The impact of corporatisation and management reform on the role and working life of managers in an Australian electricity utility: A triangulated study, 1994-2002

For decades electricity has been a critical source of energy for all major industries, nationally and internationally. In 2002 the Australian electricity supply industry had assets in excess of $86 billion and accounted for more than 1.4 percent of gross domestic product. It is a major employer with more than 33,000 people serving more than 8 million customers. This study explores the impact of corporatisation and management reform on the role and working life of managers within the broader context of this industry. It is an industry identified by academics, commentators and the business media over the past two decades as one of poor management performance and inefficiencies - often seen as significant contributors to historically high electricity costs to consumers in Australia. As a result, electricity utility reform has been high on the agenda of national and state governments from the early 1980\u27s and throughout the 1990\u27s. Macro and micro economic reforms driven by significant government sponsored reports were considered central to Australia\u27s efforts to improve its economic position. Underpinning this orthodoxy was the call for managerial responsibilities and incentives for managers of public utilities to be redefined in accord with the government\u27s objectives. Managerialism became the ideological driver for management reform and corporatisation. This in tum became the major change process employed by state governments seeking micro (agency level) economic reforms. These economic reforms incorporated efficiency, productivity and contestability considerations in line with National Competition Policy

Simulation Using a Standardized Patient to Measure Perception and Congruency of Spiritual Care for a Veteran from Three Perspectives to Inform Nursing Education and Practice

Spiritual care refers to a purposeful process of helping another find meaning and purpose in life through a mutual connection. Providing spiritual care is a professional nursing mandate, yet nurses report barriers in education and practice. Veterans want spiritual care to promote quality of life, and to cope with military experiences and chronic conditions. Patients report receiving less than desired spiritual care and nurses report infrequent provision of spiritual care. It is also unclear how congruent patients and nurses are in their perceptions of spiritual care. A spiritual care simulation and performance checklist was developed using a review of the literature, content validity expert review, and pilot testing. Forty registered nurses (RNs) who provide care for veterans engaged in a 10-minute simulation and 10-minute debriefing with a standardized patient (SP). To assess congruence in perceived performance of spiritual care, the RN, SP, and independent observer (IO) completed the checklist independently before debriefing. RN participants completed the Spiritual Care Inventory before and after the simulation to determine whether the simulation/debriefing experience affected their perceived ability to provide spiritual care. Interrater congruence supports construct validity for three checklist items (anxiety, physical suffering, and chaplain). Lack of congruence could be due to different raters, need for checklist revision, and nursing education. Findings support simulation and debriefing as an effective strategy for improving RN perceived ability to provide spiritual care (p \u3c .001). Keywords: content validity index, education, kappa statistic, nursing, simulation, spirituality, spiritual care, standardized patient, veteran

A COEVOLUTIONARY APPROACH TO UNDERSTANDING THE PARADOX OF SOCIAL PRESSURES VERSUS ECONOMIC EFFICIENCY ACROSS THE WORLD'S FOOD CHAINS

Institutional and Behavioral Economics,

A Combined Fuzzy Goal Programming and Big-Bang Big-Crunch Algorithm for Workforce Optimisation with Facility Layout Consideration

Small scale enterprises constitute an important subset of manufacturing economy and the contribution of facility redesign in bridging the performance gaps in small-scale enterprises is necessary for enterprise growth and stability. In this paper, a bi-objective programming-based facility layout design problem is formulated. We minimise workforce costs and maximise efficiency improvement in a layout. We utilised fuzzy goal programming and big-bang big-crunch algorithm in generating a Pareto solution. The model was tested using a small-scale sachet water production enterprise data. Increase in finished goods area was 66.55% while reduction in total annual distance travelled in the facility was 48.22% when the proposed layout was compared with existing one. Reduction in annual cost of labour was 16.2%. The possibility of using work-centres with high number of interrelationship was confirmed using quality function deployment and Hurwicz criterion. The optimal workforce size was found to be 14 workers against the existing workforce strength of 18 workers. The study provides a framework upon which small-scale sachet water production factories can be designed for optimum performance

Sharp Estimates of the Embedding Constants for Besov Spaces

Sharp estimates are obtained for the rates of blow up of the norms of embeddings of Besov spaces in Lorentz spaces as the parameters approach critical values.Sharp estimates are obtained for the rates of blow up of the norms of embeddings of Besov spaces in Lorentz spaces as the parameters approach critical values

Sharp Estimates of the Embedding Constants for Besov Spaces bs p,q, 0 < p < 1

Sharp estimates are obtained for the rates of blow up of the norms of embeddings of Besov spaces bs p,q in Lorentz spaces as the parameters approach critical values. In [8] the case 1 _ p < 1 was investigated. The case 0 < p < 1 of the present paper requires different methods as the pointwise estimates established are different and the interpolation argument used in [8] is no longer available

CONTEST : a Controllable Test Matrix Toolbox for MATLAB

Large, sparse networks that describe complex interactions are a common feature across a number of disciplines, giving rise to many challenging matrix computational tasks. Several random graph models have been proposed that capture key properties of real-life networks. These models provide realistic, parametrized matrices for testing linear system and eigenvalue solvers. CONTEST (CONtrollable TEST matrices) is a random network toolbox for MATLAB that implements nine models. The models produce unweighted directed or undirected graphs; that is, symmetric or unsymmetric matrices with elements equal to zero or one. They have one or more parameters that affect features such as sparsity and characteristic pathlength and all can be of arbitrary dimension. Utility functions are supplied for rewiring, adding extra shortcuts and subsampling in order to create further classes of networks. Other utilities convert the adjacency matrices into real-valued coefficient matrices for naturally arising computational tasks that reduce to sparse linear system and eigenvalue problems