Diffusion of R&D within the Australian Wine Industry

The Australian wine industry's popular image as a leader in R&D can indeed be substantiated. Its oenological and viticultural innovation and technical expertise have set new international benchmarks. The coordination of this R&D has ensured that the industry remains at the leading edge. However, the findings of this paper also substantiate concerns that this R&D is concentrated in what appears to be a South Australian R&D 'epicentre'. Regions and wine operators not connected to this epicentre can be disadvantaged. This paper examines the diffusion of R&D to regional operators and suggests mechanisms for improvement of the current structure.     

The Hegemony of Microsoft®: An Australian Story

Each Australian state and the Australian Capital Territory has signed a 'whole of education department' contract with the Microsoft® Corporation for the provision of operating systems and other software. This contracted use of Microsoft® products is one story where the purchase of specific commodities is directly connected to the provision of public schooling. It is argued that through these contracts Microsoft® exercises a hegemonic relationship with the schooling systems in Australia. The legal relationships that exist between Microsoft® Corporation and the respective Australian states and territories schooling systems seem to mutually maintain and reinforce the monopolistic, or at best, oligopolistic position of Microsoft® Corporation and its hegemony over Australian public schooling. Further, it is argued that Microsoft's® hegemonic position in part is maintained by both establishing a 'commonsense' about its products and by receiving legitimation and authority through the State for its products used in Australian schools.     

Cultural Diversity and Australian Commercial Television Drama: Policy,Industry and Recent Research Contexts

Media studies research in the 1990s illustrated an incongruity between cultural diversity in the Australian community and the representation of that diversity on commercial television screens. Australian drama in particular received much criticism for its seemingly 'Anglo' portrayal of Australian society. Most of this former research was based on program content analysis and critical approaches to studying the media. From the mid-1990s, anecdotal evidence suggested an improvement in the casting of actors from culturally diverse backgrounds. This paper contextualises policy and industry developments in the 1990s related to cultural diversity and presents new research undertaken within the commercial television drama industry. In order to determine the status of cultural diversity and commercial television drama at the end of the 1990s, a casting survey of all Australian commercial drama programs broadcast in 1999 was carried out. This was complemented by interviews with industry personnel and a two-week content analysis of programming. The research establishes the degree of casting for actors from culturally diverse backgrounds and offers explanations for both improvements made over the previous years and the continuing obstacles faced by some groups in gaining a place in our popular drama programs.     

Federalism in the Regulation of Chemical Pollutants in Australia

In response to the growth of the environment movement and increasing citizen concern for the environment, the Commonwealth and the Australian states moved to set up government departments of environment, or Environment Protection Agencies, in the early 1970s. At first the issues which engaged the public were 'green' ones, involving land and marine degradation, biodiversity (a term not then in use), and activities such as logging, mining and the generation of hydro-electric power. These were soon joined on the public agenda, however, by concerns over 'brown' issues such as chemical pollution and the management of hazardous chemicals and chemical wastes, but these were less well understood by the general public than the more visible 'green' issues. At this time, also, Australian governments took significant steps to achieve nationally consistent regulation through the work of ministerial councils, notably the Australian Environment Council (AEC) and subsequently the Australian and New Zealand Environment and Conservation Council (ANZECC). A further wave of environmentalism in the late 1980s and early 1990s, coupled with further development of the federalism model for environmental regulation that flowed from high-level inter-government meetings that were formalised as the Council of Australian Governments (COAG), gave rise to the formation of the National Environment Protection Council (NEPC). This body, while not giving more power to the Commonwealth, achieves national harmonisation of regulations through slightly more coercive processes than are available to the older-style ministerial councils. These continue to exist, however, operating in parallel with NEPC. For chemicals coming into use, there are national schemes under which the Commonwealth, states and territories regulated industrial, agricultural and veterinary chemicals, therapeutic substances, and food additives. Most 'brown' issues, however, remain with the successor to ANZECC, the Environment Protection and Heritage Council, as part of which NEPC continues to develop national approaches. In both periods of rapid change, there was a coincidence of environmentalism and federalism, but international developments were also important--in the first phase the United Nations' first 'environment' meeting, held in 1972 in Stockholm, and in the second the developments flowing from the so-called 'Earth Summit' held in Rio de Janeiro in 1992. Although public environmentalism continues to be mainly concerned with 'green' issues, the 'brown' issues remain a focus for governments and some non-government organisations.     

The Nature and Functions of Meta-tags: Covert Infringement of Trademarks and Other Issues

Meta-tags are one of the 'associational tools' considered essential to the operation of the World Wide Web. Their significance has been highlighted by recent controversies in the United States which focus on one of their important functions, i.e. as indices of websites which search engines read and rely upon in looking for the appropriate content relative to queries submitted to them. This article deals with the effect of meta-tags on the intellectual property rights of website owners. The author presents a critical survey of the American meta-tag cases and offers an Australian perspective.     

