Employment relations : integrating industrial relations and human resource management

Incorporating Human Resource Management policies within the regulatory and institutional framework that governs contemporary industrial relations has always been problematic. This paper details the nature and causes of this problem, noting the different conceptual and practical understandings that underpin each form of labour management when being applied in organisational settings. It then looks at a range of industrial relations realities confronting managers when trying to apply HRM practices, and how these practices might be accommodated within the context of such realities as a means of improving organisational effectiveness. In so doing it delineates four approaches an organisation might take in its relations with trade unions when bargaining and concluding labour contracts, and which of these are consistent and inconsistent with the coexistence of HRM and industrial relations practices. It then looks at the issue of workplace change involving trade unions and collective bargaining in terms of three categorical models—the management-driven model, the trade union gatekeeper model, and the management-union alliance model, the intention again being to show which are consistent and inconsistent with the coexistence of these different forms of labour management. The paper concludes by drawing on these conceptual models to outline the issues and policies that need to be considered when applying HRM practices within an industrial relations setting.

The impact of Porter's strategy types on the role of market research and customer relationship management

Purpose – This paper seeks to investigate the influence of Porter’s strategy types on the use of customer relationship management (CRM) techniques and traditional market research, against theoretical and empirical evidence that differences in strategy types may result in variation in favoured marketing information sources and procedure.

Design/methodology/approach – Depth interviews generated a series of scale items, which were combined with others derived from the literature in a questionnaire measuring strategy types, the roles of market research, and the characteristics of CRM systems. Responses were obtained from 240 senior marketing managers in Australia, and applied to the testing of five research propositions.

Findings – ANOVA found no differences in CRM usage among the strategy types. Variation was widespread, however, in four roles of traditional market research: enhancing strategic decision making, increasing usability of existing data, presenting plans to senior management, and achieving productivity and political outcomes.

Research limitations/implications – Future researchers using the Porter strategic types should separate “marketing differentiators” from “product differentiators” because they function and compete differently.

Practical implications – All organisations can benefit from CRM systems, but “marketing differentiators” exhibit a relatively higher usage of traditional market research. This is likely to be because they compete by creating softer product differences, while others do so on harder characteristics such as price or product functionality.

Originality/value – This is the first study to use the Porter types to explain differences between the roles and uses of market research and CRM within organisations.

