The purchasing of naming rights for sports stadiums : a harbinger of bad corporate governance or just bad timing?

The literature on corporate governance and the market’s delayed reaction to news events proliferated over the last two decades. This paper examines return patterns surrounding the event date for firms purchasing naming rights for North American sports stadiums. One argument appearing in the financial press is that such acquisitions are a harbinger of widespread corporate mismanagement and hubris at the highest levels of corporate governance. Purchases of stadium naming rights provide sidebenefits to executives such as “being in the limelight” and the use of supplementary corporate boxes. Thus, management has a strong incentive to undertake such investments even if their decision is not value enhancing to shareholders. The extent to which these agreements are associated with negative risk-adjusted returns is an empirical question, which this study addresses. On average, negative riskadjusted returns are observed over the three years following the event date, and these results are significant at standard levels of significance. The efficient market hypothesis suggests that these results are not due to a cause and effect relationship but represent data snooping or just bad timing.

Conflict management : the team New Zealand case

The primary subject matter of this case is the effectiveness of risk management strategies associated with the staging of a major international sporting event. A secondary issue examined in the case concerns the proprietary rights of employers to the intellectual capital and skills acquired by employees. The case requires an understanding of strategic risk management and good corporate governance principles.

This case has a difficulty level that makes it most suitable for senior level students in a Corporate Governance/Business Ethics course. The case is designed to be taught in three class hours and would require about eight hours of out-of-class time which includes reading the case material and the articles listed in the references.

Risk management, player welfare and privacy : player development managers and dilemmas for employee relations in Australian football league clubs

This paper reports on one aspect of a research project that was funded by the Australian Football League (AFL) to explore the emergence and evolution of a ‘professional identity’ for AFL footballers. The research was informed by Foucault's later work on the care of the Self to focus on the ways in which player identities are governed by coaches, club officials, and the AFL Commission/Executive; and the manner in which players conduct themselves in ways that can be characterised as professional - or not. The paper explores the roles of Player Development Managers (PDMs) in emerging processes of risk and player management. These roles increasingly involve PDMs in risk management practices and processes that can be seen as intrusive in players’ lives. These risk management processes raise a number of concerns about player privacy and the rights of Clubs to know what their employees are up to away from the workplace.

Effective housing management framework for multi-owner low-cost housing in Malaysia

The aim of this study is to improve the management of multi-storey low-coast housing occupied by low-income households in Malaysia.  this study suggests the residents' background and socio-economic, the occupancy rates, residents' satisfaction with their dwellings and neighbours could resolve and improve housing management issues.

The impact of religious diversity and revitalization on inter-religious education for citizenship and human rights

The unanticipated rise of religious diversity and the re-entry of religion to the public sphere have radically increased the need and demand for education about religions – how they contribute to social and cultural capital – and about the management of religious diversity. The global movement of people and cultures has brought religious diversity to nearly every major city. With diversity has come a renewed interest in the religious identity of others and how to incorporate religious diversity in ways that produce social cohesion. Religious diversity has also raised interest in a values discourse where once atheistic secularity prevailed, made faith-based social and health service delivery both more appealing to governments and more difficult to deliver, and has challenged societies to accommodate a wider range of religious needs and lifestyles. Policies designed to promote social justice and peace have little chance of success without taking seriously the religious dimensions to the issues involved. This context makes clear the need for opportunities to learn about the religions in a society at all levels of education – opportunities that include direct experience of the ‘other’, curricula that appreciate the worlds of faith, spirituality and religion rather than demeaning them, education that provides both historical depth and local reality. Some of this education will be in school, some in remedial work required for a generation or two of leaders who have been raised in ignorance of religion, or trained to despise it.

Learning to engage with human rights in heritage

Cultural heritage should not be seen merely as a technical matter or from a narrow visitor management point of view but rather as cultural practice—a form of cultural politics dominated by ruling regimes and social groups in which decisions are made about the future of and access to scarce resources. Several scholars have sought to push this approach further by arguing that heritage studies should take on the protection of human rights as a core consideration in the processes of identifying, inscribing, conserving and interpreting cultural heritage. This paper builds on these previous works to explore what the shift to a rights-based management approach in the World Heritage system might mean for various stakeholders in the heritage protection enterprise as they learn to meet this challenge and to find ways to support people’s right to access, enjoy and maintain cultural heritage. Reaffirming the need to maintain a strong relationship between theory and praxis, the paper draws into the discussion heritage practitioners, decision makers in governments and government agencies, scholars and educators. Of these, the principal emphasis in this paper is on educators who are seen to have a fundamentally important role in developing a critical understanding of the cultural heritage concept, how heritage is created, used and misused and how conservation approaches and programs sit within the broader context of community attitudes and aspirations and governmental responsibilities. A distinction is made between teachers in universities and trainers offering short courses more focused on specific employer needs. The paper focuses on World Heritage but refers to both tangible and intangible aspects. It shows how current moves to establish a rights-based approach to the management of World Heritage sites connects with moves elsewhere in global governance, most notably in the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues and the United Nations Human Rights Commission.

The value of weeds for wildlife and implications for management

This research found that weeds provided valuable habitat for some wildlife, but that current weed management does not adequately account for such interactions. By retaining weed structure during weed management this study showed that wildlife could remain unaffected by considered weed management.

Intelligent control and look-ahead energy management of hybrid electric vehicles

A review of the state of knowledge in the field of control and energy management in HEVs is carried out. The key innovation of the project is the development of a model of a PHEV using the real road data with an intelligent look-ahead online controller. Another novelty of this work is the method of route planning. It combines the information of vehicle sensors such as accelerometer and speedometer with the data of a GPS to create a road grade map for use within the look-ahead energy management strategy in the vehicle. For the PHEV, an adaptive cruise controller is modelled and an optimisation method is applied to obtain the best speed profile during a trajectory. Finally, the nonlinear model of the vehicle is applied with the sliding mode controller. The effect of using this controller is compared with the universal cruise controller. The stability of the system is studied and proved.