The formation of, and change in, the psychological contracts of graduates entering the Queensland public sector

The workplace is evolving and the predicted impact of demographic changes (Salt, 2009; Taylor, 2005) has seen organisations focus on strategic workforce planning. As part of this, many organisations have established or expanded formalised graduate programs to attract graduates and transition them effectively into organisations (McDermott, Mangan, & O'Connor, 2005; Terjesen, Freeman, & Vinnicombe, 2007). The workplace context is also argued to be changing because of the divergence in preferences and priorities across the different generations in the workplace - a topic which is prolific in the popular culture media but is yet to be fully developed in the academic literature (Jorgenson, 2003). The public sector recruits large numbers of graduates and maintains well established graduate programs. Like the workplace context, the public sector is seen to be undergoing a transition to more closely align its practices and processes with that of the private sector (Haynes & Melville Jones, 1999; N. Preston, 1995). Consequently, questions have been raised as to how new workforce entrants see the public sector and its associated attractiveness as an employment option. This research draws together these issues and reviews the formation of, and change in, the psychological contracts of graduates across ten Queensland public sector graduate programs. To understand the employment relationship, the theories of psychological contract and public service motivation are utilised. Specifically, this research focuses on graduates' and managers' expectations over time, the organisational perspective of the employment relationship and how ideology influences graduates' psychological contract. A longitudinal mixed method design, involving individual interviews and surveys, is employed along with significant researcher-practitioner collaboration throughout the research process. A number of important qualitative and quantitative findings arose from this study and there was strong triangulation between results from the two methods. Prior to starting with the organisation, graduates found it difficult to articulate their expectations; however, organisational experience rapidly brought these to the fore. Of the expectations that became salient, most centred on their relationship with their supervisor. Without experience and quality information on which to base their expectations, graduates tended to over-rely on sectoral stereotypes which negatively impacted their psychological contracts. Socialisation only limited affected graduates' psychological contracts and public service motivation. The graduate survey, measured thrice throughout the first 12 months of the graduate program, revealed that the psychological contract and public service motivation results followed a similar trajectory of beginning at mediocre levels, declining between times one and two and increasing between times two and three (although this is not back to original levels). Graduates attributed these to a number of sectoral, organisational, team, supervisory and individual factors. On a theoretical level, this research provides support for the notion of ideology within the psychological contract although it raises some important questions about how it is conceptualised. Additionally, support is given for the manager to be seen as the primary organisational counterpart to the employee in future theoretical and practical work. The research also argues to extend current notions of time within the psychological contract as this seems to be the most divergent and combustible issue across the generations in terms of how the workplace is perceived. A number of practical implications also transpire from the study and the collaborative foundation was highly successful. It is anticipated that this research will make a meaningful contribution to both the theory and practice of the employment relationship with particular regard to graduates entering the public sector.

The determinants of multinational contractors' willingness to bid for Australian public sector major infrastructure projects : towards deploying the eclectic paradigm of internationalisation

Against a background of already thin markets in some sectors of major public sector infrastructure in Australia and the desire of Australian federal government to leverage private finance, concerns about ensuring sufficient levels of competition are prompting federal government to seek new sources of in-bound Foreign Direct Income. The aim of this paper is to justify and develop a means to deploying the eclectic paradigm of internationalisation that forms part of an Australian federally funded research project designed to explain the determinants of multinational contractors' willingness to bid for Australian public sector major infrastructure projects. Despite the dominance of the eclectic paradigm as a theory of internationalisation for over two decades, it has seen limited application in terms of multinational construction. It is expected that the research project will be the first empirical study to deploy the eclectic paradigm to inbound FDI to Australia whilst using the dominant economic theories advocated for use within the eclectic paradigm. Furthermore, the research project is anticipated to yield a number of practical benefits. These include estimates of the potential scope to attract more multinational contractors to bid for Australian public sector infrastructure, including the nature and extent to which this scope can be influenced by Australian governments responsible for the delivery of infrastructure. On the other hand, the research is also expected to indicate the extent to which indigenous and other multinational contractors domiciled in Australia are investing in special purpose technology and achieving productivity gains relative to foreign multinational contractors.

