Description:
Costa Rica is a small Central American nation that has gained an international reputation as a leader in environmental conservation. This has formed the base for its highly successful and lucrative small-scale ecotourism industry. However, there are threats from high rates of deforestation and expanding large-scale tourism that is trading on strong environmental credentials, so it is appropriate to conduct this policy analysis on such a significant ecotourism area. The paper develops an ecologically sustainable economic framework, drawing on the works of Adolph Lowe (1893-1995) and Michal Kalecki (1899-1970), to examine the Costa Rican experience and then analyse lessons for general policy development of any ecotourism area. The analysis is conducted from a political economy (and not a tourism management) perspective on the trade-offs between small-scale and large-scale ecotourism.
Description:
Costa Rica is a small Central American nation that has gained an international reputation as a leader in environmental conservation. This has formed the base for its highly successful and lucrative small-scale ecotourism industry. However, there are threats from high rates of deforestation and expanding large-scale tourism that is trading on strong environmental credentials, so it is appropriate to conduct this policy analysis on such a significant ecotourism area. The paper develops an ecologically sustainable economic framework, drawing on the works of Adolph Lowe (1893-1995) and Michal Kalecki (1899-1970), to examine the Costa Rican experience and then analyse lessons for general policy development of any ecotourism area. The analysis is conducted from a political economy (and not a tourism management) perspective on the trade-offs between small-scale and large-scale ecotourism.
Description:
Costa Rica is a small Central American nation that has gained an international reputation as a leader in environmental conservation. This has formed the base for its highly successful and lucrative small-scale ecotourism industry. However, there are threats from high rates of deforestation and expanding large-scale tourism that is trading on strong environmental credentials, so it is appropriate to conduct this policy analysis on such a significant ecotourism area. The paper develops an ecologically sustainable economic framework, drawing on the works of Adolph Lowe (1893–1995) and Micha
Description:
Innovation and the environment are perceived as being in conflict within mainstream economics. Both are neglected themes in post-Keynesian economics, despite their prominence in general business discourse. A post-Keynesian ‘eco-sustainable framework’ is specified, which can stimulate innovation with supportive public policy tools for the attainment of sustainable economic and ecological development. The framework aims at satisficing towards a ‘sustainable society’ based on the work of Micha
Description:
Innovation and the environment are perceived as being in conflict within mainstream economics. Both are neglected themes in post-Keynesian economics, despite their prominence in general business discourse. A post-Keynesian ‘eco-sustainable framework’ is specified, which can stimulate innovation with supportive public policy tools for the attainment of sustainable economic and ecological development. The framework aims at satisficing towards a ‘sustainable society’ based on the work of Micha
Description:
Innovation, both technological and organisational, has become the top national priority in generating strong industrial development in order to stimulate economic development and strengthen competitiveness. From this perspective, it is crucial to identify how various aspects of business management in practice are responding to the challenge of supporting innovation. One crucial aspect under scrutiny lately has been the role of human resource management (HRM) in effectively building the capacity of organisations to innovate through motivation and learning. Recent research has found a positive relationship among HRM policies, innovation and industrial performance. This important relationship has been often mentioned, but without any clear theoretical framework or empirical evidence to identify the type of HRM strategies that support innovation. The aim of this paper is to examine the Australian situation with regard to HRM strategies and their support (or lack thereof) for innovation during the 2000s boom years prior to the recent “Great Recession”. This is done by comparing two distinct HRM systems and strategies implemented in Australia. One is centred around deregulation, the other is centred around regulation. A theoretical framework is developed based on the capability of firms to innovate and how it is strictly related to their ability to substitute between labour inputs, within these two strategies. This framework then provides the basis for examining HRM practices and industrial relations systems in order to identify the difference between the learning practices that are common to successful innovation, and the ones that hamper innovation. The focus of the paper is on the input of innovative individuals. For it is individuals who learn within a frame of reference created by their education and by their social and organisational systems of rewards. The paper will show how through HRM strategies, the process of learning can lead to innovation, but it can also hinder innovation. It is crucial that societies invest in practices that foster and maintain the individual’s motivation to innovate and ability to generate new knowledge.
Description:
Innovation, both technological and organisational, has become the top national priority in generating strong industrial development in order to stimulate economic development and strengthen competitiveness. From this perspective, it is crucial to identify how various aspects of business management in practice are responding to the challenge of supporting innovation. One crucial aspect under scrutiny lately has been the role of human resource management (HRM) in effectively building the capacity of organisations to innovate through motivation and learning. Recent research has found a positive relationship among HRM policies, innovation and industrial performance. This important relationship has been often mentioned, but without any clear theoretical framework or empirical evidence to identify the type of HRM strategies that support innovation. The aim of this paper is to examine the Australian situation with regard to HRM strategies and their support (or lack thereof) for innovation during the 2000s boom years prior to the recent “Great Recession”. This is done by comparing two distinct HRM systems and strategies implemented in Australia. One is centred around deregulation, the other is centred around regulation. A theoretical framework is developed based on the capability of firms to innovate and how it is strictly related to their ability to substitute between labour inputs, within these two strategies. This framework then provides the basis for examining HRM practices and industrial relations systems in order to identify the difference between the learning practices that are common to successful innovation, and the ones that hamper innovation. The focus of the paper is on the input of innovative individuals. For it is individuals who learn within a frame of reference created by their education and by their social and organisational systems of rewards. The paper will show how through HRM strategies, the process of learning can lead to innovation, but it can also hinder innovation. It is crucial that societies invest in practices that foster and maintain the individual’s motivation to innovate and ability to generate new knowledge.
