Research on Australian E-Retailers: Srtategic Issues, Success Factors, and Challenges

The emergence of the Internet has revolutionized retailing industry. However, the technology stock slump worldwide last year has made financing much more difficult for many e-tailer. As more well-established traditional retailers roll out their own online divisions and branches, online market, or marketplace, becomes increasingly competitive. How can Australian e-tailers successfully survive in this new competitive environment? This paper attempts to integrate research on Australian e-tailers and empirically explore, using a case study approach, some strategic issues in managing e-tailers. Research so far on Australian e-tailers has shown that Australian e-tailers have used state-of-the-art Internet technology in designing their Web site and have offered a big range of products to their online customers. They also perform reasonably well in customer services. The most difficult challenge facing them is fulfillment because of its geographic isolation and low population density. Australian government is actively involved in tackling those issues concerned by consumers, such as privacy and security, by legislation and promoting \u27best practice model\u27. The findings from a case study of an Australian e-tailer helps us understand several strategic issues in managing pure e-tailers. To survive, e-tailers need to carefully select product offerings, streamline business processes, minimize marketing budget and HR costs, improve fulfillment efficiency, and adopt a long -term growth strateg

Strategic Implementation of E-Procurement: A Case Study of an Australian Firm

The rapid development of Internet technology has made inter-organisation connectivity much easier and cheaper than ever before, hereby providing an opportunity for companies, both large and small, to realise the true value of the Internet. Despite the huge investment and complexity of implementing eprocurement, there is little empirical research to provide managerial guidelines for developing effective procurement strategies and for successfully implementing e-procurement. This paper attempts to fill this gap by reporting an Australian case study on the adoption of e-procurement. The findings offer detailed, varied and practical strategic insights into organisational redesign, critical factors, and challenges. The implications are also offered

Helping and servicing regional small businesses: an evaluation of the Business Grow Program in the South West region of Western Australia

In October 1997 the Edith Cowan University was invited to evaluate the performance of the Business Grow Program. The program commenced on July 1, 1995, and its evaluation, scheduled to be completed by April 1998, has been undertaken to assess the performance of the Program since its instigation. The evaluation team has relied substantially on information provided by small business owners, local government representatives, industry associations, and the manager of the Program. The evaluation team would like to thank Kate Loughton for her assistance in facilitating the administration of this project. The evaluation was undertaken by Small and Medium Enterprise Research Centre (SMERC). The team consisted of Dr Xueli (Charles) Huang, Post-Doctoral Research Fellow at SMERC, Associate Professor Alan Brown, Director of SMERC, Barry Chapman, Graduate and Higher Degree Coordinator, and Robyn Morris, Senior Lecturer in Faculty of Business and Head of Business Program, Bunbury campus. SMERC is the principal research centre in the Faculty of Business at Edith Cowan University and harnesses the SME expertise of the staff in the Faculty

Robust and accurate corneal interfaces segmentation in 2D and 3D OCT images

Segmentation of corneal layer interfaces in optical coherence tomography (OCT) images is important for diagnostic and surgical purposes, while manual segmentation is a time-consuming and tedious process. This paper presents a novel technique for the automatic segmentation of corneal layer interfaces using customized initial layer estimation and a gradient-based segmentation method. The proposed method was also extended to three-dimensional OCT images. Validation was performed on two corneal datasets, one with 37 B-scan images of healthy human eyes and the other with a 3D volume scan of a porcine eye. The approach showed robustness in extracting different layer boundaries in the low-SNR region with lower computational cost but higher accuracy compared to existing techniques. It achieved segmentation errors below 2.1 pixels for both the anterior and posterior layer boundaries in terms of mean unsigned surface positioning error for the first dataset and 2.6 pixels (5.2 μm) for segmenting all three layers that can be resolved in the second dataset. On average, it takes 0.7 and 0.4 seconds to process a cross-sectional B-scan image for datasets one and two, respectively. Our comparative study also showed that it outperforms state-of-the-art methods for quantifying layer interfaces in terms of accuracy and time efficiency

mHealth in China and the United States: How Mobile Technology is Transforming Healthcare in the World's Two Largest Economies

In this paper, we explore ways mobile technology can help with these difficulties. Specifically, we look at avenues through which mobile devices boost productivity, aid communications, and help providers improve affordability, access, and treatment. Using data drawn from China and the United States as well as global trends, we look at recent developments andemerging opportunities in mobile health, or mHealth. We argue that mobile technology assists patients, health providers, and policymakers in several different respects. It helps patients by giving them tools to monitor their health conditions and communicate those results to physicians. It enables health providers to connect with colleagues and offers alternative sources of information for patients. It is also an important tool to inform policymakers on health delivery and medical outcomes

Adopting management control systems through CSR strategic integration and investigating its impact on company performance: evidence from Indonesia

Purpose–This paper aims to investigate the extent to which the management control systems (MCS)adoption in corporate social responsibility (CSR) integration into business strategy has an impact oncompanies’ performance.Design/methodology/approach–Using a sample of 435 Indonesian manufacturing companies, partialleast squares structural equation modelling was used to investigate the impact of CSR strategicintegration on companies’ performance based on the contingency and stakeholder theories.Findings–The findings reveal CSR strategic integration has a positive and significant impact oncompanies’ performance, including employee, operating and financial performance and the company sizecan positively moderate the impact of this integration on both its operating and financial performance.Practical implications–The findings can encourage managers to adopt MCS by undertaking CSR atthe strategic level, resulting in superior performance, both socially and financially.Social implications–Employee performance and operating performance can significantly mediate theeffect of strategic integration on financial performance.Originality/value–The paper suggests that adopting MCS through CSR strategic integration couldimprove company performance socially and financially. This is the very first study on this issue from anIndonesian perspectiv

Clustering of Corporate Social Responsibility in the Indonesian Manufacturing Industry: How Far Can You Go?

This paper aims to cluster corporate social responsibility (CSR) practices that correspond to the CSR strategy implemented. This study performed factor and cluster analyses with 435 data from Indonesian manufacturing companies. The factor analysis resulted three categories of CSR dimensions: legal-ethical, philanthropic, and economic responsibilities. The cluster analysis generated three clusters of CSR strategy: reactive, proactive, and accommodative. The results show that most manufacturing companies in Indonesia apply proactive strategy rather than reactive or accommodative strategies