Crossing Bowen Street : mapping interventions in the classed subject

Synopsis: Crossing Bowen Street Crossing Bowen Street is an extended novel set in Melbourne, Australia. The protagonist, Meg Flanagan, is accepted to teachers' college. Meg is 24 years old and has worked, and lived out of home, since 17. Having completed her year 12 studies part time while working, she has applied to the Melbourne State College for a Bachelor of Education. Melbourne State College is subsequently 'amalgamated'A into Philip University, the original 19th century sandstone institution which borders MSC. Meg has worked as a medical secretary prior to commencing her studies. An only child, she is the first member of her family to go to university, indeed to finish high school. Tertiary study is exciting for Meg and the novel explores the psychic journey as well as the intellectual one, as Meg experiences challenges to the possibilities for her life and the trajectory along which she once assumed it would flow. The narrative is told through episodic and epistolary forms, with particular periods in Meg's cultural and academic life forming the focus, picking up the integral elements of her journey and examining the psychic context and action. Characters in the undergraduate chapters of the novel are somewhat transient, although very important to Meg's rapidly developing, changing sense of herself. The constant 'trying out' of ways of being and even lifestyles sees Meg losing old 'friendships' and making new, even temporary, ones all the time. This allows the opportunity for Meg to explore her feelings about connecting to others and the nature of her relationships. The Meg reflected back to her by others is of constant interest to her, particularly as she is frequently reminded that others see a very different Meg than she does. The novel commences at the outset of Meg's tertiary career, as she initially articulates the extent of her aspiration, of her sense of the possibility of her own life. Each vignette deals, chronologically, with an aspect of Meg's expanding sense of possibility, socially, emotionally, intellectually. Certain vignettes explore her relations with friends and acquaintances in the course, which in turn provide A In 1988, Federal Labor Minister for Education John Dawkins, devised a plan to end the streaming of Australian tertiary institutions and created what is called the Unified National System. This meant that colleges of advanced education and institutes of technology were either created universities in their own right, or more commonly, merged with an appropriate existing university. This process allows a fascinating insight into the class dimensions of hierarchies and stratifications. The need of universities and their members for status has been profoundly underscored. the background and context for her sexual relationships. That aspect of her developing subjectivity provides a marked contrast, which Meg uses as leverage, when set against her sense of herself as a scholar and her growing notion of entitlement, which allows her to 'choose', where previously she believed she had no choice; the choice is a scholarly career. Within all this, Meg discovers and is deeply empowered by certain political left, and feminist, discourses within the university community. She is equally dismayed and alienated by other feminist practices; her growing engagement with her own agency sees her quickly abandoning feminist subject positions previously dear to her, which served a particular purpose and are now superseded. This notion of feeling betrayed by the promise of a value system (or rather, its practitioners) will recur throughout the action of the novel, as Meg moves into an academic role, first as doctoral student and then as academic, seeking to live her values as practice and to remain true to what her trajectory has taught her. This is crystallised in the novel as the role played by the place she came from, and how that informs, and complicates, who she becomes. The novel seeks to explore the fundamental contradictions in doing so, through Meg's increasing awareness that the academy is not the harmonious, class aware institution she has idealised, but a world driven by status and hierarchies. This realisation must be reconciled in the light of Meg's anxieties about her working-class background. Meg's doctoral training at an elite university underscores her developing sense of what constitutes excellence and the role played by highly influential conservative institutions in maintaining social arrangements. As her academic career unfolds, the holding of a Cambridge PhD allows Meg opportunities to make change as certain privileges are afforded her by virtue of her Cambridge status. Yet it is this very notion that she seeks to challenge. Her growing passion for the State University of Victoria, an institution developed for the education of working-class people, informs her activism within the academy. Why are excellence and equity polarised? Why does the institution matter more than the scholarship? Why is so much practice within universities contrary to the values scholars often claim? These questions are explored through the dynamics of academic working life as student and later as a teacher at a university with an explicit equity agenda. The Start of the End (2003): The action commences on a late Friday after at SUV, when the Department of Communication & Cultural Studies has just been advised of Meg's promotion to Associate Professor. This vignette sees the initial soiree and celebrations and allows Meg to reflect on her experience. As her colleagues and friends are congratulating her, a particular student comes looking for Meg. It is clear that Angela Watson needs course advice particularly from Meg. Their discussion seems a straightforward one on the face of it, but it underscores many things; that Meg has come the full circle in her academic life, and what it is that her journey has really been about. The route to professorial appointment is considered, as is the source of Meg's greatest professional joy and fulfillment; is it scholarship, followed by leadership, in her discipline? It is knowing she has continued to speak and act to change the life chances of all students, wherever possible? Or is it the subtle distilling of both of these, along with the knowledge which emerges from the nexus of teaching and research. That scholarship, new knowledge, surely must be taking us somewhere specific in relation to others? The more we know, the more we can do...to what end? From this reflection, we see the action of the novel unfold. We return to this scene at the end of the novel, as Meg considers the trajectory of her life and its themes in her work. The novel ends as she is faced with the next challenge. Arrival (1989): Acceptance sees Meg as she is attempting to transform her life and create a new one. She has just been advised of her admission to an undergraduate Bachelor of Education program, at the major Melbourne teachers' college. Meg shares her rented home with her high school best friend, Anna, and her fiance, Jason, who appears to be superfluous in her life. Meg is aware he is a partner for who she used to be. We see Meg in her job as a medical secretary and this allows the mapping of Meg's sense of her own world, as she travels between home and work. This first stage of