Search results

Since its inception in 1975, Murdoch University in Western Australia has been unusual in the Australian context with its focus on interdisciplinarity in undergraduate education. Murdoch University has long claimed interdisciplinarity to be one of its distinguishing features. It has a university-wide policy on interdisciplinarity, and specifies ‘interdisciplinarity’ as one of the attributes students are expected to have when they graduate, that is: ‘A capacity to acquire knowledge and understanding of fields of study beyond a single discipline’. All Murdoch University students are introduced to interdisciplinary study in compulsory first-year foundation units that are the cornerstone of a Part 1 programme of studies. Foundation units aim to introduce students to university study, provide a broad perspective and expose students to a range of disciplines and teaching styles. Encouraging the exploration of a range of options before students proceed to their chosen field of study is dependent on a tradition of flexibility that enables students to move easily between and across disciplines. Over the years, the Part 1 programme at Murdoch University has been eroded by disciplinary demands on students, but the basic principles continue to be reaffirmed by external reviews and from within the university. Recently, the value of general undergraduate education has been further reinstated as other Australian universities have begun to investigate and instigate interdisciplinary programmes of study. The trend towards breadth in undergraduate education in Australia provides cause for reflection on interdisciplinarity at Murdoch University. This chapter describes the Murdoch University experience using the author's intimate knowledge of the University and draws on literature on interdisciplinarity to frame the lessons that have been learned over the past 30 years.

This article commences with an overview of the changes to library cooperative activity and how these might affect document supply operations. It looks at the increasing emphasis on using ICTs to locate and transfer items, and the corresponding reduction in the importance of ownership and collections. It suggests this is eroding the previous belief in collection coherence and leading to a reduction in efforts to build collections cooperatively between libraries. It argues that libraries have now entered the era of the ‘post‐modern’ collection, and suggests the impact this might have on document supply activity, particularly between consortium members. It concludes with a study of the consortium activities of one academic library, at Murdoch University in Western Australia, in order to illustrate these points.

The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate the importance of expectation formation and matching for university student volunteers and their hosts.

This research involved a multi-stage data collection process including interviews with student volunteers, and university and host representatives from six Australian universities. The project team undertook an iterative process of coding and interpretation to identify themes and develop understanding of the phenomenon.

University student volunteering has the potential to fail to meet the expectations of at least one of the parties to the relationship when the expectations of the parties are not clearly articulated. Universities operating volunteer programmes have an important role in facilitating expectation formation and matching, minimising the chances of mismatched expectations.

The study confirms the operation of a psychological contract for university student volunteers and organisations who host them which is consistent with other research in volunteering demonstrating the importance of matching expectations.

The paper identifies the importance of expectation formation and matching for hosts and students, and highlights the role of universities in facilitating matchmaking.

This paper contributes to the growing body of research on the role of the psychological contract in volunteering, in particular in university student volunteering and host organisations.

The purpose of this paper is to postulate that the technique of Importance-Performance Analysis (IPA) is currently underutilised in visitor management studies reported in the peer-reviewed marine wildlife tourism (MWT) research literature. Further, this paper provides insight into how IPA could inform future research and management of tourism experiences at marine wildlife destinations.

This paper synthesises learning gained from the natural area tourism and recreation literature that report the application of IPA in MWT and insights from a recent study at the Dolphin Discovery Centre in Bunbury, Western Australia.

Although currently underutilized in MWT research, IPA is a relatively straightforward, easy to interpret, and, if correctly applied, a powerful tool that managers and researchers can employ to investigate and enhance visitor satisfaction in the short-term and for longer-term sustainability of the industry through visitor-informed tourism management.

Having identified the opportunity to enhance visitor experiences, site management and target species welfare through increased IPA research, this review provides a plain language introduction to the application of IPA and direct access to comprehensible academic discourses and exemplars for the technique. Moreover, in light of increasing tourism demand, IPA can assist in determining management options for the future.

This paper aims to investigate shrimp income losses of farmers in the four farming systems in the research areas of Ca Mau, Vietnam, and determine the vulnerability of shrimp farming income to climate change events.

Field research interviews were conducted with 100 randomly selected households across the four farming systems to access shrimp income status and vulnerability levels to climate change events. Four focus groups, each aligned to a particular farming system, were surveyed to categorise likelihood and consequences of climate change effects based on a risk matrix worksheet to derive levels of risk, adaptive capacity and vulnerability levels.

Shrimp farmers in the study areas have been facing shrimp income reduction recently and shrimp farming income is vulnerable to climate change events. There are some differences between farmers’ perspectives on vulnerability levels, but some linkages are evident among shrimp farmer characteristics, ramifications for each farming system, shrimp income losses and shrimp farmers’ perspectives on vulnerability levels of shrimp incomes. From an income perspective, farmers operating in intensive shrimp farming systems appear to be less vulnerable to existing and expected climate change effects relative to those in mixed production or lower density systems.

Having identified the vulnerability level of shrimp farming income to climate change events in different farming systems based on shrimp farmers’ perspectives, the paper adds new knowledge to existing research on vulnerability of the aquaculture sector to climate change. The research findings have implications for policymakers who may choose to encourage intensive shrimp farming to enhance shrimp farmer resilience to the effects of climate change as well as improving cultivation techniques for shrimp farmers. The findings could thus guide local government decision-making on climate change responses and residents of Ca Mau as well as within the wider Mekong Delta in developing suitable practical adaption measures.

