A risk analysis model to reduce computer security risks among healthcare organizations

The paper describes the on-going development of a new computer-based security risk analysis methodology that may be used to determine the computer security requirements of medical computer systems. The methodology has been developed for use within healthcare, with particular emphasis placed upon protecting medical information systems. The paper goes on to describe some of the problems with existing automated risk analysis systems, and how the ODESSA system may overcome the majority of these problems. Examples of security scenarios are also presented.

Critical injuries ; collaborative Indigenous life writing and the ethics of criticism

The publication of collaborative Indigenous life writing places both the text and its production under public scrutiny. The same is true for the criticism of life writing. For each, publication has consequences. Taking as its starting point the recent critical concern for harm occasioned in life writing, this
article argues that in the reading of collaborative Indigenous life writing, injury may eventuate from critical commentary itself. The critical work of G Thomas Couser and his concern for vulnerable subjects, whose life narratives reach published form through the efforts or with the assistance of another, has its
parallel in the critical attention given to collaboratively produced Indigenous life writing in Australia and Canada. In some cases, however, such analysis is generated without consultation with the Indigenous producers of collaborative texts. Criticism directing its arguments toward the conditions
of editorial constraint by which the Indigenous subject is enclosed or silenced has the ironic and surely unintended consequence of removing the Indigenous participants of collaboration from the field of critical engagement. With particular regard to the collaborative texts Ingelba and the Five Black Matriarchs and Stolen Life: the journey of a Cree woman, this article argues that literary criticism can benefit from the practice of consultation with the Indigenous subjects whose representations it comments upon.

Collaborative social work practice in opposing paradigms: Issues to emerge from a sexual assault and mental health project

The following paper discusses my experiences of coordinating a community development project to develop collaborative links between a mental health and a sexual assault service. It presents a critically reflective description and analysis of this work to outline how post modern ideas were used to maximise the possibilities of using feminist frameworks in practice.

Still suffering from the `silo effect`: lingering cultural barriers to collaborative care

This research project sought to draw out the contesting definitions of collaborative care among professional subgroups in maternity services. The paper contrasts medical and social models of knowledge and reports on qualitative evidence from midwives and doctors in Australian hospitals. The evidence indicates that collaborative care is welcomed by both midwives and doctors but that there remains a lingering residue of the ‘silo effect’ of the ‘old’ professionalism, characterized by hierarchical relations, divergent philosophies and competing domains. Although a ‘new professionalism’ has emerged that challenges the old hierarchies and professional dependencies, it too harbours lingering residues of the former dichotomy between midwives and obstetricians. These tensions and enmities will need to be resolved before genuine collaboration may take full effect. The objective is a relationship focused model of care that transcends professional or woman-focused models. The ‘new’ professionalism may be expedited through mediation strategies, a version of which is the ‘sociological intervention method’ discussed in this article.

Norm diffusion within international organizations: a case study of the World Bank

Constructivists often argue that International Organizations (IOs) diffuse norms throughout the international system. This article asks the question: if IOs promote and diffuse specific norms within world politics, where do these norms come from? In particular, this analysis seeks to formulate how IOs' identities emerge in issue areas where rationalist theories give limited explanation, such as the environment. This article posits that IOs interact with and consume norms from non-state actors such as transnational advocacy networks, a process overlooked by the constructivist analysis of institutions. This is examined through a case study of the World Bank's environmental identity where transnational advocacy networks played an important role in the Bank's shift towards sustainable development, through processes characterized here as direct and indirect socialization. This article demonstrates that the Bank's shift was more than instrumental as a result of this interaction, and that constructivists therefore need to examine the role of IOs as norm consumers as well as norm diffusers.

