), sought to explore the costs and benefits of leveraging social outcomes on public construction contracts. The context of the research project was the trend towards the contracting out of public construction works and the attempts that have been made to use new contractual arrangements with construction companies to construction achieve a wide range of social outcomes. In federal and state jurisdictions it is now common for governments to impose a range of additional requirements on public works contractors that relate to broad social/community objectives. These requirements include commitments to train apprentices and trainees; to provide local and/or indigenous employment opportunities; to buy local materials; and to include art works. The cost and benefits of using public construction contracts to achieve social/community goals have, to our knowledge, not been thoroughly researched in an Australian context. This is likely to reflect in large part the relatively short history of contracting out public works. As Jensen and Stonecash (2004) explain, most previous empirical studies of contracting out have attempted to measure the cost savings achieved through privatization, as this was the focus of policy debate in the 1980s and 1990s. Relatively few studies have addressed the ability of contracting arrangements to ensure the delivery of desired ‘quality’ outcomes1, or the costs of achieving these outcomes via contracting arrangements. One of the potential costs of attempting to leverage social/community outcomes on public construction projects is a reduction in the amount of competition for these projects, with obvious consequences for average bid prices and choice. In jurisdictions, such as Western Australia and Queensland, where currently construction market conditions are already

"Okay girl, it's up to you": a case study of the use of a seizure alert dog to improve the wellbeing of a student with epilepsy

The relationship between student well-being and the other vital outcomes of school is unequivocal. Improved outcomes in all aspects of student well-being are positively associated with improved outcomes in all other aspects of schooling. This educational imperative only serves to strengthen and support the moral imperative for schools and schooling to be inclusive, supportive and nurturing in order to maintain and support student well-being. (Fraillon 2005, p. 12)

The future face of school guidance and counselling : what will it look like in 25 years?

The author undertook a qualitative and quantitative survey of 130 guidance counsellors and primary school principles focusing on perceptions of what school guidance and counselling will be like in 25 years. Generally the participants held similar beliefs and were bullish about employment prospects.

A review on degradation models in reliability analysis

With increasingly complex engineering assets and tight economic requirements, asset reliability becomes more crucial in Engineering Asset Management (EAM). Improving the reliability of systems has always been a major aim of EAM. Reliability assessment using degradation data has become a significant approach to evaluate the reliability and safety of critical systems. Degradation data often provide more information than failure time data for assessing reliability and predicting the remnant life of systems. In general, degradation is the reduction in performance, reliability, and life span of assets. Many failure mechanisms can be traced to an underlying degradation process. Degradation phenomenon is a kind of stochastic process; therefore, it could be modelled in several approaches. Degradation modelling techniques have generated a great amount of research in reliability field. While degradation models play a significant role in reliability analysis, there are few review papers on that. This paper presents a review of the existing literature on commonly used degradation models in reliability analysis. The current research and developments in degradation models are reviewed and summarised in this paper. This study synthesises these models and classifies them in certain groups. Additionally, it attempts to identify the merits, limitations, and applications of each model. It provides potential applications of these degradation models in asset health and reliability prediction.

Measuring the managerial benefits of tax compliance : a fresh approach

Managerial benefits of tax compliance have been identified by many authors in the tax compliance costs literature; they have however often been ignored when measuring the net effect of tax compliance on business taxpayers because it was believed that the measurement of such benefits was impossible or difficult. This paper first discusses the theoretical issues surrounding the valuation of managerial benefits, including the related tax/ accounting costs overlap problem; it then proposes a fresh approach for measuring managerial benefits. The proposed measurement model incorporates a subjective evaluation of useful accounting information by owner‑managers and objective measurements of accounting costs. Two main components of managerial benefits are identified: the incremental value of managerial accounting information and the savings on reporting costs. A study of small businesses conducted in late 2006, compared accounting practices between tax complying entities (TCEs) and tax compliance free entities (TFEs) and investigated how accounting information was valued by owner-managers in TCEs. The research adopted a mixed methodological design including a major quantitative phase followed by a minor qualitative phase. The results show that while a vast majority of TFEs maintained basic accounting functions, record keeping requirements imposed by tax compliance led to the implementation of more sophisticated accounting systems in TCEs. It was also found that TCE owner-managers assigned a relatively significant value to the managerial accounting information that is generated as a result of record keeping imposed by tax compliance, suggesting that substantial managerial benefits might be derived.