Knowledge-intensive service activities in the success of the Australian mining industry

No other industry in Australia has achieved a greater significance in economic development terms as mining. The mineral industries have built a national infrastructure throughout Australia for more than a century and Australia's minerals boom has produced generations of mining technology services (MTS) companies. This paper discusses the role of MTS firms in the transformation of the mining industry into the knowledge economy. Results from a study of Australian MTS and mining firms suggest that innovation results from the interaction of these firms through knowledge-intensive service activities.     

Managing the transformation to e‐government: An Australian perspective

Australia is recognized as a leading country in the move to an information economy, and the Australian government has played a pivotal role in this transformation. This commentary outlines some of the key issues confronting Australia as it moves towards its policy goal of achieving e‐government. Although governments differ in the pace and nature of reforms required to bring about the transformation to e‐government, many of the underlying issues are the same for most governments. © 2003 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Global production sharing: Exploring Australia's competitive edge

Cross‐border dispersion of production processes within vertically integrated global industries (“global production sharing”) has been an increasingly important structural feature of economic globalisation in the recent decades. This paper examines patterns and determinants of global production sharing with an emphasis on how Australian manufacturing fits into global production networks (GPNs). Though Australia is a minor player in GPNs, there is evidence that Australian manufacturing has a distinct competitive edge in specialised, skill‐intensive tasks in several industries such as aircraft, medical devices, machine tools, measuring and scientific equipment and photographic equipment. Specialisation in high‐value‐to‐weight components and final goods within GPNs, which are suitable for air transport, helps Australian manufacturing to overcome the “tyranny of distance” in world trade. Being predominantly “relationship specific,” Australian GPN exports are not significantly susceptible to real exchange rate appreciation.     

Australia's changing export pattern

Australia is frequently considered a farming country on the periphery of the world economy, whose exports are traditionally restricted to wheat, wool and dairy produce. However, this conception does not correspond anymore to the present shape of the Australian economy. After World War Il structural changes linked up the country with the world economy on a broader base, and Industrial products are becoming more and more Important to Australian exports. The following article deals with the determining factors of Australia's export oriented industrialisation and the future prospects for its progress from a farming country to an industrial nation.     

劳动密集型出口经济、FDI与中国经济发展——对于中国式“荷兰病”的实证检验

"荷兰病"并不仅仅局限于自然资源,也可能因任何一种造成外汇大量流入的事件所诱发。在对"荷兰病"和中国式"荷兰病"的相关文献进行分析的基础上,基于协同学原理计算了中国经济发展系统的有序度,并且运用加权最小二乘法对1990—2007年间劳动密集型出口经济、FDI依赖和中国经济发展系统有序度之间的关系进行了实证分析,以此来验证中国式"荷兰病"的存在性。回归结果显示,劳动密集型产品出口和外资流入促进了中国经济发展系统有序度的提高,中国式"荷兰病"效应目前并不存在。     

Resource curse impacts on the co-evolution of emerging economy institutions and firm internationalization

We investigate natural resource “curse” impacts on co-evolutionary relationships between emerging economy institutions and firm internationalization. We discuss how these relationships challenge and extend IB institutional research using three predominant resource curse characteristics (boom and bust cycles with related public discourse and “Dutch Disease” with associated manufacturing sector investment crowd-out). These characteristics alter regulative, normative and cognitive institutional impacts on state- and privately-owned firm internationalization during an emerging economy’s resource curse. We develop propositions describing these processes using oil and gas, manufacturing and service sector examples in several emerging economies. We discuss our theoretical contributions to the resource curse and international business literatures and outline future research directions.     

A note on the influence of saving behaviors on economic growth

The Kaldor model describes the dynamics of economic growth over time. Many works showed that a large variety of qualitative dynamics can be produced depending on the economic assumptions. This work provides conditions to mark boundaries during boom and bust cycles, investigating how saving behaviors of workers and shareholders and elasticity of substitution between capital and labor influence the growth dynamics of non‐developed, developing and developed countries considering general and specific technologies of production. The results obtained can be used by policy‐makers to increase the lower level an economy can reach during boom and bust periods and reduce fluctuations.     

