Strategizing public sector human resource management : the implications of working network

Networks have come to the fore as a means by which government can achieve its strategic objectives, particularly when addressing complex or “wicked” issues. Such joined-up arrangements differ in their operations from other forms of organizing as they require collaborative effort to deliver the collaborative advantage. Strategic Human Resource Management is concerned with the matching of human resource practices to the strategic direction of organizations. It is argued that the strategic direction of government has been towards network involvement and that, as a result, a reconfiguration of Human Resource Management practices is needed to support this new direction. Drawing on eight network case studies findings are presented in relation to the roles government is expected to play in networks and conclusions are drawn about what types of human resource management practices would best support those roles. Implications for Strategic Human Resource Management are posited.

Reinvigorating the domestic violence sector : systemically addressing conflict, power and practitioner turnover

The purpose of this exploratory Australian study was to consider methods of retaining skilled and experienced staff within the domestic violence sector. The antecedents that might influence turnover of practitioners were investigated and analysed. Antecedents broadly included the work-related factors, organisational factors and professional factors. The changing nature of the domestic violence sector was also examined, in particular, feminist identity and feminist practice frameworks. It became evident, however, that the primary reasons for the turnover of study participants can be described as parallel power processes. The concept of parallel power processes as developed through this research aims to capture how workplace behaviours can strongly mirror, or parallel, behaviours used by domestic violence perpetrators. As such, it appears that some domestic violence practitioners are experiencing their own abusive relationship, not within the confines of their home, but within their workplace. Additionally, parallel power processes are compounded by ineffective conflict management processes within the workplace. These concepts directly contribute to practitioners leaving their workplace and, sometimes, the sector. This qualitative study utilised a feminist research epistemology and focused strongly on practitioners' stories. Interviews were undertaken with fifteen domestic violence practitioners from three services within South-East Queensland, Australia. Two sets of semi-structured interviews provided in-depth information based on practitioners‘ experiences of working within this specialised sector. Analysis was conducted using a thematic analytical frame, drawing attention to the key themes as mentioned above. From these findings, it is suggested that in order to retain practitioners, domestic violence services must identify and address parallel power processes through effective conflict management processes. In an operational sense, it is recommended that education and training be undertaken within all staffing levels, in particular management committees. Lastly, it is recommended that the sector itself places greater attention on the re-invigoration of the feminist principles and philosophy that has traditionally guided the sector.

Career paths in the third sector : implications for human resource management

My interest in career paths in the third sector came from three early observations. First, the majority of workers appear to be women, in fact 77% of community sector community services in NSW (O'Donnell, 1985). Second, when asked about their career, most workers express the opinion that they have none. Third, when I examined the individual career paths of community sector workers I was struck by the stop and start nature of their paid work. Even, or perhaps especially, well qualified workers would move out of a position after about two years often to a more difficult position in a new area, with little or no salary increase and little prospect of future promotion. Indeed, there appears to be little career path available. These observations raise a number of important questions, some of which will be explored in this paper. What is the structure of the third sector labour market? What is the staff structure of third sector organisations? Is it true that career paths are unavailable, either within organisations or within the sector? If none exists, why do workers stay in the field? What motivates them? If there is a high turnover of staff, is this the reason? What are the implications of all this? If some sort of career path does exist, why do workers deny having a career? What do we mean by `career' anyway?

Market orientation in the nonprofit sector

As the nonprofit sector moves into a more competitive environment it is being required by the community to become more efficient and effective. One response is for nonprofit organisations to become market oriented, which is the familiar response in the for-profit sector. Two components of market orientation, that is market segmentation and customer oriented products, fit well within the peculiarities of a nonprofit organisation. This is usually accompanied by the desire to obtain a competitive advantage causes problems for various stakeholders within the organisation. This paper contends that three factors, management, scarcity of resources, and conflict between organisational objectives and market orientation, are major influences on the adoption of a market oriented culture for a nonprofit organisation.

Friend or foe? The impact of the Hawke/Keating neoliberal reforms on Australian workers and the Australian public sector

Over the last three decades neoliberalism has transitioned from occupying the margins of economic policy debate to becoming the dominant approach by governments and their economic advisers, a process that has accelerated with the collapse of the former Stalinist states in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union. This thesis adopts a Marxist framework for understanding this process, beginning as it did in the realm of relatively abstract philosophical and ideological debate to the permeation of neoliberal values throughout all capitalist institutions, including the state bureaucracy. This necessarily means a focus on the dialectical relationship between the rise of neoliberalism and the shifting balance of class forces that accompanied the success of the neoliberal project in transforming the dominant economic policy paradigm. The extent to which neoliberal reforms impacted on workers and public sector institutions, along with the success or otherwise of traditional working class institutions in defending the material interests of workers will therefore be a recurring theme throughout this body of work. The evidence borne from this research and analysis suggests a major shift in the dialectic of class struggle in favour of the power of capital over labour during the period covered, with the neoliberal age being one of defeat for a labour movement that largely failed to adopt successful strategies for defending itself.

