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Since 2011 the School of Media and Communication at RMIT University has been actively supporting an ethos of belonging throughout their learning and teaching. In 2017 'belonging' became a formal university priority, embedded in the institution's strategy and dispersed across Colleges and Schools through a range of activities and interventions. However, in the supercomplex COVID-19 landscape, practices of belonging are being reconsidered and reimagined for online learning environments. This paper outlines some of the reasons why belonging should be prioritised during times of intense change and complexity. We outline a range of responsive initiatives that have assisted staff and students as they rapidly shifted to a learning and teaching environment. Indeed, given our grounding in the field of media and communication, we seek to demonstrate that embracing supercomplexity through a disciplinary focus can in fact be productive for staff and students alike. Through this discussion we demonstrate how a belonging strategy at the institutional level can be translated as embedded practice at the level of the discipline and within micro-level classroom interventions.

Purpose: Much of the existing literature note how students' academic difficulties result from their background and lack of cultural capital. This paper aims to focus on internal structural inequality where people with particular backgrounds are disadvantaged within an institution. Design/methodology/approach: The authors use a case study approach to understand how an in-built faculty programme, Business for Success (B4S), mitigates institutional inequalities. Findings: The study's findings demonstrate that students need services to get accustomed to university, settle in and transition to professional work. Student services are both dependent (such as bridging courses, peer mentoring and internships) and independent (such as ongoing communication, resource loans) on the stage of their studies. Originality/value: This paper contributes to theory and practice by developing a process framework that policymakers could use to design holistic support programmes and improve students' transition to university, learning and professional work.

Despite receiving growing international recognition and regard, the scholarship of engagement remains undervalued internally at academic institutions, especially in relation to career development and academic promotion. This form of scholarship presents difficulties relating to evaluation, assessment, and evidencing that are not generally present in the traditional scholarships of learning and teaching, research, and governance and service. Thus, scholarly engagement work is often not valued or rewarded by promotional bodies, and a gap is appearing between the career development opportunities, promotion, and probation outcomes of engaged scholars and those who focus on more traditionally recognized scholarly outcomes. To combat this, the University of Wollongong has undertaken a project that aims to embed the scholarship of engagement as a scholarly "method of doing." This approach involves applying new and reformulated promotions guidelines to traditional scholarships in a way intended to remove barriers to promotion for "engaged scholars."

Peer review has been the focus of an ongoing study at a series of recent annual conferences of the Australasian Association for Engineering Education (AAEE). A further development of this study has been to explore the perspective/s of the authors of these conference papers and the impact that peer review can have on their development as researchers. This paper uses the identity-trajectory framework to illustrate relationships between peer review and academic identity construction for engineering education authors in the AAEE community. Participants' responses illustrate how various aspects of responding to reviews and writing reviews for other authors, contribute to the development of the networking and intellectual strands of their academic identity as engineering education researchers. We suggest that members of the global engineering education community should be mindful of how they write their peer reviews of conference papers to ensure the opportunity to constructively contribute to their peers' successful transition into this different research paradigm is not missed.

This paper explores the enormous variation in views, championing behaviours and impacts of liaison people: staff nominated to facilitate, tailor and promote SPIRIT (a research utilisation intervention trial in six Australian health policy agencies). Liaison people made cost/benefit analyses: they weighed the value of participation against its risks and demands in the context of organisational goals, knowledge utilisation norms, epistemology and leadership support. There was a degree of self-fulfilment (organisations got what they put in), but SPIRIT could not always be tailored to address local knowledge needs. We present nine propositions for identifying and supporting liaison people in similar interventions.

Internationalization of the curriculum points to the interdependent and interconnected (globalized) world in which higher education operates. However, while international awareness is crucial to the study of journalism, in practice this often means an Anglo-American curriculum based around Western principles of journalism education and training that are deeply rooted in Western values and traditions. This tendency to privilege Western thought, practice, and values obscures from view other journalism practices and renders Western models of journalism desirable, replicable, and transplantable to any part of the world. This article discusses the engagement of a small group of staff in the process of thinking through the meaning of internationalization of the curriculum in their particular disciplinary and institutional context. The staff are located in a school of journalism and communication at a large research intensive university in Australia. The article describes the thinking behind their decision to focus internationalization of the curriculum on "critical de-Westernization" and social imaginaries. This was a gestalt shift resulting from discussion of the way in which "taken for granted" disciplinary canons had hitherto been uncritically embedded into the curriculum. It is argued that treating internationalization of the journalism curriculum as critical de-Westernization has conceptual and practical benefits in a globalized world. (Contains 1 figure.)

