Mediating cultural politics : a dialogue with Georgina Born

The following dialogue is based on an interview conducted as part of Professor Born’s visit to Brisbane in 2006, which included three public seminars at the University of Queensland (UQ) and Queensland University of Technology (QUT). The following dialogue provides a counterpoint to these events and to Born’s work as a whole, drawing together and extending key themes in the cultural politics of both public service broadcasting and new media technologies. It begins by discussing the possibilities of public sphere theory to provide useful models of institutional design. The discussion moves from there to SBS Television – an example of Public Service Broadcasting that provides an interesting contrast to the BBC, especially by virtue of SBS’s relationship with the politics of multiculturalism in Australia. The second half of the interview draws out the issues around cultural value, cultural power and the politics of technology in relation to new media, and concludes by focusing especially on the problems and potentialities of ‘user-generated content’.

Risky strategic behaviour : unintended consequences of good intentions in the homelessness service system

The delivery of human services occurs through a complex and often volatile system characterised by both competing and cooperating efforts. A recent strategic intention of government has been to integrate disparate service providers and programs into a more effective and efficient system using competitive funding regimes. A program of amalgamation has also been forecast and promoted as a further mechanism by which to link up smaller agencies thus creating economy and efficiency in the scale and scope of their service modes. Despite the current reliance on competitive funding models and amalgamation as the preferred ways forward for the sector little is known about their integrative capacity including their ability to predict outcomes and their consequences : the ‘unknown unknowns’. Drawing on an extensive data set of human services integration initiatives in Queensland, Australia, this paper examines the impact of government policy and service models and the risks arising from the tensions between competition and accountability on the one hand and the established good will and trust on the other. It is argued that unresolved, these tensions can lead to a weakening of the social infrastructure and make the system more vulnerable to inherent systemic risks. The paper finds that government’s efforts to externalise risk to the non-government sector leads to fragmentation of the service system and fractured collaborative capability. These unintended outcomes themselves have the unintended consequence of leaving governments disconnected from the service system and unable to provide the leadership role and direction necessary for sustained integration. Moreover, facilitating such a leadership role is undermined by behaviours that are directly contrary to collective integration models.

The morphology of service bundling settings

The purpose of this paper is to advance our understanding of what contextual factors influence the service bundling process in an organizational setting. Although previous literature contains insights into the mechanisms underlying bundling and the artefacts for performing the bundling task itself, the body of knowledge seems to lack a comprehensive framework for analysing the actual scenario in which the bundling process is performed. This is required as the scenario will influence the bundling method and the IT support. We address this need by designing a morphological box for analysing bundling scenarios in different organizational settings. The factors featured in the box are systematised into a set of four categories of bundling layers which we identify from reviewing literature. The two core layers in the framework are the service bundling on a type level and on an instance level (i.e. configuration). To demonstrate the applicability and utility of the proposed morphological box, we apply it to assess the underlying differences and commonalities of two different bundling scenarios from the B2B and G2C sectors which stress the differences between bundling on a type and instance level. In addition, we identify several prospects for future research that can benefit from the proposed morphological box.

Service delivery in one-stop government portals : observations based on a market research study in Queensland

New government service delivery models based on a “franchise” metaphor are being proposed recently to allow more citizen-centric service delivery by decoupling the government’s internal departmental structure from the way services are presented and delivered to citizens. In order to evaluate the approach from an online channel perspective, the Queensland Government commissioned a market research study to compare their websites with the online presences of the UK Government and the South Australian Government, who both have adopted the “franchise” approach. The study aimed to inform an understanding of citizens’ preferred model for interacting in the online channel and to identify the relative strengths and weaknesses of the existing websites. In this paper, we will a) report on the findings of this third party usability study and b) position the study, in the form of a critical reflection, against the background of a more comprehensive “Transformational Government” approach using a “franchise marketplace”. The critical reflection points towards limitations of the study with regard to this bigger picture and discusses the potential benefits of service bundling that remained unconsidered in the study.

Enterprise architecture and the integration of service-oriented architecture

In recent years, enterprise architecture (EA) has captured a growing attention as a means to systematically consolidate and interrelate diverse business and IT artefacts in order to provide holistic decision support. The recent popularity of a service-orientation has added “service “and related constructs as a new element that requires consideration within an Enterprise Architecture. Since the emergence of the Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA), many attempts have been made to incorporate SOA artefacts in existing EA frameworks. Yet, the approaches taken to achieve this goal differ substantially for the most commonly used EA frameworks to date. SOA in the context of enterprise architecture is one of the future research challenges. Several authors argue that further research is needed in order to understand how SOA impacts prior enterprise architecture frameworks. This study explores SOA integration within EA, identifies SOA integration approaches within EA and identifies factors that impact SOA integration within Enterprise Architecture.