Description:
Joseph Schumpeter’s plea for the use of historical methods to understand the dynamic nature of entrepreneurship remains for the most part unsatisfied despite some 60 years of effort and it is argued that the absence of a suitable research framework is a contributing factor to the largely fragmented results to date. A critical realist approach is proposed as a suitable framework for addressing many aspects of Schumpeter’s plea. With its prioritisation of ontology, critical realism is more likely than the positivist/deductivist methods of mainstream economics to lead to the intellectually rigorous explanation of innovation, entrepreneurship and economic growth that Schumpeter was seeking.
Description:
Summary: The main impetus for the interest in innovation is that it is seen to improve productivity at the firm level and therefore improved economic prosperity and living standards. This edited volume was commissioned by the Department of Employment, Education and Workplace Relations. The authors contribute a variety of views on innovation from different perspectives. Some of the main themes running throughout the book are reasons for firms innovating, the skills required for innovation and how innovation and skills development is supported by the training system, the firm and government. Innovation is seen as moving beyond research and development, to include new products, services and operational/organisational processes.
Description:
This paper describes a project which seeks to identify the role of human capital formation in promoting innovation in Australian enterprises and the ways in which enterprises can improve their human resource management and learning and development practices to improve their innovation performance. There are a number of factors that affect enterprises' ability to innovate. These include internal factors such as the ability to detect technological changes in the environment, the development of core competencies from which innovation can developl and external factors such as the maturity of the market which the enterprise serves and the impact of government policy to stimulate innovation. Thus the ability of enterprises to innovate depends on the effective management of human resources and in particular, the learning and development practices that enable enterprises to increase the skills of workers to innovate (human capital formation). Studies in Denmark and Spain have shown that better
Description:
Innovation in Australia has become the top national priority in strengthening competitiveness of firms and generating strong economic development. This paper investigates the building of workforce innovation capacity through human resource management (HRM) practices to foster innovation in Australia. Two HRM strategies are identified as having operated in Australia over 40 years. One is a ‘soft’ HRM strategy based on greater worker autonomy; a strategy which dominated in the 1970s and 1980s. The other is a ‘hard’ HRM strategy based on routine worker performance measurement which has increasingly become more relevant since the 1990s and into the 21st Century as the basis for stronger competitive advantage. A dynamic discrete choice model is developed to provide a method for capturing and explaining variations in the relationship between the two strategies and innovation. This approach reframes the economics of innovation using a unique ‘containment of structure and contingency of agency’ spectrum to explain innovation-successful HRM practices which can account for both internal firm management policies and external-to-the-firm effects of government economic policies. For this reason, this study provides a historical understanding that links effective HRM strategy to building innovation capacity from both firm and government levels. Such experience can assist building a stronger Australian Innovation System so often demanded.
Description:
Innovation in Australia has become the top national priority in strengthening competitiveness of firms and generating strong economic development. This paper investigates the building of workforce innovation capacity through human resource management (HRM) practices to foster innovation in Australia. Two HRM strategies are identified as having operated in Australia over 40 years. One is a ‘soft’ HRM strategy based on greater worker autonomy; a strategy which dominated in the 1970s and 1980s. The other is a ‘hard’ HRM strategy based on routine worker performance measurement which has increasingly become more relevant since the 1990s and into the 21st Century as the basis for stronger competitive advantage. A dynamic discrete choice model is developed to provide a method for capturing and explaining variations in the relationship between the two strategies and innovation. This approach reframes the economics of innovation using a unique ‘containment of structure and contingency of agency’ spectrum to explain innovation-successful HRM practices which can account for both internal firm management policies and external-to-the-firm effects of government economic policies. For this reason, this study provides a historical understanding that links effective HRM strategy to building innovation capacity from both firm and government levels. Such experience can assist building a stronger Australian Innovation System so often demanded.
Description:
Prior studies raise the question of how business advisors’ knowledge affects the provision of advice to small business. This paper recognises there is limited understanding of ‘how knowledge is connected to action’ and asks the question of how to research such an issue. A conceptual framework is derived from the literature to guide future empirical analysis exploring small business advisor knowledge and its transference. Two theories underpin this framework and illustrate the important role external advisors play in small business knowledge development - the theory of outside assistance as a knowledge resource, and theory of guided preparation as a guide to action based on advisor knowledge. The framework is underpinned by a critical realist methodology that allows actors (i.e. small business advisors) to operate in a changing environment. This critical realist philosophical lens enables the framework to uncover causal relationship between professional small business advisor knowledge foundations and knowledge transference.
