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The purpose of this paper is to assess the extent to which work-based learning could potentially improve education and training pathways in Australia.

The paper reviews education and training provision in Australia through a contextualisation of the Australian Qualification Framework (AQF) with work-based learning pedagogy to determine the extent to which it might contribute to improved outcomes for learners.

People seeking to advance their career aspirations can consider the application of work-based learning to support lifelong learning pathways through the AQF.

There is a need for further longitudinal studies on the outcomes of work-based learning for organisations, individual learners and education and training institutions.

The application of effective WBL approaches has the potential to create a much larger flow of learners from experiential and vocational backgrounds into undergraduate programmes and onto higher education programmes using a consistent and effective pedagogy.

By actively considering the opportunities for learning at work and through work learners, educators and business managers may recognise that there would be more demand for work-based learning.

This paper represents an initial action research study which examines the role WBL can provide for life-long learning.

This paper aims to outline an implementation model and framework for those facilities management (FM) professionals who are seeking to enhance the strategic role of FM within their organisations, through the development of strategic asset management (SAM).

The project was implemented using an action research framework to capture key outcomes and findings at the same time as formal project management techniques were used to govern activities and actions across multiple dimensions.

As a result of the project, the University of Southern Queensland has significantly matured in its understanding of its real estate portfolio. In particular it has now recognised the importance of appropriate and effective investment, optimal utilisation of space, the latent opportunities residing within an under utilised or “lazy” portfolio and the significance of SAM in support of organisational objectives and priorities.

This case study provides information, observations and learning that can be applied in other organisations seeking to develop a SAM focus. These outcomes cover the technical, political, structural, and change management aspects of implementing SAM.

The paper provides guidance on the considerations, implementation experiences and lessons of an organisation with extensive and diverse physical assets engaged with an enterprise level upgrade of its asset management philosophy and practice. This paper comments on a number of organisational dimensions that go beyond the traditional technical areas.

The purpose of this paper is to describe how a consortium of universities in the Asia Pacific region are endeavouring to make a contribution to the implementation of education for sustainable development (ESD) through their participation with and the operation of the Promotion of Sustainability in Postgraduate Education and Research Net project.

The paper describes the evolutionary development of one of the projects of this network (specifically related to ESD in business schools) as the members seek to institute changes at their respective institutions at the same time as contributing to project collaboration in order to enhance the contribution to regional ESD.

The paper discusses the challenges confronting higher education institutions in the context of the decade of education for sustainable development (DESD) and finds that whilst many local actions within universities are being initiated in relation to ESD, there is insufficient cross institutional collaboration occurring to achieve the transformative agenda of ESD. In particular, universities are leaving it to individuals and departments to develop new curriculum for ESD. To overcome this, work is required at a discipline level across the higher education sector (both nationally and internationally) to support curriculum development for ESD.

Issues confronting this project and its consortium members are issues confronting many institutions of higher education (IHE) across the globe as they seek to give effect to the ramifications of ESD. The identification of issues by the project and the steps taken to overcome obstacles will be relevant to many IHE.

The challenges of ESD require not only local changes and improvements (within an organisation) but compel the connection between local and global and consequently between individual organisations and the “system” in which they operate. This applies particularly to individual universities and to the education “system” in relation to ESD, especially as there are considerable expectations of the education system to reorient and reshape our future leaders to understand and incorporate sustainability into their future careers and ways of life. Conventional and traditional approaches to curriculum development at individual universities is impeding the implementation of ESD. This project is endeavouring to develop a model for shared curriculum development which will speed up the implementation of ESD and ensure that individual universities and individual departments can focus on the transformative aspects of ESD in the curriculum.

The purpose of this paper is to highlight the role of positive emotions in generating workplace impacts and examine it through the application of an adapted appreciative inquiry process in the context of a work-based project aimed at promoting integrated working under challenging organisational circumstances.

The paper adopts a case study methodology which highlights how an organisation facing difficult circumstances (such as austerity measures, siloed cultures, constant threats of reorganisation, and requirement to work across occupational boundaries) adapted an appreciative inquiry intervention/method.

This paper found, first, that the utilisation of appreciative inquiry in the context of an adapted work-based project in difficult organisational circumstances generated positive emotions manifest through a compelling vision and action plans, second, that the impacts (such as a vision) can become entangled and therefore part of the wider ecological context which promotes pathways to such impact, but that, third, there are a various cultural and climate features which may limit the implementation of actions or the continuation of psychological states beyond the time-bound nature of the work-based project.

The paper illustrates how an organisation adapted a form of appreciative inquiry to facilitate organisational change and generated outcomes which were meaningful to the various occupational groupings involved.

This paper offers new evidence and insight into the adaptation of appreciative inquiry under challenging circumstances in the context of a work-based learning project. It also provides a richer picture of how positive emotion can manifest in ways which are meaningful to a localised context.

While the intended outcomes of work-integrated learning (WIL) are well documented, significant challenges arise when the stakeholders have different understandings and expectations. The purpose of this paper is to examine the alignment of stakeholder views on the defining features of cooperative education as a model of WIL.

An interpretive case-study methodology, incorporating questionnaires and semi-structured interviews, was used to determine the views of students, workplace supervisors and university academic supervisors involved in a sport cooperative education program.