seeking her aspiration- to be an English teacher-evolves. As Meg considers the meaning of what she is about to do and how she knows it is right. This involves a consideration of what work means in our lives and how this is different for jobs according to how they are classed. Her relationship with the life she has known, the person she has been, is changing and this change is represented through her relationship with Jason. Meg's first day at teachers' college demonstrates that she is in a constant, often painful, dialogue with herself. The difficulties she encounters in making sense of the relation between her two 'lives' are thrown into sharp relief. The preparation for college sees Meg interrogating herself about how she can be different. Her initial experiences at the College resonate with her highest expectations of the life that awaits her, of the multiple possibilities currently being authored for her. Her first attendance at classes offers the opportunity to try out some of those possibilities, to test them against those she meets and to map the ways she could discover to 'be'. There is much tension and fear, but also endless excitement and these conflicting emotional states parallel and marble each other. It is on this day that she meets Jennifer Wren, her first real friend at university, who offers so many challenges to Meg. Their friendship involves a constant exhausting shift of subject positions, which Meg is able to look back on with affection in years to come. Going Bowling (1989): within a few weeks of commencing at university, Meg is socializing with some of her new friends, having neatly segmented her home and college lives. Meg has already realised that her friendships fall into separate groups; her friendship with Jennifer and the people Jennifer knows does not find its way into this group. They meet in the city to go bowling and have a meal. While Meg really enjoys these new people, already tensions are developing in relations between the group. Their unofficial leader, Rosemary Marshall, has a tendency to seek control and already resistance is showing. Rosemary particularly does not like Jennifer. Meg is enjoying her flirtation with Pete Danville, whom she has assumed to be gay. His very flattering attention has already developed Meg's confidence and stoked her ego, which has eroded in her stagnating relationship with Jason. Rosie has developed a crush on Pete and seems to take the flirtation with Meg personally. Dynamics in the group become slightly uncomfortable but Meg has grown quickly fond of her new friends, especially flamboyant Marina, another whom Rosemary seems to dislike. The discussions which occur during their evening deepen both the relationships and the tensions between them and draw lines which will determine the outcome of their various friendships. The Ball (1990): In the third year of her degree, much has happened to Meg. She is married to Jason, although she omits him from much of her psychic (and practical) life. Meg and her friends attend the Faculty's annual formal dinner dance. Meg has so far managed to balance the competitiveness which occurs between all of them, both academically and personally. The negotiation of her respective friendships with Jennifer and Marina requires a great deal of diplomacy; the subtext in this is very disturbing to Meg. What exactly is the conflict about? She can't be sure why they don't like each other; it could be Marina's smoking, or Jennifer's confidence to spare, but these things also annoy her, yet she does not fight with either girl as they do with each other. Rose has always insisted that the problem is Jennifer's private school background, but Marina went to a catholic girls' school, so what could the difference be? The ball is initially a happy occasion; the girls dress up and they dance and drink champagne together with the boys. But dynamics operating beneath the surface force their way up. Rosie is ready to force Pete to confront her continuing crush on him; Pete confronts Meg about their ongoing flirtation. Meg gives in and admits to herself for the first time that she does want to be with Pete. He is grown up and exciting and strong. He offers her something she has never had with Jason. Married less than a year, she pushes her husband out of her thoughts. The events of the ball force Meg to confront the differences between all her friends and the discomfort this affords everyone. Rosie's continued need for control over the group is acknowledged. Future Present (1991): Meg lives in Carlton with Pete. This is the busiest year thus far in her academic career and the financial, academic and emotional pressure is showing. This vignette gives us the range of Meg's academic activities and the way her life has fallen since the events at the ball eight months earlier. We see Meg grappling with her own evaluation of the changes in her 'way of being'; trying on different ways of living that she has idealised and finding them just as wanting as the last. Meg faces some key existential questions in this vignette and seeks answers which she finally discovers only she can give. Her relationship with Pete, the values and goals they share (and don't share) are thrown into sharp relief and provide a touchstone for the clearer determination of Meg's aspiration and future. Her relationship with various female friends is also revisited and this offers insight into Meg's constant checking of herself against idealised female templates. There is a crisis of identity and strength which constitutes an important fork in Meg's road. Beyond (1992): Beyond sees Meg determinedly seeking ways she can progress towards her goal, while still constantly checking against herself that postgraduate study (let alone a scholarly life) is available to her. We accompany Meg as she seeks and locates the academic path she wants; this is the backdrop for her further psychic exploration of the women who intimidate yet fascinate her, particularly Heloise Waul, who is a significant influence through Meg's postgraduate career. The sites in which Meg's personal struggles manifest are highlighted in this vignette, particularly in terms of dress and cultural pursuit. The conversations between Meg and Heloise also allow an exploration of the feminist politics of that milieu and the class tensions which operate tacitly within those politics. Bound to the Caucus (1992); Meg has now nearly completed her undergraduate degree and has been active for some time in university life and student politics. Her feminist and socialist education is well advanced. Bound to the Caucus shows us Meg in her student politics world for the first time, where the segue of her activism and academic life have taken her. Meg has found female friends who understand that part of her which struggles with inadequacy, although at this point in the novel this common struggle is not well understood or articulated. It is in this vignette that Meg admits her growing attraction for a Liberal student activist, Stuart Noble; this proscribed liaison raises many questions about values and aspiration, as well as the dominant sexual politics of the time and place. Bound to the Caucus also offers insight into the student activism occurring at universities like Philip in the early 1990s. Divergence (1993): Set in 1993, Meg is now in the early weeks of her honours program, although she