Greener workplace: An examination of Green HR initiatives adoption through the theory of planned behaviour lens

The goal of this article is to propose the model of green human resource initiatives adoption. Based on innovation management and psychology literatures, attitude, pressure and controllability are key drivers for organizational change. Data were collected from 210 organizations in Australia. Results indicated that attitude, pressure and controllability significantly influenced the firms’ adoption of green HR initiatives. Attitude and resource availability especially had greater impacts than pressure. Limitation, implications and future researches are also outlined.

Proceedings of the Interior Space in Other Places : An IDEA [Interior Design/Interior Architecture Educators Association] Symposium [Edited Volume of Proceedings]

Conference curatorial outline The focus of this symposium was to question whether interior design is changing relative to local conditions, and the effect globalization has on the performance of regional, particularly Southern hemisphere identities. The intention being to understand how theory and practice is transposed to ‘distant lands’, and how ideas shift from one place to another. To this extent the symposium invited papers on the export, translation and adoption of theories and practices of interior design to differing climates, cultures, and landscapes. This process, sometimes referred to as a shift from ‘the centre to the margins’, seeks new perspectives on the adoption of European and US design ideas abroad, as well as their return to their place of origin. Papers were invited from a range of perspectives including the export of ideas/attitudes to interior spaces, history of interior spaces abroad, and the adoption of ideas/processes to new conditions. Paralleling this trafficking of ideas are broader observations about interior space that emerge through specificity of place. These include new and emerging directions and differences in our understanding of interiority; both real and virtual, and an ever-changing relationship to city, suburb and country. Keeping within the Symposium theme the intention was to examine other places, particularly on the margins of the discipline’s domain. Semantic slippage aside, there are a range of approaches that engage outside events and practices enabling a transdisciplinary practice that draws from other philosophical and theoretical frameworks. Moreover as the field expands and new territories are opened up, the virtual worlds of computer gaming, animations, and interactive environments, both rely on and produce new forms of expression. This raises questions about the extent such spaces adopt or translate existing theory and practice, that is the transposition from one area to another and their return to the discipline.

Critical theory and literacy

This handbook chapter explores the relationship between critical theory and seminal studies of literacy which investigate inequities in education. It identifies new research questions to explore the connections between literacy and power, but go beyond promises of emancipation.

Are academics messy? Testing the broken windows theory with a field experiment in the work environment

We test the broken windows theory using a field experiment in a shared area of an academic workplace(the department common room). More specifically, we explore academics’ and postgraduate students’ behavior under an order condition (a clean environment) and a disorder condition (a messy environment). We find strong evidence that signs of disorderly behavior trigger littering: In 59% of the cases, subjects litter in the disorder treatment as compared to 18% in the order condition. These results remain robust in a multivariate analysis even when controlling for a large set of factors not directly examined by previous studies. Overall, when academic staff and postgraduate students observe that others have violated the social norm of keeping the common room clean, all else being equal, the probability of littering increases by around 40%.

Lignocellulosics as a renewable feedstock for chemical industry : chemical hydrolysis and pretreatment processes

Lignocellulosic materials including agricultural, municipal and forestry residues, and dedicated bioenergy crops offer significant potential as a renewable feedstock for the production of fuels and chemicals. These products can be chemically or functionally equivalent to existing products that are produced from fossil-based feedstocks. To unlock the potential of lignocellulosic materials, it is necessary to pretreat or fractionate the biomass to make it amenable to downstream processing. This chapter explores current and developing technologies for the pretreatment and fractionation of lignocellulosic biomass for the production of chemicals and fuels.

Marcel Cousins : every little thing

This review considers the artwork of Melbourne artist Marcel Cousins showed at Ryan Renshaw Gallery, Brisbane in April 2012. The review traces Cousins' doctoral study in Tokyo. It then assesses his paintings and installations that explore the transformation of generic objects in exhibition contexts, as well as the aesthetic dimensions of such processes.

