Communication for Poverty Alleviation: How Aid and Development Agencies in New Zealand View the Relationships Between Communication and Development

A highly debated topic of the last few decades has centred on the idea of communication as a means for poverty reduction. With two-thirds of the world's population living in poverty, there is a dire need to understand why global poverty and inequality continue to increase, and what role communication can, and is playing in the fight against poverty. This study therefore seeks to understand how three aid and development agencies in New Zealand, New Zealand Aid (NZAID), Oxfam New Zealand (NZ), and Christian World Service (CWS), construct poverty in the context of international development. Additionally it seeks to establish how these three organisations view relationships between communication and poverty. Eleven semi-structured, in-depth interviews with key informants were conducted, transcribed, and analysed in order to extract information surrounding the issues of poverty and international development. From this analysis, it is evident that these three organisations recognise official and unofficial definitions of poverty. It is also apparent that these definitions of poverty affect the ways in which these organisations view the causes of poverty, as well as their outlook on international development. Furthermore, three topics emerged when examining relationships between communication and poverty: communication with local people and local organisations, communication about local people and local organisations, and dealing with communication issues through accountability, transparency, and legitimacy. Implications on communication and development theory as well as theory on the discursive constructions of poverty are addressed. Finally, this study addresses practical implications for aid and development agency practice, and offers recommendations for further study in the area development communication

The collectors : Naval, Army and Air Intelligence in the New Zealand Armed Forces during the Second World War

This thesis examines the performance of the intelligence collection organisations of the armed services of New Zealand during the Second World War. It considers the intelligence bodies of the Navy, the Army and the Air Force and looks at their growth, development and demise, and assesses their effectiveness as intelligence organisations. The question of how much New Zealand could be expected to achieve in the field of intelligence arises, not least because New Zealand was demographically small, had a long coastline and was geographically relatively remote. How much could New Zealand contribute to the Allied cause in intelligence terms is another issue, and what forms did any participation take? Were there lessons to be learned from the wartime experience (there were, but they went for the most part largely unheeded)? New Zealand, like other countries, had a fragmented approach to intelligence collection, making for a degree of complexity over a range of activity, despite the intelligence organisations being of modest size. The examination of the organisations in this thesis includes multi-service and multi-departmental dimensions along with the production of useful intelligence. Whether good use was made of intelligence collected is another matter. There was a substantial amount of liaison, contact and practice between departments of state as to various aspects of intelligence, the Organization for National Security and coastwatching being two notable areas. The overarching role and limitations of the Organization for National Security with regard to intelligence is explored, and the development of a combined intelligence centre examined. The participation of New Zealand signals intelligence organisations in the great Allied interception offensive is detailed, along with the mundane but fundamental task of coastal surveillance. The establishment and spectacular decline of the first local independent security service is traced. Both the intelligence and security aspects of the Army's operationally deployed units are covered, along with the growth of RNZAF air intelligence. The effectiveness of all of these organisations could hardly be expected to be uniform, and indeed it was not. Some bodies succeeded in their collection roles beyond expectations, others were reasonably effective, and two organisations failed dismally in different ways, for a number of reasons. If a pattern emerges at all, it is that small single service component-type intelligence sections collecting operational intelligence were the most effective New Zealand intelligence organisations. Operational focus and. operational requirements underlay the drive for successful collection. Most significant within the Allied context were the signals intelligence bodies. At the other end of the scale, larger co-operative interdepartmental New Zealand intelligence ventures failed to deliver projected results. New Zealand's armed forces had an interesting variety of intelligence contributions during the Second World War. Of these, the most effective organisations collected intelligence to meet directed operational requirements

The application of job analysis, the O*NET and competency modelling in New Zealand organisations

The present study aimed to gain an understanding of the extent to which human resource professionals are using and applying job analysis, the Occupational Information Network (O*NET) and competency modelling in New Zealand organisations. This study also explored the research-practice gap in job analysis, as examined through the O*NET and the influence of Taylor and Cable's (2004) article on the O*NET database. An online questionnaire was completed by 107 participants, who were members of the Human Resource Institute of New Zealand research stream. Findings suggest there is high awareness of job analysis, however the application of job analysis in the organisation is commonly hindered by the limited understanding and knowledge amongst human resource professionals. Findings on competency modelling suggest, there has been a possible increase in the application of competency modelling in organisations since Markus, Cooper-Thomas and Allpress (2005) study. The article by Taylor and Cable (2004) has had little influence on the application of the O*NET, suggesting a potential research-practice gap is present in the job analysis area. Specifically, the O*NET database could benefit Human Resource Management (HRM), through supporting the development of job descriptions and person specifications. Human resource professionals could benefit further from extending their awareness of job analysis and competency modelling to the application of these processes in HRM. The need for future research and practical implications for HRM and organisational psychology are discussed

Keynote Address: Barriers and incentives to Māori participation in the profession of psychology

It is well known that Māori are overrepresented within the client group of psychologists. Despite ongoing attempts to recruit and retain more Māori within the discipline of psychology, the numbers of Māori psychologists continues to remain low, raising serious concerns about the ability of the profession to effectively meet the needs of its clientele. The objectives of this study were to identify the, barriers to, and incentives for improving the recruitment and retention of Māori in the profession of psychology and Māori to gain and maintain registration as psychologists. This paper is based on the full report provided to the New Zealand Psychologists’ Board. The findings in this study clearly demonstrate that in order to attract Māori to participate in psychology, the majority of environments need to change substantially. It is simply not enough for organisations, whether they are educational, professional, or service delivery agencies, to identify the need for more Māori psychologists, yet still fail to commit to, and actively engage in, altering long identified environmental factors that are barriers to Māori participation

DXC Dandelion Program: 2018 in Review

[Excerpt] 2018 was another very successful year for the DXC Dandelion Program. DXC established a number of new, critical partnerships that continue to propel autism at work programs to the forefront of workplace inclusion. This has resulted in the program growing significantly throughout the year. DXC has now successfully established seven teams across four states in Australia, employing over 80 people on the autism spectrum

Evaluating whether a change in organisational structure would improve its competitive advantage

The purpose of this research is to study and analyse the internal and external structure of Ultimate Clean ltd, where I do work. We have put concentration on background of the company in the starting. This information is followed by aim and scope of research, which shows that what is the research question and what is scope of our research. After that Literature review is elaborated under five main subheadings. These subheading gives us deep information about the literature of organisation structure, competitive advantage. After that, Organisational context with internal and external analyse of the company is given which highlight the strengths, weaknesses, threats and opportunities of the company. Some external factors like political, economic, social and legal, are also discussed in this report. Then some information is given for method of research that why we use it, where and when it is used. Some limitations are also discussed in this report of method. After this, result section comes. In this section, we discussed deeply about the answers of customers, employees and employer. We prepare a discussion of the result and conclude it wisely. In the end, some recommendations are also given to improve organisational structure of Ultimate Clean ltd. We suggest a new structure for the organisation to develop within company to have a good competitive advantage in market place. A big list of references is also given in the end of this report