has been at work on her thesis on the poet William Blake for some months. Living unhappily in a share household near the University, her relationship with Stuart Noble continues to develop, reaching a crisis point in this period. These events occur in the context of Meg's activist career in the Student Left, particularly as she encounters issues of identity around her class, feminism and difference amongst Left women. While Meg fights these battles passionately in an intense milieu, she considers them emotionally in terms of her changing sense of herself. Meg is increasingly aware that the personal impact of her class is changing for her. Additionally, she explores her relation with a 'boyfriend' of right wing political affiliation; Meg comes to recognise that this relationship is undermining her sense of herself in a way that her relationships with women in the left previously did. Honour Roll (1993): Meg is now undertaking honours and this vignette opens with Meg seeing the honours coordinator, Professor Michaela Moore, who approximates all those apparently middle-class traits to which Meg has such a push-pull relation. We see the return of a chapter of the honours thesis, discussion of the content and the constantly shifting subject positions these experiences offer Meg. This vignette also directly introduces Agnes. Mia and Agnes meet Meg after her supervision and this conversation allows very distinct if tacit class themes to develop. Meg has warmed quickly to Agnes, who is unlike anyone she has known; they have much in common in relation to their work and this binds them. Mia continually presents a viewpoint which irritates Meg, in relation to entitlement: to academic life, to funding, even to questioning how these things are enabled. Honour Roll allows us to see Meg's flourishing theoretical and intellectual life and its role in assisting her emotionally as she re-frames the same conundrums that previously constituted obstacles. The Cusp (1993): Meg's developing friendship with Agnes offers her enormous insights into difference and her developing sense of self and aspiration. While the girls come from diametrical backgrounds, they are united by their passion for their research and scholarly work. Meg is increasingly self-conscious through their discussions in terms of how she has seen herself and allowed herself to dream and seek. Cusp is set at the end of the honours year, prior to the release of results. Meg and Agnes explore their feelings about academia and this leads to discussions of purpose and the role of class within that. This vignette also documents Meg's growing social confidence and those aspects of herself which have become so sure to her, that she no longer considers them at all. Whom (1996): [Not included in this abridged edition]. Set at Cambridge, two thirds into Meg's doctorate, Whom shows Meg in the mental space which will take her back to Melbourne and the State University of Victoria. Having risen to the challenge of doctoral study, she is confronted now by deeper demons, and the need to explore and challenge them in the ambivalent context of Cambridge, which so excites her still, but which has proved empty of the profoundly held higher ideals she expected to see reflected. Set in the midst of Meg's doctoral study, this vignette is dramatically abridged in the submission novel. The importance of Whom lies in its concern with Meg's rapidly shifting sense of herself and her own scholarly subjectivity and the changes to these that the culture of Cambridge has wrought. By the second year of her PhD Meg is crystal clear about her goals and decides to spend the long break at home, rather than travelling, because she wishes to 'touch base' with her future. The action described segues into that in Courting the Enemy. Whom describes Meg's ambivalent and contradictory but passionate feelings about Cambridge. Whom demonstrates Meg's increasing anger at the status and privilege to which her education now automatically admits her, and her need to find some sort of stasis and safety in her emotional life. In this vignette, Meg meets her life partner, Jeremy McCallum (I have intentionally reduced the attention in the novel to Meg's romantic life as she matures into her career). Courting the Enemy (late 1990s): By this time, Meg is a senior lecturer in English at the State University of Victoria, which was established in the nineteenth century as the Worker's College. This vignette starts with Meg's attendance at a University Committee which is considering a transformation in relation to equity in admissions policy. Meg was drawn to SUV because of its transparent and determined commitment to educate the children of working-class people. An attack on the equity admission policy of her university galvanizes Meg and some of her colleagues. The action of the vignette considers the role of the scholar, and of such an institution as SUV, in the light of daily academic life. This vignette is primary in its demonstration of the themes of the novel. In the unabridged version, I took the opportunity to illustrate some of the vast range of administrative, intellectual and even physical demands on a senior scholar in the routine of academic life. In placing Meg in this context, I sought to highlight how a scholar of her values and commitment makes sense of the constantly shifting terrain of her working world and how this continually informs her practice. This vignette is also significant for its retrospective description of Meg's employment at SUV some years earlier. Locus: (1995). This piece of writing stands apart from the rest of the novel. I wished to write in a reflective voice, which might be from Meg's journal, were it not in the (omniscient) third person, in order to consider the headspace and meaning-making which occurs as Meg settles into Cambridge, and the lifestyle her situation allows her. Locus is a deeper engagement with Meg's sense of her identity. It considers the impact on her of the physical journeys she must make to match those of her psyche. These are thoughts too personal for a letter, even to Anna. Meg is exploring her ever shifting self and the growth in her self-belief allows her to explore what is rage; that she was bounded by illusions about her worth. Locus seeks to allow some context for Meg's anger at the role Cambridge plays. I seek to create the space in which Meg's dawning self understanding will lead her to her next, driven, purpose. Letters: throughout the novel letters are used to reveal and inform Meg's relationship with her family. This is an intentional device to distance the birth family in an attempt to blur and muddy an assessment of Meg's class through traditional measures. The letters between Meg and Aunty Jean particularly reveal much of the classed emotional antecedents of Meg's life. There are also letters exchanged with Meg's high school best friend, Anna, who has moved to the country and a very different lifestyle. Meg writes to Anna often, using the acceptance she feels in the friendship and her sense that Anna understands her, to touchstone her own emotional growth. Formal letters from institutions ring changes in settings and mark significant points in the geographical and academic trajectory of the character. All the letters serve to introduce time and event changes consistent with the episodic style of the narrative.