Clergy Sexual Abuse Litigation: Survivors Seeking Justice By Jennifer M. Balboni (Boulder: First Forum Press, 2011, 180pp. £43.77)

Balboni identifies her interest as being the processes of official disclosure and the path taken to civil litigation by survivors of child sexual abuse by Roman Catholic Clergy. The empirical data, on which this work is based, come in the form of in-depth face-to-face interviews with 22 survivors of clergy sexual abuse who have pursued litigation and 13 of their advocates. Balboni provides a space for survivors’ accounts of the ‘why’ behind their decision making and the impact of civil litigation on their lives to be heard, discussed and contextualized with both clarity and sensitivity. She acknowledges the breadth and depth of survivor responses, and the perspectives of their legal advocates, employing defiance theory, symbolic interaction and other points of analysis, to capture the journey of survivors towards litigation and beyond. Balboni’s work is deeply poignant in its recognition of survivors’ voices, the complex transformative capacity of litigation, the effects of community forming amongst survivors and the complex nature of ‘empowerment’ obtained by survivors through civil litigation. Acknowledging that, for many survivors, litigation becomes a means of identity change and truth telling, Balboni admits that ‘these survivors helped me understand that litigation is more about voice than monetary settlement’ (p. 149). This work is not deeply analytical or theoretically rich but privileges the voices of survivors and their advocates with sufficient frameworks to contextualize and explain participants’ perspectives and experiences.

Use of a clay modeling task to reduce chocolate craving

Elaborated Intrusion theory (EI theory; Kavanagh, Andrade, & May, 2005) posits two main cognitive components in craving: associative processes that lead to intrusive thoughts about the craved substance or activity, and elaborative processes supporting mental imagery of the substance or activity. We used a novel visuospatial task to test the hypothesis that visual imagery plays a key role in craving. Experiment 1 showed that spending 10 min constructing shapes from modeling clay (plasticine) reduced participants' craving for chocolate compared with spending 10 min 'letting your mind wander'. Increasing the load on verbal working memory using a mental arithmetic task (counting backwards by threes) did not reduce craving further. Experiment 2 compared effects on craving of a simpler verbal task (counting by ones) and clay modeling. Clay modeling reduced overall craving strength and strength of craving imagery, and reduced the frequency of thoughts about chocolate. The results are consistent with EI theory, showing that craving is reduced by loading the visuospatial sketchpad of working memory but not by loading the phonological loop. Clay modeling might be a useful self-help tool to help manage craving for chocolate, snacks and other foods.

Will the application of spatial multi criteria evaluation technique enhance the quality of decision-making to resolve boundary conflicts in the Philippines?

Systematic studies that evaluate the quality of decision-making processes are relatively rare. Using the literature on decision quality, this research develops a framework to assess the quality of decision-making processes for resolving boundary conflicts in the Philippines. The evaluation framework breaks down the decision-making process into three components (the decision procedure, the decision method, and the decision unit) and is applied to two ex-post (one resolved and one unresolved) and one ex-ante cases. The evaluation results from the resolved and the unresolved cases show that the choice of decision method plays a minor role in resolving boundary conflicts whereas the choice of decision procedure is more influential. In the end, a decision unit can choose a simple method to resolve the conflict. The ex-ante case presents a follow-up intended to resolve the unresolved case for a changing decision-making process in which the associated decision unit plans to apply the spatial multi criteria evaluation (SMCE) tool as a decision method. The evaluation results from the ex-ante case confirm that the SMCE has the potential to enhance the decision quality because: a) it provides high quality as a decision method in this changing process, and b) the weaknesses associated with the decision unit and the decision procedure of the unresolved case were found to be eliminated in this process.

