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.

Language, power and ruling relations in vocational education and training

This thesis uses institutional ethnography to explore the text-based regulatory framework of the Australian Vocational Education and Training (VET) sector. Training Packages are national competency standards used to assess local workplace practice. The Australian Quality Training Framework (AQTF) is a national compliance framework used to audit local learning and assessment practice. These texts operate in a ‘symbiotic relationship’ to achieve a policy goal of national consistency. The researcher explicates the social relations of VET starting from her disquiet as a practitioner. The thesis argues that Training Packages and the AQTF socially organise the content and delivery of local learning and assessment activities. VET practitioners struggle to use these texts to support good practice, and their hidden work maintains an unstable VET system. Yet the extralocal mode of ruling offers no room to challenge VET policy. The thesis explicates three themes. Interview data is used to explore the contrast between the institutional language of Training Packages and the vernacular of workplaces in which these texts are activated. Many practitioners and participants simply do not understand Training Package competency standards. Using these texts to judge employee performance shifts the policing of workplace practice from local sites to external VET authorities. A second theme emerges as the analysis explores why VET practitioners use this excluding language in their work with participants. Interview data reveals that local training organisations achieve different readings as they engage with ruling VET texts. Some organisations use the national texts as broad frameworks, allowing practitioners to create spaces for meaningful learning. Other organisations adopt a narrow and rule-bound reading of national texts, displacing practitioners’ authority over their own practice. A third theme is explored through examination of a sequence of VET texts. The review and redevelopment of the mandatory qualifications for VET practitioners identified the language of the competency standards as a significant accessibility issue. These concerns were reshaped and subsumed in an official response that established the use of this language as a compulsory assessable requirement and a language and literacy benchmark. The thesis presents a new understanding of VET as a regulatory framework established through multiple levels of ruling texts that connect local sites to national government agendas. While some individual practitioners are able to navigate through this system, there is an urgent need for practitioners as a profession to challenge national hegemony.

Contract management in government

The primary subject matter of this case is the procedure for contract management in relation to the application for and granting of government funding to organisations. A secondary issue examined in the case concerns the adequacy and effectiveness of governance and accountability controls within organisations receiving public funds for the external supply of services. The case requires an understanding of audit planning and good governance and accountability principles.
This case has a difficulty level that makes it most suitable for senior level students in an Auditing/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 and other items listed in the references.

Power relations in virtual communities: an ethnographic study

Peoples' need to socialize with others and greed for power can be best captured with Aristotle's description of human beings as “political animals”/“social animals.” This paper reports on observations of how cyber communities, such as Web-based forums and mailing lists, manifest themselves through social interactions and shared values, membership and friendship, and commitments and loyalty. The paper highlights the importance of power relations in these communities, how they are formed, exercised and evolve. This paper explores power relations as they emerge in two online Vietnamese communities and suggests a new understanding of the formation and evolution of power in virtual societies.

Power relations in cyber communities

Peoples' need to socialize with others and greed for power can be best captured with Aristotle's description of human beings as "political animals"/"social animals." This paper reports on observations of how cyber communities, such as Web-based forums and mailing lists, manifest themselves through social interactions and shared values, membership and friendship, and commitments and loyalty. The paper highlights the importance of power relations in these communities, how they are formed, exercised and evolve. This paper explores power relations as they emerge in two online Vietnamese communities and suggests a new understanding of the formation and evolution of power in virtual societies.

Investigating people management issues in a third sector health care organisation - an inductive approach

Objective : To explain use of inductive convergent interviewing to generate the perceived critical people management issues, as perceived by staff, as a prelude to longitudinal surveys in a third sector health care organisation.

Design : Convergent interviewing is a qualitative technique that addresses research topics that lack theoretical underpinning and is an inductive, flexible, evolving research approach. The key issues converged after six rounds of interviews as well as a further round to ensure that all of the common people management issues had been generated.

Setting : Studies in employee behaviour in the health care industry exist, but there is little in the way of tested models of predictors of such behaviour in third sector organisations in the Australian health care industry. The context is what differentiates this study covering a range of facilities and positions in hospitals and aged care situations within one third sector health care organisation.

Subjects : The study proposed twenty seven extensive interviews over a range of facilities and positions. Twenty one interviewees participated in the final convergent process.

Conclusions : Critical issues included: workload across occupational groups, internal management support, adequate training, the appropriate skill mix in staff, physical risk in work, satisfaction, as well as other issues. These issues confirm the proposition of sector‑ness in health organisations that are multi‑dimensional rather than uni‑dimensional.

People management issues in a third sector health care organisation: preliminary findings

Objective – To use inductive convergent interviewing to generate the perceived critical people management issues of the day as perceived by staff. This was used as preliminary to longitudinal ongoing survey in a third sector health care organisation.

Design – Convergent interviewing is a qualitative technique that addresses research topics that lack theoretical underpinning and is an inductive, flexible, evolving research instrument. The key issues converged after six rounds of interviews as well as a further round to ensure that all of the common people management issues had been generated.

Setting - There is very little in the way of tested models of predictors of employee behaviour in third sector organisations in the Australian health care industry. This study investigates a range of facilities and positions, in various hospitals and aged care facilities within the one third sector health care organisation.

Subjects – The study proposed twenty seven extensive interviews over a range of facilities and positions. Twenty one interviewees participated in the final convergent process.

Conclusions - Critical issues included: workload across occupational groups, internal management support, adequate training, the appropriate skill mix in staff, physical risk in work, satisfaction, as well as other issues. These issues confirm the proposition of sector-ness in health organisations that are multi-dimensional rather than uni-dimensional.

State-NGO relations in Malaysia in the Mahathir years

This thesis states that the containment of NGOs is not simply due to the state's control of the political mechanisms. This study argues that the boundaries for NGOs are determined by the interplay between the state, the ruling elites, the middle class and the business elites.

Business to consumer eCommerce : implications for employee management

This research explored the way service organisations deal with employee management issues when implementing eCommerce technologies. The thesis proposes a framework for understanding the technology-mediated context of the customer-employee interaction in service organisations when implementing eCommerce. The framework assists in achieving a balance between achieving efficiencies and maintaining customer loyalty.

On the mopfloor: researching employment relations in the hidden world of commercial cleaning

This chapter explores some of the challenges and tribulations of studying the hidden and hitherto unresearched world of work in the New South Wales (Australia) cleaning industry. The findings and analysis presented here are informed by my research into employment relations, labour management and the organisation of work in the NSW commercial cleaning industry (Ryan, 2007). This research used primarily a case study of an industry exemplar, and made extensive use of participant observation to obtain evidence on the perceived realities of work and organisation for those on the front line of cleaning work - the cleaners and their supervisors - and to understand how they make sense of their working world. The discussions and findings presented in this chapter support the use of an ethnographic approach to work, and provide some guidance as to how a participant observation study might be carried out and what might be found through the use of this method.