Students, workplace supervisors and academic supervisors shared a perception that the students’ development of employability skills and their acquisition of experience in industry were the primary intended outcomes. As an associated benefit, students would be work-ready. Ideally, cooperative education experiences should also provide opportunities for students to learn to integrate theory and practice, further develop their personal and professional identities, and learn to navigate the important ethical aspects of being a professional.

While the employability emphasis in the findings aligns well with government agendas, graduates need to be prepared for complex and dynamic workplaces, and to be future ready for careers that are yet to exist. WIL curricula need to explicitly address this expanded agenda, which in turn needs to be communicated clearly to all stakeholders.

This paper challenges stakeholders in WIL to move beyond a focus on preparing students for the “now” and to reconsider the learning outcomes that should be imperative for university education in the twenty-first century.

Natural selection—survival of the fittest—is as old as life itself. Applied genetics which is purposeful in contrast to natural selection also has a long history, particularly in agriculture; it has received impetus from the more exacting demands of the food industry for animal breeds with higher lean : fat and meat : bone ratios, for crops resistant to the teeming world of parasites. Capturing the exquisite scent, the colours and form beautiful of a rose is in effect applied genetics and it has even been applied to man. For example, Frederick the Great, Emperor of Prussia, to maintain a supply of very tall men for his guards—his Prussian Guards averaged seven feet in height—ordered them to marry very tall women to produce offspring carrying the genes of great height. In recent times, however, research and experiment in genetic control, more in the nature of active interference with genetic composition, has developed sufficiently to begin yielding results. It is self‐evident that in the field of micro‐organisms, active interference or manipulations will produce greater knowledge and understanding of the gene actions than in any other field or by any other techniques. The phenomenon of “transferred drug resistance”, the multi‐factorial resistance, of a chemical nature, transferred from one species of micro‐organisms to another, from animal to human pathogens, its role in mainly intestinal pathology and the serious hazards which have arisen from it; all this has led to an intensive study of plasmids and their mode of transmission. The work of the Agricultural Research Council's biologists (reported elsewhere in this issue) in relation to nitrogen‐fixing genes and transfer from one organism able to fix nitrogen to another not previously having this ability, illustrates the extreme importance of this new field. Disease susceptibility, the inhibition of invasiveness which can be acquired by relatively “silent” micro‐organisms, a better understanding of virulence and the possible “disarming” of organisms, particularly those of particular virulence to vulnerable groups. Perhaps this is looking for too much too soon, but Escherichia coli would seem to offer more scope for genetic experiments than most; it has serotypes of much variability and viability; and its life and labours in the human intestine have assumed considerable importance in recent years. The virulence of a few of its serotypes constitute an important field in food epidemiology. Their capacity to transfer plasmids—anent transfer of drug resistance— to strains of other organisms resident in the intestines, emphasizes the need for close study, with safeguards.

Man has been seeking an ideal existence for a very long time. In this existence, justice, love, and peace are no longer words, but actual experiences. How ever, with the American preemptive invasion and occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq and the subsequent prisoner abuse, such an existence seems to be farther and farther away from reality. The purpose of this work is to stop this dangerous trend by promoting justice, love, and peace through a change of the paradigm that is inconsistent with justice, love, and peace. The strong paradigm that created the strong nation like the U.S. and the strong man like George W. Bush have been the culprit, rather than the contributor, of the above three universal ideals. Thus, rather than justice, love, and peace, the strong paradigm resulted in in justice, hatred, and violence. In order to remove these three and related evils, what the world needs in the beginning of the third millenium is the weak paradigm. Through the acceptance of the latter paradigm, the golden mean or middle paradigm can be formulated, which is a synergy of the weak and the strong paradigm. In order to understand properly the meaning of these paradigms, however, some digression appears necessary.

The most significant event for the School has been the announcement of the creation of the National Centre for Management Research and Development. The Centre is due to open in 1986 and will provide research facilities for up to 20 major projects designed to improve the competitiveness of Canadian business practices.

This paper explored the relationship between the embeddedness of a firm’s managerial values and corporate financial performance in Swiss small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) by developing a conceptual maturity model of managerial values (MM-MV). The MM-MV articulates the extent to which managerial values are embedded within organizations, allowing the analysis of the interrelationship between the degree of values-embeddedness and financial performance in SMEs. The findings suggested that as managerial values become more embedded, financial performance increases; therefore, SMEs exhibiting highly embedded managerial values such as customer-minded, team spirit, innovation-driven reliability, persistency, competency, and engagement tend to financially outperform SMEs that have not fully embedded managerial values throughout the firm.

While on a business flight, a CEO reads in an airline magazine about an information technology innovation that promises fabulous returns to the adopting corporation. Returning home, the CEO demands immediate action from the senior information systems executive. So goes a story current among systems practitioners. This tale of “Airline Magazine Syndrome” is analyzed here as an instance of narrative, through research informed by innovation theory and field interviews with business executives and systems practitioners. The analysis considers both how the story depends for its meaning on the sociotechnical context of innovation, and how that context is illuminated by the listener’s engagement with the story. “Airline Magazine Syndrome” is a kind of moral drama, in which misdeeds portend crisis and failure. As such, there are also lessons for a happier ending, in the domain of real practice, in which organizational innovation with information technology can have better prospects for success.