Abstract art or the politics and pedagogies of getting read

The writing of academic abstracts is more than a tiresome necessity of scholarly life. It is a practice which goes beyond genre and technique to questions of identity and the promotional economies of academic work. In this paper we deconstruct a series of abstracts from a variety of refereed journals and conferences and develop a set of questions that allow us to 'read' the representation of data, argument, methodology and significance. We argue that the rules of abstract engagement are fluid and increasingly important with the advent of online journals and global citation indices. We suggest that abstract art is now an obligatory aspect of postgraduate supervision.

Ethical structures and processes of corporations operating in Australia, Canada and Sweden : A longitudinal and cross-cultural study

Based on the ‘Partnership Model of Corporate Ethics’ (Wood, 2002), this study examines the ethical structures and processes that are put in place by organizations to enhance the ethical business behavior of staff. The study examines the use of these structures and processes amongst the top companies in the three countries of Australia, Canada, and Sweden over two time periods (2001–2002 and 2005–2006). Subsequently, a combined comparative and longitudinal approach is applied in the study, which we contend is a unique approach in the area of business ethics. The findings of the study indicate that corporations operating in Sweden have utilized ethical structures and processes differently than their Canadian and/or Australian counterparts, and that in each culture the way that companies fashion their approach to business ethics appears congruent with their national cultural values. There does, however, appear to be a convergence of views within the organizations of each culture, as the Swedish companies appear to have been more influenced in 2005–2006 by an Anglo-Saxon business paradigm than they have been in the past.

Comparing codes of ethics among the top companies in Australia, Canada and the USA

In the twentieth century, industrialized economies around the world enacted legislation to protect free and fair trade. These legislative initiatives were often precipitated by exposure to unethical business practices. With the fairly recent corporate business scandals around the world, ethics is once again at the forefront of concerns about commercial exchanges. This situation has become more complex with the globalization of commercial trade. Subsequently, there have been various attempts by international organizations to regulate the conduct of global corporations. One key technique to try to regulate the conduct of corporation is the use of codes of ethics. This study examines corporate codes of ethics and the measures in place to communicate the ethos of the codes to both internal and external stakeholders in three countries. A questionnaire that was non-sponsored and unsolicited was sent to the top companies operating in the private sector within Australia, Canada and the USA. Nine key areas of corporate ethics are examined and they are divided into two categories as follows:

Regulation
Consequences for a Breach
Ethical Perfonnance Appraisal
Conduct Ethical Audits

Staff Support
Support of Whistle blowers
Guide to Strategic Planning
Ethics Committee
Ethics Training Committee
Staff Training
Ethics Ombudsman.

Codes of ethics artefacts in Australia, Canada and Sweden : a longitudinal study

It would appear that corporations operating in Sweden have embraced the ethos of codes of ethics differently to their Canadian and/or Australian counterparts and that in each culture the way that companies fashion their approach to business ethics appears to be in line with their national, cultural values.

Government revenue and government expenditure nexus : evidence from developing countries

The relationship between government revenue and government expenditure has attracted a lot of interest given its policy relevance, particularly with respect to budget deficits. The goal of this paper is to investigate evidence for causality between government revenue and government expenditure within a multivariate framework by modelling them together with gross domestic product for 12 developing countries. Our application of the Toda and Yamamoto (1995) test for Granger causality reveals support for the tax-and-spend hypothesis for Mauritius, El Salvador, Haiti, Chile and Venezuela. For Haiti, there is evidence for the spend-and-tax hypothesis, while for Peru, South Africa, Guatemala, Uruguay and Ecuador there is evidence of neutrality.

Principals, politics and change : confronting school resilience to radical renewal

Governments expect school principals to lead and manage significant change to implement school improvement agendas. Research evidence suggests, however, that schools are slow to change (Evans, 1996; Duignan, 2006), that many teachers resist change (Marzano, Waters & McNulty, 2005), and that change is often cursory or short lived – not disrupting dominant cultures and existing arrangements (Johnson, 2004). This paper discusses the resistance to major change encountered by Australian principals, and their perceptions of its causes. Emergent themes demonstrate that the success or otherwise of change rests heavily on the political astuteness of principals, which suggests the need for ongoing professional learning and leadership support around the issue of leading and managing change.

Online delivery and learning in regional Australia : benefits and barriers

The potential for online learning to enhance learning opportunities of those living in regional Australia cannot be over-emphasised. This chapter* describes a study where online delivery was mapped to determine ‘what’ is happening and ‘why’. This enabled the benefits, barriers and ‘promoters’ of online learning to be identified. However, an important conclusion of this study is that there is a lack of consistent, comparable enrolment data relating to online learning, which obviously affects funding allocation decisions. To ensure high-quality learning experiences and appropriate support for students and staff, institutions require adequate funding and resources based on models which reflect the reality of online delivery and learning.