Oh, the Power and the Passion: Managerialism and Collegiality in Australian Geography

Australia-Academics-Managerialism-Collegiality-Geography? Is this the stuff of a debate? Well ... let us just say that Joe Powell is the only one recently to have spent his time and money sending letters to try to find out what people think,. These issues have escaped recent conferences of heads of departments, and the Institute of Australian Geographers. Other Australian geography professors and ex-geographer vice-chancellors are not scurrying into print. As Powell (1993: 6) remarks, "most academics remain outside the discourse or shuffle around its periphery". All quiet on the Antipodean front

If Planning is About Anything, What is it About?

The discipline and practice of regional and town planning is searching uneasily for new directions attendant upon conceptual and empirical developments since the early 1970s. This paper traces the current disquiet, explores contemporary viewpoints and then outlines a prospective focus in terms of processes of wealth creation. It is argued that orientation to this goal would realign planning with other mainstream disciplines such as economics and provide greater clarity to the endeavours of theoreticians and practitioners. The implications of such a move are explored in terms of an approach to the real world of the marketplace

'Practical Reconciliation': 21st Century Rehabilitation of Indigenous Paternalism?

Australian policy is again co-opting an Indigenous client population into obligation which requires adoption of government values and objectives. While previous criticism has focused on the ethical and moral failings of such an approach, this study reflects on its logical and economic elements. Presentation of the ideological background leads into study of Indigenous social housing clients and their historical resistance to imposed objectives. The account next considers Indigenous settlement and occupational options and indicates the importance of economic priorities in any debate about policy objectives. Further commentary raises the shortcomings of current trends by defining minimum requirements for social policy and then comparing them with the government's claims about meeting the needs of its Indigenous clients. The conclusion questions certain of the policy directions and provides some alternative pathways to need satisfaction

The Impact of Transmission Lines on Property Values: Coming to Terms with Stigma

The impact of power transmission lines on property values remains insufficiently explored and inconclusively theorised This paper provides a platform for examining what appears to be a general phenomenon of price depreciation of land abutting power lines. A large scale international literature review is organised in terms of a thematic model as a prelude to a precis of key papers discussing the power line/property value nexus. Broadening the account, attention turns to the issue of stigma which has different manifestations from its normal context involving contaminated lands. In order to advance theoretical understanding, a speculative model is provided of the stigma apparently attaching to power lines and attendant installations

Short-term climate response to a freshwater pulse in the Southern Ocean

The short-term response of the climate system to a freshwater anomaly in the Southern Ocean is investigated using a coupled global climate model. As a result of the anomaly, ventilation of deep waters around Antarctica is inhibited, causing a warming of the deep ocean, and a cooling of the surface. The surface cooling causes Antarctic sea-ice to thicken and increase in extent, and this leads to a cooling of Southern Hemisphere surface air temperature. The surface cooling increases over the first 5 years, then remains constant over the next 5 years. There is a more rapid response in the Pacific Ocean, which transmits a signal to the Northern Hemisphere, ultimately causing a shift to the negative phase of the North Atlantic Oscillation in years 5–10

Outside The City of Grace: appraising dystopia and global sustainability

'The City of Grace: An Urban Manifesto' (Wadley, 2020) models an ecotech settlement, aiming to achieve economic and social sustainability over a substantial period. The City is intended to be anti-dystopian and non-exclusive, with the possibility of replication in receptive settings. In this rejoinder to the book, the potential for dystopia attending population and sustainability issues in the outside world is appraised. Foundations are established in general systems, complexity and chaos theories, and an interpretation of procedural and substantive rationality. Two possible global failure modes are examined, one contained within the human sphere involving the future of capital and labour, and an external one founded in the familiar problematics of the human-environment nexus. Dilatory responses in advanced societies to these dilemmas are outlined. The subsequent prognosis regarding population and sustainability co-opts a meta-theory from environmental management to assess the viability of possible counterstrategies to dystopia although, in conclusion, its existence is instantiated

Effects of a Speed-of-Processing Intervention on Driving Performance: The ACCELERATE Study