This study was aimed at identifying the critical interactions within work environments that support the development of early career academics as researchers in institutions with lower order research profiles, that is, environments that differ from research-intensive universities. Ten early career academics, five from Australia and five from the UK, were recruited. Multiple sources of data were subjected to a qualitative analysis from which five interrelated themes identified the features of the research journeys: "institutional environment, individual attributes, postgraduate and other research training, supportive interactions with others," and "outcomes from the research process". A key finding was that individuals differ in their need for redirection, support, challenge, and inspiration which may be important at any time but especially at turning points in their career. Actions that might be taken by those responsible for implementing plans and programs in professional learning and development for early career academics are outlined. This study offers empirical evidence of the changes that are significant for individual neophyte researchers, and the environments and interactions that influence these changes.

Purpose: This article outlines the emergence of programme teams in the Australian dairy farm sector as a response to counter weaknesses in the institutional environment for agricultural innovation which favours technology adoption/diffusion approaches. Design/methodology/approach: The strengths, weaknesses and risks of different approaches to innovation in the Australian dairy sector RD&E system are analysed and key features of an emerging programme team approach defined. The programme team approach is compared and contrasted with the features of innovation capacity from international literature. An analysis of the relative investment in this innovation capacity in different topics or domains of dairy innovation is provided. Findings: The programme team approach to innovation involves groups of researchers, extension people, public and private organisations, farmers, community groups, and policy and service groups brought together to progress innovation and change in a topic area or domain. Leadership of the process is provided by an area expert or champion. The team takes responsibility for: (a) understanding the businesses of key players who have an influence in the innovation or domain; (b) deciding the nature of the desired change that all stakeholders can align to; (c) identifying features of the enabling environment to establish what capacity is needed; (d) designing a "route to change" strategy (in contrast to traditional route-to-market thinking); and (e) piloting and refining the approach within the target populations. The group manages emerging risks and keeps on top of issues, as well as identifies any knowledge gaps for research that are preventing innovation and change. Conclusions/practical implications: The programme team approach provides a semi-formal governance mechanism for innovation to develop, despite an institutional environment that favours technology adoption. Further, the activities of programme teams consist of practices which integrate research-led and demand-pull approaches. Currently, investment in such innovation capacity is relatively low and highly variable across different topic domains. Added value: The article provides tangible activities that managers of agricultural RD&E programmes can invest in to progress systemic approaches to innovation and is a guide for agricultural education and extension practitioners to proceed in their innovation work. (Contains 3 tables and 2 figures.)

This article aims to contribute to understandings of youth homelessness and subjectivity by analysing identity construction in terms of young people's negotiation of the structural and institutional environment of youth homelessness. I suggest that while existing literature on this topic concentrates mainly on micro-social encounters, the identities of young people experiencing homelessness can be understood as constructed by structural processes described by Ulrich Beck's individualisation thesis. Narratives from 20 Australian young people are analysed for how their identities are constructed in their contact with the institutions which govern youth homelessness, and the way these young people make sense of the structural conditions they are facing. Two narrative trajectories are identified. In narratives describing movement into homelessness, young people articulate feelings of failure and shame, consequences of their individualised understanding of their biography. In narratives describing movement out of homelessness into a home, young people articulate feelings of strength and pride, while also describing those who remain homeless in ways which reflect the status of homelessness as a stigmatised difference. This article concludes by discussing the way that structural, institutional and subjective processes interact to produce the identities of young people experiencing homelessness, and reflects on the utility of understanding youth homelessness as a form of individualised social inequality.

The metaphor of "monoculture on the intellectual landscape" is used to analyse the effects of large-scale research management regimes. The metaphor of "monoculture on the intellectual landscape", derived from Shiva's "monocultures of the mind", is developed and illustrated with respect to gender and ethnicity. The paper then discusses the production of knowledge in the context of monocultures of the mind, and concludes that large-scale research management regimes are inimical to healthy and diverse intellectual habitats.

