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To identify key factors that are contributing to vulnerability in business schools in Australian public universities and determine the degree of vulnerability exhibited by these schools.

Using a multi-criteria assessment (MCA) approach, a framework is developed to determine which business schools are most vulnerable to disruptions and uncertainty.

The findings show a lack of preparedness on the part of many business schools, particularly those relying heavily on international students.

The implication is that business schools in Australian public universities need to diversify revenue streams and continue to seek legitimacy through external stakeholders such as employers and international accrediting bodies.

This study presents an empirical perspective of business schools in Australian public universities and offers valuable insights for university leaders and policymakers.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the extent to which consumer purchasing behaviour is influenced by advertised information that a product is made with renewable energy. It also seeks to identify why some consumers might respond more favourably.

Three experiments were conducted using two samples of university students enroled in Australia. The first experiment tested the main effect of this research, the second tested the potential amplifying effect of locus of control and the third tested the temporal orientation.

Consumer respond favourably to products promoted as made with renewable energy. The possible explanation for this is that future temporal orientation (FTO) influences attitude towards the brand, attitude towards the advertisement, purchase intention and willingness to pay a premium for brands. The observed interaction effect between perceived greenness of the advertisement and FTO is also robust to scepticism.

Results presented here are also derived from responses made by students at a regional Australian university. Although atypical in their profile with most over 30 years of age, findings cannot reliably be generalised to the larger population. Determining how much importance a renewable energy appeal has when it is positioned among other green appeals would reveal the relative usefulness of the focal promotion to marketers.

Promoting a firm’s use of renewable energy presents an important opportunity to achieve desirable outcomes, and the efficacy of this is magnified within individuals that habitually focus on the future.

These findings benefit society because they contribute towards increasing the frequency of sustainable business practices. It should also encourage policy-makers to implement policy changes (e.g., removing subsidies that prevent renewable energy from attaining cost parity with non-renewable sources of energy), which can result in beneficial economic outcomes.

This research is the first of its kind to be conducted in an Australian context, providing findings that assist both firms’ and policy-makers’ decision-making.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the determinants of church attendance and the formation of “religious human capital” using a Becker-inspired allocation-of-time framework.

Data derived from three waves of the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia Survey were used to estimate a reduced-form two-equation system where the endogenous variables were frequency of attendance at religious services and intensity of faith.

The results indicate that while the hourly wage rate accounts for some of the variation in the attendance and faith regressions (i.e. higher wages lead to lower levels of attendance and faith), “allocation of time” variables like working long hours also influence these dimensions. The findings also suggest that the decision to attend or not or to have any faith at all is generally independent from economic factors. However, once the decision to attend or to have faith is made, an individual’s wage influences the degree of attendance or faith to a significant level.

The study contributes to this embryonic body of empirical literature by providing – to the best of the authors’ knowledge – the first results for Australia.

The purpose of this paper is to estimate and explore how religious affiliation may influence general and local trust in contemporary society.

This paper employs data from the 2010 and 2014 waves of the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia survey. The association between religious affiliation and trust was estimated using an ordered logistic regression and conventional ordinary least squares model.

The paper presents evidence of a statistically significant association between religious affiliation and trust that are consistent with theory.

This finding is important for a heterogeneous population like Australia as it seeks to build social cohesion in the face of threats to internal and external security.

The study contributes to the literature by providing – to the best of the authors’ knowledge – the first results on the association between religious affiliation and trust for Australia.

With their former role as “cash cows” under threat owing to COVID-19, Australian business schools are fighting not only to maintain their status but also their survival. This study aims to look at how the sector might best approach these challenges.

The study reviews the recent literature on business and management education in Australia and compares that with emerging trends and policy directions.

This analysis of current and emerging trends suggests that business education needs to find alternative arguments for legitimacy, and that business schools in public universities can no longer be regarded automatically as the “keepers of knowledge”.

The study contends that public resources would be better channelled towards fit-for-purpose business and management education, with this being administered by an array of entities, some of which would include private providers, public–private partnerships or public entities other than “business schools”.

The study articulates the current and emerging challenges faced by decision and policy makers in the field of public business education and contends that the largely homogeneous business education provided by public universities in Australia is not always in the public interest.