Description:
Prior studies raise the question of how business advisors’ knowledge affects the provision of advice to small business. This paper recognises there is limited understanding of ‘how knowledge is connected to action’ and asks the question of how to research such an issue. A conceptual framework is derived from the literature to guide future empirical analysis exploring small business advisor knowledge and its transference. Two theories underpin this framework and illustrate the important role external advisors play in small business knowledge development - the theory of outside assistance as a knowledge resource, and theory of guided preparation as a guide to action based on advisor knowledge. The framework is underpinned by a critical realist methodology that allows actors (i.e. small business advisors) to operate in a changing environment. This critical realist philosophical lens enables the framework to uncover causal relationship between professional small business advisor knowledge foundations and knowledge transference.
Description:
The recognition that corporate social responsibility (CSR) is important for business sustainability has focused the bulk of research on explicit normative arguments for its adoption by large corporations. This ignores the role of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and the investigation of how such firms actually perform CSR activities. This study begins with the premise that SMEs may design appropriate CSR strategies to address issues in local communities. SMEs operate within these communities and subsequently are more aware of community and environmental issues than their larger counterparts. From this emerges the aim of examining the reality of this proposition from the particular perspective of a regional city in Australia. The results show a gap between normative CSR proposals and the actual operation of CSR processes in this cohort of SMEs in a regional community. What is exposed is the complexity of CSR ‘on the ground at the business frontline’.
Description:
The recognition that corporate social responsibility (CSR) is important for business sustainability has focused the bulk of research on explicit normative arguments for its adoption by large corporations. This ignores the role of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and the investigation of how such firms actually perform CSR activities. This study begins with the premise that SMEs may design appropriate CSR strategies to address issues in local communities. SMEs operate within these communities and subsequently are more aware of community and environmental issues than their larger counterparts. From this emerges the aim of examining the reality of this proposition from the particular perspective of a regional city in Australia. The results show a gap between normative CSR proposals and the actual operation of CSR processes in this cohort of SMEs in a regional community. What is exposed is the complexity of CSR ‘on the ground at the business frontline’.
Description:
Cycles, crises and innovation are the major economic forces that shape capitalist economies. Central to this book is a critical realist political economy approach based on the works of Joseph Schumpeter and Michal Kalecki who identified cycles, crises and innovation as the three dynamic forces plotting the path of economic development. The book examines how the rise of capital, through investment, enshrines innovation in profit and power which determines the course of cycles and crises. Based on this analysis, strategic intervention by transformative eco-innovation is proposed as a public policy path to ecologically sustainable development
Description:
Over the last three decades the way in which public policy analysts learn about the structure and function of Australia’s small towns has shifted from the intensive, in-depth analysis provided by the anthropologist living in the community (called “community studies”) to a more empirically oriented, demographic-based research carried out at a distance from these places (called “sustainability studies”). Rather than just understanding the functioning of small towns through case studies, recent research emphasis has centred on the more “aggregative” question of small town sustainability in all it forms. This alters the way in which small towns are viewed and complicates the current policy approaches to small town development and change. This paper identifies the two different methodologies implied by these divergent approaches and examines what this means to understanding of small towns and the policy implications that emerge. By reviewing the community studies approach to learning about small towns popular in the 1960s and 1970s, and contrasting this approach with recent, more aggregative approaches to learning about the sustainability of towns; this paper aims to find points of alignment and suggest a broader research framework that incorporates both approaches. This provides a comprehensive understanding of small towns, leading to a more effective development of public policies for these communities.
Description:
Over the last three decades the way in which public policy analysts learn about the structure and function of Australia’s small towns has shifted from the intensive, in-depth analysis provided by the anthropologist living in the community (called “community studies”) to a more empirically oriented, demographic-based research carried out at a distance from these places (called “sustainability studies”). Rather than just understanding the functioning of small towns through case studies, recent research emphasis has centred on the more “aggregative” question of small town sustainability in all it forms. This alters the way in which small towns are viewed and complicates the current policy approaches to small town development and change. This paper identifies the two different methodologies implied by these divergent approaches and examines what this means to understanding of small towns and the policy implications that emerge. By reviewing the community studies approach to learning about small towns popular in the 1960s and 1970s, and contrasting this approach with recent, more aggregative approaches to learning about the sustainability of towns; this paper aims to find points of alignment and suggest a broader research framework that incorporates both approaches. This provides a comprehensive understanding of small towns, leading to a more effective development of public policies for these communities.
Description:
Focus is on agricultural production of a river basin economy and ecosystem processes relating to climate change and water supply. A generic regulated river basin model of agricultural production is integrated with an existing demand-based macroeconomic model in discrete time which has been developed previously over a series of computer simulation experiments. This is the forerunner to a fully-specified Murray-Darling Basin model. Two crops are in the model - rainfed wheat and irrigated rice - with River Basin Commission revenue and expenditure, as well as exports and imports outside the river basin economy. The model simulates 100 years of production.