Thrown in the deep end : newcomers and public sector reform

Triggered by the continuing global financial crisis, most public administration systems internationally are reviewing their ability to meet public expectations in more challenging strategic environments, while satisfying the pressure from their political masters to drive down the costs of public administration. Consequently public sector organizations are under constant pressure to reform to meet not only the global economic challenges, but the need for more responsive government (Brown et al 2003). Doyle et al (2000) propose that organizational change is seldom well managed, but that the public sector faces greater difficulty in implementing corporate change than the private sector because of its unique environment, e.g. the need to deliver bureaucratically impartial outcomes. The scale of the changes required, and the constraints imposed by the context within which these changes need to occur, have intensified the need for capable public sector leadership and management. The types of capability required now extend beyond those typically required in public organizations through the efficiency drive of new public management. Acquiring these capabilities remains a key issue for public organizations. One challenge for public management, then, is leadership and management quality, including the need to recruit externally to refresh, re-energize and change the sector and its individual organizations as well as develop advanced skills among existing senior executives.

Legislating for sustainability: a framework for managing statutory rights obligations and restrictions affecting private land

The ad hoc growth of administrative controls on land use has produced an information management problem. Land registries face growing demands to record on the Torrens register particulars of rights, obligations and restrictions created under public law statutes, in order to reduce information costs, promote compliance and inform planning. As sustainable management of land and natural resources will require more legislative regulation, this paper proposes a framework of principles for the more coherent and consistent management of public law controls on private land use.

Efficient and secure self-escrowed public-key infrastructures

A self-escrowed public key infrastructure (SE-PKI) combines the usual functionality of a public-key infrastructure with the ability to recover private keys given some trap-door information. We present an additively homomorphic variant of an existing SE-PKI for ElGamal encryption. We also propose a new efficient SE-PKI based on the ElGamal and Okamoto-Uchiyama cryptosystems that is more efficient than the previous SE-PKI. This is the first SE-PKI that does not suffer from a key doubling problem of previous SE-PKI proposals. Additionally, we present the first self-escrowed encryption schemes secure against chosen-ciphertext attack in the standard model. These schemes are also quite efficient and are based on the Cramer-Shoup cryptosystem, and the Kurosawa-Desmedt hybrid variant in different groups.

Incentivising private health insurance through the income tax regime : Capitalising on behavioural models

The Australian income tax regime is generally regarded as a mechanism by which the Federal Government raises revenue, with much of the revenue raised used to support public spending programs. A prime example of this type of spending program is health care. However, a government may also decide that the private sector should provide a greater share of the nation's health care. To achieve such a policy it can bring about change through positive regulation, or it can use the taxation regime, via tax expenditures, not to raise revenue but to steer or influence individuals in its desired direction. When used for this purpose, tax expenditures steer taxpayers towards or away from certain behaviour by either imposing costs on, or providing benefits to them. Within the context of the health sector, the Australian Federal Government deploys social steering via the tax system, with the Medicare Levy Surcharge and the 30 percent Private Health Insurance Rebate intended to steer taxpayer behaviour towards the Government’s policy goal of increasing the amount of health provision through the private sector. These steering mechanisms are complemented by the ‘Lifetime Health Cover Initiative’. This article, through the lens of behavioural economics, considers the ways in which these assorted mechanisms might have been expected to operate and whether they encourage individuals to purchase private health insurance.

Effort-release public-key encryption from cryptographic puzzles

Timed-release cryptography addresses the problem of “sending messages into the future”: information is encrypted so that it can only be decrypted after a certain amount of time, either (a) with the help of a trusted third party time server, or (b) after a party performs the required number of sequential operations. We generalise the latter case to what we call effort-release public key encryption (ER-PKE), where only the party holding the private key corresponding to the public key can decrypt, and only after performing a certain amount of computation which may or may not be parallelisable. Effort-release PKE generalises both the sequential-operation-based timed-release encryption of Rivest, Shamir, and Wagner, and also the encapsulated key escrow techniques of Bellare and Goldwasser. We give a generic construction for ER-PKE based on the use of moderately hard computational problems called puzzles. Our approach extends the KEM/DEM framework for public key encryption by introducing a difficulty notion for KEMs which results in effort-release PKE. When the puzzle used in our generic construction is non-parallelisable, we recover timed-release cryptography, with the addition that only the designated receiver (in the public key setting) can decrypt.

