Realising competitive advantage through HRM in New Zealand service industries

An emerging source of competitive advantage for service industries is the knowledge, skills and attitudes of their employees. Indeed, achievement of a 'service quality' culture, considered imperative for competitive advantage in service organisations, supposedly results from the use of best practice human resource management (HRM), and from a strategic approach to their implementation. This paper empirically explores the use of these dimensions of HRM as a source of competitive advantage. It finds high-performing service organisations actively engage best practices across the areas of recruitment and selection, training and development, communication and team working. Evidence of a strategic approach to the implementation of these practices is also found.

Challenges in residual service life assessment for refurbishment

A need for an efficient life care management of building portfolio is becoming increasingly due to increase in aging building infrastructure globally. Appropriate structural engineering practices along with facility management can assist in optimising the remaining life cycle costs for existing public building portfolio. A more precise decision to either demolish, refurbish, do nothing or rebuilt option for any typical building under investigation is needed. In order to achieve this, the status of health of the building needs to be assessed considering several aspects including economic and supply-demand considerations. An investment decision for a refurbishment project competing with other capital works and/or refurbishment projects can be supported by emerging methodology residual service life assessment. This paper discusses challenges in refurbishment projects of public buildings and with a view towards development of residual service life assessment methodology

Where the actions are : bring reality into virtual reality

This paper describes a work-in-progress on developing design environments that combine wireless and mobile technologies with augmented reality to facilitate bringing context from the physical environment to the virtual models for design work. One of the challenges for designers in a variety of end-user-oriented design disciplines such as architecture and industrial design has been capturing and replaying the contextual information of the intended domain of the artifact being designed. Either the technology is decidedly low-tech, such as charcoal drawings in a sketchbook, out-of-reach, such as immersive virtual reality CAVEs, or a “make-do” with existing technologies, such as a collage of digital photos. This paper describes a novel combination of “off-the-shelf” technologies that may allow designers more capability to create models using standard computer-aided design applications and augmented reality to combine the current, physical context with the projected, digital context. We demonstrate this approach in the building design domain to address a common problem in building construction, construction defect resolution.

Test architecture for prototyping automated dynamic airspace control

The automation of various aspects of air traffic management has many wide-reaching benefits including: reducing the workload for Air Traffic Controllers; increasing the flexibility of operations (both civil and military) within the airspace system through facilitating automated dynamic changes to en-route flight plans; ensuring safe aircraft separation for a complex mix of airspace users within a highly complex and dynamic airspace management system architecture. These benefits accumulate to increase the efficiency and flexibility of airspace use(1). Such functions are critical for the anticipated increase in volume of manned and unmanned aircraft traffic. One significant challenge facing the advancement of airspace automation lies in convincing air traffic regulatory authorities that the level of safety achievable through the use of automation concepts is comparable to, or exceeds, the accepted safety performance of the current system.

What value do users derive from social network applications?

Research on social networking sites like Facebook is emerging but sparse. This exploratory study investigates the value users derive from self-described ‘cool’ Facebook applications, and explores the features that either encourage or discourage users to recommend applications to their friends. The concepts of value and cool are explored in a social networking context. Our qualitative data reveals consumers derive a combination of functional value along with either social or emotional value from the applications. Female Facebook users indicate self-expression as important motivators, while males tend to use Facebook applications to socially compete. Three broad categories emerged for application features; symmetrical features can both encourage or discourage recommendation, polar features where different levels of the same feature encourage or discourage, and uni-directional features only encourage or discourage but not both. Recommending or not recommending an application tends to be the result of a combination of features and context, rather than one feature in isolation.

A tri-dimensional approach for auditing brand loyalty

Over the past twenty years brand loyalty has been an important topic for both marketing practitioners and academics. While practitioners have produced proprietary brand loyalty audit models, there has been little academic research to make transparent the methodology that underpins these audits and to enable practitioners to understand, develop and conduct their own audits. In this paper, we propose a framework for a brand loyalty audit that uses a tri-dimensional approach to brand loyalty, which includes behavioural loyalty and the two components of attitudinal loyalty: emotional and cognitive loyalty. In allowing for different levels and intensity of brand loyalty, this tri-dimensional approach is important from a managerial perspective. It means that loyalty strategies that arise from a brand audit can be made more effective by targeting the market segments that demonstrate the most appropriate combination of brand loyalty components. We propose a matrix with three dimensions (emotional, cognitive and behavioural loyalty) and two levels (high and low loyalty) to facilitate a brand loyalty audit. To demonstrate this matrix, we use the example of financial services, in particular a rewards-based credit card.