Useful Field of View performance, as measured by UFOV, is a valid and reliable predictor of crash involvement among older drivers, and UFOV performance improves with Speed of Processing (SOP) training. The ACCELERATE Study is examining the effects of SOP training on other cognitive functions and on everyday mobility among older adults at risk for impaired mobility. To date, 59 participants have been randomly assigned to SOP training and 59 to an Internet training control group (total n = 118). At baseline and post-test, participants are given extensive cognitive, sensory, health, and mobility assessments, as well as driving assessments in either a driving simulator or an instrumented vehicle. Preliminary results indicate that performance on the UFOV improves significantly more in the SOP training group than in the control group. Furthermore, means on most other cognitive variables are in the direction of greater improvement for SOP trainees than controls, with significant transfer of training on select speeded measures. Preliminary analyses of driving indicate that relative to controls, SOP trainees have improved in the speed with which they are able to detect moving targets originating in the periphery and moving toward central vision, but not in the detection of static targets originating in central view. Thus, some driving tasks appear to benefit from SOP training, while others do not. Results suggest that Speed of Processing training may transfer to other cognitive functions as well as to everyday mobility performance, such as driving

Liberman Proposals and Their Impact on the Development of Soviet Economic Thought

Department of Economics and Legal Studies in Busines

Corporate decision-making during recession : product franchisors in the Australian agricultural machinery industry, 1967-72

This study analyses the impact of scale, establishment mobility and policy substitution in the corporation's geographical behaviour. To maximise opportunities for observing change, the effects of recession on firms using a particular marketing system --product franchising are examined. It is argued that competitive powers, represented by company structural attributes and expressed through relative network control capacities, should assist larger organisations to undertake spatial tactics which maintain their market and economic standing. Nineteen agricultural machinery franchisors are classified on a number of key variables into large and small groups. Their manufacturing, wholesaling and retailing activity between 1967 and 1972 is compared on criteria relating to the entry and exit of outlets. Certain locational strategies adopted by major competitors are seen to stabilise or improve distribution control, thus demonstrating a relationship of structural factors, channel management and representation courses. However, a broader association of these measures and market and general financial performance cannot be shown because of data limitations. Subsidiary findings point out the greater stability of large corporations in a setback, the lower probability of continuation suffered by small franchisors' dealers and the attack on small towns enforced by the economic contraction. Through the use of an operational model within an intensive, longitudinal analysis, the enquiry concludes that scale effects pervade locational decision-making, not only among enterprises but across the whole business sector. For the largest firms, spatial policy is clearly an interchangeable means to goals and, thus, establishment mobility can be pronounced. The divergence of such findings from previous work contributes to the ongoing review of traditional thinking in industrial geography and economics and prompts further research into the interface of the corporation and the entrepreneur

Corporate decision-making during recession : product franchisors in the Australian agricultural machinery industry 1967-72

This study analyses the impact of scale, establishment mobility and policy siibstitution in the corporation's geographical behaviour. To maximise opportunities for observing change, the effects of recession on firms using a particular marketing system — product franchising — are examined. It is argued that competitive powers, represented by company structural attributes and expressed through relative network control capacities, should assist larger organisations to undertake spatial tactics which maintain their market and economic standing. Nineteen agricultural machinery franchisors are classified on a number of key variables into large and small groups. Their manufacturing, wholesaling and retailing activity between 1967 and 1972 is compared on criteria relating to the entry and exit of outlets. Certain locational strategies adopted by major competitors are seen to stabilise or improve distribution control, thus demonstrating a relationship of structural factors, channel management and representation courses. However, a broader association of these measures and market and general financial performance cannot be shown because of data limitations. Subsidiary findings point out the greater stability of large corporations in a setback, the lower probability of continuation suffered by small franchisors' dealers and the attack on small towns enforced by the economic contraction. Through the use of an operational model within an intensive, longitudinal analysis, the enquiry concludes that scale effects pervade locational decision-making, not only among enterprises but across the whole business sector. For the largest firms, spatial policy is clearly an interchangeable means to goals and, thus, establishment mobility can be pronounced. The divergence of such findings from previous work contributes to the ongoing review of traditional thinking in industrial geography and economics and prompts further research into the interface of the corporation and the entrepreneur