Crisis preparedness in government departments in Australia

A survey of Australian government communicators (n = 45) at a 2008 conference on crisis preparedness and management has shown that more than 80% of departments had a crisis management plan and that 90% of these plans were tested at least once a year. Almost 70% of those surveyed were ‘very confident’ or ‘somewhat confident’ in their crisis management plans, even though 44% felt that the level of senior management support for crisis planning was not sufficient. The research supported previous US research (Cloudman & Hallahan, 2006) that showed that the level of crisis preparedness (measured by the presence of crisis management and business continuity plans, frequency of drills based on the plans, the level of incorporation of disaster into the plans, frequency of plan review and confidence with crisis management planning) was related to the size of the organisation and the size of its communication function. The size of the organization also seemed to be a predictor of confidence in crisis planning and preparedness, with 13 of the 19 (68.4%) respondents that reported that they were ‘very confident’ or ‘somewhat confident’ in their crisis preparations coming from organizations larger than 500 employees

An Experiment in Scaling Impact: Assessing the Growth Capital Aggregation Pilot

This report presents an assessment of the Growth Capital Aggregation Pilot. It was commissioned by the Edna McConnell Clark Foundation, founder and lead investor of the grantmaking initiative.Starting in 2000, The Edna McConnell Clark Foundation (Clark) adopted an investment approach to grantmaking that focused on providing growth capital to youth-serving organizations with demonstrated commitments to evaluation and measurable outcomes. For grantees, the strategy meant larger, longer-term, unrestricted investments, complemented by extensive access to consulting and technical assistance to strengthen their organizations.This approach helped Clark grantees across the portfolio increase the numbers of youth they served (for example, by 18 percent between 2005 and 2006) and achieve annual revenue gains (averaging 19 percent over the four years prior to the founding of GCAP). At the same time, the Foundation concluded that more capital would be required if its grantees and other promising youth-serving organizations were to realize their ultimate scale and sustainability potential

Business Process Redesign in the Perioperative Process: A Case Perspective for Digital Transformation

This case study investigates business process redesign within the perioperative process as a method to achieve digital transformation. Specific perioperative sub-processes are targeted for re-design and digitalization, which yield improvement. Based on a 184-month longitudinal study of a large 1,157 registered-bed academic medical center, the observed effects are viewed through a lens of information technology (IT) impact on core capabilities and core strategy to yield a digital transformation framework that supports patient-centric improvement across perioperative sub-processes. This research identifies existing limitations, potential capabilities, and subsequent contextual understanding to minimize perioperative process complexity, target opportunity for improvement, and ultimately yield improved capabilities. Dynamic technological activities of analysis, evaluation, and synthesis applied to specific perioperative patient-centric data collected within integrated hospital information systems yield the organizational resource for process management and control. Conclusions include theoretical and practical implications as well as study limitations

The significance of communication in emergency management: what’s changed since 2010?

In 2010, Ryan and Matheson (2010) compiled evidence to quantify the importance of communication activities to emergency management. The study involved a comprehensive content analysis of emergency incident and emergency exercise debriefing sessions and reports spanning 2003 to 2008. Six years on, this 2015 study replicates that work to determine the current significance of communication in emergency management. It also identifies trends in issues that occur during emergency events. This study considers recommendations and findings from 22 reviews of recent disaster events and training exercises from around Australia. Using content analysis, 20.4 per cent of the findings relate to issues with communicating with communities. This represents an increase of 1.3 per cent on the 2010 study. Resourcing, skills in social media, and community consultation and engagement feature in the study results

Assessing regional digital competence: Digital futures and strategic planning implications

Understanding strategic decisions aimed at addressing regional economic issues is of increasing interest among scholars and policy makers today. Thus, studies that proffer effective strategies to address digital futures concerns from social and policy perspectives are timely. In light of this, this research uses strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats (SWOT) analysis tool to frame a regional strategy for digital futures to enhance place-specific digital connectivity and socio-economic progress. Focus group discussions and a structured questionnaire were conducted to examine a SWOT for a digital economy strategy in the Southern Downs Region in Queensland, Australia. The findings show that while the proposed regional strategies for digital futures are susceptible to internal and external forces, strategic planning makes them manageable. The study’s findings also reveal that adaptive strategic planning can help regulate the effects of internal and external factors that shape individual and organisational responses to digital transformation, and that these factors promote regional competitiveness

Teaching Ethics in the Primary Science Classroom: Planning Support for Teachers

The work presented in this thesis focuses on teaching ethics in primary science classrooms. Such teaching is important because it engages students not only in the human aspects of science, but also in science more generally, leading to enhanced scientific literacy and ultimately contributing to responsible citizenship. Teaching ethics in science also presents opportunities for developing students’ argumentation, critical thinking and decision-making skills, and helps students become more ethically aware, knowledgeable and discerning in science. Ethics in science has a prominent role in the New Zealand Curriculum within the ‘nature of science’ strand in the science learning area. However, there is a paucity of research demonstrating how this might be implemented with primary-age students. This work determines firstly whether primary students can engage in ethical discussions in science. Secondly, it focuses on the question of support needed for primary teachers and whether it is helpful for teachers to use a subject-specific planner for teaching ethics in science. The research adopted a sociocultural view of learning, in which learning is understood to be of a social and collaborative nature. The research involved two teacher development sessions, where three teachers were introduced to ethics concepts, examples on how they could be taught in a science context, and an ethics-in-science planner. Teachers subsequently developed and implemented an ethics in science programme using the ethics-in-science planner in their classrooms. The data for this research were collected from three teachers within the same school. Document analysis, interviews and classroom observation provided data triangulation. The findings suggest that young students can engage in ethical discussions in science – and do so, enthusiastically. They also confirm that primary teachers need support to teach ethics in science. For example, all three teachers reported the development sessions were necessary to help them understand ethics concepts and to give them ideas and strategies for teaching ethics in science. This is supported by research demonstrating that intervention in the form of teacher development and planning is vital for teachers to develop pedagogical content knowledge in a new area. In particular, teachers reported that the ethics-in-science planner helped them consider the classroom interactions on which they wanted to focus the outcomes, demonstrating that ethics in science can be meaningfully taught in the primary classroom. This raises the issue of teacher development and how this would be funded and implemented for the purpose of developing the pedagogical content knowledge of primary teachers for the teaching of ethics in science

Thorstein Veblen: A New Perspective

In spite of his extensive writings, Thorstein Veblen is an American sociologist most students of sociology know very little about. The obscurity of Veblen's work within the discipline is explained by two parallel trends: the selective utilization ofhis economic theory, and the failure to legitimize or develop his generalized social theory. Veblen's sociology explains class divisions under capitalism as outward manifestations of the desire for dominance in order to gain self-esteem and prestige. The division between pecuniary and industrial occupations illustrates this process; however, the first and most important division from which all others follow is the division between the sexes. The lack of acknowledgement in sociology of Veblen's emphasis on the primacy of the sex role division in the development of human society suggests an inquiry into either the legitimacy of his position and/or academic selection which rejects the importance ofsex role divisions. Through an examination of both Veblen's writings and later analysts of his work, this paper (1) reclaims Veblen's sex role analysis, (2) demonstrates male bias in the social sciences, and (3) considers the applicability of Veblen's theory with contemporary feminist theory