The purpose of this study is to explore the contributing barriers to corporate social and environmental responsibility (CSER) practices. In particular, this study focuses on non-managerial stakeholders’ perceptions of the barriers to CSER practices in a developing country context. The study also investigates the current initiatives undertaken by the different stakeholders, such as government, non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and regulators.

The study takes a qualitative approach, undertaking semi-structured in-depth interviews with 26 participants from NGOs, the media, regulatory authorities, government departments, shareholders, trade union leaders and customers.

The views of stakeholder groups were analysed to identify the contributing barriers to CSER practices. The findings of the study reveal that corruption and politics, lack of coordination, lack of government initiatives and unsatisfactory implementation of laws are perceived as the major barriers that hinder CSER practices in Bangladesh. The study also found a lack of awareness amongst various stakeholder groups regarding the influential role CSER plays in promoting sustainable development. The current initiatives undertaken by various stakeholders to improve CSER practices were limited but growing.

The study utilises the stakeholder theory to examine the role of stakeholders, rather than managers, in relation to CSER practice in Bangladesh. The findings may provide impetus for mitigating CSER barriers in a developing country context.

This study is one of the few engagement-based studies to explore the non-managerial stakeholders’ views on CSER in a developing country context.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the factors that may impact on the acceptance of the e-book amongst mathematics and statistics (MAS) students at higher education institutions in Libya.

A theoretical model has been developed based on the technology acceptance model (TAM). The factors divided into three groups: intrinsic variables represent the first group of factors that are related to the user or the potential users itself, such as Self-Efficacy and Resistance to Change. Second, extrinsic variables include all the factors that reflect the characteristics of the e-book and the infrastructure for universities, which are Mobility (M), Facilities (F) and Library Service Quality (LS). TAM constructs from Perceived Ease Of Use (PEOU), Perceived Usefulness (PU), Attitude (AU) and Behaviour Intention (BI) represent the last group. Data relating to the constructs were collected through a self-administered survey in 2014. The developed model was measured and tested by structural equation modelling using AMOS (22.0).

The result confirmed that the structural model fits the data well. According to the results, TAM constructs have a significant impact on the acceptance of e-book among MAS students at universities in Libya. In addition, the intrinsic variables play the important role to predict students’ BI. Although the extrinsic variables were less important, Facilities was the strong factor in this group.

The adoption of e-book amongst higher education students in Libya is still quite low. Hence, identifying the factors that may contribute to e-book adoption is crucial. The contribution of this paper is to determine the factors that effect on the acceptance of e-book amongst MAS students at higher education institutions in Libya.

While behaviour sequence analysis (BSA) is popular, it is not without limitations, namely, the level of detail required and time taken to run analyses; therefore, this paper aims to outline a novel method, using 30 serial homicide cases as a worked example.

Temporal analysis methods are becoming increasingly popular in applied forensic and criminological research. In recent years, BSA has become a widely used approach.

Waypoint sequencing provides a streamlined version of the traditional BSA approach, allowing for fewer behaviours to be included and providing a clearer overview of the main behaviours of interest.

Waypoint sequencing is shown in the current paper through serial killer research to show how to conduct the analyses and how it is effective in current investigations by expediting the process and allowing quicker analysis to facilitate current investigations.

The current research provides a novel approach to sequence analysis that is more useful in applied settings as it requires fewer behaviours or events than traditional BSA.

This paper presents base‐line data about the incumbency or length of time spent in office by Australian vice‐chancellors who held appointments in the years 1963 to 1983. Principal findings of the analysis are that the average length of incumbency has declined from 13.6 years for 1963 to 8.0 years for 1983 vice‐chancellors, that the period 1983 to 1987 will witness an unprecedentedly high rate of turnover among vice‐chancellors, and that an increasing proportion of vice‐chancellors no longer regard their incumbency as their final full‐time professional appointment. The conclusions are related to apparent stratification and ranking among Australian universities in an emerging system of higher education which is becoming more complex.

This study aims to investigate the relationship between university rankings and sustainability reporting among Australia and New Zealand universities. Even though sustainability reporting is an established area of investigation, prior research has paid inadequate attention to the nexus of university ranking and sustainability reporting.

This study covers 46 Australian and New Zealand universities and uses a data set, which includes sustainability reports and disclosures from four reporting channels including university websites, and university archives, between 2005 and 2018. Ordinary least squares regression was used with Pearson and Spearman’s rank correlations to investigate the likelihood of multi-collinearity and the paper also calculated the variance inflation factor values. Finally, this study uses the generalized method of moments approach to test for endogeneity.

The findings suggest that sustainability reporting is significantly and positively associated with university ranking and confirm that the four reporting channels play a vital role when communicating with university stakeholders. Further, this paper documents that sustainability reporting through websites, in addition to the annual report and a separate environment report have a positive impact on the university ranking systems.

This paper contributes to extant knowledge on the link between university rankings and university sustainability reporting which is considered a vital communication vehicle to meet the expectation of the stakeholder in relevance with the university rankings.