A study of organizational effectiveness for national olympic sporting organizations

This study applies the competing values approach (CVA) of organizational effectiveness to a sample of nonprofit Australian national Olympic sporting organizations (NOSOs). The purpose of the study was to determine the psychometric properties of the subscales developed within each of the four quadrants composing the CVA. Two hundred eightynine constituents from 10 NOSOs participated in this study. Initial factor analysis resulted in six of the eight theoretically derived cells in the CVAeach yielding one reliable factor. These were Flexibility, Resources, Planning, Productivity, Availability of Information, and Stability. The other two cells, Skilled Workforce and Cohesive Workforce, each produced a two-factor structure. To understand the relationship between these manifest factors (cells) and organizational effectiveness, a confirmatory factor analysis was conducted, which revealed that the rational-goal model, comprising Productivity and Planning, was the critical determinant of effectiveness in NOSOs.

A self-representation analysis of the effects of individualist-collectivist interactions within organizations in individualistic cultures

Purpose – Increasingly, organizations in the Asia-Pacific region are recognizing the importance of cross-cultural management to the sustainability of their competitive edge. Although the literature is replete with cross-cultural studies of individualism and collectivism, little information is available on the factors that foster effective individualist–collectivist interaction (ICI) within organizations. This paper attempts to provide a theoretical description of individualists and collectivists at the individual
level of analysis, which offers specific testable hypotheses about the effect of self-representation on prejudice between individualists and collectivists (ICs).

Design/methodology/approach – In this paper, a theoretical model is presented in which intergroup prejudices and interpersonal prejudices mediate the effects of ICI and bicultural orientation toward cross-cultural experiences and, in which, the dissimilarity openness of the climate
moderates the level and outcome of prejudices flowing from ICI.

Findings – The model depicts that the outcomes of ICI are mediated by the intergroup prejudices of collectivists and the interpersonal prejudices of individualists, which are moderated by the extent of diversity-oriented HRM policies and practices and individuals’ orientation to cross-cultural experiences. When workforces become culturally diverse, organizations should modify HRM practices to enable the full use of the range of skills and talents available from the diversity, and to ensure affective and behavioral costs are minimized. As globalization and international competition will continue to increase, organizations including those in the Asia-Pacific region, should seriously reevaluate their HRM policies to adapt and take advantage of an increasingly culturally diverse workforce.

Originality/value – The model provides a useful basis upon which organization researchers and practitioners can base their respective agendas.

Teaching and learning in collaborative group design projects

The 200 years of apprentice/master tradition that underpins the atelier studio system is still at the core of much present-day architectural design education. Yet this tradition poses uncertainties for a large number of lecturers faced with changes in the funding of tertiary education. With reductions in one-to-one staff/student contact time, many educators are finding it increasingly difficult to maintain an atelier teaching model. If these deficiencies remain unchecked and design-based schools are unable to implement strategies to reduce the resource intensity of one-to-one studio teaching programmes, then, for many higher-education providers, current architectural education may be based on an untenable course structure. Rather than spreading their time thinly over a large number of individual projects, an increasing number of lecturers are setting group projects. This allows them to coordinate longer and more in-depth review sessions on a smaller number of assignment submissions. However, while the group model may reflect the realities of the design process in professional practice, the approach is not without shortcomings as a teaching and learning archetype for the assessment of individual student skill competencies. Hence, what is clear is the need for a readily adoptable andragogy for the teaching and assessment of group design projects. The following is a position paper that describes – with a focus on effective group structures and assemblage and fair assessment models – the background, methodology and early results of a Strategic Teaching and Learning Grant currently running at the School of Architecture and Building at Deakin University in Australia.