Taking a 'reality' check : expanding pre-service teachers' views on pedagogy and diversity

The outcomes of a two-pronged 'real-world' learning project, which aimed to expand the views of pre-service teachers about learning, pedagogy and diversity, will be discussed in this paper. Seventy-two fourth-year and 22 first-year students, enrolled in a Bachelor of Education degree in Queensland, Australia, were engaged in community sites outside of university lectures, and separate from their practicum. Using Butin's conceptual framework for service learning, we show evidence that this approach can enable pre-service teachers to see new realities about the dilemmas and ambiguities of performing as learners and as teachers. We contend that when such 'real-world' experiences have different foci at different times in their four-year degree, pre-service teachers have more opportunities to develop sophisticated understandings of pedagogy in diverse contexts for diverse learners.

Defining reference service life : an open innovation approach

The endeavour to obtain estimates of durability of components for use in lifecycle assessment or costing and infrastructure and maintenance planning systems is large. The factor method and the reference service life concept provide a very valuable structure, but do not resolve the central dilemma of the need to derive an extensive database of service life. Traditional methods of estimating service life, such as dose functions or degradation models, can play a role in developing this database, however the scale of the problem clearly indicates that individual dose functions cannot be derived for each component in each different local and geographic setting. Thus, a wider range of techniques is required in order to devise reference service life. This paper outlines the approaches being taken in the Cooperative Research Centre for Construction Innovation project to predict reference service life. Approaches include the development of fundamental degradation and microclimate models, the development of a situation-based reasoning ‘engine’ to vary the ‘estimator’ of service life, and the development of a database on expert performance (Delphi study). These methods should be viewed as complementary rather than as discrete alternatives. As discussed in the paper, the situation-based reasoning approach in fact has the possibility of encompassing all other methods.

The role of product involvement in e-service evaluations

This paper provides conceptual and empirical insights into consumers’ evaluations of online services and their consequent behavioural intentions. We show that behavioural intentions in online contexts are driven primarily by two factors, namely online service satisfaction and perceived service quality. Perceived sacrifice and service quality are found to have an indirect effect on online service satisfaction through their influences on perceived value associated with the online service. In addition, we examine the moderating effects of product involvement and discuss the implications of our research findings.

Teacher educators embrace philosophy: reflections on a new way of looking at preparing pre-service teachers

Over the last decade in Australia, the role of the teacher has changed. Teachers are now expected to model and foster in their students a wide range of skills such as critical thinking, self-regulated learning, knowledge of self and others and lifelong learning. These changes are having a significant impact on the design of pre-service teacher education programmes, with university educators re-evaluating the teacher training curriculum and embedded pedagogical processes in order to consider how they might develop these skills in pre-service teachers. One approach is to consider the processes and practices inherent in philosophical inquiry. This paper reports on three participants’ reflections of a 12-week philosophy programme that was conducted for teacher educators at Queensland’s University of Technology (QUT) in 2008. The programme was facilitated by teachers from Buranda State School who have been teaching philosophy in their P-7 school for more than ten years. This paper provides insight into teacher educators’ reflections on the philosophy programme and the associated changes and challenges of implementing such a programme in pre-service teacher education degrees.

Curvilinear relationships between the job demands-resources (JD-R) model, and work engagement : a police service case study

The current study aims to investigate the non-linear relationship between the JD-R model and work engagement. Previous research has identified linear relationships between these constructs; however there are strong theoretical arguments for testing curvilinear relationships (e.g., Warr, 1987). Data were collected via a self-report online survey from officers of one Australian police service (N = 2,626). Results demonstrated a curvilinear relationship between job demands and job resources and engagement. Gender (as a control variable) was also found to be a significant predictor of work engagement. The results indicated that male police officers experienced significantly higher job demands and colleague support than female officers. However, female police officers reported significantly higher levels of work engagement than male officers. This study emphasises the need to test curvilinear relationships, as well as simple linear associations, when measuring psychological health.