Environmental factors of food literacy in Australian high schools: views of home economics teachers

This study set out to examine environmental factors impacting on the food literacy of adolescents. It utilized data from a nation‐wide survey of home economics teachers regarding their experience of food literacy education in Australian high schools. Content analysis and the ANGELO framework were applied to analyse free‐text comments from 78 of the respondents that were collected as part of a more extensive data set. The analysis of environmental factors revealed three enablers and ten barriers that could influence food literacy education delivered by high schools in Australia. High schools are well positioned to improve adolescents’ food literacy through a comprehensive, hands‐on approach in home economics. However, many environmental barriers were reported that could influence food literacy education in Australian high schools such as: lack of teaching materials and facilities, and human resources; the perceived inadequacy of the Australian school curriculum; non‐supportive school canteens; and negative role modelling. This study points to the need to eliminate or reduce these environmental barriers impacting on the capacity for effective food literacy education in high schools to help adolescents increase their food literacy and thereby support them in making informed food choices.     

澳大利亚对华反倾销法律政策演变和最新发展

自1996年以来,澳大利亚对华反倾销法律政策不断调整?最初澳大利亚认为中国是“非市场经济国家”．后承认中国为“转型经济国家”。判断转型经济国家的正常价值标准由“价格控制”测试变为“市场条件主导”测试。由于澳大利亚海关法作了最新修正,且中澳正在进行双边自由贸易区谈判,澳大利亚目前正处在是否承认中国完全市场经济地位的分水岭时期。     

Buy Australian Made

The Australian Federal Government introduced in 1994 the Trade Practices Amendment (Origin Labelling) Bill in the House of Representatives, Parliament of Australia, to establish a scheme to govern representations about the origin of consumer goods. This amendment to the Trade Practices Act (1974) applies only to Australian products, and provides two labelling alternatives, that is Product of Australia (no imported components and processing has been done completely in Australia) and Made in Australia (with some imported components). The Origin Labelling Bill 1994 is currently pending in the Senate, Parliament of Australia, for various reasons.Apart from the investigation into legal matters, a major aim of the research to be reported here was to question the impact of country of origin on the consumers' buying decision process, and in particular the impact of the Australian Made logo on sales of consumer goods. This logo is provided by the Advance Australia Foundation as a part of the Buy Australian Made campaign, started in 1986 to reduce the Australian import penetration.A Townsville-based consumer survey, conducted as a part of the research, showed that price, quality, and value for money were the over-riding factors in purchasing decisions. The survey sampled 647 interviewed consumers, and included an experiment in which business shirts and tea bags were used to determine reactions to country of manufacture information. It was found, for example, that the addition of a logo to a shirt had no positive influence on the Australian shirt's propensity to be selected as the preferred shirt when compared to the imported shirts.     

Labour Responses to Globalization: The Australian Experience by Bernard McKenna

This contribution deconstructs globalization using a critical discourse method. Taking Australia as its case study, the essay argues that globalization must be seen within the context of hypercapitalism and the unchallenged hegemony of neo-classical economics and neo-liberal politics. The Australian experience, it is argued, shows that trade unions should refuse to be incorporated into this hegemony presented as technocratic alchemy. In fact, deconstruction reveals that globalist claims rest upon highly contestable tautological claims. This essay briefly describes Australian political economy 1983-96 when the Labor government, in an ‘accord’ with the trade union movement, embraced free-market globalism; critically deconstructs the ideological features that underlie the technocratic claims made about the benefits of globalization; and argues for a resurgent unionism and traditional labourism that dialectically challenges the inequitable and destructive features of contemporary hypercapitalism.     

