Search results

The finance and accounting processes tend to be mistakenly viewed only as necessary functions of month‐end closing and historical focus. When finance becomes recognized as a value‐adding process ‐ creating and focusing information to facilitate achieving the goals and objectives of the corporation, its impact on the bottom line will be fully realized. The key to revising this view of finance is to change the focus and processes of the finance and accounting functions. The author describes the changes in these functions that can be more supportive of meeting future business challenges.

Effective management and utilisation of plant history data can considerably improve plant and equipment performance. This rationale underpins statistical and mathematical models for exploiting plant management data more efficiently, but industry has been slow to adopt these models. Reasons proffered for this include: a perception of models being too complex and time consuming; and an inability of their being able to account for dynamism inherent within data sets. To help address this situation, this research developed and tested a web‐based data capture and information management system. Specifically, the system represents integration of a web‐enabled relational database management system (RDBMS) with a model base management system (MBMS). The RDBMS captures historical data from geographically dispersed plant sites, while the MBMS hosts a set of (Autoregressive Integrated Moving Average – ARIMA) time series models to predict plant breakdown. Using a sample of plant history file data, the system and ARIMA predictive capacity were tested. As a measure of model error, the Mean Absolute Deviation (MAD) ranged between 5.34 and 11.07 per cent for the plant items used in the test. The Root Mean Square Error (RMSE) values also showed similar trends, with the prediction model yielding the highest value of 29.79 per cent. The paper concludes with direction for future work, which includes refining the Graphical User Interface (GUI) and developing a Knowledge Based Management System (KBMS) to interface with the RDBMS.

Managerial job changing is becoming an increasingly important issue in managerial careers. Due to reasons such as global competition, mergers, acquisitions, corporate downsizing, and cost‐cutting, fewer executives believe that the organisations that they start their careers with will be the organisation that they retire from. Executives who changed jobs in 1987 through five worldwide executive search firms reported their expectations about job change (Worldwide Executive Mobility, 1988). Of the less senior executives, about three‐fourths expected to change companies again within the next ten years. Salary was one potential outcome for these managers. The median raise associated with a job change was about thirty per cent. Advancement was another possible outcome. Top executives had typically held five different jobs and had worked for three different companies in the previous fifteen years. Increased job responsibility was also a potential outcome, although for some job changers job responsibility decreased. A third of U.S. executives changed jobs without changing titles but a third of those who changed job titles moved to jobs of a lower rank. Forty‐three per cent of managers outside the U.S. changed jobs without changing job titles and a quarter of the job title changes were to lower rank.

Claims that effective price communication for services requires understanding variables that mediate the effects of price and the cognitive systems consumers use to process price information. Presents a model which indicates that involvement and source credibility mediate the effects of price. Discusses the heuristic and analytic cognitive systems which consumers could use to process price information. The article also reports the results of an experiment which tested the model, and discusses the managerial implications of the model.

The purpose of this paper is to inform on results of the study based on the dissertation project – the study of newcoming university students and their information literacy experience. It describes the three categories of information literacy experience as perceived by these students.

The document is based on a qualitative phenomenographic study of 40 first-year undergraduate students of teacher education programs from five faculties of Comenius University in Bratislava. Data were collected from each participant in two stages by three methods: written statements, drawings and interviews.

The phenomenographic analysis results in three categories of information literacy: (1) the conception of digital technologies, (2) the conception of knowledge and (3) the conception of truth. The outcome space presented by two alternative models points to a strong interrelation of all three categories. The resulting conceptions point to the diversity of the concept of information literacy in relation to other types of literacies, especially digital, reading and media literacy, as well as to intersections with other scientific disciplines such as psychology, cognitive science or philosophy.

The most important limits of this qualitative research are the low numbers of participants and the high degree of subjectivity in data evaluation. For this reason, a verification study was carried out one-year later.

Although phenomenographic studies of information literacy in the educational context are quite common, the third category of this study brings a new contribution to the information literacy theory – the dimension of truth or truthfulness of information.

This study investigated possible moderating effects on the relationship between job satisfaction and nurses' intention to quit. Using data collected from 327 registered nurses in three large private hospitals, moderator regression analysis revealed significant main and moderating effects for employee age. When the effects of education, employment status, and marital status were controlled, the main and moderating effects of age on the relationship between job satisfaction and nurses' intention to quit remained significant. Alternative explanations of the results are discussed, along with implications of the findings for nursing turnover research.

Australian higher education is presently subject to a period of substantial change. The needs of the economy and workforce, together with the broader educational role of the university, are leading to focus on lifelong learning as a tool for bringing together the apparently diverging needs of different groups. Within this broader context, the emphasis on lifelong learning and associated graduate capabilities is leading to opportunities for new partnerships between faculty and librarians, partnerships that bring the two groups together in ways that are helping to transform the experience of teaching and learning. This paper explores emerging partnerships in diverse areas, including research and scholarship, curriculum, policy, supervision, and staff development. They are in the early phases of development and result from a broad focus on the learning and information literacy needs of students, as opposed to a narrow focus on using the library and its information resources. Taken together, and viewed from a system‐wide perspective, these partnerships reveal a complex dynamic that is deserving of wider attention across the Australian higher education system and internationally.

This article examines ways in which graduates of an online teacher certification program integrate technology into social studies instruction. With dramatic growth in the number of online teacher certification programs, educators are faced with how to ensure their graduates incorporate effective teaching strategies, including technology, into classrooms. Research over the past decade indicates that teachers do not integrate technology within social studies instruction in meaningful ways, beyond traditional approaches to teaching (Ravitz & Wong, 1999; Van Fossen & Shively, 2003, 2009). Results from this study indicate that online teacher education graduates, who have access to technology within their schools, find meaningful ways to integrate such technology into social studies instruction. Teacher educators must conduct more research, and receive more funding, to follow online teacher education graduates. Today’s new generation of tech-savvy students deserve teachers who can competently integrate technology into all content areas.