Work engagement and its antecedents in high-risk occupations : a police service case study

Introduction: Work engagement is a recent application of positive psychology and refers to a positive, fulfilling, work-related state of mind characterized by vigor, dedication and absorption. Despite theoretical assumptions, there is little published research on work engagement, due primarily to its recent emergence as a psychological construct. Furthermore, examining work engagement among high-stress occupations, such as police, is useful because police officers are generally characterized as having a high level of work engagement. Previous research has identified job resources (e.g. social support) as antecedents of work engagement. However detailed evaluation of job demands as an antecedent of work engagement within high-stress occupations has been scarce. Thus our second aim was to test job demands (i.e. monitoring demands and problem-solving demands) and job resources (i.e. time control, method control, supervisory support, colleague support, and friend and family support) as antecedents of work engagement among police officers. Method: Data were collected via a self-report online survey from one Australian state police service (n = 1,419). Due to the high number of hypothesized antecedent variables, hierarchical multiple regression analysis was employed rather than structural equation modelling. Results: Work engagement reported by police officers was high. Female officers had significantly higher levels of work engagement than male officers, while officers at mid-level ranks (sergeant) reported the lowest levels of work engagement. Job resources (method control, supervisor support and colleague support) were significant antecedents of three dimensions of work engagement. Only monitoring demands were significant antecedent of the absorption. Conclusion: Having healthy and engaged police officers is important for community security and economic growth. This study identified some common factors which influence work engagement experienced by police officers. However, we also note that excessive work engagement can yield negative outcomes such as psychological distress.

Security metrics for object-oriented class designs

Measuring quality attributes of object-oriented designs (e.g. maintainability and performance) has been covered by a number of studies. However, these studies have not considered security as much as other quality attributes. Also, most security studies focus at the level of individual program statements. This approach makes it hard and expensive to discover and fix vulnerabilities caused by design errors. In this work, we focus on the security design of an object oriented application and define a number of security metrics. These metrics allow designers to discover and fix security vulnerabilities at an early stage, and help compare the security of various alternative designs. In particular, we propose seven security metrics to measure Data Encapsulation (accessibility) and Cohesion (interactions) of a given object-oriented class from the point of view of potential information flow.

Building an ontology and process architecture for engineering asset management

Historically, asset management focused primarily on the reliability and maintainability of assets; organisations have since then accepted the notion that a much larger array of processes govern the life and use of an asset. With this, asset management’s new paradigm seeks a holistic, multi-disciplinary approach to the management of physical assets. A growing number of organisations now seek to develop integrated asset management frameworks and bodies of knowledge. This research seeks to complement existing outputs of the mentioned organisations through the development of an asset management ontology. Ontologies define a common vocabulary for both researchers and practitioners who need to share information in a chosen domain. A by-product of ontology development is the realisation of a process architecture, of which there is also no evidence in published literature. To develop the ontology and subsequent asset management process architecture, a standard knowledge-engineering methodology is followed. This involves text analysis, definition and classification of terms and visualisation through an appropriate tool (in this case, the Protégé application was used). The result of this research is the first attempt at developing an asset management ontology and process architecture.

Art for architecture's sake?

The Architecture, Disciplinarity and the Arts symposium was organised by the Architecture. Theory, Criticism and History (ATCH) research group at the University of Queensland, run by John Macarthur and Antony Moulis, together with Andrew Leach who joined them last year and organised much of the symposium. The symposium ran for three days in a small room at the Institute of Modern Art (IMA) in Fortitude Valley, Brisbane (generously donated by director Robert Leonard), with about 40 people in attendance. Together with a long question time of an hour after every three speakers, the size of the room and the small number of people made it very different from most architecture or design conferences. The intellectual level of the symposium was high, without the speed dating aspect that one often sees at the Society of Architectural Historians, Australia and New Zealand (SAHANZ) meetings, where endless parallel sessions of short papers create an occasionally disorientating cacophony of words. The symposium was deliberately, unapologetically academic and the intimate nature of the forum made the discussion rich and collaborative, with an active audience. The title of the symposium, 'Architecture, Disciplinarity and the Arts', reflects the connection that already exists between the art history and the architectural history community in Brisbane, with both groups regularly attending each other's functions.