Giving the people a voice? Experiments with consultative authoritarian institutions in China

In the last decade Chinese consultative authoritarianism has been renewed through many political and administrative innovations and tools. Authoritarian rule in China is now permeated by a wide variety of consultative and deliberative practices. These practices stabilize and strengthen authoritarian rule, leading to deliberative authoritarianism, an advanced form of consultative authoritarianism. This paper discusses two experiments—deliberative polling at Zeguo, Zhejiang, and a township election in Ya'an, Sichuan. Through these two cases we examine the direction which the development of consultative authoritarianism is presently taking, and the potentials and limitations of such input mechanisms in an authoritarian setting.

Confidence in Australian institutions 1983-2005

This paper examines changes in the level of institutional confidence in Australia between 1983 and 2005. The principal aim of the paper is to disaggregate the general trend in social trust and overall institutional confidence. Using data drawn from three waves of the World Values Survey undertaken in 1983, 1995 and 2005 we examine whether social trust and confidence have declined and the differing patterns of confidence for different birth cohorts in Australia. The results show a significant decrease in social trust and a large decline in confidence between 1983 and 1995. There was little change in confidence between 1995 and 2005, but social trust returned to the 1983 level over that period. A cohort analysis shows that the oldest cohort, those born before WWII, reported the largest decline in confidence, while by 2005 the baby boomers (or middle cohort born between 1944 and 1955) were the most confident, with the oldest group reporting the least confidence. Throughout the 1990s and early 2000s confidence has been at a much lower level than in the early 1980s.

Actual/ideal body images of high school girls and how it affects their self-esteem : implications for educational and clinical institutions

Given that adolescence is a critical period for the development of a positive self-concept and body image, it is imperative that educators have an understanding of adolescent students' body image and their dieting practises and behaviours. Negative body image is an issue that is rife within the adolescent student population in Australia and around the world, and is a factor that is commonly associated with and linked to disturbed eating behaviours and chronic eating disorders like Anorexia Nervosa (AN). Despite the intuitive appeal and importance of investigating adolescents' body image in terms of what adolescents would like to look like and what they think that they look like now, very little research has investigated these concepts. Furthermore, very little research has explored whether there is a difference between these two constructs how this may affect adolescents' self-esteem. This study therefore aimed to explore the actual and ideal body images of adolescent high school girls aged between 12 and 18 years in two samples of adolescents, one with eating disorders (n=76, clinical sample) and one without (n=823 high school sample). Additionally, this study investigates these constructs in relation to self-esteem levels. The results of this study have important implications for educators and clinicians within educational and clinical settings.

Improving leadership in higher education institutions : a distributed perspective

This paper reports on a qualitative study exploring how distributed patterns of leadership manifest themselves in project teams within a Higher Education institution. The emphasis is on both the ‘what’ and the ‘how’ of distributed leadership, thus providing an account of the nature of distributed leadership in higher education and the factors which were found to enhance and inhibit its occurrence and effectiveness. The findings are presented in a model of distributed leadership which seeks to provide an integrative account and a framework for further study. The conclusions focus on both the theoretical implications for the study of distributed leadership and the practical implications for HE institutions wishing to promote effective leadership.

The relationship between attitude and behavior : an empirical study in China

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine the effects of attitude towards behavior, subject norm and perceived behavioral control (PBC) on a Chinese subject's evaluation of a tertiary education program.

Design/methodology/approach – This study adopts a 3 (country-of-origin) by 2 (location) between-group factorial design. The Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB) is used as a framework to understand the intentions of the Chinese subjects concerning their enrollment in an offshore program.

Findings – Results show that a subject's attitude towards behavior, subject norm and PBC had a significantly positive relationship with the subjects' enrollment intentions irrespective of the country-of-origin (COO) of an education program. However, results also indicate that the significance of the three components on enrollment intention is contingent on which country the offshore program is from.

Practical implications – The findings of this study can help foreign education institutions develop a good understanding of the education market in China.

Originality/value – This study is one of the few studies that have adopted the TPB, the widely used psychology theory, in the Chinese context.

Institutions and growth volatility

Recently some studies provided evidence that democratic political institutions generate less volatile growth. These studies, however, do not provide any link between democracy and investment volatility. Here, we focus on the specific channel that links individualistic societies and low growth volatility. We test whether investment volatility and consequently growth volatility are lower in individualistic societies. We construct a two-equation system of investment and income growth volatility, allowing various measures of individualism to influence growth volatility both directly and indirectly. We find that individualism significantly directly and indirectly influences growth volatility negatively.

Privatization and performance : the case of four Australian financial institutions

This paper investigates the performance after privatization of institutions in Australian banking and insurance. Privatization was anticipated to improve firm performance in Australia and elsewhere, yet findings are mixed. A comparative institutional approach is taken to analyzing firm performance in the longer term which allows for further structural change. A CAMEL analysis of performance before and after privatization events is undertaken for four privatized institutions, two each from banking and insurance sectors. These are matched with private peer institutions. Privatized institutions are found to perform quite similarly to private peer institutions both before and after privatization.

