Brand orientation: another explanation of retailer performance

This paper postulates that organisational capabilities, particularly brand orientation, may provide an appropriate theoretical framework to explain variations in organisational performance among retailers. Brand orientation is viewed as a strategic capability, just like innovation. This allows for a distinction to be made with such core antecedent (However, it is important to distinguish between strategic capabilities (innovation orientation and brand orientation) and antecedent core) capabilities such as market orientation, operational orientation and human resource orientation which all organizations must have to some degree. This distinction is made to emphasise that all organisations operate with some degree of market, operational and human resource orientation, whereas organisations can choose to operate without either innovation or brand orientation. We argue that it is the inclusion of organisational capabilities with positional advantage and organisational performance that provides an holistic conceptual framework for the empirical investigation we are currently undertaking. The propositions discussed in this paper link the various relationships in the conceptual model within the context of Australian retailing organisations.

Analysis of work hardening and recrystallization during the hot working of steel using a statistically based internal variable model

A mathematical model has been developed which describes the hot deformation and recrystallization behavior of austenite using a single internal variable: dislocation density. The dislocation density is incorporated into equations describing the rate of recovery and recrystallization. In each case no distinction is made between static and dynamic events, and the model is able to simulate multideformation processes. The model is statistically based and tracks individual populations of the dislocation density during the work-hardening and softening phases. After tuning using available data the model gave an accurate prediction of the stress–strain behavior and the static recrystallization kinetics for C–Mn steels. The model correctly predicted the sensitivity of the post deformation recrystallization behavior to process variables such as strain, strain rate and temperature, even though data for this were not explicitly incorporated in the tuning data set. In particular, the post dynamic recrystallization (generally termed metadynamic recrystallization) was shown to be largely independent of strain and temperature, but a strong function of strain rate, as observed in published experimental work.

Enforcement of arbitral awards where the seat of the arbitration is Australia, how the Eisenwerk decision might still be a sleeping assassin

This article examines the enforcement of foreign awards in Australia. It identifies and explains the difference between a “foreign award” and “international arbitration award,” observing it is a somewhat surprising but potentially significant distinction. The article then moves to consider the consequences of the distinction with particular reference to the Australian arbitral landscape. Australia has dual arbitration regimes operating at the state and federal level. Particular attention is given to the still controversial Queensland Supreme Court of Appeal decision in Australian Granites Ltd. v. Eisenwerk Hensel Bayreyth Dipl-Ing Burkhardt GmbH. The article concludes by promoting a line of interpretation that will effectively allow subsequent courts to avoid the potentially disastrous effects the Eisenwerk decision may yet still wreak.

Cosmopolitanism as virtue

This paper explores cosmopolitanism, not as a position within political philosophy or international relations, but as a virtuous stance taken by individuals who see their responsibilities as extending globally. Taking as its cue some recent writing by Kwame Anthony Appiah, it argues for a number of virtues that are inherent in, and required by, such a stance. It is critical of what it sees as a limited scope in Appiah's conception and enriches it with Nigel Dower's concept of 'global citizenship'. It then seeks to overcome a distinction that Appiah draws between a 'thin' moral conception of justice and a 'thick' ethical conception of our obligations to those with whom we have identity-forming relationships. It argues that a richer conception of the virtue of justice, as suggested by Raimond Gaita, can fully articulate the ideals of cosmopolitanism.

Does the concept of ″altered states of consciousness″ rest on a mistake?

Block (2002) has argued that the multiplicity of meanings ascribed to consciousness is due to the erroneous treatment of very different concepts as a single concept. Block distinguished four notions of consciousness intended to encapsulate the various meanings attributed to the term: phenomenal, access, self, and monitoring consciousness. We argue that what is common to all of these definitions is the implicit distinction between consciousness and the content of consciousness. We critically examine the term “altered state of consciousness” and argue that affixing the qualifier “altered state” to consciousness results in a theoretical confusion of consciousness and its content, that is, consciousness is mistaken for the content of consciousness. We refer to this as the consciousness/content fallacy and argue that it may be avoided if one supplants “altered states of consciousness” with “altered pattern of phenomenal properties,” an extrapolation of the term “phenomenal field.” Implications of the consciousness/content fallacy for theory and research are also considered.

Social indicators and social development

This paper concerns the use of social indicators to improve social development and the happiness of populations. A distinction will be drawn between the traditional indicators of wealth and health and the new subjective social indicators. These latter measures concern the subjective side of life quality, or happiness, which in contemporary science is more commonly referred to as subjective wellbeing (SWB). The SWB construct is described within the theoretical context of SWB homeostasis. This is a proposed management system which has the role of maintaining a positive view of the self. It will be described how the homeostatic system can be challenged by hardship and defended by a variety of resources. Recommended forms of SWB measurement will be considered. It is concluded that both objective and subjective social indicators should be consulted by policy makers in order to plan the most effective initiatives to enhance population wellbeing.