The purpose of the current study was to benchmark a broad range of work practices and outcomes in Australian universities against other industries. Past research suggests occupational stress experienced by academic staff is worse than experienced by employees in other industries. However, no other practices or outcomes can be compared confidently. Using a well-validated and normed employee survey, responses were collected from 26 226 academic and general staff from 17 Australian universities. Results were compared against normative data from over 2000 organisations from other industries. Of the 31 practices and outcomes measured, 17 were significantly worse in universities and eight were significantly better. Fewer differences were observed, however, when university results were compared against a subset of benchmarks from large public sector organisations. Universities performed most poorly in areas such as cross-unit cooperation, processes, facilities, wellness and work-life balance. Conversely, higher scores were observed in role clarity, belief in mission and values, confidence and relationships with co-workers, and employee engagement. (Contains 1 table.)

In Australia, there has been a tendency to rely on quantitative indicators of university teaching quality. This has occurred partly because the indicators are perceived as objective and reliable and partly because they are relatively simple to gather and collate. A national project currently underway is based on the assumptions that teaching quality is multidimensional and that the identification and use of relevant indicators of teaching quality are dependent on the institutional environment. With a focus on student engagement, this paper outlines the research-based approach to developing indicators of teaching quality being taken by one Australian university participating in the national project. (Contains 4 figures.)

Learning in workplaces is always mediated through talk. It is tempting for management to seek to utilise everyday talk as part of learning and therefore enhance productivity. This paper examines the responses of workers to interventions that aim to formalise informal conversations at work as part of an explicit workplace learning strategy. It draws on interviews with managers and workers in a public sector organisation to examine their experience of these practices. The paper raises questions about whether interventions in the name of fostering informal learning may well be hindering what they seek to promote.

In this paper I use a governmentality framework to explore the growth of women's mentoring programmes in Australian universities over the last 10-15 years. These programmes are supported because they speak to institutional concerns with improving performance in a performative culture, while being seen to deal with the problem of gender inequity. I draw on the mentoring experiences of two women academics from a larger study to illustrate the ways women are governed and self-govern, and negotiate subjectivities through mentoring. This reading locates mentoring within a network of institutional power relations, in so doing unsettling the truths we hold about mentoring as always good and unproblematic. It offers an important account of why mentoring has become so popular in these places in these times and reflects on the implications for feminist political goals. (Contains 1 note.)

This paper explores the relationship between the diversity within a higher education system and five key factors, namely: the environment, policy intervention, funding, competition and co-operation, and ranking. The exploration is based on the extent to which higher education systems, particularly those of Australia and New Zealand, have accommodated distinctive forms of higher education institutions characterised by the older traditional university at one extreme, and the newer university of technology at the other. Twelve interdependent propositions on diversity are proposed and discussed. These propositions indicate the ways in which each of the five key factors may influence institutional diversity or convergence. In the majority of circumstances, the convergent tendencies of institutions will predominate unless very specific environmental and economic conditions prevail, and/or specific directed policy is implemented.

Staff interviews addressed the changing roles and relationships between principals of one-teacher schools and administrators of the North West Region of the New South Wales Department of School Education. Over a five-year period, the approaches employed by administrators to implement departmental policy changes altered significantly and resulted in principals embracing the concept of school-based management. (LP)

Higher education in Australia and the Netherlands illustrates two international trends: restructuring toward systems of fewer, larger institutions; and government tendencies to continue setting broad policies while decentralizing other responsibilities to institutions. Success in restructuring is attributed to the interaction of public policy and changing political and ideological environments. (SV)

The effects on principals in South Australia of Human Achievement Skills training, aimed at developing interpersonal, human relations, and personnel management skills, were measured by conducting interviews with trainees and staff members 3 months after training and by obtaining responses to organizational climate questionnaires before and after the training period. (PGD)

The Organizational Climate Description Questionnaire (OCDQ), modified by Thomas and Slater for use in South Australian schools in 1970, was based on four factors (rather than the original eight): principal supportiveness or operations emphasis and teacher disaffiliation or intimacy. A recent study in New South Wales has validated this four-factor schema. (TE)

