Enigmatic exchange mechanisms in modern societies: Community and business barter and international countertrade

Modem domestic barter systems are operating in Australia and other high-income countries at the local community level, and at the national level for business exchanges. Both governments and firms practise countertrade at the international level. These exchange regimes appear to have become institutionalised in a macromarketing system which is organised on the primacy of market exchange based on price as the coordinating device. In this paper, explanations for this enigma are presented with a particular emphasis on the Australian context.     

Analysis on the exchange rate of Australian dollar

Australian dollar （AUD） maintains a fluctuant increase for long period, but in recent two years, this currency represents an anomalistic change. In order to forecast the trend of AUD, this essay examines the exchange rate of AUD in then years from March of 2000 to March of 2010, and argues the factors which create these trend changes. By means of secondary research and graphs analysis, the relevant evidence and argument was selected into four terms below： relative raw materials prices changes, relative domestic price level and Import-Expert changes, relative interest rate changes, and other factors. The examples based on the theoretics, graphs, statistics and experts＇ opinions.     

An analysis of Australian exchange traded options and warrants

This study focuses on the price discovery process in Australian option and warrant markets. Characterizing these two markets in terms of their cost structures and institutional features, we formally test competing price discovery hypotheses. The general findings indicate that the warrants market is the dominant market suggesting that their lower trading cost outweigh their less attractive institutional features. Additionally, we find that idiosyncratic differences among firms may result in a clientele effect thus providing justification for the coexistence of these seemingly redundant markets.     

Attitudes to pay systems:an exploratory study within and across cultures

The present study investigates employees’preferences for criteria that are used in pay systems, namely, performance, cost of living, tenure, educational qualification, collective bargaining, skill, market rate, responsibility and special demands. The study also explored variation and similarities of employees’preferences for the criteria across four countries, namely Australia (N = 162), Indonesia (N = 100), Malaysia (N = 129) and Hong Kong (N = 39). The results indicate that the respondents prefer multiple criteria to determine their pay. Preferences for length of service and educational attainment were found to be significantly different across countries, particularly between Australian and Asian samples (Indonesian and Malaysia). This variation is, in part, attributed to cultural differences. Other variables, such as age, educational qualification, position, and industry sector, have been found to be significant correlates of preference for pay systems. Implications for reward management have been discussed.     

Australia's regional innovation systems: inter-industry interaction in innovative activities in three Australian territories

Regional specifics reveal in differences in economic activity and structure, the institutional, socio-economic and cultural environment and not least in the capability of regions to create new knowledge and to generate innovations. Focusing on the regional level, this paper for three Australian territories (New South Wales, Victoria and Queensland) explores patterns of innovative activities in their private business sectors. Furthermore, these patterns are compared to specifics of each region's economic structure. We make use of input–output-based innovation flow networks, which are directed and weighted instead of binary. The value added of the proposed analysis is that we are able to trace a variety of different aspects related to the structure of innovative activities for each territory. It gets evident that mostly innovative activities in each territory are not strong in ‘niche’ branches but in fields of intense economic activity, signalising the high path-dependency of innovative activities in a specific geographical environment.     

Human capital enhancing HRM systems and frontline employees in Australian manufacturing SMEs

The current study seeks to answer a number of key questions concerning the strategic management of frontline employees (e.g. individuals who do not occupy an executive, managerial or supervisory role in functions such as production, maintenance, service and clerical functions) and their contributions towards the performance of small- and medium-sized manufacturing firms in Australia. This study adopts a human capital perspective to examine the employee and organisational performance of small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in Australia. We were also interested in seeking to examine the presence of the human resource management (HRM) function of SMEs in Australia and their contribution towards employee and firm performance. Findings from the partial least square analysis identified the antecedents and consequences of a human capital enhancing (HCE) approach for the strategic HRM of frontline employees in Australia's manufacturing industry. Strategic orientations of small- and medium-sized manufacturing firms mediate the contribution of the HRM function in adopting a set of HCE HRM systems. HCE HRM system was found to have a direct and indirect impact on manufacturing performance outcomes. Frontline employees' performance was found to mediate the impact of HCE HRM system on manufacturing performance outcomes. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed in relation to the management of frontline employees in enhancing perceived employee and manufacturing performance.     

Manifested Attitudes: Intricacies of Inter-Partner Learning in Collaboration

abstract    This article is concerned with attitudes to learning in inter-organizational collaboration. Basic attitudes to learning evident in extant research – selfish , sharing and sidelined – are compared with those observed through research-oriented action research. A conceptualization based on a characterization of the attitudes observed in the research situations is produced. It models attitudes to learning in collaboration as bundles of varied stances relating to taking and giving knowledge from or to a partner, or excluding learning from the agenda altogether. The observations suggest that actual attitudes – which are evident at individual, community or organizational level – are much more varied than the basic attitudes and that they often include elements of all three – sidelined , selfish and sharing – motivations. The model acknowledges differences in perceptions of attitudes, differences of attitudes within partner organizations as well as between them, and differences in partners' attitudes to each other over time.     