Scriptural Archeology: Excavating the Presence of Women in the Torah

Women's roles in religious history have been traditionally described in terms of their relation and value to men. The normative religious texts provide an androcentric perspective on the gender relationships within the early community, the growth of Judaism in "Jacob's House" and the monotheistic worship of God. Yet these literary representations omit an entire half of the experience of the Jewish community: the perspective and participation of women. As Judith Plaskow argues extensively in Standing Again at Sinai, women are defined not in her own terms or in her own voice, but by her relationship and value to men through the androcentric vocabulary of the Torah. This statement is textually illustrated by the authorial and editorial presentation of women and their place in ancient Israelite society in the Torah. As Judaism grew increasingly androcentric in its leadership, women were increasingly reduced to marginal figures in the community by authorial and editorial revisions. Yet the participation of women of ancient Israel is not lost. Instead, the presence of women is buried beneath the androcentric presentation of the early Judaic community, waiting to be excavated by historical and scriptural examination. The retelling of the past is influenced by the present; memory is not static but takes on different shapes depending on the focus of concentration. However, tradition greatly influences the interpretation of religious history as well. In the book of Genesis, the literature emphasizes the divine appointment of male figures such as Abraham the father of the covenant and Jacob who is renamed and claimed by God as "Israel," placing them at the center of Jewish history. As a result, the other figures in these biblical narratives are described in relation to the patriarchs, those male bearers of the covenant, by their service or their value to him. Women are at the bottom of this hierarchy. Although female figures of exceptional quality are noted in later chronicles, such as Ruth, Deborah and Miriam, it is the very nature of their exception that highlights the androcentric editorial focus of the Torah. I agree with Peggy Day, whose own scriptural examination in Gender and Difference in Ancient Israel, makes the important distinction between the literary representation and the reality of ancient Israelite culture: they are not coextensive nor equivalent. Although the text represents the culture of ancient Israel as male dominated from the time of Abraham, this presentation omits the perspective of half of the population-the women. By beginning at the point of realization that women did exist and were active in their culture, and placing aside the androcentric perspective of the text and its editors, the reality of women's place in ancient Israel may be determined. Through this new perspective, the women of the Torah will emerge as the archetypes of strength, leadership and spiritual insight to provide Jewish women of the present with female, ancestral role models and a foundation for their gender's heritage, a more complete understanding of the partial record of Jewish history recorded in the Torah. Those stories that appear as the exception of women's presence will unveil an exceptional presence. As Tamar Frankiel eloquently states in The Voice of Sarah, "the women we call our 'Mothers'-Sarah, Rivkah (Rebekah), Rachel, and Leah-are not merely mothers, any more than the 'Fathers'-Abraham, Isaac and Jacob-are merely fathers "(Frankiel 5).

Import-associated translational inhibition: novel in vivo evidence for cotranslational protein import into dictyostelium discoideum mitochondria

To investigate protein import into the mitochondria of Dictyostelium discoideum, green fluorescent protein (GFP) was fused as a reporter protein either to variable lengths of the N-terminal region of chaperonin 60 (the first 23, 40, 80, 97, and 150 amino acids) or to the mitochondrial targeting sequence of DNA topoisomerase II. The fusion proteins were expressed in AX2 cells under the actin-15 promoter. Fluorescence images of GFP transformants confirmed that Dictyostelium chaperonin 60 is a mitochondrial protein. The level of the mitochondrially targeted GFP fusion proteins was unexpectedly much lower than the nontargeted (cytoplasmic) forms. The distinction between targeted and nontargeted protein activities was investigated at both the transcriptional and translational levels in vivo. We found that targeting GFP to the mitochondria results in reduced levels of the fusion protein even though transcription of the fusion gene and the stability of the protein are unaffected. [³⁵S]methionine labeling and GFP immunoprecipitation confirmed that mitochondrially targeted GFP is translated at much slower rates than nontargeted GFP. The results indicate a novel phenomenon, import-associated translational inhibition, whereby protein import into the mitochondria limits the rate of translation. The simplest explanation for this is that import of the GFP fusion proteins occurs cotranslationally, i.e., protein synthesis and import into mitochondria are coupled events. Consistent with cotranslational import, Northern analysis showed that the GFP mRNA is associated with isolated mitochondria. This association occurred regardless of whether the GFP was fused to a mitochondrial leader peptide. However, the presence of an import-competent leader peptide stabilized the mRNA-mitochondria association, rendering it more resistant to extensive EDTA washing. In contrast with GFP, the mRNA of another test protein, aequorin, did not associate with the mitochondria, and its translation was unaffected by import of the encoded polypeptide into the mitochondria.

