The paradox of transparency : short-termism and the institutionalisation of Australian capital markets

As the ultimate corporate decision-makers, directors have an impact on the investment time horizons of the corporations they govern. How they make investment decisions has been profoundly influenced by the expansion of the investment chain and the increasing concentration of share ownership in institutional hands. By examining agency in light of legal theory, we highlight that the board is in fact sui generis and not an agent of shareholders. Consequently, transparency can lead to directors being 'captured' by institutional investor objectives and timeframes, potentially to the detriment of the corporation as a whole. The counter-intuitive conclusion is that transparency may, under certain conditions, undermine good corporate governance and lead to excessive short-termism.

Composite SaaS resource management in cloud computing using evolutionary computation

Cloud computing is an emerging computing paradigm in which IT resources are provided over the Internet as a service to users. One such service offered through the Cloud is Software as a Service or SaaS. SaaS can be delivered in a composite form, consisting of a set of application and data components that work together to deliver higher-level functional software. SaaS is receiving substantial attention today from both software providers and users. It is also predicted to has positive future markets by analyst firms. This raises new challenges for SaaS providers managing SaaS, especially in large-scale data centres like Cloud. One of the challenges is providing management of Cloud resources for SaaS which guarantees maintaining SaaS performance while optimising resources use. Extensive research on the resource optimisation of Cloud service has not yet addressed the challenges of managing resources for composite SaaS. This research addresses this gap by focusing on three new problems of composite SaaS: placement, clustering and scalability. The overall aim is to develop efficient and scalable mechanisms that facilitate the delivery of high performance composite SaaS for users while optimising the resources used. All three problems are characterised as highly constrained, large-scaled and complex combinatorial optimisation problems. Therefore, evolutionary algorithms are adopted as the main technique in solving these problems. The first research problem refers to how a composite SaaS is placed onto Cloud servers to optimise its performance while satisfying the SaaS resource and response time constraints. Existing research on this problem often ignores the dependencies between components and considers placement of a homogenous type of component only. A precise problem formulation of composite SaaS placement problem is presented. A classical genetic algorithm and two versions of cooperative co-evolutionary algorithms are designed to now manage the placement of heterogeneous types of SaaS components together with their dependencies, requirements and constraints. Experimental results demonstrate the efficiency and scalability of these new algorithms. In the second problem, SaaS components are assumed to be already running on Cloud virtual machines (VMs). However, due to the environment of a Cloud, the current placement may need to be modified. Existing techniques focused mostly at the infrastructure level instead of the application level. This research addressed the problem at the application level by clustering suitable components to VMs to optimise the resource used and to maintain the SaaS performance. Two versions of grouping genetic algorithms (GGAs) are designed to cater for the structural group of a composite SaaS. The first GGA used a repair-based method while the second used a penalty-based method to handle the problem constraints. The experimental results confirmed that the GGAs always produced a better reconfiguration placement plan compared with a common heuristic for clustering problems. The third research problem deals with the replication or deletion of SaaS instances in coping with the SaaS workload. To determine a scaling plan that can minimise the resource used and maintain the SaaS performance is a critical task. Additionally, the problem consists of constraints and interdependency between components, making solutions even more difficult to find. A hybrid genetic algorithm (HGA) was developed to solve this problem by exploring the problem search space through its genetic operators and fitness function to determine the SaaS scaling plan. The HGA also uses the problem's domain knowledge to ensure that the solutions meet the problem's constraints and achieve its objectives. The experimental results demonstrated that the HGA constantly outperform a heuristic algorithm by achieving a low-cost scaling and placement plan. This research has identified three significant new problems for composite SaaS in Cloud. Various types of evolutionary algorithms have also been developed in addressing the problems where these contribute to the evolutionary computation field. The algorithms provide solutions for efficient resource management of composite SaaS in Cloud that resulted to a low total cost of ownership for users while guaranteeing the SaaS performance.

The function of property in creating an effective legal regime for trade in environmental offsets

Market-based environmental regulation is becoming increasingly common within international and national frameworks. Environmental offset and trading regimes are part of the market-based instrument revolution. This paper proposes that environmental market mechanisms could be used to introduce an ethic of land holder responsibility. In order for market based regimes to attract sufficient levels of stakeholder engagement, participants within such scheme require an incentive to participate and furthermore need to feel a sense of security about investing in such processes. A sense of security is often associated with property based interests. This paper explores the property related issues connected with environmental offset and trading scheme initiatives. Relevant property-related considerations include land tenure considerations, public versus private management of land choices, characteristics and powers associated with property interests, theories defining property and the recognition of legal proprietal interests. The Biodiversity Banking Scheme in New South Wales is then examined as a case study followed by a critique on the role of environmental markets.