The plasticity of professional boundaries: a case study of collaborative care in maternity services

A case study of twenty-nine midwives and nine obstetricians working in a regional, public sector Australian hospital demonstrates the plasticity of professional boundaries within a post-welfare state. Driven by new discourses of globalisation, marketisation, managerialism and consumerism, professional boundaries in health care are being blurred, reordered and reconstituted. Government policies that call for a new interdisciplinarity between maternity professionals may be seen as responses to the above pressures. However, there remain considerable barriers to achieving collaborative models including conflicting interpretations of risk, of women's bodies and of childbirth; the veto power of decision-making retained by obstetricians; questions of professional accountability; and diversity over appropriate styles of micro-interaction. Collaboration demands a new egalitarianism to eclipse the old vertical system of obstetric dominance and this means that midwives need to create a distinctive professional specialty, or new object of knowledge. Midwives' skill in 'emotion management' could provide this speciality in addition to their rational-technical knowledge and thus elevate midwifery to an equivalent professional status with obstetrics but as yet neither obstetrics nor midwifery have realised its professionalising potential

Collaborative knowledge creation in electronic mail

With organisational work increasingly performed by the collaboration of distributed groups, an improved understanding is needed of the co-creation of knowledge in emerging virtual structures. We explore the potential of the ubiquitous organisational tool, electronic mail (e-mail), for supporting collaborative knowledge creation in such settings. This research draws on a case study of knowledge creation occurring in e-mail conversations in a large Australian university and adopts a discourse analysis research approach. We describe a model of collaborative knowledge creation derived from the study and identify a preliminary set of key factors for organisational knowledge tools and their use by groups to support collaborative knowledge creation. The paper also provides insights into the role of e-mail in collaborative knowledge creation, not only in facilitating this process, but in shaping a participatory, multi-perspective, team-based approach to knowledge building. Organisational implications arising from this type of knowledge creation are also discussed in the paper.

Theorizing norm diffusion within international organizations

International Organizations (IOs) promote and diffuse norms within world politics. This prompts the question: where do these norms come from? This inquiry analyses how IOs have been perceived within the emerging norms literature where IOs are 'norm diffusers' within the international system, and finds that the way in which IOs themselves internalize norms has not been taken into account. This poses a potentially fruitful new avenue of inquiry into why and when IOs behave as norm diffusers. An interpretation of when and why IOs internalize norms is offered by positing that IO identities are not fixed and that they are 'norm consumers' socialized by state and non-state actors.

Educational partnerships on-line: global collaborative learning through an on-line student exchange programme

Deakin University and the University of Calgary have used the internet to provide workplace-based learners with the possibility of a student exchange programme which does not disrupt their careers, lives or families.  The programmes involved in this on-line exchange were both developed in response to the needs of workplace learners and are representative of the role of universities in the field of life-long learning.  This paper describes the first phase of the exchange and discusses the shared pedagogical philosophies and shared implementation of on-line groupware which provided a rationale for the exchange.  The paper will explore the cross-cultural implications of the educational experience and the possibilities such an exchange opens up for life-long learners.

Collaborative online projects in a global community

What is evident in recent literature reviews of the use of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) in Education is the lack of accessible documentation on the development of, and participation in, collaborative online projects by educationalists. (Blackmore et. al. 2002, Downes et. al. 2001). The major source of information comes in the form of anecdotal evidence from teachers, project facilitators and organisations (Gragert 2000, Carr 2001, Tate 1998, Robertson 1999). Other literature reviews and research that focus on the use of ICT in education have significant gaps in this area and yet it is increasingly promoted in educational policy and supported and promoted by education systems.

This paper identifies and explores the extent and impact of educational technology in the context of collaborative online projects in a global educational community. A general identification of a wide range of local and international collaborative online projects and the groups/communities in which they operate, is followed by a closer look at a selection of case study projects. The case study projects have been selected for their potential to provide new perspectives on the role of technology in education and its potential impact on teaching and learning in a global context.

This paper provides definitions and examples of collaborative online projects, their history and their diversity. It explores the level of participation afforded by the projects and presents a detailed section that focuses on a sample of projects. The collaborative online projects in the case study section are The Environmental Mystery Competition, The First People's Project, Lewin - an Anthology of Children's' Writing and The Teddy Bear Project. The case study projects will be looked at from the perspective of the project facilitators and project participants. In many of the projects items such as books and calendars are products of the projects. Examples of these items will be shown in the presentation.