The emerging role of private health care provision in China : a critical analysis of the current health system

China continues to face great challenges in meeting the health needs of its large population. The challenges are not just lack of resources, but also how to use existing resources more efficiently, more effectively, and more equitably. Now a major unaddressed challenge facing China is how to reform an inefficient, poorly organized health care delivery system. The objective of this study is to analyze the role of private health care provision in China and discuss the implications of increasing private-sector development for improving health system performance. This study is based on an extensive literature review, the purpose of which was to identify, summarize, and evaluate ideas and information on private health care provision in China. In addition, the study uses secondary data analysis and the results of previous study by the authors to highlight the current situation of private health care provision in one province of China. This study found that government-owned hospitals form the backbone of the health care system and also account for most health care service provision. However, even though the public health care system is constantly trying to adapt to population needs and improve its performance, there are many problems in the system, such as limited access, low efficiency, poor quality, cost inflation, and low patient satisfaction. Currently, private hospitals are relatively rare, and private health care as an important component of the health care system in China has received little policy attention. It is argued that policymakers in China should recognize the role of private health care provision for health system performance, and then define and achieve an appropriate role for private health care provision in helping to respond to the many challenges facing the health system in present-day China.

Early users of fertility treatment with hormones and IVF : women who live in major cities and have private health insurance

Objective: To identify early users (women aged <34 years) of fertility treatment with hormones and in vitro fertilisation (IVF). Methods: A cross-sectional survey of infertile women from fertility clinics (n=59) and from the community (Australian Longitudinal Study on Women's Health participants) who had (n=121) or had not (n=110) used hormones/IVF as treatment for infertility. Associations between socio-demographic, reproductive and lifestyle factors, medical conditions and recurrent symptoms and using treatment (or not) were analysed using multivariable logistic regression. Results: Among infertile women who had used treatment (community vs clinic), women from clinics had lower odds of living outside major cities, using hormones only, i.e., not IVF, or recurrent headaches/migraines, severe tiredness, or stiff/painful joints; and higher odds of recent diagnoses of urinary tract infection or anxiety disorder. Compared to infertile women who had not used treatment, women from clinics had lower odds of living outside major cities, recurrent allergies or severe tiredness; and higher odds of having private health insurance for hospital or ancillary services, recent diagnosis of polycystic ovary syndrome or recurrent constipation. Conclusions: Compared to infertile women in the community, living in major cities and having private health insurance are associated with early use of treatment for infertility at specialist clinics by women aged <34 years. Implications: These results provided evidence of inequity of services for infertile women.

Learning how to be responsive to public policy issues affecting SSSI members

Human survival depends on human ingenuity in using resources at hand to sustain human life. The historical record – in wrings and archaeological artefacts – provides evidence of the growth and collapse of political organisations and societies. In the institutions of Western civilisation, some traditions have endured over millennia where the roles of monarchs and public officials have been organised in perpetual succession. These roles were developed as conventions in the British Parliament after 1295 and provided the models of corporate governance in both public and private enterprise that have been continuously refined to the present day. In 2011, the Queensland Parliament legislated to introduce a new and more open system of scrutiny of legislation through a system of portfolio-based parliamentary committees. The committees began to function more actively in July 2012 and have inviting submissions from stakeholders and experts in a structured way to consider the government’s priorities in its legislative programme. The questions now are whether the Surveying and Spatial Sciences can respond expertly to address the terms of reference and meet the timetables of the various parliamentary committees. This paper discusses some of the more important and urgent issues that deserve debate that the profession needs to address in becoming more responsive to matters of public policy.

Exploring partnership : the experience of HCAP

This report summarises the participatory action research (PAR) undertaken as part of the Homelessness Community Action Planning (HCAP) project implemented across seven regions in Queensland in 2011 and 2012. The HCAP is a component of the Queensland strategy for the National Partnership Agreement on Homelessness, and is funded for three years (2010-2013). The report identifies and analyses factors which facilitated or constrained the development of Government- NGO partnerships at regional and state levels in HCAP. The study supports the view that the HCAP partnership between the Queensland Government and the Community Services Sector is working and likely to be productive.