Australian Exports of Dairy Products

Abstract

Exports of dairy products are becoming increasingly important in terms of export earnings for Australia. The industry is the fourth highest foreign exchange earner compared to all Australia's food exports. However, Australian exports of dairy products account for about 67 per cent of the total Australian production of dairy products, and about 13 per cent of total world exports of dairy products. About 68 per cent of Australian dairy products exports are sold on Asian markets. The purpose of this paper is to examine the challenging issues and opportunities for Australian exports of dairy products on world markets and to identify potential and emerging export markets for Australian dairy products. Australia is highly restricted on its access to world dairy product markets by the impact of export subsidies and other trade barriers of overseas markets. The current economic and political crises in Asia are also not favourable to maintain export sales on some of the Asian markets. The export support scheme in Australia has made exporting attractive relative to domestic sales. But it is anticipated that the termination of the scheme after June 2000, will reduce production and exports by 6 and 20 per cent, respectively in the short run. However, in the long run, resources will be efficiently used without government intervention and Australian dairy products will also be competitive on the domestic market. There is scope for greater market opportunities in the emerging markets in Asia and other parts of the world for Australian dairy products. Australia will also benefit from the agreement on international trade that directs exporting countries to reduce export subsidy and remove nontariff trade barriers on exports of dairy products. Australia should implement appropriate measures to inaease the milk yield per cow, to improve the quality of dairy products and to identify the need for market promotion and research in order to increase the volume of dairy product exports on world markets, especially in Asia and other potential markets such as Middle East, Africa, Europe and the Americas.     

Merger Impacts on Investor Expectations: An Event Study for Australia

In previous work, little evidence of share‐price response to Australian price‐fixing investigations was found. However, these investigations often involve a small part of a company’s operations and antitrust penalties have tended to be relatively small; in fact, some weak support was found for a greater response by investors when penalties were expected to be more significant. Mergers, on the other hand, clearly represent a much more significant event, and we would anticipate a clearer share‐price response both to announced mergers and to associated antitrust challenges. While such studies have been done in other countries (primarily for the US), we know of no prior research of this sort for Australia. In this paper we focus on a sample of about 50 mergers and acquisitions involving Australian companies from 1996 to 2003, examining the impact on share prices of the announcement of these mergers both on the firms involved and on rival firms. For those which were challenged by the Australian antitrust enforcers, we also consider the impact of the announcement of such a challenge.     

Australian migrants’ social cultural adaptation and consumption behaviour towards food and alcohol

Australia is one of the most successful multicultural countries in the world due to successive waves of migration from Europe and recently Asia. Nonetheless, new migrants coming to Australia are not always able to adapt to Australian culture due to language and cultural barriers. Hence, the purpose of this study is to segment migrants based on their cultural adaptation and subsequently to examine similarities and differences between those segments in regards to their health‐related behaviour (i.e., alcohol and food consumption). A cross‐sectional study of migrants in Australia (N = 408) suggests that migrants from Asia have the greatest difficulty in adapting to the local culture due to language barriers. This study will assist public policy makers and social marketers in creating effective campaigns and interventions to reduce excessive alcohol consumption and obesity among migrants.     

Consumer Concerns Relating to Food Labeling and Trust—Australian Governance Actors Respond

This study aims to report and critically analyze the responses of governance actors to a set of consumers' concerns relating to food labeling, and by doing so describe how these actors construct both consumer perspectives and the food policy environment in which they work. Fifteen food‐labeling governance actors in Australia and New Zealand were asked to view an online presentation of the findings from a previous study exploring consumer perspectives on food labeling and trust before completing a one‐hour, in‐depth, semi‐structured interview. Colebatch's social constructionist perspective on policy was adopted in the analysis. Participants used their own constructions of Australian food policy, the role of labeling and consumer trust as a means to minimize the consumer concerns. Inadequate critical engagement with the moral dimension of consumer concerns is a core driver of the inertia demonstrated in the Australian government's approach to addressing consumer concerns regarding food matters.     