Negotiating life choices : living with motor neurone disease

Motor neurone disease (MND) is an uncommon neurodegenerative disease that is terminal and has an insidious onset. With no known cause or cure, the disease triggers progressive death of motor neurones that causes increasing difficulties with mobility, communication, breathing and nutrition. Most research focuses on the disease process, but little is known of the illness experience from the perspective of those diagnosed with the disease. The aim of this study was to explore what it is like to live with MND and how people with the disease negotiate with others to exercise choice over the way they live. A grounded theory methodology was used to explore the life world of people diagnosed and living with MND. Data were collected via in-depth interviews, their stories and photographs, poems and books participants identified as important and fieldnotes. The textual data were analysed using constant comparative analysis. The majority of participants experienced difficulty with verbal communication. Some invited a third person to interpret their speech and others used assistive technologies such as Lightwriters and computers. Analysis revealed three constructs that, together, told the story of the MND illness experience. First, was the “diagnosis story” that described the devastating process of repeated tests had on the participants, shattering their trust in the competence of the health care system. The second construct revealed the process of living with MND as cyclical and repetitive requiring constant decision-making to adapt to the ongoing changes connected with the disease. The core theme and basic social process of “maintaining personal integrity” evolved as the third construct. This process underpinned and explained participants’ decision-making. Finally a substantive theory was conceptualised as the illness experience: “maintaining personal integrity in the face of ongoing change and adaptation”. This theory illustrates that the basic social process of maintaining personal integrity is central to decision and choice making while living with MND. The findings have implications for people with MND, their carers, health professionals and service providers. Recommendations include improved counselling services for people at the time of diagnosis; the introduction of nurse specialists to support health professionals, people diagnosed with the disease and their families; open, accessible, realistic health and funding policies.