R&D PROJECT ASSESSMENT AS AN INFORMATION AND COMMUNICATION PROCESS

The paper has three main objectives, viz, to emphasize the need for informed project assessment as central to the effective management of R&D by Australian businesses; to argue that different assessment techniques will be applicable to different stages of a project's development; to emphasize the importance of R&D project assessment as an information and communication process which helps to promote a firm's goals. In addressing these issues the paper highlights some of the ways in which managers of Australian companies can learn from overseas experience and outlines some of the challenges facing Australian management at this time.     

The Employment of German Scientists in Australia after World War II

Soon after the end of World War II the Australian Government brought scientists of defeated Germany to Australia. They were to work in government institutions and private industry to contribute their expertise to improving Australian science and to improving Australia's industrial efficiency. The Allied powers occupying Germany were engaged in a scramble to appropriate German expertise for the next phase of the arms race. The Australian Employment of Scientific and Technical Enemy Aliens Scheme (ESTEA) instead channeled its personnel to basic science and industrial research. The personnel were part human reparations, part invited experts. This curious scheme offers insight into attitudes towards industrial regeneration in a previous era, and the importance of context in shaping attempts to alter existing scientific and industrial cultures.     

Australian Universities in Crisis

That this book, having been recommended for publication by the editors of Melbourne University Press, was subsequently rejected through the intervention of the University authorities, is a symptom of the very malaise which the contributors address. Since the Dawkins 'reforms' to Australian higher education the university system has come under increasing surveillance by government functionaries, and university 'managements' have been subverted through their desire to win favour from government and to display their 'competitive edge' against other 'institutions'. The 'reforms' have mandated the wholesale introduction of business techniques, and a pervading business ethos, which is quite inappropriate to the traditional function of universities. The very word 'traditional' is rejected as contrary to the commitment to change required of expanding businesses. That universities have a role in conserving and transmitting a public culture is all but repudiated by university managements in their desire to appear at the 'cutting edge' of government privatization agenda. The authors of this book affirm a public role for universities, and reassert the conviction that they must protect a threatened independence in the search for truth, and in the responsibility to 'speak truth to power'. Since 'managements' are now unlikely to uphold these duties, it becomes the responsibility of the members of the community of scholars to maintain independence of thought and to expound the truth.     

Representing Islam in the Wake of September 11: A Comparison of US Television and CNN Online Messageboard Discourses

This paper contrasts the immediate representations of Islam on US television and CNN's online messageboard by focusing on the noun phrases for 'Islamic' used in both media fora from September 11 to 16. The study found some notable congruities and differences in the associations made with Islam in each context. It considers these findings in terms of previous research on the representation of Islam and terrorism in 'Western' media; the official insistence that 'we' are not at war with Islam; and media theories of 'framing' and 'reception'.     

Emerging Bioinformatic Networks: Contesting the Public Meaning of Private and the Private Meaning of Public

This paper explores the complexity of public/private identities in the emerging global economies of gene sequence mapping and analysis. In so doing we seek to offer a less over-determined acccount of what it means to describe institutional actors as either 'public' or 'private'. Instead, these 'codes' can be seen to offer actors a means of mutual positioning that, more usually conceals broader interdependencies within the world's bioinformatics networks.     

Power,Rules of the Game and the Limits to Knowledge Management: Lessons from Japan and Anglo-Saxon Alarms

Much of the Knowledge Management (KM) literature assumes that all relevant knowledge can be represented as information and 'managed'. But the meaning of information is always context-specific and open to subsequent reinterpretation. Moving over time or between contexts affords scope for new meanings to emerge. Making sense of information signals (speech, body language, tone-of-voice or whatever)--Aand the absence of such signals--Ainvolves dimensions of individual and collective tacit knowledge that are frequently misrepresented or ignored in mainstream KM. By relating power and knowledge to 'rules of the game', it is possible to consider how the contexts in which information is rendered meaningful are bounded, as well as crucially related in the stretch between macro-level processes and micro-level practices. In the knowledge debate, Japan stands as a counterfactual to Anglo-Saxon expectations about formal rules, liberal individualism and market-rational entrepreneurship. While seminal accounts of knowledge creation in Japanese companies impelled the West towards KM, there has been no corresponding KM-boom in Japan. Our interpretation of the processes by which Japanese and Anglo-Saxon practices are situated suggests that KM is limited by the separation of knowledge from power and information from meaning.     

Priority Setting and Resource Allocation in Australian Biomedical Research: Muddling with Some Skill

Examined here are models of resource allocation adopted by Australia's premier biomedical research funding council, the National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC), since pressure to make research more 'relevant' has been exerted. For a council that disburses its funds chiefly to high-impact fundamental research, allocating resources to priority-driven research that contributes directly to population health and evidence-based health care is a challenging transition. It is contended that while the NHMRC has attempted to accommodate a 'rationalist' user-driven approach to resource allocation, it has moved only marginally away from a highly decentralised (investigator-driven) model to a mixed-mode system that resembles 'muddling with some skill'.     