Employer training in Australia: current practices and concerns

This paper presents and analyses results from a research project on current trends in employer training in Australia. While the formal vocational education and training (VET) system is well‐researched, the everyday training that happens in workplaces is relatively under‐researched in Australia. Using some of the results of an employer survey undertaken in 2015, the paper describes and analyses employer‐based training across a range of industry areas. The survey included groups of questions on a range of matters, including the reasons why employers train, and how these relate to employers’ perceptions of their operating environment, and the structures they have in place to manage and organize training. Detailed data are provided about three specific forms of training: in‐house training and learning; the use that employers make of external providers of training; and employers’ use of nationally recognised training – training from the VET system. Finally the paper reports what managers said about the barriers to providing more training. The paper analyses the findings in relation to the literature and also identified changes over time in training practices in Australian companies. Implications for training policy and practice, as well as for future research, are identified.     

建立中国和澳大利亚自由贸易区的经济影响分析及政策建议

加入世贸组织后,中国逐渐重视双边自由贸易协定的积极作用,继中国-东盟(“10+1”)自由贸易区之后,中国和澳大利亚的自由贸易协定正在协商之中。本文目的是研究中国和澳大利亚建立自由贸易区后对中澳两国和其他国家的经济影响。本文采用全球贸易分析模型,对自由化方案作了分析,研究结果表明:中澳两国间存在明显的经济互补性,建立自由贸易区将改进两国和世界总福利,澳大利亚的农业和工业都将受益,农业部门所得利益大于工业部门,中国所得利益全部来自劳动力密集型的工业部门,而农业部门会受到一定的冲击。最后,基于模拟分析结果,提出应对措施和政策建议。     

The Development of Large Scale Enterprise in Australia, 1910–64

This essay explores the development of large scale enterprise in Australia, an economy in which resource industries were unusually important and with a very small domestic market. Using asset size as a yardstick, the authors construct a series of the 100 largest firms operating in the years 1910, 1930, 1952 and 1964. These lists allow the identification of firms by industry and whether they were foreign-owned. Cross-country comparisons are also made. Further, the authors discuss the more qualitative aspects of Australian large scale enterprise in the context of whether these firms approximated the competitive capitalism of the United States or the family capitalism of Britain. They concluded that Australian firms displayed little of the dynamism of the leading firms in the United States. Protectionist government policies explain part of this behavioural trait.     

An Examination of Helping Behavior—Some Evidence from Australia

ABSTRACT

This paper examines whether variables included in existing models of helping behavior (also referred to giving behavior), as developed in the US and Europe, apply in Australia. The results of two focus groups suggest that variables included in these models generally do apply to the Australian context, however, some differences also exist. First, donors perceive that governmental support of charities in Australia is high and thus causes are perceived to be less likely to need individual support. Second, respondents placed more emphasis on intrinsic variables as compared to extrinsic variables. Third, the emphasis placed on the importance of factors influencing helping behavior in Australia seems to differ to what is suggested in the existing literature. A discussion highlighting differences and similarities between the qualitative findings and previous works are presented. The significance of these results is discussed in relation to model building and managerial implications in an Australian context are also identified.     

Local integration and co‐evolution of internationalizing Chinese firms

This study investigates the integration of internationalizing Chinese firms into local host markets. We explore the market‐driven investment of a new wave of Chinese private and local state‐owned firms in Australia since 2012, which has replaced the initial large‐scale investment in resources by central state‐owned enterprises. Using an in‐depth analysis of nine Chinese firms operating in various sectors of the Australian market, we argue that market integration, adaptation, and bilateral institution‐building through co‐evolution and empowerment of local subsidiaries of Chinese multinational enterprises results in entrepreneurial autonomy and characterizes a new generation of Chinese investors. We propose that Chinese multinational subsidiaries have transferred domestic practices to the Australian market and have reconfigured domestic and host market resources to gain a competitive advantage in their original investment industry and new industries. Our study advances middle‐range theory building and provides a practical understanding of the strengths and weaknesses of Chinese investors, their potential to disrupt local markets, and their responsiveness to market‐oriented institutional guidance. The results of this study suggest that the bilateral institution‐building and resource reconfiguration capabilities of Chinese enterprises can be transferred to other developed and developing markets, including Belt and Road Initiative countries.