On the commonly accepted assumptions regarding observed motor vehicle crash counts at transport system locations

Readily accepted knowledge regarding crash causation is consistently omitted from efforts to model and subsequently understand motor vehicle crash occurrence and their contributing factors. For instance, distracted and impaired driving accounts for a significant proportion of crash occurrence, yet is rarely modeled explicitly. In addition, spatially allocated influences such as local law enforcement efforts, proximity to bars and schools, and roadside chronic distractions (advertising, pedestrians, etc.) play a role in contributing to crash occurrence and yet are routinely absent from crash models. By and large, these well-established omitted effects are simply assumed to contribute to model error, with predominant focus on modeling the engineering and operational effects of transportation facilities (e.g. AADT, number of lanes, speed limits, width of lanes, etc.) The typical analytical approach—with a variety of statistical enhancements—has been to model crashes that occur at system locations as negative binomial (NB) distributed events that arise from a singular, underlying crash generating process. These models and their statistical kin dominate the literature; however, it is argued in this paper that these models fail to capture the underlying complexity of motor vehicle crash causes, and thus thwart deeper insights regarding crash causation and prevention. This paper first describes hypothetical scenarios that collectively illustrate why current models mislead highway safety researchers and engineers. It is argued that current model shortcomings are significant, and will lead to poor decision-making. Exploiting our current state of knowledge of crash causation, crash counts are postulated to arise from three processes: observed network features, unobserved spatial effects, and ‘apparent’ random influences that reflect largely behavioral influences of drivers. It is argued; furthermore, that these three processes in theory can be modeled separately to gain deeper insight into crash causes, and that the model represents a more realistic depiction of reality than the state of practice NB regression. An admittedly imperfect empirical model that mixes three independent crash occurrence processes is shown to outperform the classical NB model. The questioning of current modeling assumptions and implications of the latent mixture model to current practice are the most important contributions of this paper, with an initial but rather vulnerable attempt to model the latent mixtures as a secondary contribution.

Mediating identity narratives : a case study in queer digital storytelling as everyday activism

Digital Stories are short autobiographical documentaries, often illustrated with personal photographs and narrated in the first person, and typically produced in group workshops. As a media form they offer ‘ordinary people’ the opportunity to represent themselves to audiences of their choosing; and this amplification of hitherto unheard voices has significant repercussions for their social participation. Many of the storytellers involved in the ‘Rainbow Family Tree’ case study that is the subject of this paper can be characterised as ‘everyday’ activists for their common desire to use their personal stories to increase social acceptance of marginalised identity categories. However, in conflict with their willingness to share their personal stories, many fear the risks and ramifications of distributing them in public spaces (especially online) to audiences both intimate and unknown. Additionally, while technologies for production and distribution of rich media products have become more accessible and user-friendly, many obstacles remain. For many people there are difficulties with technological access and aptitude, personal agency, cultural capital, and social isolation, not to mention availability of the time and energy requisite to Digital Storytelling. Additionally, workshop context, facilitation and distribution processes all influence the content of stories. This paper explores the many factors that make ‘authentic’ self-representation far from straight forward. I use qualitative data drawn from interviews, Digital Story texts and ethnographic observation of GLBTQIS participants in a Digital Storytelling initiative that combined face-to-face and online modes of participation. I consider mediating influences in practice and theory and draw on strategies put forth in cultural anthropology and narrative therapy to propose some practical tools for nuanced and sensitive facilitation of Digital Storytelling workshops and webspaces. Finally, I consider the implications of these facilitation strategies for voice, identity and social participation.

Information practices of teen content creators : the intersection of action and experiences a grounded theory study