Kidney exchange: Further utilization of donors via listed exchange

There is a set of incompatible patient–donor pairs and these pairs are matched pairwise. A match between two pairs corresponds to a paired kidney donation, where pairs exchange donated kidneys, or a paired listed exchange, where the first donor donates a kidney to the deceased donor wait-list, the first patient receives the kidney of the second donor, and the second patient receives a priority on the wait-list. We characterize the set of exchanges with the maximum number of transplants from the set of pairs. This characterization generalizes the well-known Gallai–Edmonds Decomposition Theorem.     

未来社区:社区建设的未来图景

未来社区是在我国语境下人们追求跨越简单居住模式的新的生产-生活-生态耦合模式。未来社区是破解我国社会主要矛盾的突破口,为加快新型城镇化进程提供新方案,是培育新的经济增长点的新场景。未来社区的建设试点,存在邻里塑造客观障碍、新兴场景制度瓶颈、技术应用潜在风险、各方利益平衡难题等可能的风险与难点,需要从顶层设计、微观建设、制度创新、营造模式等方面系统推进。     

Ranking participants in tournaments by means of rating functions

In this paper we bring a novel approach to the theory of tournament rankings. We combine two different theories that are widely used to establish rankings of populations after a given tournament. First, we use the statistical approach of paired comparison analysis to define the performance of a player in a natural way. Then, we determine a ranking (and rating) of the players in the given tournament. Finally, we show, among other properties, that the new ranking method is the unique one satisfying a natural consistency requirement.     

A report on an Australian experiment at attempting to increase innovation and entrepreneurship within the community: Results of efforts over four years

The article reports on an initiative by the Australian government to increase the level of innovation and entrepreneurship in the country. The initiative took the form of three workshops which eventually had all sectors of the community actively involved. The methodology and results are discussed as well as some of the reasons why not all the aims were met.     

Measuring efficiency in Australian Schools: A preliminary analysis

In this paper, we apply a public sector Data Envelopment Analysis model to estimate the efficiency of Australian primary and secondary schools. Standard microeconomic production theory showing the transformation of inputs into outputs is extended to allow nondiscretionary environmental variables characteristic of educational production. Failure to properly control for the socioeconomic environment leads to inappropriate comparisons and biased efficiency estimates. We employ a conditional estimator that does not allow a school with a better environment to serve as a benchmark for a school with a worse environment. The results suggest that Australian schools are moderately inefficient and that efficiency increases for the quintile of schools with the most favorable environment. Further, efficiency gains are realized with increasing enrollment.     

Dual Commitment: Contract Workers in Australian Manufacturing Enterprises

A growing trend in employment practices is for firms to concentrate on their core functions and outsource peripheral activities. While an assessment of the economic benefits of outsourcing has been the subject of a number of research projects, little attempt has been made to evaluate the impact of such practices on employee commitment. This is the purpose of this paper. The central questions are can employees be committed to their employer and to their host enterprise, and what determines each form of commitment? The research is based on a survey of employees working for a major labour hire firm. The key finding of the research is that employees can have a dual commitment, although different factors influence commitment to the employer and to the host firm.     

Work absence in industrialised societies: the Australian case

In this paper, Bob Crawford and Sam Volard present an analysis of the causes for temporary non-approved work absence in which they isolate the extent of the ‘sickie’ in Australian industry. They suggest areas in which management can properly institute programmes which are likely to reduce the incidence of this largely avoidable and costly organisational problem.     

人民币汇率:缓解升值压力,加快制度改革

近一段时间人民币汇率在内外因的共同作用下升值压力巨大,盯住美元的固定汇率制度已经不符合当前中国的经济形势,但是完全放开人民币汇率让其自由浮动在现有条件下也是行不通的,以市场供求为基础的有管理的浮动汇率制度才是目前的最佳选择.     

人民币汇率:缓解升值压力,加快制度改革

近一段时间人民币汇率在内外因的共同作用下升值压力巨大,盯住美元的固定汇率制度已经不符合当前中国的经济形势,但是完全放开人民币汇率让其自由浮动在现有条件下也是行不通的,以市场供求为基础的有管理的浮动汇率制度才是目前的最佳选择。     

The embedding process of community ventures: creating a music festival in a rural community

Community entrepreneurship is a potentially powerful mechanism to improve the well-being of rural communities. To mobilize inhabitants for collective action, an emerging community venture must be embedded within a local community. Yet, the embedding process of community ventures is not well understood. Accordingly, this study explores how a community entrepreneur (CE) embedded an emerging community venture into a rural community and simultaneously stimulated social change in the community. Drawing on a longitudinal case study of a CE who created a jazz music festival in a rural Norwegian community, a dynamic conceptual framework was developed that highlights the roles and mechanisms that support the embedding process. The CE promoted social change by introducing external impulses to the local community and assumed a bridging role between the villagers and external actors in the embedding process. Some villagers assumed local embedding roles, while several external actors assumed external embedding roles. I identified four strategies that were used to increase the embeddedness of the community venture in the rural community and one strategy that was used by the CE to de-embed the venture in order to avoid constraints imposed by the local community. The importance of the different roles and mechanisms changed over time.