Meaning of home : a comparison of the meaning of home as identified by samples of Victorians with, and without, an intellectual disability

This phenomenological study of the meaning of home from the perspectives of people with and without an intellectual disability sought to identify, (a) any common ‘essence’ of meaning held by and, (b) the nature of any differences of perception between, the groups. Purposive samples of 18 people with an intellectual disability and 21 non-disabled people were surveyed using a semi-structured interview to ascertain their experiences of home and 'non-homes'. Inductive analysis of the data revealed a shared understanding of the meaning of home at a fundamental level. This shared meaning of home was found to comprise: the ability to exert control over an area; having a personalised space; feeling content with the living situation; a sense of familiarity with the setting; a set of behaviours and routines usually only enacted when at home; common names and uses for rooms; socialising at home with others; the importance of a positive social atmosphere in the home; and, recognition of places as non-homes because they lacked one or more of these attributes. Further analysis revealed the essence of home is its experience as the place where stress is most reduced or minimised for the individual. The study demonstrates that the concept of stress is superordinate to previously identified concepts considered fundamental to home such as privacy, control and non-homes. Major differences between the two samples were largely differences of degree with people who have an intellectual disability reporting the same fundamental attributes of home as people who do not have an intellectual disability, but in a less elaborated form. Principal among these differences of degree was the notion of control over the home and its derivative elements which encompassed the whole dwelling including its setting for people without an intellectual disability but was very restricted for people with an intellectual disability being largely confined to the person's bedroom. Socialising in or from the home was also very limited for people with an intellectual disability in comparison with that experienced by non-disabled informants with the former group conveying an impression of leading significantly socially isolated lives at home. The major implications of this study are related to the meaning of home per se, to residential service provision to people with an intellectual disability, and to future research.

Invisible labour : home–school relations and the front office

When school front offices are mentioned in research on schools and their relations with the community, it is often to describe how parents/carers and the public are treated officiously and/or inappropriately. In professional development materials, schools are urged to improve communication, and occasionally directed to consider the practices of the front office staff. Yet when schools send out information to parents/carers, the school office is usually the place to which all queries are directed. However, there is almost no detailed research that looks at what actually happens in this place. In this paper we draw on a small-scale commissioned research project which began to fill this gap. In seeking to reread our data and push further on analysis, we have come to realize that those who work in school front offices are women whose physical and emotional labour is not only rendered largely invisible in a wide range of literatures relating to home-school relations but is also inadequately recognized through recruitment practices, professional development and remuneration. We suggest that there needs to be further research into the high energy, multitasking, nurturing work that goes on in school front offices.

With guarded optimism? Evidence from focus groups of ‘mainstream’ Australians’ perceptions of Muslims

Studies of Australian perceptions of Muslims and Islam tend to be based on research into media representations of these themes. Additionally, most research on attitudes pertaining to social cohesion and security in the post-9/11 environment concentrates on the opinions of minority groups on these matters. The following study is drawn from materials extracted from focus group discussions relating to Islam, multiculturalism and security that took place with 119 Australians from so-called ethnic and religious majority groups (European descended, and identifying with Judaeo-Christian traditions or having no religious affiliation) in selected metropolitan and rural/regional centres of the state of Victoria in 2007–2008. This article is guided by the following research questions: How can ‘mainstream’ Australian attitudes towards Muslims be categorized? What concerns ‘mainstream’ Australians most about Muslims? Can these attitudes be considered to be Islamophobic? If not, how else may we classify these attitudes? Although some participants voiced very strong, critical and at times unflattering and potentially antagonistic opinions of Muslims, most contributors were guardedly optimistic that current tensions with and controversies surrounding Australia’s Muslims would subside, and that Muslims would soon become well established within Australian society, as previous generations of migrants have since World War II.

Share corporate social responsibility best practice and forgo competitive advantage

Cross-sector partnerships are capable of achieving solutions to large scale societal problems, which when successful, are well-publicized. Partnering organizations not only reap reputational acclaim but garner valuable organizational benefits. Membership within successful partnerships would undoubtedly be considered a competitive advantage, yet several of these successful relationships have chosen to forgo this valuable position. Instead of retaining intellectual property, partnering organizations are sharing successful processes and practices with peers and competitors. This research examined three examples of best practice cross-sector partnerships to identify relationship success factors, how they involved other organizations and why they shared successful social responsibility initiatives with others.

