Employability and job status as moderators of the effects of job insecurity on work outcomes

Despite greater use of temporary employment contracts, little is known about how employees react to job length uncertainty. Individual careers within the safety of one or two primary organisations are no longer the norm. This study investigates the effects of job insecurity and employment status (temporary/permanent) on work outcomes. Three hundred and ninety-one employees (122 temporary and 269 permanent) in low to medium level non-academic positions from two Australian universities completed a survey. The results show that a belief that comparable employment is easily available did not alleviate the negative effects of job insecurity. Work attitudes for temporaries and permanents though were differentially influenced by employee perceptions of their own employability.

Equity management strategies in the Australian private sector

This paper outlines the methods and outcomes of a study into equity management strategies in Australian private sector organisations reporting to the Equal Opportunity for Women in the Workplace Agency. Reports from 1976 organisations indicate eleven key factors characterising equity management in Australia. The study highlights differences within previously identified social structural policies, temperamental and opportunity policies and identifies a further policy type, categorised as “support policies”. Differences have also been identified in relation to distribution structures, suggesting that gender is not the sole consideration in determining equity management strategies. The principle of distribution also figures strongly in equity management implementation.

Turbocharging Networks in the Public Sector

Networks have come to occupy a key position in the strategic armoury of the government, business and community sectors and now have impact on a broad array of policy and management arenas. An emphasis on relationships, trust and mutuality mean that networks function on a different operating logic to the conventional processes of government and business. It is therefore important that organizational members of networks are able to adopt the skills and culture necessary to operate successfully under these distinctive kinds of arrangements. Because networks function from a different operational logic to traditional bureaucracies, public sector organizations may experience difficulties in adapting to networked arrangements. Networks are formed to address a variety of social problems or meet capability gaps within organizations. As such they are often under pressure to quickly produce measurable outcomes and need to form rapidly and come to full operation quickly. This paper presents a theoretical exploration of how diverse types of networks are required for different management and policy situations and draws on a set of public sector case studies to understand/demonstrate how these various types of networked arrangements may be ‘turbo-charged’ so that they more quickly adopt the characteristics necessary to deliver required outcomes.

Enterprise resources planning systems impacts: A Delphi study of Australian public sector

The business value of Enterprise Resource Planning systems (ERP systems), and in general large software implementations, has been extensively debated in both popular press and in the academic literature for over two decades. Organisations invest enormous sums of money and resources in Enterprise Resource Planning systems (and related infrastructure), presumably expecting positive impacts to the organisation and its functions. Some studies have reported large productivity improvements and substantial benefits from ERP systems, while others have reported that ERP systems have not had any bottom-line impact. This paper discusses initial findings from a study that focuses on identifying and assessing important ERP impacts in 23 Australian public sector organizations.

ERP success: Does organisation size matter?

Organisations invest enormous sums of money in acquiring Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems, presumably expecting positive impacts to the organisation and its functions. Despite the optimistic motives some ERP projects have reported nil or detrimental impacts. This paper studies the proposition that the size of an organisation (e.g. small, large) may have contributed to the differences in receiving benefits reported in prior studies in this domain. The alleged differences in organisational performance are empirically measured using a prior validated model, using five constructs and fortytwo sub-constructs. Information is gathered from three hundred and ten respondents representing twenty-seven public sector organisations. Results suggests that (1) larger organisations have received more benefits compared to small organisations, (2) small organisations demonstrated higher reliance on their ERP systems, (3) employment cohorts demonstrate significant differences in perceived benefits in small and large organisations.

Towards a Business Process Management Maturity Model

Business Process Management (BPM) has been identified as the number one business priority by a recent Gartner study (Gartner, 2005). However, BPM has a plethora of facets as its origins are in Business Process Reengineering, Process Innovation, Process Modelling, and Workflow Management to name a few. Organisations increasingly recognize the requirement for an increased process orientation and require appropriate comprehensive frameworks, which help to scope and evaluate their BPM initiative. This research project aims toward the development of a holistic and widely accepted BPM maturity model, which facilitates the assessment of BPM capabilities. This paper provides an overview about the current model with a focus on the actual model development utilizing a series of Delphi studies. The development process includes separate studies that focus on further defining and expanding the six core factors within the model, i.e. strategic alignment, governance, method, Information Technology, people and culture.

IT service desk process improvement : a narrative style case study

This paper is a detailed case narrative on how a Faculty of a leading Australian University conducted a rigorous process improvement project, applying fundamental Business Process Management (BPM) concepts. The key goal was to increase the efficiency of the faculty’s service desk. The decrease of available funds due to reducing student numbers and the ever increasing costs associated with service desk prompted this project. The outcomes of the project presented a set of recommendations which leads to organizational innovation having information technology as an enabler for change. The target audience includes general BPM practitioners or academics who are interested in BPM related case studies, and specific organisations who might be interested in conducting BPM within their service desk processes.

An Investigation of Cognitive, Emotional and Negative Behavioural Responses to Service Recovery Strategies

Despite the best intentions of service providers and organisations, service delivery is rarely error-free. While numerous studies have investigated specific cognitive, emotional or behavioural responses to service failure and recovery, these studies do not fully capture the complexity of the services encounter. Consequently, this research develops a more holistic understanding of how specific service recovery strategies affect the responses of customers by combining two existing models—Smith & Bolton’s (2002) model of emotional responses to service performance and Fullerton and Punj’s (1993) structural model of aberrant consumer behaviour—into a conceptual framework. Specific service recovery strategies are proposed to influence consumer cognition, emotion and behaviour. This research was conducted using a 2x2 between-subjects quasi-experimental design that was administered via written survey. The experimental design manipulated two levels of two specific service recovery strategies: compensation and apology. The effect of the four recovery strategies were investigated by collecting data from 18-25 year olds and were analysed using multivariate analysis of covariance and multiple regression analysis. The results suggest that different service recovery strategies are associated with varying scores of satisfaction, perceived distributive justice, positive emotions, negative emotions and negative functional behaviour, but not dysfunctional behaviour. These finding have significant implications for the theory and practice of managing service recovery.