Granular Activated Carbon (GAC) adsorption in tertiary wastewater treatment : experiments and models

Wastewater treatment has always been a major concern in the developed countries. Over the last few decades, activated carbon adsorption has gained importance as an alternative tertiary wastewater treatment and purification process. In this study, granular activated carbon (GAC) adsorption was evaluated in terms of total organic carbon (TOC) removal from low strength synthetic wastewater. This paper provides details on adsorption experiments conducted on synthetic wastewater to develop suitable adsorption isotherms. Although the inorganics used in the synthetic wastewater solution had an overall unfavourable effect on adsorption of organics, the GAC adsorption system was found to be effective in removing TOC from the wastewater. This study showed that equation of state (EOS) theory was able to fit the adsorption isotherm results more precisely than the most commonly used Freundlich isotherm. Biodegradation of the organics with time was the most crucial and important aspect of the system and it was taken into account in determining the isotherm parameters. Initial organic concentration of the wastewater was the determining factor of the model parameters, and hence the isotherm parameters were determined covering a wide range of initial organic concentrations of the wastewater. As such, the isotherm parameters derived using the EOS theory could predict the batch adsorption and fixed bed adsorption results of the multi-component system successfully. The isotherm parameters showed a significant effect on the determination of the mass transfer coefficients in batch and fixed bed systems.

Clarifying creative nonfiction through the personal essay

In a recent issue of TEXT, Matthew Ricketson sought to clarify the ‘boundaries between fiction and nonfiction’. In his capacity as a teacher of the creative nonfiction form he writes, ‘I have lost count of the number of times, in classes and in submitted work, that students have described a piece of nonfiction as a novel’. The confusion thus highlighted is not restricted to Ricketson’s journalism students. In our own university’s creative writing cohort, students also struggle with difficulties in melding the research methodology of the journalist with the language and form of creative writing required to produce nonfiction stories for a 21st century readership.
Currently in Australia creative nonfiction is enthusiastically embraced by publishers and teaching institutions. Works of memoir proliferate in the lists of mainstream publishers, as do anthologies of the essay form. During a time of increasing competition and desire for differentiation between institutions, when graduate outcomes form a basis for marketing university degrees, it is hardly surprising that, increasingly, tertiary writing teachers focus on this genre in their writing programs.
A second tension has arisen in higher education more generally, which affects our writing students’ approaches to tertiary study. The student writers of the 21st century emerge from a digitally literate and socially collaborative generation: the NetGen(eration). From a learner-centric viewpoint, they could be described as time-poor, and motivated by work-integrated learning with its perceived close links to workplace contexts and to writing genres. They seek just-in-time learning to meet their immediate employment needs, which inhibits the development of their capacity to adapt their researching and writing to various genres and audiences.
This article examines issues related to moving these NetGen student writers into the demanding and rapidly expanding creative nonfiction market. It is form rather than genre that denotes creative nonfiction and, we argue, it is the unique features of the personal essay, based as it is on doubt, discovery and the writer’s personal voice that can be instrumental in teaching creative nonfiction writing to our digitally and socially literate cohort of students.

Strategic marketing of educational institutions

Strategy development in higher education (HE) institutions has not been investigated a great extent. To address this issue, this study reports on the first stage of a larger investigation of strategy development in HE. The theoretical background draws on two theories of strategy and competitive advantage, namely, industrial organisation (IO) and resource-based view (RBV). These are used to guide 32 in-depth interviews that explore the elements of external industry structure, internal resources and capabilities, and institutional performance with senior HE decision-makers. Factors of competitive advantage and the indicators of institutional performance identified in the study verify and further develop the limited understanding relating to strategic marketing of educational institutions.

Student equity's starring role in Australian higher education : not yet centre field

The field of Australian higher education has changed, is changing and is about to change, repositioned in relation to other ‘‘fields of power’’. It is a sector now well defined by its institutional groupings and by their relative claims to selectivity and exclusivity, with every suggestion of their differentiation growing. The potential of a ‘‘joined-up’’ tertiary education system, of vocational education and training (VET) and universities, has the potential to further rework these relations within Australian higher education, as will lifting the volume caps on university student enrolments. Moreover, Australian universities now compete within an international higher education marketplace, ranked by THES and Shanghai Jiao Tiong league tables. ‘‘Catchment areas’’ and knowledge production have become global. In sum, Australian universities (and agents within them) are positioned differently in the field. And being so variously and variably placed, institutions and agents have different stances available to them, including the positions they can take on student equity. In this paper I begin from the premise that our current stance on equity has been out-positioned, as much by a changing higher education field as by entrenched representations of social groups across regions, institutions, disciplines and degrees. In taking a new stance on equity, the paper is also concerned with the positioning in the field of a new national research centre with a focus on student equity in higher education. In particular, the paper asks what stance this new centre can take on student equity that will resonate on a national and even international scale. And, given a global field of higher education, what definitions of equity and propositions for policy and practice can it offer? What will work in the pursuit of equity?

Linking student evaluations to institutional goals : a change story

For the past 30 years, beginning with the seminal work of Herbert Marsh in Australia and New Zealand, institutions of higher education have developed internal practices and procedures to collect and analyse student evaluations of teaching and learning. However, the question remains: has this development resulted in the achievement of institutional goals that maximise learning across all teaching contexts? As is the case in many other countries, a recent review of Australian national student evaluation data failed to conclude that student evaluations have improved overall teaching. However, these data have made student perceptions of teaching and learning more salient in the minds of tertiary educators. Certainly, teaching staff are aware of the impacts of student evaluations on informed decision-making, such as the continuation or discontinuation of courses, and on their promotion processes. This paper will review student evaluation practices according to criteria used in change theories, such as the transtheoretical change model (TTM). TTM construes organisational change as a process involving progress through a series of five stages: precontemplation, contemplation, preparation, action and maintenance. This paper will focus on organisational and behavioural outcomes that can be linked to the use of student data. It will recommend strategies for better aligning evaluation results to the stages of change.