The value of business education provided by public institutions is becoming increasingly contested, with many stakeholders, including employers, questioning the utility of contemporary business education.

Previous studies have looked at the aspects of the future of business and management education, but no overview has hitherto synthesised the findings of such studies and drawn out the practical implications.

The purpose of this paper is to estimate the association between religious affiliation and the rate of return to human capital for German men and women.

This paper employs data from the 1997, 2003, 2007 and 2011 waves of the German Socio-Economic Panel for German men and women in full-time employment between the age of 25 and 54. The association between religious affiliation and wages was estimated using a conventional human capital model.

This paper finds that Catholic men (women) received a wage premium of 4 per cent (3 per cent) relative to their Protestant counterparts, even after controlling for an extensive range of demographic, economic and social characteristics.

The study contributes to the literature by providing – to the best of the authors’ knowledge – the first results on the wage premium received by Catholic men and women in the German labour market.

The purpose of this paper is to identify and discuss the drivers behind the rise and fall of the Australian Doctor of Business Administration (DBA) and to assess its future.

Data covering the period 1993-2013 was sourced from the Commonwealth Department of Education and Training to provide a comprehensive analysis of the rise and fall of the Australian DBA.

In Australia, the DBA was introduced in 1993. In the first 11 years of the programme, enrolments increased from only nine candidates in 1993 to 1,505 candidates in 2004. However, by 2013, the number of candidates had fallen to 869 candidates. The authors argue that the principal rationale for the dramatic fall in enrolments points to the challenges and issues of managing overseas candidates by second tier and regional universities rather than a decline in the market per se.

The challenge for universities is to determine whether they can or are able to offer the DBA under a quality framework that requires academic rigour equal to the PhD.

This paper presents – for the first time – the most comprehensive description of trends in the Australian DBA programme from its inception to the present day. It also offers valuable insights and cautionary lessons for other countries thinking of introducing or expanding their current DBA programmes.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate examiner reactions to doctorate of business administration (DBA) theses at an Australian university applying Perry’s structured approach to thesis presentation, which had its origin in the marketing discipline, but is now widely applied to other business disciplines.

This paper examines 49 DBA examiner reports relating to 19 DBA theses using the structured Perry approach, with emphasis paid to comments relating to thesis structure and presentation. Only those theses that acknowledged Perry or demonstrated Perry-like characteristics were interrogated.

The use of Perry’s structured approach can lead to DBA theses that place excessive emphasis on description rather than practical outcomes, as should occur with a professional doctorate, and also fosters excessive repetition and scaffolding that unduly interferes with the candidate’s “story telling”. Many examiners found theses using Perry’s structured approach problematic, particularly with respect to a lack of integration with the literature and reflection on the findings in relation to previous studies.

The use of Perry’s structured approach potentially acts as a further barrier to DBA theses, and other professional doctorates by extension, sufficiently differentiating themselves from PhDs. This has implications for the examination of such theses, which are sometimes viewed as lower-quality PhDs instead of professional doctorates.

Applying a traditional PhD thesis structure, such as the model advocated by Perry with its use of five chapters, to DBA theses potentially exacerbates existing professional doctorate “image” issues, thereby leading to ambiguity for examiners and the candidates themselves.

We utilise the problem of dirty hands to consider the ethical dimensions of commissions of inquiry, particularly commissions of inquiry conducted for the purposes of public policy. The Independent Local Government Review Panel (ILGRP) in NSW is used as an example for the purposes of discussion. Four questions endemic to considerations of dirty hands are derived from Coady (2014). The framework affords various insights into the ethical terrain of this particular inquiry and those undertaken for the purposes of public policy more generally. We argue that commissions of this type and the ILGRP in particular cannot be labelled examples of dirty hands and that the concept of determinatio from the work of St Thomas Aquinas sheds light as to the nature of moral claims around commissions. We also argue that a fruitful analysis is afforded by Wallis’ (2013) analytic framework of the ‘logic of fateful choices faced by the leaders of commissions of inquiry’. Nevertheless, confusion surrounding the nature and types of inquiries is partially responsible for accusations of their ethical incoherence.