The Dilemmas of External Earnings in Public Sector Scientific Research

Governments in a number of developed countries have repositioned their public research agencies to support economic objectives and to alleviate fiscal pressures. This has been accomplished through various strategies, including private-public partnerships and purchaser-provider arrangements. In the 1980s, the Australian Government introduced external earnings targets of up to 30% per annum for its public research agencies, as a means of strengthening their responsiveness to national economic needs. A case study of the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization is presented in this article to discuss the impacts of the external earnings policy. Impacts on the type of research being undertaken by public research agencies, the quality of public research-industry relationships, the nature of scientists' work and the role of stakeholders are considered. A number of dilemmas are raised relating to the role of public scientific research.     

The Persistence of Information Structures in Nordic Countries

This article examines to what extent the Nordic countries, which have been characterized as the world's leading information societies, show similar patterns of Internet use. The data consists of the Danish, Swedish, Norwegian, and Finnish sections of the European Social Survey 2002 ( n = 7539) and 2004 ( n = 7211). The similarities and differences in the Internet use are analyzed using sociodemographic and economic information. Temporal changes in the distribution of use between population groups and between countries are also examined. The findings indicate that there are clear disparities in the Internet use patterns, which have not evened out in the early 21st century.     

New Products of the 1980s and 1990s: The Diffusion of Household Technology in the Decade 1985-1995

The management of our households and the way we spend our leisure time has been greatly influenced by the introduction of various household technologies in the 1980s and 1990s. This paper compares the extent and rate of adoption of selected household products in Australian households. The diffusion of colour television sets, video cassette recorders, compact disc players, microwave ovens and personal computers into various types of households during the 1980s and 1990s was examined. This study found that different types of Australian households adopted new technology at different rates. The levels of ownership of various household technologies were highest for households with children. In general, one-adult households were slower to adopt new household technology when compared to other types of households. This paper speculates as to why one-person households are slower to purchase the latest in cooking and entertainment technology.     

Coping with Illness Online: The Case of Patients'Online Communities

This article identifies and analyzes characteristics of patients' online communities (POC) in Sweden. Using a qualitative approach, it presents a fine-grained picture of the communities covering both the structural and cultural factors. Acknowledging the debate about quality of health information online and the potential risks of e-health, the article argues that a deeper understanding of the dynamics of POC, which offer unique aides for the coping process of chronically ill patients, can contribute to the design of the emergent forms of Internet-based health care resources.     

The 'Self-service' Student: Building Enterprise-wide Systems into Universities 1

This article investigates the take-up by universities of enterprise-wide computer systems and the development of a new module for the management and administration of students. Having its origins in Electronic Commerce, the system assumes the existence of a certain kind of user, one with particular roles and responsibilities--Aa self-service user. The notion of 'self-service' is deployed as an integral part of the system rollout where students are to view, input and modify administrative and financial information on themselves and their courses. Drawing from the sociology of science and technology, and material from a 3-year ethnographic study, we describe the system's implementation in a British university. While accepting of the need for an ERP system the campus community reject self-service. However, as we will show, because Campus Management is a 'global product' unwanted functionality can be difficult to resist outright and this can have important implications for the autonomy of the university and the reshaping of fundamental principles and relationships.     

Death and Data

Research into the intelligence processes in two child murder cases shows that 'information management is no longer simply an administrative support function or technical service, but an integral part of the strategy of the organisation'. Consequently, its importance must be demonstrated in the organisation's structure and in the resources allocated to it. Problems were caused by the divide between information specialists and detectives. This illustrates the disadvantages of a detection system which fails to preserve either information or knowledge, the tensions between detectives and intelligence officers as members of separate, incompletely integrated teams, and the importance of incorporating tacit learning-by-doing into a knowledge base accessible to both detectives and intelligence staff.     

New Structures,New Strategies: CSIRO’s Changing Role in Australian Innovation

Abstract

CSIRO’s role in Australian innovation has evolved over the years in response to changes in the external environment and within Australia’s national innovation system. The process of organisational change has been characterised by a series of restructurings—in 1978, 1988, 1996 and 2001—and accompanying shifts in the organisation’s strategic directions. In this paper we look at the process of organisational change in an historical context, looking at the evolving external environment, the legislative and management background, and the shifts in the organisation’s strategic directions. The change process is interpreted from a punctuated equilibrium perspective. We propose that discontinuous, rather than continuous change, is the way that a complex and diversified organisation like CSIRO adjusts to a changing external environment and, moreover, that independent public reviews have an important role in this process. In the light of major changes in the Australian and scientific landscapes over the past two decades we suggest it is time to look again at CSIRO’s role and the sustainability of its internal management arrangements.     

IT Investment Strategy for Development: An 'Instrumental Analysis' Based on the Tasmanian and New Brunswick Information Technology Strategies

In April 1997, Tasmania (Australia) adopted the reputably successful New Brunswick (Canada) industrial strategy to build an information technology (IT) industry of significance. The strategy aims to overcome isolation in small regional economies and structurally change from declining natural resource industries. Both plans reject neo-classical economics-based industry policy, opting instead for a strong state-based investment planning approach. An analytical framework is set out, using Adolph Lowe's 'Instrumental Analysis', to examine implementation of both IT strategies. Implications of this analysis are drawn for any attempts at developing IT regional plans and, more generally, as a guide for broad strategic-based national industrial strategies.