Introduction

For a long time we held the view that if you had a particular skill – such as accountancy, trades, engineering, IT, management – all you needed to make a success of life was to learn some “soft skills”. These soft skills included communication, presenting and speaking, team building and so on.
Yet the continuing problem with this approach has been that despite lots of training, many people never actually improved their ability to communicate, get on with others, make good speeches or build teams.
Public relations professionals around the world must find the “flat world” message very encouraging. This message is telling corporations that in a flat world, the biggest differentiator is your people. How do people effectively differentiate? We differentiate ourselves by becoming better communicators. PR campaign skills can come to the forefront as organisations seek to thrive in this new world using a strategic planning approach.

The Virtualopolis archipelago: creatively interconnecting work-based virtual scenarios

One of the key elements of a quality student experience in higher education, outlined in the 2008 Bradley Report on the review of Australian higher education, is access to well-designed and engaging courses that lead to good vocational outcomes. 1 The Virtualopolis project concerns the development of a virtual city or platform which can encompass a community or vocational context for learning resources, linking these to engaging course delivery across disciplines and faculties. It is a virtual community with great potential to scaffold the imaginative immersion of the modem net generation learner. It was designed to incorporate virtual scenarios which were already in use, such as the country town of Bilby and the Pacific-style island of Newlandia, and has expanded to provide a virtual city of Virtualopolis across faculties and disciplines. One of the key strengths of this form of virtual environment is its capacity to focus on graduate attributes across disciplines. Virtualopolis provides access and a virtual city context to an interactive teamwork scenario, to develop attributes related to working with others, interrelating virtual business entities across all faculties. The teamwork scenario has multiple applications, with capacity to be a hurdle requirement, assessment item or training activity depending on the needs of the faculty's Work-integrated Leaming (WIL) policy. By developing the online virtual framework or platform of Virtualopolis, work-integrated team assessment can be used as skills preparation for experiential learning units such as internships, professional experience and workplace-based projects university-wide. It also provides the opportunity to repeatedly reuse the virtual city context for resources to support other courses. The Virtualopolis city and its interactive team scenario will be transferable for future cross-faculty and interdisciplinary virtual developments. Plans are already made for content areas as diverse as community health, nursing, creative arts, international relations and management.

Contentious Activism and Inter-Korean Relations

In South Korea, the contentious debate over relations with the North transcends traditional considerations of physical and economic security, and political activists play a critical role in shaping the discussion of these issues as they pursue the separate yet connected agendas of democracy, human rights, and unification.

Providing international observers with a better understanding of policymakers’ management of inter-Korean relations, Danielle L. Chubb traces the development of various policy disputes and perspectives from the 1970s through South Korea’s democratic transition. Focusing on four case studies—the 1980 Kwangju uprising, the June 1987 uprising, the move toward democracy in the 1990s, and the decade of “progressive” government that began with the election of Kim Dae Jung in 1997—she tracks activists’ complex views on reunification along with the rise and fall of more radical voices encouraging the adoption of a North Korean–style form of socialism. While these specific arguments have dissipated over the years, their vestiges can still be found in recent discussions over how to engage with North Korea and bring security and peace to the peninsula.

Extending beyond the South Korean example, this examination shows how the historical trajectory of norms and beliefs can have a significant effect on a state’s threat perception and security policy. It also reveals how political activists, in their role as discursive agents, play an important part in the creation of the norms and beliefs directing public debate over a state’s approach to the ethical and practical demands of its foreign policy.

A qualitative evaluation of an intervention for parents of adolescents with mental disorders: the parenting challenging adolescents seminar

This qualitative study describes parents’ responses to a targeted and brief educational seminar (known as ‘Parenting Challenging Adolescents’), and provides recommendations for brief parenting interventions designed to engage adolescents in mental health treatment. The 2-h intervention was designed to assist parents who were concerned about their adolescents and in the identification of mental disorders. Participants were invited to attend the seminars conducted in a community setting on the basis of local advertising and promotion of the event with community health services and schools. Any parent of a young person aged 12–25 interested in the seminar material was eligible to attend. Sixteen parents completed measures of parent and youth mental health and family satisfaction and were also interviewed using semi-structured telephone interviews 4 weeks after the seminar. Interpretational phenomenological analysis of interviews suggested that most parents valued the chance to connect with others in similar situations and appreciated knowing about local services available for mental health disorders. Many parents also reported positive changes to communication and family dynamics following the seminar. Another common theme was an increased knowledge of mental disorders and appropriate treatments, along with the desire to receive more specific, targeted information. Overall the findings suggest that even a single session of educational material designed for parents may be useful, engaging and potentially encourage improved service usage for adolescents with mental disorders.

