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The purpose of this paper is to review the establishment of Primary Health Network (PHN) in Australia and its utility in commissioning Primary Health Care (PHC) services.

This study is an analysis of management practice about the establishment and development of a PHN as a case study over the three-year period. The PHN is the Hunter New England and Central Coast PHN (HNECCPHN). The study is based on “insiders perspectives” drawing from documentation, reports and evaluations undertaken.

HNECCPHN demonstrates a unique inclusive organisation across a substantial diverse geographic area. It has taken an innovative and evidence-based approach to its creation, governance and operation. HNECCPHN addresses the health challenges of a substantial Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander population. It contains significant and diverse urban, coastal and distinct rural, regional and remote populations. It can be described as a “virtual” organisation, using a distributed network of practice approach to engage clinicians, communities and providers. The authors describe progress and learning in the context of theories of complex organisations, innovation, networks of practice, knowledge translation and social innovation.

The study provides initial publication into the establishment phase of a PHN in Australia.

The study describes the implementation and progress in terms of relevant international practice and theoretical concepts. This paper demonstrates significant innovative practice in the short term.

The study describes significant engagement and the importance of that with and between communities, service providers and health professionals.

This is the first study of the results of the implementation of an important change in the funding and delivery of PHC in Australia.

Evidence of mean reversion in U.S. stock prices during the post‐World War II era is mixed. I find that using the standard portfolio formation method to construct size‐sorted portfolios is inadequate for detecting mean reversion. Using alternative portfolio formation methods and additional cross‐sectional power gained from size‐sorted portfolios during the period 1963 to 1998, I find strong evidence of mean reversion in portfolio prices. My findings imply a significantly positive speed of reversion with a half‐life of approximately three and a half years. Parametric contrarian investment strategies that exploit mean reversion outperform buy‐and‐hold and standard contrarian strategies.

Learners with autism require specialized education and supports to ensure acquisition and mastery of various communication skills. This is particularly true for individuals whose disability significantly impacts their language development. Without functional communication, these individuals often engage in severe behavior, have reduced self-determination, and experience diminished quality of life. Accordingly, researchers in special education and related fields have sought ways to improve the communication skills of learners with autism who need specialized language and communication interventions. Although the Picture Exchange Communication System (PECS) is well-established in the empirical literature and has helped countless individuals learn to communicate, the method known as facilitated communication (FC; which also is being called “supported typing” and “rapid prompting method”) has become increasingly popular in recent years. Few methods in special education have been as thoroughly discredited as FC and perhaps none are as dangerous. This chapter contrasts the thoroughly debunked FC and its pseudoscientific characteristics with those underpinning PECS. A brief historical account of each method is provided along with key scientific and pseudoscientific features that distinguish science from pseudoscience. Ultimately, our intent is to further clarify how FC is not an augmentative or alternative communication method and why PECS is.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the factors that can facilitate agility in higher education and to analyze the interrelationship between the factors.

A structured model of factors facilitating agility in higher education was developed using total interpretive structural modeling (TISM). Cross-impact matrix multiplication (MICMAC) analysis helped in classifying the factors on the basis of their driving and dependency power.

An extensive literature review and expert opinion helped in identifying eight enablers that can promote agility in higher education. The ability to sense the environment, organizational structure, adoption of ICT, organizational learning, human resource strategies, leadership, readiness to change and collaboration with the stakeholders were the eight factors identified. The structural model revealed leadership as the most crucial enabler followed by human resource strategies and organizational structure.

The model has incorporated and prioritized all the crucial drivers of agility that can help universities and colleges design, adopt and implement policies and practices that would facilitate agility.

So far, the research on agility in higher education has looked into each factor in isolation. This research provides a comprehensive list of the factors and establishes the interplay between the factors making this study new and original.

The purpose of this paper is to conceptualise graduate work-readiness (GWR) and to develop a scale to measure it.

The methodology entailed the compilation of a literature review and the conduct of qualitative interviews and a focus group to generate items. This study used the “resource-based view” approach to conceptualise a multi-dimensional–“work-readiness integrated competence model (WRICM)”–consisting of four main factors (namely, intellectual, personality, meta-skill and job-specific resources), with a further ten sub-dimensions. Further, a series of tests were performed to assess its reliability and validity.

A final 53-item WRICM scale covering four dimensions and ten sub-dimensions of GWR was developed based on the perceptions of 362 HR professionals and managers from seven Asia-Pacific countries. The ten sub-dimensions covering 53 work-readiness skills reflect the perceptions of stakeholders regarding the work-readiness of graduates. The scale was found to be psychometrically sound for measuring GWR.

Though the WRICM model is based on the inputs of different stakeholders of GWR (employers, educators, policy makers and graduates), the development of the WRICM scale is based on the perspectives of industry/employers only.

