Creative choices : changes to Australian copyright law and the future of the public domain

Changes to Australian copyright law introduced under the Australia–United States Free Trade Agreement will diminish the public domain, criminalise common copyright infringing practices and locally introduce significant portions of the controversial 1998 American Digital Millennium Copyright Act. This paper examines these imminent changes to Australian copyright law, with specific attention to the potential effects of the extended duration of copyright protection and the introduction of technological anti-circumvention measures. It argues that public domain-enhancing activities are crucial for sustaining cultural creativity and technological innovation, and discusses the potential role of the Creative Commons movement in establishing economically viable and legal alternatives to the current model of trade-oriented copyright reform.

Mapping landscape features and values in coastal Australia

Places encompass the physical setting, as well as human experience and interpretation. Although sense of place definition nominally includes the physical environment, most research has emphasized the social construction of sense of place and neglect the important contribution of the physical environment to place meanings and attachment. On the other side, theoretical and technological developments during the past decades resulted in significant sophistication and power of analysis, display, and interpretation of spatial information applied in landscape analysis. This development, however, remains disconnected from the socio-political realities of the communities and regions which are the subject of these studies. There is a research need to integrate public perceptions and attitudes with the type of information typically found in a landscape assessment. A challenge of GIS is whether or not Cartesian space can be adapted to incorporate a more humanistic sense and understanding of distance, direction, and position.

The impact of bullying on health care administration staff : reduced commitment beyond the influences of negative affectivity

Background: Investigations of workplace bullying in health care settings have tended to focus on nurses or other clinical staff. However, the organizational and power structures enabling bullying in health care are present for all employees, including administrative staff.

Purposes: The purpose of this study was to specifically focus on health care administration staff and examine the prevalence and consequences of workplace bullying in this occupational group.

Methodology/Approach: A cross-sectional study was conducted based on questionnaire data from health care administration staff who work across facilities within a medium to large health care organization in Australia. The questionnaire included measures of bullying, negative affectivity (NA), job satisfaction, organizational commitment, well-being, and psychological distress. The three hypotheses of the study were that (a) workplace bullying will be linked to negative employee outcomes, (b) individual differences on demographic factors will have an impact on these outcomes, and (c) individual differences in NA will be a significant covariate in the analyses. The hypotheses were tested using t tests and analyses of covariances.

Findings: A total of 150 health care administration staff completed the questionnaire (76% response rate). Significant main effects were found for workplace bullying, with lower organizational commitment and well-being with the effect on commitment remaining over and above NA. Main effects were found for age on job satisfaction and for employment type on psychological distress. A significant interaction between bullying and employment type for psychological distress was also observed. Negative affectivity was a significant covariate for all analyses of covariance.

Practice Implications: The applications of these results include the need to consider the occupations receiving attention in health care to include administration employees, that bullying is present across health care occupations, and that some employees, particularly part-time staff, may need to be managed slightly differently to the full-time workforce.

Above and beyond the bottom line

Education is BIG BUSINESS! Stakeholders are many—governments and governors, parents and students, employers and corporations, communities and nations—all with their own agendas, demands and expectations. The business surrounding education is hidden from public view, but is integral to education and student learning.

Above and Beyond the Bottom Line:The extraordinary evolution of the education business manager provides insights into the dynamic evolution and exponential expansion of education business and the rise of the education business manager—now an indispensable member of educational leadership teams.

No longer is the business manager an invisible back-office employee who balances the books. The role is highly complex and accountable and the scope of the work wide-ranging and changeable. Education business managers are professionals holding knowledge, skills and ideas that increase organisational capacity, viability and provision and enable other educational leaders to focus on learning and teaching. Building on research from around the world, this book fills a huge gap in our understandings about educational leadership in its most comprehensive sense, while discussing current issues and considerations for the future.

Above and Beyond the Bottom Line will be an invaluable resource for business managers from all education settings—schools, universities, kindergartens, training colleges—and their professional associations; educational leaders and councillors; education policymakers; advisors and auditors; and scholars and researchers interested in finding out about the extraordinary developments occurring behind the scenes in educational leadership, management and administration.

Motivation and social contexts : A crossnational pilot study of achievement, power, and affiliation motives

Previous research suggests that there is a relationship between social contexts (e.g., economic growth, engagement in wars) and motives within populations. In particular, high achievement motive is associated with subsequent economic growth, which in turn increases power motive. Increased national achievement and power motives have been argued to precede social changes that lead to decreased affiliation motives, and engagement in wars. The present study aimed to examine differences in achievement, power, and affiliation motives between 266 college students in China (a nation with sustained high economic growth) and 255 college students in the USA (a nation with previously strong but now slowing economic growth, and engaged in war). Analysis of personal strivings suggested that Chinese college students showed significantly higher levels of achievement motive than the American college students, but American college students showed significantly higher levels of affiliation motive than Chinese college students. Overall, males exhibited higher achievement motivation than females. No significant interaction effects were found for gender by location for any of the three motives. The findings are discussed in relation to previous research.