A study of perceptions of the school climate among the students of two secondary schools over two years is reported. The measures used were a scale of teacher concern for students and a measure of student alienation. Differences by sex, school year, and school and their implications are examined. (MSE)

Argues that effective planning in Australian school systems must account for the attitude of everyone involved in the school's operation when developing youth policy. Describes the transition from school to work from the viewpoints of the educational system, administrative organization, classroom teachers, and students. Discusses the interconnectedness of these levels. (KO)

This case study explores the developmental practices and institutional environment which have supported the Warlpiri Education and Training Trust to build a sense of Aboriginal agency and ownership over efforts to promote development in remote central Australia. Drawing on interview data with practitioners and Aboriginal participants, the study demonstrates that flexible, adaptive practices which embrace learning and prioritise respectful relationships in pursuit of culturally appropriate fit-for-purpose governance is conducive to supporting Aboriginal-led development. The study further identifies the importance of institutional settings that enable this work, including relational leadership, long-term commitment, risk appetite, creating space for reflection and adaptation, and appropriate recruitment. It also identifies the constraints on the Warlpiri Education and Training Trust (WETT) within the contemporary political economy of Indigenous affairs, which limit the extent to which such practices and institutions can, by themselves, further Aboriginal-led development approaches. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores why women miss out in the transition from the educational system to the labour market. Using nationally representative longitudinal data (2001–18) from the Household Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia (HILDA) survey, we compare how long after graduation it takes men and women with tertiary qualifications (n = 2030) to achieve key labour market milestones: (1) getting a full-time job; (2) getting a permanent contract; (3) earning an average wage; (4) finding a job that matches their skill level. We find significant gender differences in reaching these milestones, confirming that time is a critical dimension for understanding gendered inequalities in the returns to education. We attribute findings to incompatible 'timescapes' across the institutions of education, family and employment. The more flexible timescape of education allows women to succeed, but the inflexible timescape of employment (particularly when combined with family responsibilities) impedes them from turning educational achievement into labour market progress. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Around the world, Indigenous people are preparing for futures of climate uncertainty and resource shortages. Indigenous communities are looking to the past and seeking guidance from their traditions – diverse systems of knowledge that change over time – so that they and future generations might nurture connections to the "deep time" of geological and human histories. In this essay we examine how the Wangan and Jagalingou Family Council in Australia and the Agua Caliente Band of Cahuilla Indians in the United States have taken long-term views on ecological sustainability and sovereignty. We focus on these two Indigenous communities on opposite sides of the Pacific Ocean because they are among the highest-profile battles over ancient groundwater in the past decade. Set against a backdrop of global settler state interference and exploitative economic practices, both cases reveal how the concept of kinscapes – or a shared sense of relatedness to interconnected ecosystems, histories, and places (or nodes) of belonging – can sharpen our understanding of environmental stewardship and its importance to Indigenous sovereignty. Whereas mining corporations and settler governments continue to make decisions with short- to medium-term objectives in mind, Wangan and Jagalingou and Agua Caliente leaders have used legal battles over groundwater to underscore their spiritual and physical connectedness with local environments. Like Indigenous communities around the world, the Wangan and Jagalingou Family Council and the Agua Caliente Band of Cahuilla Indians are making ontological choices by asserting their sovereignty through environmental stewardship. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the face of growing global tendencies of anti-globalization and de-globalization, emerging economy multinational enterprises (EMNEs) are suffering from a trust deficit and multiple liabilities of foreignness in leading economies. The purpose of this study is to empirically examine the coping strategies of EMNEs towards the challenging institutional environment in host countries. It adopts a qualitative approach, conducting longitudinal multiple cases studies among MNE subsidiaries and employing interviews as the main method of data collection. The findings reveal that EMNEs are not passive recipients of the adverse institutional environment and adopt institutional adaptation as the only response strategy. Given that a single strategy cannot be effective, they have developed both proactive and protective strategies to handle the multiple liabilities of foreignness and trust deficit. This study can help EMNEs gain a better understanding of the dominance effect and develop more effective measures to manage challenging institutional environments in host countries. Given that interactions between institutional environments and firm-level strategies of MNEs remain under-researched, this study advances understanding of strategies and behaviours of MNEs in host countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As early as the 1980s, the avalanche of innovative performance witnessed in the global economy has seen the rise of the