A Review of Customer Involvement in Evaluations of Case Management : Consistency with a recovery paradigm

This Open Forum examines research on case management that draws on consumer perspectives. It clarifies the extent of consumer involvement and whether evaluations were informed by recovery perspectives. Searches of three databases revealed l3 studies that sought to investigate consumer perspectives. Only one study asked consumers about experiences of recovery. Most evaluations did not adequately assess consumers' views, and active consumer participation in research was rare. Supporting an individual's recovery requires commitment to a recovery paradigm that incorporates traditional symptom reduction and improved functioning, with broader recovery principles, and a shift in focus from illness to wellbeing. It also requires greater involvement of consumers in the implementation of case management and ownership of their own recovery process, not just in research that evaluates the practice.

Crossing boundaries: Implications of advances in basic sciences for the management of addiction.

This set of papers in this issue of "Addictive Behaviors" was presented at the 2004 'Addictions' conference, which, for the first time, was held in the Southern Hemisphere, on the Sunshine Coast of Queensland, Australia. The theme of the conference, Crossing Boundaries: Implications of Advances in Basic Sciences for the Management of Addiction, speaks for itself. The papers derive from a wide range of empirical paradigms and cover issues with relevance to the development of addiction, to the maintenance of problematic use, and to assessment, treatment, and relapse. Research from Europe and the United States is represented, as well as work from Australia. An international perspective is strongly emphasized from the initial paper by Obot, Poznyak, and Moneiro, (see record 2004-19599-015) which describes the WHO Report on the Neuroscience of Psychoactive Substance Use and Dependence, and summarises some of the report's implications for policy and practice. Hall, Carter, and Morley (see record 2004-19599-014) close the issue with a paper on the wide-ranging ethical implications of advances in neuroscience research, including issues arising from the identification of high risk for addiction, the potential for coercive pharmacotherapy, use of medications to enhance function, and risks to privacy.

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.

Sustainable infrastructure assets : capability for infrastructure capacity management

Building for a sustainable environment requires sustainable infrastructure assets. Infrastructure capacity management is the process of ensuring optimal provision of such infrastructure assets. Effectiveness in this process will enable the infrastructure asset owners and its stakeholders to receive full value on their investment. Business research has shown that an organisation can only achieve business value when it has the right capabilities. This paradigm can also be applied to infrastructure capacity management. With limited access to resources, the challenge for infrastructure organisations is to identify and develop core capabilities to enable infrastructure capacity management. This chapter explores the concept of capability and identifies the core capability needed in infrastructure capacity management. Through a case study of the Port of Brisbane, this chapter shows that infrastructure organisations must develop their intelligence gathering capability to effectively manage the capacity of their infrastructure assets.

Exercise, appetite, and energy balance: The interactions between energy expenditure and intake, and the implications for weight management

This book disseminates current information pertaining to the modulatory effects of foods and other food substances on behavior and neurological pathways and, importantly, vice versa. This ranges from the neuroendocrine control of eating to the effects of life-threatening disease on eating behavior. The importance of this contribution to the scientific literature lies in the fact that food and eating are an essential component of cultural heritage but the effects of perturbations in the food/cognitive axis can be profound. The complex interrelationship between neuropsychological processing, diet, and behavioral outcome is explored within the context of the most contemporary psychobiological research in the area. This comprehensive psychobiology- and pathology-themed text examines the broad spectrum of diet, behavioral, and neuropsychological interactions from normative function to occurrences of severe and enduring psychopathological processes