Success factors for ICT shared services in the higher education sector

Shared services is a prominent organizational arrangement for organizations, in particular for support functions. The success (or failure) of shared services is a critical concern as the move to shared services can entail large scale investment and involve fundamental organizational change. The Higher Education (HE) sector is particularly well poised to benefit from shared services as there is a need to improve organizational performance and strong potential from sharing. Through a multiple case study of shared services experiences in HE, this study identifies ten important antecedents of shared services success: (1) Understanding of shared services; (2) Organizational environment; (3) Top management support; (4) IT environment; (5) Governance; (6) Process centric view; (7) Implementation strategy; (8) Project management; (9) Change management; and (10) Communication. The study then develops a preliminary model of shared services success that addresses the interdependencies between the success factors. As the first empirical success model for shared services, it provides valuable guidance to practice and future research.

‘Supersize me’ : on equine obesity

There’s nothing like travel to broaden the mind. As a young man living in Britain during the 1980s I thought I knew about human obesity, but it took a visit to the US to show me what an epidemic looks like. Nowadays I live in Australia, where human obesity is rife. We have plenty of fat horses too (Sillence et al., 2006), but they are noticeable. In fact, it was only recently during a return visit to Britain, that I was finally sold on the concept of an equine obesity epidemic. It seems that in the UK, the fat horse or pony is now so commonplace that it has come to represent the norm in the eyes of many owners. I met clinicians who claim to have forgotten what a fit horse looks like, and heard anecdotes of a responsible owner who kept their animals in a healthy body condition, only to be reported to the RSPCA for ‘cruelty’. Round and shiny have become the order of the day and, as we have learned from the tsunami of human obesity, once a problem reaches a certain scale it can seem unstoppable, despite the attendant risks, costs and consequences.

Optimising COBIT 5 for IT governance : examples from the public sector

Control Objectives for Information and related Technology (COBIT) has grown to be one of the most significant IT Governance (ITG) frameworks available and also the best suited for audit, as it provides comprehensive guidance around IT processes and related business goals. However, given the constraints of both time and resources within which the Australian public sector is forced to operate, implementing an audit framework the size of COBIT in its entirety is often considered too large a task. As an alternative to full implementation it is not uncommon for the public sector to “cherry pick” controls from the framework in an effort to reduce its size. This paper reports on research undertaken to evaluate the potential to use an optimised sub-set of COBIT 5 for ITG audit in Australian public sector organisations. A survey methodology was employed to determine the control-objectives considered to be the most important to a selection of public sector organisations. Twelve control-objectives were identified as being most important to Queensland public sector organisations. As ten of these were also identified by previous studies, it appears possible to derive an optimised sub-set from COBIT 5 that would be both enduring and relevant across geographical and organisational contexts.

Comparative study of depth-dependent characteristics of equine and human osteochondral tissue from the medial and lateral femoral condyles

Articular cartilage defects are common after joint injuries. When left untreated, the biomechanical protective function of cartilage is gradually lost, making the joint more susceptible to further damage, causing progressive loss of joint function and eventually osteoarthritis (OA). In the process of translating promising tissue-engineering cartilage repair approaches from bench to bedside, pre-clinical animal models including mice, rabbits, goats, and horses, are widely used. The equine species is becoming an increasingly popular model for the in vivo evaluation of regenerative orthopaedic approaches. As there is also an increasing body of evidence suggesting that successful lasting tissue reconstruction requires an implant that mimics natural tissue organization, it is imperative that depth-dependent characteristics of equine osteochondral tissue are known, to assess to what extent they resemble those in humans. Therefore, osteochondral cores (4-8 mm) were obtained from the medial and lateral femoral condyles of equine and human donors. Cores were processed for histology and for biochemical quantification of DNA, glycosaminoglycan (GAG) and collagen content. Equine and human osteochondral tissues possess similar geometrical (thickness) and organizational (GAG, collagen and DNA distribution with depth) features. These comparable trends further underscore the validity of the equine model for the evaluation of regenerative approaches for articular cartilage.