The WRICM model has implications for education, industry, professional associations, policy makers and for graduates. These stakeholders can adapt this scale in assessing the work-readiness of graduates in different streams of education.

The authors believe that the WRICM model is the first multi-dimensional construct that is based on a sound theory and from the inputs from graduate work-readiness stakeholders from seven Asia-Pacific countries.

This paper investigates whether stock‐price indexes of emerging markets can be characterized as random walk (unit root) or mean reversion processes. We implement a panelbased test that exploits cross‐sectional information from seventeen emerging equity markets during the period January 1985 to April 2002. The gain in power allows us to reject the null hypothesis of random walk in favor of mean reversion at the 5 percent significance level. We find a positive speed of reversion with a half‐life of about 30 months. These results are similar to those documented for developed markets. Our findings provide an interesting comparison to existing studies on more matured markets and reduce the likelihood of earlier mean reversion findings as attributable to data mining.

Human resource management (HRM) processes are increasingly artificial intelligence (AI)-driven, and HRM supports the general digital transformation of companies' viable competitiveness. This paper points out possible positive and negative effects on HRM, workplaces and workers’ organizations along the HR processes and its potential for competitive advantage in regard to managerial decisions on AI implementation regarding augmentation and automation of work.

A systematic literature review that includes 62 international journals across different disciplines and contains top-tier academic and German practitioner journals was conducted. The literature analysis applies the resource-based view (RBV) as a lens through which to explore AI-driven HRM as a potential source of organizational capabilities.

The analysis shows four ambiguities for AI-driven HRM that might support sustainable company development or might prevent AI application: job design, transparency, performance and data ambiguity. A limited scholarly discussion with very few empirical studies can be stated. To date, research has mainly focused on HRM in general, recruiting and HR analytics in particular.

The four ambiguities' context-specific potential for capability building in firms is indicated, and research avenues are developed.

This paper critically explores AI-driven HRM and structures context-specific potential for capability building along four ambiguities that must be addressed by HRM to strategically contribute to an organization's competitive advantage.

A Monte Carlo experiment is used to examine the size and power properties of alternative Bayesian tests for unit roots. Four different prior distributions for the root that is potentially unity – a uniform prior and priors attributable to Jeffreys, Lubrano, and Berger and Yang – are used in conjunction with two testing procedures: a credible interval test and a Bayes factor test. Two extensions are also considered: a test based on model averaging with different priors and a test with a hierarchical prior for a hyperparameter. The tests are applied to both trending and non-trending series. Our results favor the use of a prior suggested by Lubrano. Outcomes from applying the tests to some Australian macroeconomic time series are presented.

The purpose of this paper is to paper investigates whether different perceptions exist with regard to diversity management within an organisation. Additionally, if such differences exist, what contextual factors influence these perceptions?

The approach of this study is based on inductive and interpretative case research, which aims to compare diverse perceptions in two different organisational units of a company. For this purpose, 30 semi-structured interviews were conducted.

The findings in this paper highlight the importance of contexts in the study of diversity management. That is, contexts such as workforce composition and power (e.g. organisational status) in an organisation as well as the social environment’s impact on social identity processes, which results in discrepant focusses on and recognition of diversity management within the same organisation.

This study contributes to research on a more nuanced approach to diversity by proposing an importance of contexts for the process of social identity and further perceptual discrepancy.

Qualitative research on and findings about perceptual discrepancy help to close the gap between the practice and rhetoric of diversity management.

Departing from extant empirical research on diversity at the workplace, which relies predominantly on quantitative methods, a qualitative design of this study allows a refinement of previous findings. Also, this paper provides deeper insight into the sense-making process, resulting in different diversity perceptions by different employees according to their work and social environments or contexts.

The purpose of this paper is to identify how the design of a performance appraisal system (PAS) affects the perceived justice of academic employees (AE) about their performance appraisal (PA) and how this is associated with organizational effectiveness in terms of organizational leadership (OL).

The study subjects are two economic faculties of two Estonian public universities. The data for the study were collected using the PA Survey with a total of 82 AEs, OL Capability Questionnaire with a total of 72 AEs and the organizations' documents to analyze PAS. Assessment and analysis of the data included: the measurement of PAS design; the measurement of perceived justice from PA; the measurement of organizational leadership capability; analysis of the results gained from studying perceived justice from different PAS designs and organizational effectiveness in terms of OL.

Ultimately, the study reveals that PAS design affects academic employees' perception of distributive justice and organizational external effectiveness in terms of OL but does not affect academic employees' perception of procedural justice and organizational internal effectiveness in terms of OL.

This study suggests that organizational effectiveness depends on perceived justice of employees from the design of PAS. However, the results of this study are valid in the arrangements of academic jobs in universities and in similar or close context of Estonian culture.

This paper demonstrates the role of PAS design in conditions of intellectual job arrangement in universities with its influence on organizational effectiveness in the context of OL.