Collaboration : developing integration in multi-purpose services in rural New South Wales, Australia

Introduction: The Multi-purpose Service (MPS) Program was introduced to rural Australia in 1991 as a solution to poor health outcomes in rural compared with metropolitan populations, difficulty in attracting healthcare staff and a lack of viability and range of health services in rural areas. The aim of this study was to describe the main concerns of participants involved in the development of multi-purpose services in rural New South Wales (NSW). This article is abstracted from a larger study and discusses the extent to which collaboration occurred within the new multi-purpose service. Methods: A constructivist grounded theory methodology was used. Participants were from 13 multi-purpose services in rural NSW and 30 in-depth interviews were conducted with 6 community members, 11 managers and 13 staff members who had been involved in the process of developing a multi-purpose service. Results: The main concern of all participants was their anticipation of risk. This anticipation of risk manifested itself in either trust or suspicion and explained their progression through a phase of collaborating. Participants who had trust in other stakeholders were more likely to embrace an integrated health service identity. Those participants, who were suspicious that they would lose status or power, maintained that the previous hospital services provided a better health service and described a coexistence of services within the multi-purpose service. Conclusions: This study provided an insight into the perceptions of community members, staff members and managers involved in the process of developing a multi-purpose service. It revealed that the anticipation of risk was intrinsic to a process of changing from a traditional hospital service to collaborating in a new model of health care provided at a multi-purpose service.

Government community service contracts : restraining abuse of power

The use of grant contracts to deliver community services is now a significant feature of all Australian government administrations. These contracts are the primary instrument governing the provision of such services to citizens and are largely outside the usual parliamentary review mechanisms and constraints. This article examines the extent of the erosion of fundamental constitutional principles facilitated by the use of private contracts, by applying the principles used in scrutiny of delegated legislation to standard form federal and State community service contracts. It reveals extensive executive power which, if the relationship were founded in legislative instruments rather than in private contract, would have to be justified to Parliament at least and possibly not tolerated.

Domestic and international innovation partnerships : do they matter for innovation outcomes of South African firms?

This paper studies the impact of the diversity of domestic and international innovation partnerships on the innovation outcomes of South African firms. A number of competing hypotheses are formulated and tested empirically using a sample of South African firms in manufacturing and services by applying Ordinary Least Squares regression analyses. Results show that having an innovation partnership, particularly an international partnership, is beneficial to innovation outcomes. However, it also emerges that too diverse a set of international partnerships is detrimental to innovation outcomes. The paper concludes with a discussion and a number of proposals for future research.

Gatekeeping, gatewatching, real-time feedback : new challenges for Journalism

How bloggers and other independent online commentators criticise, correct, and otherwise challenge conventional journalism has been known for years, but has yet to be fully accepted by journalists; hostilities between the media establishment and the new generation of citizen journalists continue to flare up from time to time. The old gatekeeping monopoly of the mass media has been challenged by the new practice of gatewatching: by individual bloggers and by communities of commentators which may not report the news first-hand, but curate and evaluate the news and other information provided by official sources, and thus provide an important service. And this now takes place ever more rapidly, almost in real time: using the latest social networks, which disseminate, share, comment, question, and debunk news reports within minutes, and using additional platforms that enable fast and effective ad hoc collaboration between users. When hundreds of volunteers can prove within a few days that a German minister has been guilty of serious plagiarism, when the world first learns of earthquakes and tsunamis via Twitter – how does journalism manage to keep up?

Service providers' perceptions of active ageing among older adults with lifelong intellectual disabilities

Background: Considerable attention is currently being directed towards both active ageing and the revising of standards for disability services within Australia and internationally. Yet, to date, no consideration appears to have been given to ways to promote active ageing among older adults with intellectual disabilities. Methods: Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 16 Australian professional direct-care support staff (service providers) about their perceptions of ageing among older adults with lifelong intellectual disabilities and what active ageing might entail for an individual from this population who is currently under their care, in both the present and future. Data were analysed against the six core World Health Organization active ageing outcomes for people with intellectual disabilities. Results: Service providers appeared to be strongly focused on encouraging active ageing among their clients. However, their perceptions of the individual characteristics, circumstances and experiences of older adults with intellectual disabilities for whom they care suggest that active ageing principles need to be applied to this group in a way that considers both their individual and diverse needs, particularly with respect to them transitioning from day services, employment or voluntary work to reduced activity, and finally to aged care facilities. The appropriateness of this group being placed in nursing homes in old age was also questioned. Conclusion: Direct-care staff of older adults with intellectual disabilities have a vital role to play in encouraging and facilitating active ageing, as well as informing strategies that need to be implemented to ensure appropriate care for this diverse group as they proceed to old age.

Drivers of satisfaction and dissatisfaction for overseas service consumers : a critical incident technique approach

This is one of the few studies in the academic literature that directly addresses inward exporting of customer services, which is a topic that has gained less attention from an international services marketing point of view. The objective of this study is to explore the drivers of satisfaction and dissatisfaction for overseas service customers of higher education in Australia. Critical incident technique (CIT) method was used to collect and analyse the data and a total of 107 critical incidents were collected. Findings from this study show that service satisfaction and dissatisfaction for international students derive from: elements of the core service (educational service performance), personal sources (international student performance), and the external environment (socialization and host environment performance). Additionally, results show that the drivers of satisfaction and dissatisfaction for international students are not necessarily the same. Limitations relating to the specific sector of higher education and the cross sectional natures of the data are addressed.