Conversion stories as shifting narratives of organizational change

This paper is concerned with how employees talk about their experiences of organizational change and focuses specifically on the construction of conversion stories. These are particularly positive narratives that consider change as a turning point in which individuals depart from an old way of life pre-change to embrace a post-change organization. In this study, employees seek conversion into management groups and report the values and philosophies of management in their narratives, thus highlighting the benefits of change while suppressing any negative aspects. This paper draws attention to the dramatic nature of the conversion story and explores the sharp distinction between the reporting of experiences prior to and after change. We also investigate the relationship between constructing conversion stories and gaining personal and career advancement at work and suggest that beneath the positive exterior of the conversion narratives lies a theme of silence, which may be related to career advancement. Our findings suggest that such stories of silence complicate the conversion story as an example of positive organizational change and discuss implications for both the theory and practice of narrative change research.

Photochemical Generation and Intramolecular Chemistry of β-Alkoxycarbenes

The photolytic phenanthrene-based precursors for both β-methoxycarbene and β-ethoxycarbene were synthesized with and without a deuterium label attached to the a carbon. The incorporation of this deuterium label allowed distinction between a 1, 2-H shift and a 1, 2-O shift pathway to the respective alkyl vinyl ether, without the influence of a primary kinetic isotope effect. Photolyses of these precursors gave rearrangement products of the expected β-alkoxycarbenes. In the case of β-methoxycarbene, no methyl vinyl ether was observed due to its volatility. However, the appearance of aldehyde peaks in the NMR spectra, from an apparent further rearrangement to acetaldehyde through an enol intermediate, indicated that a 1,2-H shift had occurred. Ethyl vinyl ether was isolated following the photolysis of the β-ethoxycarbene precursor. Quantification of the two pathways showed less than 2% undergoing an ethoxy shift to the ethyl vinyl ether. Yield experiments on this photolysis demonstrated a maximum yield of β-ethoxycarbene as 43%, though this decreased as the experiment continued. Computational work on the β-ethoxycarbene system indicates that the triplet scate is more stable than the singlet. In addition, the activation energy to the 1.2-H shift pathway is remarkably low and is clearly consistent with the observed overwhelming preference for this pathway in the experiment.

Medical treatment and the good death: an ethical analysis of euthanasia, physician assisted suicide, and the right to die

Frequent advances in medical technologies have brought fonh many innovative treatments that allow medical teams to treal many patients with grave illness and serious trauma who would have died only a few years earlier. These changes have given some patients a second chance at life, but for others. these new treatments have merely prolonged their dying. Instead of dying relatively painlessly, these unfortunate patients often suffer from painful tenninal illnesses or exist in a comatose state that robs them of their dignity, since they cannot survive without advanced and often dehumanizing forms of treatment. Due to many of these concerns, euthanasia has become a central issue in medical ethics. Additionally, the debate is impacted by those who believe that patients have the right make choices about the method and timing of their deaths. Euthanasia is defined as a deliberate act by a physician to hasten the death of a patient, whether through active methods such as an injection of morphine, or through the withdrawal of advanced forms of medical care, for reasons of mercy because of a medical condition that they have. This study explores the question of whether euthanasia is an ethical practice and, as determined by ethical theories and professional codes of ethics, whether the physician is allowed to provide the means to give the patient a path to a "good death," rather than one filled with physical and mental suffering. The paper also asks if there is a relevant moral difference between the active and passive forms of euthanasia and seeks to define requirements to ensure fully voluntary decision making through an evaluation of the factors necessary to produce fully informed consent. Additionally, the proper treatments for patients who suffer from painful terminal illnesses, those who exist in persistent vegetative states and infants born with many diverse medical problems are examined. The ultimate conclusions that are reached in the paper are that euthanasia is an ethical practice in certain specific circumstances for patients who have a very low quality of life due to pain, illness or serious mental deficits as a result of irreversible coma, persistent vegetative state or end-stage clinical dementia. This is defended by the fact that the rights of the patient to determine his or her own fate and to autonomously decide the way that he or she dies are paramount to all other factors in decisions of life and death. There are also circumstances where decisions can be made by health care teams in conjunction with the family to hasten the deaths of incompetent patients when continued existence is clearly not in their best interest, as is the case of infants who are born with serious physical anomalies, who are either 'born dying' or have no prospect for a life that is of a reasonable quality. I have rejected the distinction between active and passive methods of euthanasia and have instead chosen to focus on the intentions of the treating physician and the voluntary nature of the patient's request. When applied in equivalent circumstances, active and passive methods of euthanasia produce the same effects, and if the choice to hasten the death of the patient is ethical, then the use of either method can be accepted. The use of active methods of euthanasia and active forms of withdrawal of life support, such as the removal of a respirator are both conscious decisions to end the life of the patient and both bring death within a short period of time. It is false to maintain a distinction that believes that one is active killing. whereas the other form only allows nature to take it's course. Both are conscious choices to hasten the patient's death and should be evaluated as such. Additionally, through an examination of the Hippocratic Oath, and statements made by the American Medical Association and the American College of physicians, it can be shown that the ideals that the medical profession maintains and the respect for the interests of the patient that it holds allows the physician to give aid to patients who wish to choose death as an alternative to continued suffering. The physician is also allowed to and in some circumstances, is morally required, to help dying patients whether through active or passive forms of euthanasia or through assisted suicide. Euthanasia is a difficult topic to think about, but in the end, we should support the choice that respects the patient's autonomous choice or clear best interest and the respect that we have for their dignity and personal worth.