Museum development and cross-cultural learning in the Kelabit Highlands, Borneo

The article discusses an aspect of the first phase of the Kelabit Highlands Museum Development Project. Deakin University and the Rurum Kelabit Sarawak collaborated in a field school for post-graduate cultural heritage and museums studies students that was held in Bario in June 2012. The article provides details about the learning framework and research activities that were designed to facilitate exchange and cross-cultural learning between the students and local participants.

Power and discourse in information systems practice : a narrative research method

Relationships of authority and control and their effect on information systems actors has interested IS researchers since at least the 1980’s. The study of power itself has also troubled organisational and sociological theorists, from which information systems researchers have drawn various lines of attack. Our approach to power rests on an historical synchronic theory that seeks to uncover the places and operation of power through an examination of narrative ‘testaments’ which are analysed not from the perspective of the giving individual but from the structural elements of discourse that they may represent. This paper compliments previous research methods on the topic of power especially in expert reports and systems development methodologies; provides specific guidance on how to apply the notion of discourse synchronically; and reconstructs the commercial practice of information systems, not as a broad church, but as one of competing and epistemologically incommensurate discourse, where the fates of the powerful are balanced against the fearful and silent disciplined.

Regional security and regional conflict

This chapter raises the following main points:
• Regions are groupings of states that share either geographic proximity or have sufficient cultural/historic ties that bind them together.
• Regionalization occurs within a region as interdependence is developed among the regional states.
• The development of regionalism is dependent on the support of the regional great power(s), the extent of reciprocity that exists in the relations of the states in the region, and the level of strategic reassurance that exists among these states.
• Regionalization is not a lineal process, that is, it can increase or decrease.
• The pace of regionalism is different in each region but a basic pattern exists where economic integration precedes political and security integration.
• Regional threats to security can be divided into four categories. The first two comprise traditional military threats such as balance of power contests between regional powers and ‘grass fire’ conflicts between smaller powers or over more localized issues. The
third category includes, for example, intra-state conflicts for ethnic, religious, nationalist or ideological, issues. Finally, transnational threats such as environmental degradation or resource scarcity can also cause regional instability and conflict.

The impact of divergent historical and cultural factors on convergence in global communication practice

Communication practice is increasingly converging around globally consistent approaches and techniques shaped by both globalisation and globalising communications technologies. However, this paper argues, national and regional practice histories and cultural characteristics have shaped, and continue to shape, practice in individual markets. The paper analyses the extent of that these divergent histories and cultures have shaped the structure and practices of the public relations industry in Australia and other countries. The paper challenges the common assumptions about public relations development and industry practice having developed from a predominantly US-based model progressively disseminated globally. It traces the history of public relations in Australia, counter-pointing its distinctive origins, to the US-origin thesis. It also examines the impact of demography and diverse national culture on industry shape and practice, comparing the Australian industry to that of other industries around the world. It uses mini-case studies of campaigns in specific countries to assess the extent to which they are culturally-bound by historical and cultural differences and the extent to which they are capable of being transferred or adapted to individual markets. For instance, assumptions about globally-consistent brand identities are contradicted by McDonalds’ branding practices in markets such as Canada and Japan. The paper also discusses how emerging market PR industries are being shaped by distinctive and divergent cultures and development paths and may create new structural and practice models as the emerging economies becoming dominant internationally. The authors suggest that history and cultural diversity continue, and will continue to, shape national and regional practices.

(Un)ethical practices and ethical dilemmas in universities : academic leaders’ perceptions

In this paper we report on the qualitative component of a study that explored middle-level academic leaders’ experiences of (un)ethical practices and ethical dilemmas in their daily work. An electronic survey was distributed to academic leaders from universities across three Australian states. There are three major findings in this study. First, the messy context of universities is providing a fertile ground for ethical dilemmas to flourish. Second, the two main categories of unethical practices identified by participants were academic dishonesty and inappropriate behaviour towards staff and students. Third, the ethical dilemmas that emerged focused on the academic leaders’ strong sense of professional ethics that were in conflict with an ethic of care, supervisors’ directives, and the rules and policies of the organisation.

Leadership in pursuit of purpose : social, economic and political transformation

This chapter critiques the field of educational administration and leadership from a feminist perspective,. It argues that leadership should focus on social justice and this requires wider transforantive social, economic and political  change.

What is a cinema? Death, closure and the database

This chapter explores the possible ontological questions and epistemological propositions that arise from detailed empirical research into cinema closures. Repeated pronouncements of the ‘Death of Cinema’ in the wake of technological, social and industrial change serve to reinforce the coincidence of ‘death’ with a type of ‘closure’. The evocation of a ‘crisis’ in the cinema is ordinarily articulated within the terms of specific cultural concerns around transience and transformation in the social experience of the cinema. However, rather than adding another chapter to the apocalyptic historiography of the cinema this paper proposes instead the constitutive importance of ‘closure’ as a critical tool for rethinking our defining assumptions about cinema(s). Specifically, the chapter will demonstrate how the conceptual granularity entailed in the development of a detailed database of venue openings and closings (the Cinema and Audiences in Australia Project database) can in turn lead to a fundamental reconsideration of the ontology of the cinema itself.