entrepreneur. Entrepreneurship is recognized as being a vital factor that promotes social change through innovation, leading to opportunities for job and wealth creation, thereby improving the economy. The study of entrepreneurship is, therefore, an important consideration for the long-term social and economic development of a nation. The contemporary competitive globalized work environment requires a range of entrepreneurial skills, not only to start new ventures but also for these ventures to thrive and be sustainable. Being an entrepreneur is an occupation based on specific properties of entrepreneurship. An exploratory study was conducted with university students in Australia to ascertain students' views on entrepreneurship and study programs. The responses were compared with an audit of course offerings from Australian universities' websites to determine whether current programs meet students' expectations in relation to the skills and abilities required to be a successful entrepreneur. The findings suggest that Australian entrepreneurship study programs should be reconceptualized to provide specific experiential learning that enables graduates to hit the ground running in start-ups. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study investigates engagement activities higher education institutions have been providing to develop a learning culture as well as entrepreneurship skills for undergraduate entrepreneurship education learners in Australia. This research is intended to explore changes and adjustments made in the curriculum of undergraduate entrepreneurship education programmes in selected higher education institutions in Australia due to uncertainties caused by COVID-19. We focused on six Australian universities offering undergraduate entrepreneurship programmes, which were purposefully chosen. Data and information were gathered from the universities' websites, documents available from the same source, the universities' structure of engagement activities, and their curriculum. Previous literature was referred to for models already proposed and executed. By considering the COVID-19 crisis as well as similar types of future uncertainties, the study has identified the necessity of implementing open innovation and experiential learning models in a blended environment and having strong IT infrastructure for sustainable industry-university collaboration to facilitate a learning culture and develop entrepreneurship skills in undergraduate entrepreneurship education learners in Australia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: Although skilled migrants have a high capacity for integration, many report experiences of exclusion which impacts their ability to contribute fully to the host country. This experience of exclusion, which can diminish their self-efficacy at work, is especially acute for skilled migrants from non-English speaking backgrounds when functioning in a new or exclusionary environment. In this paper, we explore the relationship between workplace inclusion and self-efficacy and identify factors that contribute to perceived inclusion for skilled migrant workers. Design/methodology/approach: Participants were recruited through social network groups representing migrant workers via LinkedIn. Through snowball sampling, participants were asked to recommend recent (3–5 years) skilled migrants to participate. A total of 210 skilled migrant workers to Australia completed the survey. Structural equation modelling (SEM) is used to test our model on the relationship between inclusion and self-efficacy. Findings: Migrants' perceptions of inclusion at work are related to their self-efficacy at work. We also find that some dimensions of inclusion are more important than others in enhancing self-efficacy for skilled migrants. Meaningful exchanges with supervisors, a sense of belonging at work and workgroup cohesion (being accepted by co-workers) are more important than senior management support or getting involved in organizational social activities as determinants of perceived inclusion. Social implications: Although skilled migrants are often assumed to be a self-select group of highly motivated, high achieving workers, many experience poor adjustment and feel excluded after arriving in the host country. Public policies have limited effects in promoting inclusion of skilled migrant workers in organizations. These policies may be supplemented with an inclusive organizational climate to improve migrant worker success. Organizations and employers are thus critical partners in fostering migrant workers' sense of inclusion and supporting the career outcomes of skilled migrant workers in the host country. Originality/value: This study supports the link between perceived inclusion and self-efficacy among skilled migrant workers. It also sharpens the evidence of organizational-level factors that contribute to perceived inclusion for migrant workers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the past decade, a growing number of graduates, originally from key source countries of international students such as China and Viet Nam, have returned home after graduation from overseas universities. In particular, there seems to be a recent surge in the number of international graduates heading home due to the high unemployment, tightening migration, rising national protectionism and emerging challenges, exacerbated by the COVID‐19 pandemic, in major host countries such as Australia, the UK and the United States. While there has been emerging empirical research on international returning graduates' contributions to their home country development, little is known about graduates' own perceptions of the impacts of the contextual factors on their homecoming decision and their home labour market navigation. Draving on a qualitative study, this article responds to this critical gap in the literature by conceptualising returnee employability as a dynamic interactive process between multiple forces in the host and home labour markets and broader socio‐economic contexts, and between these forces and returnee agency. It identified interrelated contextual factors in the host and home contexts that drive Vietnamese graduates home, including challenges in securing migration, and insecure job prospects facing them in Australia and simultaneously, greater employment and business opportunities at home. In particular, the study found that contextual factors such as sector characteristics, types of employers, economic performance and cultural practices create an institutional environment, in which returnees' agency is enacted, resulting in different returnees' labour market navigation experiences and employment outcomes. Significant recommendations for key stakeholders in both home and host countries to support international graduate employability are provided. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the clearance of native forests and native vegetation for plantation establishment, otherwise known as forest conversion, in the state-owned plantations of New South Wales, Australia. It begins by describing Australia's forests, plantations, and forest conversion, continues with an outline of the history of public hardwood plantations in New South Wales, and explores the regulatory frameworks that allow this practice to happen, and the responses adopted by non-state environmental governance systems, notably forest certification, to address this problem. The paper presents a case study analysis of conversion in the hardwood plantations of northern NSW, and concludes that the current regulatory environment facilitates deforestation, with cumulative impacts at the landscape level, and that without government intervention, efforts to prevent this by non-state action will only be partially successful, leading to ongoing habitat and species loss. The failure of existing legislative and regulatory frameworks to adequately acknowledge, define, and prohibit conversion will remain an impediment to sustainable forest management, as the entry of such timber into the market contaminates supply chains, resulting in considerable reputation risk. Reform is needed in both public and private governance systems to ensure strong governance, effective planning, and ecosystem integrity at the landscape level. Recommendations are provided for policymakers. • A new methodology to identify original forest inside plantation areas via historical aerial imagery. • A detailed evaluation of a range of spatial datasets demonstrating the increase of plantation cover, potentially at the expense of native forest. • A case study identifying that forest conversion has occurred in public hardwood plantations managed by the Forestry Corporation of New South Wales. • There is an urgent need to undertake reform to ensure New South Wales does not fall foul of the EUDR, or the Glasgow Declaration. • More research is needed to determine how significant these conversion events are , and the impacts on flora and fauna, notably the koala. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Our article considers the ways in which changes to the governance, culture and missions of universities have raised significant health issues for staff and students. We report data which indicates that Australian university personnel in 2021 are 2.5 times more likely than the national population to work in a high-risk psychosocial climate. We examine the following features of universities that can threaten health: corporatisation; frequent restructuring; undue pressure to win grants and publish; excessive workloads and casualisation of staff; less democratic governance; a culture of fear and bullying; the use of slogans. These features create dilemmatic spaces and moral crises which affect the health and wellbeing of academics and their ability to perform at their best. Students are also affected in terms of tuition debts and a decline in the quality of the university experience. We conclude with a consideration of what a healthier university organisational environment might look like. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: This paper examines the extent to which actors from sectors other than health engaged with the South Australian Health in All Policies (HiAP) initiative, determines why they were prepared to do so and explains the mechanisms by which successful engagement happened. This examination applies theories of policy development and implementation.Methods: The paper draws on a five year study of the implementation of HiAP comprising document analysis, a log of key events, detailed interviews with 64 policy actors and two surveys of public servants.Results: The findings are analysed within an institutional policy analysis framework and examine the extent to which ideas, institutional factors and actor agency influenced the willingness of actors from other sectors to work with Health sector staff under the HiAP initiative. In terms of ideas, there was wide acceptance of the role of social determinants in shaping health and the importance of action to promote health in all government agencies. The institutional environment was initially supportive, but support waned over the course of the study when the economy in South Australia became less buoyant and a health minister less supportive of health promotion took office. The existence of a HiAP Unit was very helpful for gaining support from other sectors. A new Public Health Act offered some promise of institutionalising the HiAP approach and ideas. The analysis concludes that a key factor was the operation of a supportive network of public servants who promoted HiAP, including some who were senior and influential.Conclusions: The South Australian case study demonstrates that despite institutional constraints and shifting political support within the health sector, HiAP gained traction in other sectors. The key factors that encouraged the commitment of others sectors to HiAP were the existence of a supportive, knowledgeable policy network, political support, institutionalisation of the ideas and approach, and balancing of the economic and social goals of government. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper summarises findings from a study of the relationship between union membership and workplace climate. A survey of 1380 workers in three different Australian manufacturing firms found union membership to be negatively associated with workplace climate in one company, positively associated with workplace climate in another and to have no significant relationship to workplace climate in the third. These results, when linked to the findings from observational research and focus group discussions, indicated that when a business was only partially unionised, internal harmony and good workplace conditions were reasons for the existence of a positive relationship between workplace climate and union membership. However, when union-management relationships were fractious, the workplace climate was driven by that relationship with deleterious results for workplace harmony. The findings highlight the pivotal requirement for management to provide positive work environments and, when unions are involved, to work with them to achieve this outcome. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Climate change has developed into one of the most pertinent issues for government, organizations and society in the 21st century (Enkvist, Naucler, & Oppenheim, 2008; Gilman, Randall, & Shwartz, 2007; Lash & Wellington, 2007; Porter & Reinhardt, 2007; Quiggin, 2012). As a source of unpredictable events, climate change has disrupted the stability of the natural system (Winn, Kirchgeorg, Griffiths, Linnenluecke, & Günther, 2011), while the reactions of governments to these disruptions have destabilised the traditional regulatory systems (Esty & Charnovitz, 2012). Because organizations are sub-systems operating within national regulatory sub-systems within the global regulatory system, climate change has been a source of increasing complexity at all three levels (Hoffmann & Sgrò, 2011; Linnenluecke, Griffiths, & Winn, 2012; Winn et al., 2011). As a result climate change response is occurring at three interconnected levels: global, national and organisational. Organisational climate change responses are drawn from global responses, which in turn are drawn from national responses. In order to study how organisational responses are devolved from global and national responses, this paper conducted a case study of the Australian electricity sector. Through an in depth analysis of the three energy gentailers, this paper presents the strategies, measures and outcomes of organisational climate change responses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Organizations increasingly find themselves responding to unprecedented natural disasters that are experienced as complex, unpredictable, and harmful. We examine how organizations make sense and learn from these novel experiences by examining three Australian bushfires. We show how sensemaking and learning occurred during the public inquiries that followed these events, as well as how learning continued afterward with the help of “learning cues.” We propose a model that links public inquiry activities to changes in organizational practices. Given the interesting times in which we live, this model has important implications for future research on how new organizational practices can be enacted after public inquiries have concluded their work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Growing supermarket dominance and the expansion of own-label market share in Australia has put considerable pressure on agri-food manufacturers, and the recent movement of a number of manufacturing operations off-shore has attracted widespread attention. This paper examines the pursuit of an international manufacturing base by SPC Ardmona, one of Australia's major fruit and vegetable processors, with a focus on strategic alliances formed with Siam Foods in Thailand and Rhodes Food Group in South Africa/Swaziland. Strategic horizontal alliances have become increasingly important for manufacturers seeking to counter retailer dominance, yet have received little attention in the agri-food literature. The two alliances examined in this paper illustrate the profound importance of prevailing societal and institutional environments in which production networks 'touch-down', and their influence on firm-level dynamics of trust, motivation, corporate values, and strategic objectives. Horizontal alliances can offer a promising alternative to cut-throat competition and a 'race- to-the-bottom' between agri-food manufacturers. However, with own-label sourcing strategies deepening competition between geographically-disparate manufacturers, identifying compatible alliance partners is likely to become an increasingly greater challenge. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Environmental policy instruments generate transaction costs to public and private parties. There is a growing literature reporting on the size of transaction costs produced by environmental policy instruments. This paper extends that literature through an analysis of the factors that influence transaction costs in environmental policy and how this influence occurs. The theory based factors that influence transaction costs are categorised as: 1) transaction characteristics; 2) transactor characteristics; 3) nature of the institutional environment; and 4) nature of the institutional arrangements. We examined how these factors influenced transaction costs through the analysis of two Australian-based development offset schemes with different policy designs. We found evidence of all four theory-based categories of influence in the policy case studies. The degree of influence and how each factor influenced transaction costs varies across the two policies and between parties. Policy design as a component of the institutional environment had a particularly large bearing on transaction costs of offset buyers and the policy administrator. An important contribution to transaction cost theory assumes the institutional environment as given. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]