The 2010 and 2011 Canterbury earthquakes and organisational learning at the University of Canterbury: does practice make perfect?

In September 2010 and again in February 2011, the city of Christchurch was rocked by earthquakes of magnitude 7.1 and 6.3 respectively. The second earthquake was shallow and caused extensive damage and loss of life, destroying most of the Central Business District. This paper focuses on recovery management at the University of Canterbury, exploring the extent to which the senior management team learned lessons from the September event which informed the way that the recovery was managed after the February earthquake. It examines the counter-intuitive possibility that successfully dealing with a prior, lesser event, may not necessarily better equip managers to deal with a subsequent, more extreme event

Proceedings of the 5th QS-APPLE Conference

This volume is a post-conference publication containing the refereed papers and abstracts of all presentations at the QS-APPLE Conference held in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia from 24th-26th November, 2009

The rise of the remote metropolitan branch campus – Definitions, motivations and models

This paper explores the concept of the university remote metropolitan branch campus (RMBC). Drawing on approaches used to frame international branch campuses, it proposes a first definition for an RMBC, distinguishing it from a wider group of domestic ‘Satellite Campuses’ that includes multi‐campus universities within regions. Using interviews with 10 RMBC directors in London, it explores motivations for their creation and approaches used to organise and resource these ventures, as well as to attract and teach students. It concludes that the dominant reasons for creating RMBCs relate to financial diversification, reputation, reach and business engagement, but that in some cases the repositioning of an RMBC has been strategically reactive in response to external changes in its operating environment. Whilst there is evidence for a range of organisational models amongst London‐based RMBCs, there are key commonalities around the students attracted, the programmes offered and approaches to teaching and learning. RMBCs in London are growing and thriving, but face challenges from market entrants and uncertain future UK Government policy

On-line surveys in international marketing research: pros and cons

In a recent article on conducting international marketing research in the 21st century (Craig and Douglas 2001) the application of new (electronic) technology for data collection was encouraged. Email and web-based data collection methods are attractive to researchers particularly in international marketing, because of low costs and fast response rates. Yet the conventional wisdom is that, as some people still do not have access to email and the Internet, such data collection techniques may often result in a sample of respondents that is not representative of the population in question. In this article we evaluate multimode strategies of data collection that include web-based, email and postal methods, as a means for the international marketing researcher to obtain survey data from a representative sample. An example is given of a multimode strategy applied to the collection of survey data from a sample of respondents across 100 countries

The changing role of central banks in market economies

Among the main reasons for the emergence of central banks in Europe were the wars that ravaged the continent from the 17th century onwards and the consequent pressure this exerted on government finance. In brief, governments granted monopoly power over the note issue to a commercial bank and in return were given privileged borrowing facilities. This marked the beginning of the 'special relationship' between governments and their central bank. However, in most cases, recent years have witnessed enormous changes in the nature of this relationship. In particular, since the beginning of the 1990s, many governments have become convinced that the way to ensure price stability is to sever the institutional links between government and the central bank, leaving the latter to manage monetary policy free from political interference. The focus of this paper is on the historical developments, which have underpinned this new monetary orthodoxy