What are the information practices of teen content creators? In the United States over two thirds of teens have participated in creating and sharing content in online communities that are developed for the purpose of allowing users to be producers of content. This study investigates how teens participating in digital participatory communities find and use information as well as how they experience the information. From this investigation emerged a model of their information practices while creating and sharing content such as film-making, visual art work, story telling, music, programming, and web site design in digital participatory communities. The research uses grounded theory methodology in a social constructionist framework to investigate the research problem: what are the information practices of teen content creators? Data was gathered through semi-structured interviews and observation of teen’s digital communities. Analysis occurred concurrently with data collection, and the principle of constant comparison was applied in analysis. As findings were constructed from the data, additional data was collected until a substantive theory was constructed and no new information emerged from data collection. The theory that was constructed from the data describes five information practices of teen content creators. The five information practices are learning community, negotiating aesthetic, negotiating control, negotiating capacity, and representing knowledge. In describing the five information practices there are three necessary descriptive components, the community of practice, the experiences of information and the information actions. The experiences of information include information as participation, inspiration, collaboration, process, and artifact. Information actions include activities that occur in the categories of gathering, thinking and creating. The experiences of information and information actions intersect in the information practices, which are situated within the specific community of practice, such as a digital participatory community. Finally, the information practices interact and build upon one another and this is represented in a graphic model and explanation.

Organisational culture in airworthiness management programs : developing a measurement model

All civil and private aircraft are required to comply with the airworthiness standards set by their national airworthiness authority and throughout their operational life must be in a condition of safe operation. Aviation accident data shows that over twenty percent of all fatal accidents in aviation are due to airworthiness issues, specifically aircraft mechanical failures. Ultimately it is the responsibility of each registered operator to ensure that their aircraft remain in a condition of safe operation, and this is done through both effective management of airworthiness activities and the effective program governance of safety outcomes. Typically, the projects within these airworthiness management programs are focused on acquiring, modifying and maintaining the aircraft as a capability supporting the business. Program governance provides the structure through which the goals and objectives of airworthiness programs are set along with the means of attaining them. Whilst the principal causes of failures in many programs can be traced to inadequate program governance, many of the failures in large scale projects can have their root causes in the organisational culture and more specifically in the organisational processes related to decision-making. This paper examines the primary theme of project and program based enterprises, and introduces a model for measuring organisational culture in airworthiness management programs using measures drawn from 211 respondents in Australian airline programs. The paper describes the theoretical perspectives applied to modifying an original model to specifically focus it on measuring the organisational culture of programs for managing airworthiness; identifying the most important factors needed to explain the relationship between the measures collected, and providing a description of the nature of these factors. The paper concludes by identifying a model that best describes the organisational culture data collected from seven airworthiness management programs.

Efficient route update and maintenance processes for multipath routing in large-scale industrial wireless sensor networks

Reliable communications is one of the major concerns in wireless sensor networks (WSNs). Multipath routing is an effective way to improve communication reliability in WSNs. However, most of existing multipath routing protocols for sensor networks are reactive and require dynamic route discovery. If there are many sensor nodes from a source to a destination, the route discovery process will create a long end-to-end transmission delay, which causes difficulties in some time-critical applications. To overcome this difficulty, the efficient route update and maintenance processes are proposed in this paper. It aims to limit the amount of routing overhead with two-tier routing architecture and introduce the combination of piggyback and trigger update to replace the periodic update process, which is the main source of unnecessary routing overhead. Simulations are carried out to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed processes in improvement of total amount of routing overhead over existing popular routing protocols.

A new approach for power system black-start decision-making with vague set theory

Power system restoration after a large area outage involves many factors, and the procedure is usually very complicated. A decision-making support system could then be developed so as to find the optimal black-start strategy. In order to evaluate candidate black-start strategies, some indices, usually both qualitative and quantitative, are employed. However, it may not be possible to directly synthesize these indices, and different extents of interactions may exist among these indices. In the existing black-start decision-making methods, qualitative and quantitative indices cannot be well synthesized, and the interactions among different indices are not taken into account. The vague set, an extended version of the well-developed fuzzy set, could be employed to deal with decision-making problems with interacting attributes. Given this background, the vague set is first employed in this work to represent the indices for facilitating the comparisons among them. Then, a concept of the vague-valued fuzzy measure is presented, and on that basis a mathematical model for black-start decision-making developed. Compared with the existing methods, the proposed method could deal with the interactions among indices and more reasonably represent the fuzzy information. Finally, an actual power system is served for demonstrating the basic features of the developed model and method.