A Delphi study into the audit challenges of IT governance in the Australian public sector

Information technology (IT) has been playing a powerful role in creating a competitive advantage for organisations over the past decades. This role has become proportionally greater over time as expectations for IT investments to drive business opportunities keep on rising. However, this reliance on IT has also raised concerns about regulatory compliance, governance and security. IT governance (ITG) audit leverages the skills of IS/IT auditors to ensure that IT initiatives are in line with the business strategies. ITG audit emerged as part of performance audit to provide an assessment of the effective implementation of ITG. This research attempts to empirically examine the ITG audit challenges in the public sector. Based on literature and Delphi research, this paper provides insights regarding the impact of, and required effort to address these challenges. The authors also present the ten major ITG audit challenges facing Australian public sector organisations today.

Arts-health intersections : a model of practice for consistency in the arts-health sector

The field of Arts-Health practice and research has grown exponentially in the past 30 years. While researchers are using applied arts as the subject of investigation in research, the evaluation of practice and participant benefits has a limited general focus. In recent years, the field has witnessed a growing concentration on the evaluation of health outcomes, outputs and tangential benefits for participants engaging in Arts-Health practice. The wide range of methodological approaches applied arts practitioners implement make the field difficult to define. This article introduces the term Arts-Health intersections as a model of practice and framework to promote consistency in design, implementation and evaluative processes in applied arts programmes promoting health outcomes. The article challenges the current trend to solely evaluate health outcomes in the field, and promotes a concurrent and multidisciplinary methodological approach that can be adopted to promote evaluation, consistency and best practice in the field of Arts-Health intersections. The article provides a theoretical overview of Arts-Health intersections, and then takes this theoretical platform and details a best model of practice for developing Arts-Health intersections and presents this model as a guide.

Towards a typology of structural arrangements for shared services : evidence from the higher education sector

Shared services are increasingly prevalent in practice, their introduction potentially entailing substantive and highly consequential organizational redesign. Yet, attention to the structural arrangements of shared services has been limited. This study explores types of structural arrangements for shared services that are observed in practice, and the salient dimensions along which those types can be usefully differentiated. Through inductive attention to the shared services literature, and content analysis of 36 secondary case studies of shared services in the higher education sector, three salient dimensions emerged: (1) the existence or not of a separate organizational entity, (2) an intra- or inter-organizational sharing boundary, and (3) involvement or not of a third party. Each dimension being dichotomous yields 23 combinations, or eight shared services structural arrangement types. Each of the eight structural arrangement types is defined and demonstrated through case examples. The typology offers clarity around shared services structural arrangements. It can serve as a useful analytical tool for researchers investigating the phenomenon further, and for practitioners considering the introduction or further development of shared services arrangements. Important follow on research is suggested too.

Hidden Innovation : Policy, Industry and the Creative Sector

The latest book in the internationally acclaimed Creative Economy series. The term ‘two cultures’ was coined more than 50 years ago by scientist and novelist C.P. Snow to describe the divergence in the world views and methods of scientists and the creative sector. This divergence has meant that innovation systems and policies have focussed for decades on science, engineering, technology and medicine and the industries that depend on them. The humanities, arts and social sciences have been bitt players at best; their contributions hidden from research agendas, policy and program initiatives, and the public mind. But structural changes to advanced economies and societies have brought services industries and the creative sector to greater prominence as key contributors to innovation. Hidden Innovation peels back the veil, tracing the way innovation occurs through new forms of screen production enabled by social media platforms as well as in public broadcasting. It shows that creative workers are contributing fresh ideas across the economy, and how creative cities debates need reframing. It traces how policies globally are beginning to catch up with the changing social and economic realities. In his new book, Cunningham argues that the innovation framework offers the best opportunity in decades to reassess and refresh the case for the public role of the humanities, particularly the media, cultural and communication studies disciplines.

Implementing the Clean Development Mechanism in Fiji : opportunities and barriers in the energy sector

The Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) has been praised for its ingenuity in mobilising finance to implement sustainable development practices in non-industrialised countries (known as Non-Annex 1 parties under the Kyoto Protocol). During the first commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol (2008-2012), a large number of clean development mechanism projects have been registered with the CDM board. In addition to the large number of registered CDM projects, there are significant numbers of proposed projects stalled in implementation due to the cumbersome and lengthy CDM approval process. Despite this regulatory criticism it is recognised that the role performed by the CDM is essential for achieving a significant reduction in global green house gas emissions. This is because the CDM funds sustainable development in countries that lack capacity to do so on their own. It is anticipated that some form of CDM instrument will continue post the 2012 timeframe and that reform of the mechanism will be focused around making the mechanism’s approval and implementation processes faster and more efficient.