Managing the family business

Managing the family business is a timely and thought provoking book that should encourage greater debate about where family businesses are going and what issues are paramount. The editors have made a consious attempt to invite and encourage academic and industry practitioners to contribute chapters.

Contemporary management

Presents a fresh and humane view of the manager in the workplace. This non-prescriptive text explores the manager as a person, rather than an institution, with values and ethics.Waddell, Deakin University, and Devine, Edith Cowan University.

Work choices : evolution or revolution

Never has a form of legislation created such contentious and wide-reaching emotional debate in Australia. It has divided the community and has resulted in extensive media activity. To the forefront are Australian academics who have often been the resource of expert comment and their reports have been prolific. In this book, academics have taken to opportunity to write their own perception of the impact of Work Choices in the workplace.

Organisation , development and change-Asia Pacific

This text focuses on the use of organisation development, which is a process that applies behavioural science knowledge and practices to help organisations achieve greater effectiveness. Other paradigms, including organisation tranformation, are also discussed in order to give a balanced perspective on the challenges of being an agent.

Surviving suppression : no detectable impacts of Class A foam on soil invertebrates and some Australian native plants

Firefighting foams (Class A foams) are an effective and widespread firefighting tool which are frequently used in environmentally sensitive areas. Firefighting foams are known to be ecologically damaging in aquatic environments, however their impacts at the plant species or ecosystem level are relatively unknown. Reports of shoot damage to plants, suppressed flowering, and changes in plant community composition suggested that the ecological damage caused by their use may be unacceptable. However, applications of foam to seedlings of some Australian plant species from representative and widespread families, showed no detectable impacts on a range of vegetative growth characteristics. Application of 1.0% foam to heathland soils showed no detectable impacts on soil invertebrate Orders sampled over several months. The results are encouraging for the continued use of Class A foam as a fire suppression technique.

The interdependency between knowledge management and quality

In this paper, the authors seek to examine the link between Knowledge Management (KM) and Quality. They propose that as KM reaches its maturity in terms of acceptance as an important part of doing business in the modern world, that Quality will again become the mantra of successful companies. A national survey of 1000 Quality certified organisations in Australia was distributed with a 25% response rate. The survey asked questions pertaining to their use of KM, their Quality culture as well as their Quality performance measures. As a result of preliminary analysis of the data, the authors suggest that in order to survive in such a dynamic environment, organisations will have to embrace KM as a fundamental component of delivering a Quality culture.