Exploring distributed leadership for the quality management of online learning environments

Online learning environments (OLEs) are complex information technology (IT) systems that intersect with many areas of university organisation. Distributed models of leadership have been proposed as appropriate for the good governance of OLEs. Based on theoretical and empirical research, a group of Australian universities proposed a framework for the quality management of OLEs, and sought to validate the model via a survey of Australasian university representatives with OLE leadership responsibility. For the framework elements: Planning and Resourcing were rated most important; Organisational structure was rated least important; Technologies were rated low in importance and high in satisfaction; Resourcing and Evaluation were rated low in satisfaction; and Resourcing had the highest rating of importance coupled with low satisfaction. Considering distributed leadership in their institution, respondents reported that the organisational alignments represented by 'official' reporting and peer relationships were significantly more important and more effective than the organisational alignments linking the formal and informal leaders. From a range of desirable characteristics of distributed leadership, 'continuity and sustainability' received the highest rating of importance and a low rating of 'in evidence' - there are concerns about the sustainability of distributed leadership for the governance of OLEs in universities.

Multimedia content adaptation service discovery mechanism

Electronic information is becoming increasingly rich in content and varied in format and style while at the same time client devices are getting increasingly varied in their capabilities. This mismatch between rich contents and the end devices capability presents a challenge in providing seamless and ubiquitous access to electronic documents to interested users. Service-oriented content adaptation has emerged as a potential solution to the content-device mismatch problem. Since an adaptation task can potentially be performed by multiple content adaptation services (CAS), an approach for CAS discovery is a fundamental component of service-oriented content adaptation environment. In this paper, we propose a service discovery approach that considers the client device capability and the service’s attributes to discover appropriate CAS while optimizing performance and functionality. The efficiency of the proposed CAS discovery protocol is studied experimentally. The results show that the proposed discovery approach is effective in terms of discovering appropriate content adaptation services.

A good place to raise a family? Comparing parents, service-providers', and media perspectives of the inner and outer suburban areas of Melbourne

In Australia, the suburbs have historically been the favoured place to raise children. However this is being challenged both by social change and government policy encouraging innerurban renewal. We examined how inner-urban areas compare with more traditional suburban locations as places to raise a family. Recognising that there are many influences on perceptions of place, we included the opinions of parents, service-providers and the media in the two locations.

Research focused on two municipalities in Melbourne, one located >25km and the other <10km from the CBD. Themes were obtained and compared from in-depth interviews with parents, serviceproviders and analysis of municipality-specific and state-wide newspaper articles.

Service provision was the only theme common at all levels of analysis. For all other themes, differences occurred between perspectives of service-providers, media and parents, as well as between the two residential locations. These in-depth snapshots on the challenges and rewards of raising children in different urban locations can help inform government in planning healthy neighbourhoods that better serve the needs of contemporary Australian families.

The services internationalization process: n exploratory investigation of Australian service company internationalization to China

Service companies possess different characteristics from non-service-based companies, affecting their process of internationalization. This article examines the internationalization of service organizations using case studies of 23 Australian service organizations internationalizing to China. It finds that the internationalization process is influenced by the type of service the organization produces. The Uppsala internationalization model partially explains internationalization for companies producing exportable services but did not explain internationalization for companies, which produce nonexportable services (services that must be located within the market). International experience, government regulations and capital intensity were influential for internationalization. The findings develop a model for service organization internationalization.

Exploring the effects of perceived service provider sincerity on consumers' emotional state and satisfaction during service consumption

A holistic approach to satisfaction and its effects seems to be particularly important in high-affect, high-involvement, and extended duration services such as those offered by many travel and tourism providers. This means understanding the complexities of service provision and its processes. Consumers value service interaction that appears sincere. For this reason, organizations expect service providers to manage their service "performance" to reflect a genuine display of positive emotions towards the customer, which has a direct impact on customer satisfaction and possibly overall life satisfaction. This study explores consumers' perception of sincerity and tests its effects on positive emotions and satisfaction in an extended duration service. The findings indicate that perceived service sincerity positively influences consumers' emotions during a service and has important direct and indirect effects on life satisfaction, service satisfaction, and intention to repurchase. Implications for managers and opportunities for further research are discussed.

Service level agreements for the digital library

Digital libraries offer a massive set of digital services to geographically distributed library patrons. The digital services are commonly sourced from third-party service providers for charge. As externally sourced digital services are becoming prevalence, issues regarding their quality assessment are gaining critical importance. Unfortunately, sourcing digital services from external providers has brought with it stringent quality of service (QoS) demand from the library service users. Currently, there is no way for ensuring QoS between the digital service providers and the library management. In this paper, we propose service level agreements (SLAs) to capture the QoS requirements of the digital service users and the commitments, as well as adherence of the digital service providers.

