Customer-focused CRM: a marketing challenge for organizations

The article explains that CRM is all about building longterm business relationships with customers. It is best described as the blending of internal business processes: sales, marketing and customer support with technology. Research indicates that poor project planning, weak and
incomplete business cases, cost and complexity of the technology, lack of.technological skills, lack of system integration and lack of senior management involvement in the CRM process are among the many factors that inhibit the successful adoption ofCRM in companies. The article presents a framework for customer centric CRM.

Finding a place for health in the schooling process: A challenge for education

It is common in schools for health and education goals to be seen as agendas that are in competition. However schools do attempt to find time in crowded curriculums to cover health issues as part of their responsibility towards advancing the health of their students. A qualitative approach was used in this study to explore perceived outcomes of a Health Promoting School intervention project. The project schools targeted for in-depth study were purposefully sampled to include diversity based on location, level, system and specific health activities. The results showed that the schools involved were moving beyond oppositional constructions of health and education towards approaching health as an element of effective schooling. It is concluded that in any effective health promotion activity in schools, the agenda needs to be driven primarily by an education sector that has demonstrated it can embrace holistic approaches to health, with the health sector acting as partner and facilitator.

Sustainable development and environmental accounting: the challenge to the economics and accounting profession

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine the role of natural resources accounting in sustainable development. Natural resource accounting is important because the welfare of a nation measured in terms of gross domestic product (GDP) has several weaknesses. Design/methodology/approach – This paper achieves this objective by identifying the present status, the constraints and the challenges for the economics and accounting professions. Findings – The main weakness of GDP as a measure of development is that it does not take into account damages to environmental resources. However, the improvement of the concept to include environmental resource use is made difficult because of the difficulties of measuring environmental damage. The challenge to the economics and accounting profession is to ensure interdisciplinary collaboration, development of a framework to explicitly include the environment, development of credible valuation procedures for the environment, and inclusion of the various ethical positions advanced by various groups on the value of the environment. Practical implications – Some headway has been made on these issues during the last decade but a major challenge still lies ahead in further improving these approaches so that sustainable development becomes an achievable goal. Originality/value – This paper brings together diverse views and fusing them together providing a future path for research in environmental accounting to achieve sustainable development.

The challenge of managing continence care in residential aged care settings : recommendations for research and practice

Incontinence-related problems are a major reason for placement in residential aged care facilities. Data from the Residential Classification Scale indicates that 86% of people in residential aged care facilities in Australia are dependent on others for bladder management, 77% require some support with bowel management and 78% require some support with toileting. In this paper, we present an overview of the literature on the issues that need to be considered for the management of incontinence in residential aged care settings. Based on this literature, we make recommendations for research and practice. Although residential care facilities are mandated to provide continence care, there is little research evidence on which to base care or to evaluate the effectiveness of current practices. Further research is required to address this gap in information to ensure delivery of residential aged care that meets the requirements of the Aged Care Act 1997.

International strategy: is it meeting the challenge?

The paper proposes an IS process model comprising inputs, development, outputs and a feedback loop based on performance measurement and its interpretation. The feedback impacts on the inputs and development components. Inputs are comprised of market information. human resources, diversity, value creation and host country environmental factors. Development includes preparation and learning. planning and scrutinising partnerships. anticipating impacts of globalisation and experience effects. Outputs comprise structure, scope of operations, target countries. facility location and positioning. Performance interpretation explains rapid and major changes in IS outputs, such as structure and business unit portfolios, whilst process complexity explains observed output similarities for organisations reacting to similar inputs and suggests an evolutionary approach in their determination.

Generic rehabilitation assistants : will rehabilitation nurses take up the challenge?

This paper provides an overview of some of the issues that need to be considered in the context of a declining health workforce. It outlines some of the arguments for and against the introduction of generic health workers and more specifically, for the role of generic rehabilitation - assistant. It is argued that rehabilitation nurses, amongst others, are well placed to take an active role in the development of innovative interdisciplinary models of care that enhance patient outcomes as they transect the continuum of care. Failure to do so will be at the peril of rehabilitation nursing.

Building autonomic clusters : a response to IBM’s autonomic computing challenge

IBM has announced Autonomic Computing as one of its Grand Challenges. A list of characteristics was generated to describe an autonomic computing system. Many researchers and research group have responded positively to the challenge by initiating research around one or two of the characteristics identified by IBM as the requirements for Autonomic Computing. We have addressed the IBMrsquos request to contribute to the challenge by building an autonomic operating system that possesses nearly all IBM characteristics. This paper contains our response to the IBMrsquos Autonomic Computing Challenge.

Hegemony of printed books in Australian tertiary education a concept under challenge

This paper is about challenges to the hegemony of printed books in Australian tertiary education and the potential demise of that hegemony. Not because the book in its traditional form is considered by some to be outdated and not because ofcompeting products that might put the use of the traditional book under threat - our Australian 'book-industry' might well rise to such challenges given that competitiveness is a driving feature of business. This paper is about challenges to the hegemony of printed books in tertiary education because of forces entirely outside the 'book-industry's' control.

The function of traditional printed books within tertiary education is changing. Education is a user-pays product, and competitive pressures ensure students are given greater voice in the types of learning resources provided, with the evolution of electronic and communication technologies allowing student learning resources to be made available in a myriad of ways. Thus a traditional printed book may be an inflexible tool in a dynamic environment.

Globalizing heritage: world heritage as a manifestation of modernism and the challenge from the periphery

Government efforts to protect monuments and sites of cultural heritage value have gone on for many centuries. The distinctive new chapter that
the 20th Century brought to cultural heritage protection was the establishment of a globalized effort over and above the work of nation states, This led to a new cultural heritage bureaucracy at the international level, the development of new sets of 'universal' standards, and a new set of places deemed to be of world heritage significance, All of this was done in the spirit of goodwill and optimism that infused the modem movement and that made possible the establishment of the so-called Bretton Woods organizations such as the United Nations as well as the parallel organizations specifically dealing with Cultural Heritage - UNESCO, ICOMOS, ICOM and ICCROM, In recent decades cultural relativists have challenged the drive towards uniformity implicit in the global activities of the modernist organizations, and various parts of the periphery have reacted against aspects of the global cultural heritage approach, The Venice Charter is no longer regarded as the single, universal way to conserve heritage places. It has been replaced or supplemented in large parts of the world by alternatives and modifications such as the Nara Document and Burra Charter. If it is no longer acceptable to provide a universal answer to the question of how do we identify and save heritage, the challenge of the 21st Century is to make the most of the complexity of standards that now exists.

Building autonomic clusters: a response to IBM's autonomic computing challenge

IBM has announced Autonomic Computing as one of its Grand Challenges. A list of characteristics was generated to describe an autonomic computing system. Many researchers and research group have responded positively to the challenge by initiating research around one or two of the characteristics identified by IBM as the requirements for Autonomic Computing. We have addressed the IBMs request to contribute to the challenge by building an autonomic operating system that possesses nearly all IBM characteristics. This paper contains our response to the IBMs Autonomic Computing Challenge.