A cybernetic approach to land management issues

This work is a digital version of a dissertation that was first submitted in partial fulfillment of the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy at the Queensland University of Technology (QUT) in March 1994. The work was concerned with problems of self-organisation and organisation ranging from local to global levels of hierarchy. It considers organisations as living entities from local to global things that a living entity – more particularly, an individual, a body corporate or a body politic - must know and do to maintain an existence – that is to remain viable – or to be sustainable. The term ‘land management’ as used in 1994 was later subsumed into a more general concept of ‘natural resource management’ and then merged with ideas about sustainable socioeconomic and sustainable ecological development. The cybernetic approach contains many cognitive elements of human observation, language and learning that combine into production processes. The approach tends to highlight instances where systems (or organisations) can fail because they have very little chance of succeeding. Thus there are logical necessities as well as technical possibilities in designing, constructing, operating and maintaining production systems that function reliably over extended periods. Chapter numbers and titles to the original thesis are as follows: 1. Land management as a problem of coping with complexity 2. Background theory in systems theory and cybernetic principles 3. Operationalisation of cybernetic principles in Beer’s Viable System Model 4. Issues in the design of viable cadastral surveying and mapping organisation 5. An analysis of the tendency for fragmentation in surveying and mapping organisation 6. Perambulating the boundaries of Sydney – a problem of social control under poor standards of literacy 7. Cybernetic principles in the process of legislation 8. Closer settlement policy and viability in agricultural production 9. Rate of return in leasing Crown lands

Faculty and employee ownership of inventions in Australia

A recent decision by the Australian High Court means that, unless faculty are bound by an assignment or intellectual property (IP) policy, they may own inventions resulting from their research. Thirty years after its introduction, the US Bayh-Dole Act, which vests ownership of employee inventions in the employer university or research organization, has become a model for commercialization around the world. In Australia, despite recommendations that a Bayh-Dole style regime be adopted, the recent decision in University of Western Australia (UWA) v Gray1 has moved the default legal position in a diametrically opposite direction. A key focus of the debate was whether faculty’s duty to carry out research also encompasses a duty to invent. Late last year, the Full Federal Court confirmed a lower court ruling that it does not, and this year the High Court refused leave to appeal (denied certiorari). Thus, Gray stands as Australia’s most faculty-friendly authority to date.

The role of the audit committee and institutional investors in constraining earnings management : evidence from Chinese firms listed in Hong Kong

Using data from 2004 to 2008, we find that an audit committee is an important monitoring mechanism as audit committee independence, expertise and size are associated with reduced levels of abnormal accruals, our measure of earnings management. This study also attempts to discern when the monitoring role of the audit committee is more salient for the firm. We find that ownership concentration and the presence of government officials on the audit committee are important determinants of the negative association between audit committee characteristics and earnings management. In contrast, we find no significant associations between the audit committee and abnormal accruals for Chinese firms listed only on the Chinese domestic Stock Exchanges. The paper contributes to the corporate governance literature in a transitional economy. Identifying the role of audit committees of firms listed on markets other than the domicile market demonstrates the importance of considering the institutional setting in governance research.

Can an effective audit committee help to mitigate earnings management in Chinese firms listed in Hong Kong?

This paper attempts to determine whether the adoption of recommended corporate governance practices by Chinese firms is associated with less earnings management proxied by abnormal accruals. We examine the role of the audit committee and ownership concentration in preventing earnings management using Chinese firms listed in Hong Kong. The results of this preliminary analysis show that the frequency of audit committee meetings is associated with reduced levels of abnormal accruals, our measure of earnings management. We conclude that audit committee activity is an important factor in constraining the propensity of managers to engage in earnings management. In contrast, we find that the size of the audit committee is associated with increased levels of abnormal accruals and suggest that increasing the size of the audit committee creates information asymmetry between the audit committee and management that reduces the monitoring capacity of the audit committee. We do not find any association between audit committee independence, financial and industry experience, or ownership concentration and abnormal accruals.

Planning for sustainable urban futures : an ecological approach to sustainable urban development

In recent years, cities have shown increasing signs of environmental problems due to the negative impacts of urban activities. The degradation and depletion of natural resources, climate change, and development pressure on green areas have become major concerns for cities. In response to these problems, urban planning policies have shifted to a sustainable focus and authorities have begun to develop new strategies for improving the quality of urban ecosystems. An extremely important function of an urban ecosystem is to provide healthy and sustainable environments for both natural systems and communities. Therefore, ecological planning is a functional requirement in the establishment of sustainable built environment. With ecological planning, human needs are supplied while natural resources are used in the most effective and sustainable manner and ecological balance is sustained. Protecting human and environmental health, having healthy ecosystems, reducing environmental pollution and providing green spaces are just a few of the many benefits of ecological planning. In this context, this chapter briefly presents a short overview of the importance of the implementation of ecological planning into sustainable urban development. Furthermore, it presents a conceptual framework for a new methodology for developing sustainable urban ecosystems through ecological planning approach.