Type-aware task placement in geo-distributed data centers with low OPEX using data center resizing

With the rising demands on cloud services, the electricity consumption has been increasing drastically as the main operational expenditure (OPEX) to data center providers. The geographical heterogeneity of electricity prices motivates us to study the type-aware task placement problem over geo-distributed data centers. With the consideration of the diversity of user requests and server clusters in modern data centers, we formulate an optimization problem that minimizes OPEX while guaranteeing the quality-of-service, i.e., the expected response time of tasks. Furthermore, an efficient solution is designed for this formulated problem. The experimental results show that our proposal achieves much higher cost-efficiency than the greedy algorithm and much approaches the optimal results. © 2014 IEEE.

Alternative service delivery models for families with a new speech generating device: perspectives of parents and therapists

Purpose: Research has revealed limitations in the provision of in-person services to families with a new speech generating device (SGD), both in Australia and overseas. Alternative service models such as parent training, peer support and telepractice may offer a solution, but their use with this population has not been researched to date.

Method: Using interviews and focus groups, this study explored the experiences and opinions of 13 speech-language pathologists and seven parents regarding alternatives to in-person support and training for families with a new SGD. Data were analysed using grounded theory. Themes explored in this paper include the benefits and drawbacks of alternative service models as well as participants’ suggestions for the optimal implementation of these approaches.

Result: Participants confirmed the utility of alternative service models, particularly for rural/remote and underserviced clients. Benefits of these models included reduced travel time for families and therapists, as well as enhanced information access, support and advocacy for parents.

Conclusion: Participants viewed the provision of ongoing professional support to families as critical, regardless of service modality. Additional issues arising from this study include the need for development of organizational policies, resources and training infrastructure to support the implementation of these alternative service models.

The antecedents of word-of-mouth behaviour: the service quality perspective

The aim of this study is to undertake empirical research investigating the nature and magnitude of the determinants of word-of-mouth behaviour from the point of view of service performance and postpurchase perceptions. A quantitative study was undertaken. A theoretical model linking service quality issues and word-of-mouth behaviour was developed and tested using structural equation modelling of 280 surveyed participants at various day spa locations. All major fit indices from structural equation modelling methods show satisfactory results for the measurement and structural models. The results confirm significant relationships between the constructs in the model. While the quality of the product, customer service, and servicescape atmosphere lead to customer satisfaction, it is servicescape atmosphere and customer satisfaction that drive word-of-mouth behaviour. The results of this study provide insights to aid service providers and marketing professionals in the service industry in fully understanding that the enhancement of the delivery of high quality service, an accommodating environment, and instilling feelings of satisfaction with their customers will more likely lead to positive word-of-mouth referrals. One major limitation is that the survey was conducted within one industry in one country. The major value of this chapter is the establishment of the role of service quality on word-of-mouth behaviour. This research provides empirical results of the impacts of service performance and post-purchase perceptions on word-of-mouth behaviour.

Optimal task placement with QoS constraints in geo-distributed data centers using DVFS

 With the rising demands on cloud services, the electricity consumption has been increasing drastically as the main operational expenditure (OPEX) to data center providers. The geographical heterogeneity of electricity prices motivates us to study the task placement problem over geo-distributed data centers. We exploit the dynamic frequency scaling technique and formulate an optimization problem that minimizes OPEX while guaranteeing the quality-of-service, i.e., the expected response time of tasks. Furthermore, an optimal solution is discovered for this formulated problem. The experimental results show that our proposal achieves much higher cost-efficiency than the traditional resizing scheme, i.e., by activating/deactivating certain servers in data centers.

Service level agreement management framework for utility-oriented computing platforms

With the increasing popularity of utility-oriented computing where the resources are traded as services, efficient management of quality of service (QoS) has become increasingly significant to both service consumers and service providers. In the context of distributed multimedia content adaptation deployment on service-oriented computing, how to ensure the stringent QoS requirements of the content adaptation is a significant and immediate challenge. However, QoS guarantees in the distributed multimedia content adaptation deployment on service-oriented platform context have not been accorded the attention it deserves. In this paper, we address this problem. We formulate the SLA management for distributed multimedia content adaptation deployment on service-oriented computing as an integer programming problem. We propose an SLA management framework that enables the service provider to determine deliverable QoS before settling SLA with potential service consumers to optimize QoS guarantees. We analyzed the performance of the proposed strategy under various conditions in terms of the SLA success rate, rejection rate and impact of the resource data errors on potential violation of the agreed upon SLA. We also compared the proposed SLA management framework with a baseline approach in which the distributed multimedia content adaptation is deployed on a service-oriented platform without SLA consideration. The results of the experiments show that the proposed SLA management framework substantially outperforms the baseline approach confirming that SLA management is a core requirement for the deployment of distributed multimedia content adaptation on service-oriented systems.