Brokering knowledge : managing knowledge in a network of government and non-government human service delivery agencies

This paper examines aspects of knowledge management that are particularly important in the network of human service delivery agencies in Victoria. This network is characterised by four features: it is a cluster of networked organisations; professionals and others may act as knowledge brokers within and between organisations in the network; rapid change in both knowledge and organisation accentuates the importance of innovative knowledge and emergent organisation over and above routine instrumental knowledge within stable organisation; and consequently there is an underlying concern with dialogical rather than instrumental knowledge and its management, and particularly how it constitutes and is constituted by organisation. The paper describes the analytical tools that we consider particularly important in examining this situation – in particular, the distinction between instrumental and dialogical knowledge, and the role of knowledge brokers (and professionals as knowledge brokers). It concludes by relating this analysis to broader issues in organisation studies, and suggests paths for further examination of these issues.

Using programmed formulas in Excel

A NESTED formula that converted a numerical mark to a letter grade which is used at Deakin to create letter grades of High Distinction, Distinction, Credit, Pass, and Fail is outlined. Spreadsheet programming can handle words as well as formulas and numbers. Spreadsheet programming = well-formed formulas + logic + mathematics operations + learning.

Resisting assimilation : the mild aesthetics and wild perceptions of the migrant house

The physical adaptation, remaking and maintenance, or building of the house plays a significant role in immigrants’ sense of belonging to a community, especially in contexts of first generation elderly immigrants with minimal English language skills. Psychoanalytic theories propose that objects are integral to a subject’s identity, but that the path of effect between the subject and object is not causal or direct, rather it goes via the unconscious. This paper seeks to examine the relationship between immigrants and their houses through these theories adapting them to an analysis of the houses. It draws its data from field research of three elderly immigrant households. The iconography of the house has always been perceived as central to the analysis of dreams, here the thesis is that the house is the most significant object of the immigrant because it mediates the many worlds inherent to the migrant’s imaginary landscapes. The analysis will seek to understand this role of the house.

Secondly, while many houses in which migrants live can barely be differentiated in clear physical ways from the typology of houses built in Australia, the perception that they are different is a strong myth. At the least it has resulted in very little, if any, study of this vernacular of new Australian houses. It would be easy to argue that to build a house in Australia is the most important mode of assimilation because a way of life is intrinsically set by this suburban paradigm. But for the reason of this perception of difference I will explore an idea about ethnic aesthetics as a mode of resisting assimilation. In writing on taste in his seminal book, Distinction, the sociologist, Pierre Bourdieu, has argued that taste is a way of classifying people into classes, race, culture, but it is also a way for dominant and ruling classes to resist challenges from other parties, and maintain a particular hierarchy of society. In this case those other parties are ethnic communities in Australia whose tastes are not always the same as that of the dominant Anglo-Celtic community.

Health literacy revisited : what do we mean and why does it matter?

‘Health literacy’ refers to accessing, understanding and using information to make health decisions. However, despite its introduction into the World Health Organization's Health Promotion Glossary, the term remains a confusing concept. We consider various definitions and measurements of health literacy in the international and Australian literature, and discuss the distinction between the broader concept of ‘health literacy’ (applicable to everyday life) and ‘medical literacy’ (related to individuals as patients within health care settings). We highlight the importance of health literacy in relation to the health promotion and preventive health agenda. Because health literacy involves knowledge, motivation and activation, it is a complex thing to measure and to influence. The development of health literacy policies will be facilitated by better evidence on the extent, patterns and impact of low health literacy, and what might be involved in improving it. However, the current lack of consensus of definitions and measurement of health literacy will first need to be overcome.