Considering the Human Element of Long-Term IT Outsourcing: A Case Study of an Australian Bank

While many studies on outsourcing have identified its advantages and disadvantages from an organizational perspective, there has been insufficient attention paid to the impact of outsourcing on employees. A case study methodology was used in the analysis of the effects of IT outsourcing on the well-being of IT professionals working in a leading Australian bank. Despite the success of the outsourcing initiative for the organization, evidence from an intranet forum established in the six months prior to the outsourcing transition and surveys conducted of remaining staff two years post-implementation revealed a high degree of non-acceptance by both sets of workers. This arose despite managementâs attempts to communicate effectively with staff. Within this same period, the bank also had to adjust to the effects of a new psychological contract to which the now outsourced IT staff were working. The study concludes that the disaffection of staff resulted mainly from a lack of consultation during decision-making steps and a sense of powerlessness to influence management. Suggestions are provided as to how outsourcing could be accomplished in ways that improve employee acceptance and reactions to change

Confucian or fusion?: Perceptions of Confucian-heritage students with respect to their university studies in Australia

This research aims to uncover the perceptions of first-year Confucian-heritage students towards their lived experience of university study in Australia. Data was gathered from the students via interviews and analyzed using a phenomenological approach. From the students' perspective, prior experience of western-style pedagogy was found to be helpful in giving students an idea of what the Australian learning environment would entail, although many students still had difficulty with classroom interaction due to persistent cultural conditioning. In terms of teacher behaviour, important factors include the lecturer demonstrating an understanding of the student's culture, using humour in teaching, being a role model, developing a good relationship with the student and demonstrating a commitment to their learning. Issues included the students' lack of understanding of the true significance of assignments and lecturers' misunderstanding of the valuable role of memorization in Confucian-heritage students' learning. The findings of this work allow academics an insight into the lived educational experiences of the student participants. They may also be tentatively offered as a means of informing future course design and delivery, with the goal of improving the quality of student learning and, therefore, academic success. © Common Ground, Frank Gutierrez, Laurel Evelyn Dyson, All Rights Reserved, Permissions

Managing employee expectations of organizational change: A case study of IT outsourcing at an Australian bank

While many studies on outsourcing have identified its advantages and disadvantages from an organizational perspective, there has been insufficient attention paid to the impact of outsourcing on employees. This case study of IT outsourcing in a leading Australian bank explores its effect on the well-being of IT professionals working there. Despite the success of the outsourcing initiative for the organization, evidence from an intranet forum established in the six months prior to the outsourcing transition and surveys conducted of remaining staff two years post-implementation revealed a high degree of nonacceptance by both sets of workers. This occurred despite management's attempts to communicate with staff. The study concludes that the disaffection of staff resulted mainly from a lack of consultation during decision-making steps and a sense of powerlessness to influence management. Suggestions are provided as to how outsourcing could be accomplished in ways that improve employee acceptance and reactions to change

Cristina Valdes: Pianist, in recital

Program listing performers and works performe

A Racial Reckoning: Anti-Asian racism and exclusion in higher education

The Atlanta massacre on March 16, 2021, spurred a series of solidarity statements with the broader Asian and Asian American1 community from higher education institutions across the nation. While many colleges and universities have expressed their grief and support with the larger Asian and Asian American community, the same institutions have yet to reflect and reckon with their own history of exclusion, which has omitted Asian and Asian American students from larger conversations of diversity, equity, and inclusion. The purposes of this brief are to name the forms of anti-Asian racism that already exist in higher education institutions and to propose a series of recommendations to address the foreseeable forms of overt and covert anti-Asian violence that may occur when students return to campuses in fall 2021 and beyond. We recommend that institutions of higher education: create effectual task forces to think strategically about racism and xenophobia towards Asian and Asian American students; increase funding for ethnic studies, specifically, Asian American Studies Departments, Programs, and Centers; and collect and report disaggregated data on diverse subgroups of Asian and Asian American students

Anti-Asian Bullying and Harassment: Symptoms of racism in K-12 schools during COVID-19

The COVID-19 pandemic has posed many challenges for K-12 students. However, these challenges have not been experienced equally across student groups. There has been a significant increase in mainstream media coverage of anti-Asian racism, but very little attention has been given to Asian American youth, who are not immune from incidents of bullying and harassment in our K-12 schools. This brief discusses how Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI)1 students face unique challenges associated with bullying and harassment because of their racial and ethnic identity. We examine the historical context of bullying and harassment of Asian Americans and how that persists as anti-Asian racism today. Finally, we propose policy solutions to create a more positive learning environment and address racist attitudes towards this specific community. Notably, we propose that K-12 leaders disaggregate data by ethnic subgroup, collect more comprehensive data on school bullying, harassment, and victimization disaggregated by AAPI ethnic subgroups, and invest in culturally sustaining mental health resources and curriculum

Moving real-time linked data query evaluation to the client

Traditional RDF stream processing engines work completely server-side, which contributes to a high server cost. For allowing a large number of concurrent clients to do continuous querying, we extend the low-cost Triple Pattern Fragments (TPF) interface with support for timesensitive queries. In this poster, we give the overview of a client-side rdf stream processing engine on top of tpf. Our experiments show that our solution significantly lowers the server load while increasing the load on the clients. Preliminary results indicate that our solution moves the complexity of continuously evaluating real-time queries from the server to the client, which makes real-time querying much more scalable for a large amount of concurrent clients when compared to the alternatives

(Re)conceptualizing Protests: Activism, Resistance, and AANAPISIs

Though protests on college campuses have captured public attention, far less consideration has been paid to Asian American Native American Pacific Islander Serving Institutions (AANAPISIs). The Asian and Pacific Islander American (APIA) population has historically served on the front lines of the Asian American Movement during the Civil Rights Movement influencing the educational experiences of APIA students. While literature documents student activism from APIA students, they are portrayed as an apolitical group. The purpose of this article is to (re)conceptualize the term protest to capture the historical and contemporary forms of activism by researchers, policy makers, community organizers, and students throughout a decade that pushed a legislation forward to create the federal designation for AANAPISIs. We argue that the term protest is limiting in research. Instead, the term activism should be used in order to encapsulate the ways APIAs have been engaged socially and politically. Additionally, there exists a gap in educational literature discussing how the spatial politics of domination and resistance manifests in representational spaces—in this case institutional structures like AANAPISIs. Influenced by spatial politics and spatial theory we put forth a conceptual argument that the representational existence of AANAPISIs is a site of resistance that needs to be better understood, especially in the era of Trump where anti-immigration and racist rhetoric is ever-present, because of the ways APIAs continue to be racialized and (re)positioned in United States racial discourse and research