Description:
This article reports the outcomes of a study on the nature of the change process when a regional tourism network seeks to adopt e-commerce. The study builds on Rogers' seminal work on the diffusion of innovations and makes a unique contribution to existing ICT diffusion studies by its focus on the nature of the network links and by its application of an action-oriented methodology to untangle the effects of the embedded network structure. The study suggests a strong relationship between diffusion and network positioning, both in terms of place (status and position in the network) and space (the geographic make-up of the network). Diffusion additionally hinged on network cohesion and actors' trust in and engagement with the network.
Description:
This article reports the outcomes of a study on the nature of the change process when a regional tourism network seeks to adopt e-commerce. The study builds on Rogers' seminal work on the diffusion of innovations and makes a unique contribution to existing ICT diffusion studies by its focus on the nature of the network links and by its application of an action-oriented methodology to untangle the effects of the embedded network structure. The study suggests a strong relationship between diffusion and network positioning, both in terms of place (status and position in the network) and space (the geographic make-up of the network). Diffusion additionally hinged on network cohesion and actors' trust in and engagement with the network.
Description:
This qualitative study was undertaken with a diverse sample of Australian health managers to examine their perceptions regarding the health system and to understand how they learned to become health managers. The findings showed that they viewed the health system as one of constant change, mostly non-adaptive, and a system of parts controlled by bureaucrats and political interests. While the respondents enjoyed their managerial role, they see it as contested between the professions. This study concluded that greater emphasis on the education and training of health managers and their continuing professional development is required if they are to manage increasingly complex, dynamic and changing health systems. In Australia, the health debate continues with the recently announced national health reform agenda. The perceptions of health managers in health reform and change management are important given that they are said to be central to the implementation of health reform and the management of change.
Description:
The widespread implementation of new management practices (NMPs) in industrialised countries has had a significant impact on employee training. Examines five NMPs: the learning organisation; total quality management; lean production/high performance work organisations; teamworking; and business process re-engineering. Focuses on the relationship between organisational change and training at the enterprise level. The research identified important findings in six key areas: small business; the use of the vocational education and training system; the importance of the individual; the nature of training; the importance of behavioural skills; and organisational change. The study confirmed that workplace change is a major driver of improved training provision in enterprises. It showed unambiguously that most NMPs are associated with higher levels of training. The integration of training with business strategy was found to be the most important factor in driving training across a wide range of training activities and appears to lead to an across the board boost to enterprise training in all its forms.
Description:
The concepts of ecosystem regime shifts, thresholds and alternative or multiple stable states are used extensively in the ecological and environmental management literature. When applied to aquatic ecosystems, these terms are used inconsistently reflecting differing levels of supporting evidence among ecosystem types. Although many aquatic ecosystems around the world have become degraded, the magnitude and causes of changes, relative to the range of historical variability, are poorly known. A working group supported by the Australian Centre for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis (ACEAS) reviewed 135 papers on freshwater ecosystems to assess the evidence for pressure-induced non-linear changes in freshwater ecosystems; these papers used terms indicating sudden and non-linear change in their titles and key words, and so was a positively biased sample. We scrutinized papers for study context and methods, ecosystem characteristics and focus, types of pressures and ecological responses considered, and the type of change reported (i.e., gradual, non-linear, hysteretic or irreversible change). There was little empirical evidence for regime shifts and changes between multiple or alternative stable states in these studies although some shifts between turbid phytoplankton-dominated states and clear-water, macrophyte-dominated states were reported in shallow lakes in temperate climates. We found limited understanding of the subtleties of the relevant theoretical concepts and encountered few mechanistic studies that investigated or identified cause-and-effect relationships between ecological responses and nominal pressures. Our results mirror those of reviews for estuarine, nearshore and marine aquatic ecosystems, demonstrating that although the concepts of regime shifts and alternative stable states have become prominent in the scientific and management literature, their empirical underpinning is weak outside of a specific environmental setting. The application of these concepts in future research and management applications should include evidence on the mechanistic links between pressures and consequent ecological change. Explicit consideration should also be given to whether observed temporal dynamics represent variation along a continuum rather than categorically different states.
Description:
At present, no agreement on a precise definition of agility within the sports science community exists. The term is applied to a broad range of sport contexts, but with such great inconsistency, it further complicates our understanding of what trainable components may enhance agility. A new definition of agility is proposed: "a rapid whole-body movement with change of velocity or direction in response to a stimulus". Agility has relationships with trainable physical qualities such as strength, power and technique, as well as cognitive components such as visual-scanning techniques, visual-scanning speed and anticipation. Agility testing is generally confined to tests of physical components such as change of direction speed, or cognitive components such as anticipation and pattern recognition. New tests of agility that combine physical and cognitive measures are encouraged.
Description:
At present, no agreement on a precise definition of agility within the sports science community exists. The term is applied to a broad range of sport contexts, but with such great inconsistency, it further complicates our understanding of what trainable components may enhance agility. A new definition of agility is proposed: "a rapid whole-body movement with change of velocity or direction in response to a stimulus". Agility has relationships with trainable physical qualities such as strength, power and technique, as well as cognitive components such as visual-scanning techniques, visual-scanning speed and anticipation. Agility testing is generally confined to tests of physical components such as change of direction speed, or cognitive components such as anticipation and pattern recognition. New tests of agility that combine physical and cognitive measures are encouraged.
Description:
In this project, an in-situ soil treatment technique based on electrokinetics was tested in order to identify the potential of this approach to modify the engineering properties of salt affected soils.