An effective program design to support older workers with intellectual disability to participate individually in community groups

The foreshadowed increase of older people with intellectual disability has become a reality in many developed countries. As these adults age, improved quality of life can be achieved through applications of conjoint policy aims of inclusion and participation. A transition-to-retirement (TTR) program developed for employees of a large multisite disability employment service in Sydney, Australia, used these aims to effect successful partial retirement. The authors describe the program logic of the TTR, detailing its conceptual components as the first step to enabling it to be tested and replicated in other settings. The TTR program has three components: promoting the concept of retirement, laying the groundwork for inclusion of would-be retirees with intellectual disability in the community, and constructing the reality. The third component comprised five stages: planning, locating a group, mapping new routine, recruiting and training mentors, and monitoring and ongoing support. The project's participants were 24 older employees, who replaced 1 day a week of work with membership of a community group and were supported by mentors who facilitated involvement of the participants in their group. Data collected provided information on the implementation of the program, the time and costs expended, and challenges encountered. Key to the model was a coordinator, skilled in generic case management and specific disability interventions (such as active support), who collaborated with others to manage the program. The authors note that by detailing the program logic underpinning the TTR program, they have exposed the hidden work of supporting meaningful inclusion of people with intellectual disability in community groups and added to the limited stock of evidence-informed programs in this area. © 2014 International Association for the Scientific Study of Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities and Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Regularizing topic discovery in emrs with side information by using hierarchical bayesian models

We propose a novel hierarchical Bayesian framework, word-distance-dependent Chinese restaurant franchise (wd-dCRF) for topic discovery from a document corpus regularized by side information in the form of word-to-word relations, with an application on Electronic Medical Records (EMRs). Typically, a EMRs dataset consists of several patients (documents) and each patient contains many diagnosis codes (words). We exploit the side information available in the form of a semantic tree structure among the diagnosis codes for semantically-coherent disease topic discovery. We introduce novel functions to compute word-to-word distances when side information is available in the form of tree structures. We derive an efficient inference method for the wddCRF using MCMC technique. We evaluate on a real world medical dataset consisting of about 1000 patients with PolyVascular disease. Compared with the popular topic analysis tool, hierarchical Dirichlet process (HDP), our model discovers topics which are superior in terms of both qualitative and quantitative measures.

Assumptions of decision-making capacity: the role supporter attitudes play in the realisation of Article 12 for people with severe or profound intellectual disability

The United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (UNCRPD) was the first legally binding instrument explicitly focused on how human rights apply to people with disability. Amongst their obligations, consistent with the social model of disability, the Convention requires signatory nations to recognise that “…persons with disabilities enjoy legal capacity on an equal basis with others in all aspects of life” and mandates signatory nations to develop “…appropriate measures to provide access by persons with disability to the support they may require in exercising their legal capacity”. The Convention promotes supported decision-making as one such measure. Although Australia ratified the UNCRPD in 2008, it retains an interpretative declaration in relation to Article 12 (2, 3, 4), allowing for the use of substituted decision-making in situations where a person is assessed as having no or limited decision-making capacity. Such an outcome is common for people with severe or profound intellectual disability because the assessments they are subjected to are focused on their cognition and generally fail to take into account the interdependent nature of human decision-making. This paper argues that Australia’s interpretative declaration is not in the spirit of the Convention nor the social model of disability on which it is based. It starts from the premise that the intention of Article 12 is to be inclusive of all signatory nations’ citizens, including those with severe or profound cognitive disability. From this premise, arises a practical need to understand how supported decision-making can be used with this group. Drawing from evidence from an empirical study with five people with severe or profound intellectual disability, this paper provides a rare glimpse on what supported decision-making can look like for people with severe or profound intellectual disability. Additionally, it describes the importance of supporters having positive assumptions of decision-making capacity as a factor affecting supported decision-making. This commentary aims to give a focus for practice and policy efforts for ensuring people with severe or profound cognitive disability receive appropriate support in decision-making, a clear obligation of signatory nations of the UNCRPD. A focus on changing supporter attitudes rather than placing the onus of change on people with disability is consistent with the social model of disability, a key driver of the UNCRPD.