Search results

This study aims to describe the role of design thinking in achievement of transformative sustainability learning outcomes among undergraduate art and design students to support future curricular design efforts and thereby train sustainability minded future designers.

Baseline and culminating sustainability concept mapping assessments and reflective surveys were administered to 70 students enrolled in a general ecology and design-centric Ecology for Architects course. Correlation and regression analyses compared samples and case studies, further elucidated patterns of variation relating to the complexity and breadth of students’ sustainability knowledge and transformative potential.

Students in the design-centric course performed better on transformative sustainability indicator metrics than those enrolled in the General Ecology course, driven by improvement in design applications. Complexity of sustainability knowledge improved more among the general ecology students but was accompanied by declines in transformative indicators. Increasing foundational sustainability knowledge is unlikely, on its own, to support transformative learning. Survey responses indicated students were, however, motivated to apply what they learned to their design work, with the most significant improvement in transformative indicators seen in students enrolled in the design-centric course.

This study focuses on a population of students often marginalized in STEM education and provides a unique perspective on the value of design-centric general education courses in a population of students accustomed to design thinking pedagogies.

In A Conceptual Framework for Auditing (Pratt & Van Peursem, 1993) it was argued that audit risk, materiality and judgement are fundamental auditing concepts which should form a part of any conceptual framework. However, it was identified that the New Zealand Society of Accountants treats these issues as guidelines only; they are not treated as fundamental issues. This paper compares the different positions in respect of audit risk, materiality and judgement that have been adopted by the various professional bodies responsible for auditing standards in English speaking Pacific Rim countries and the United Kingdom. Countries included in the study are: New Zealand, Australia, United States of America, Canada, United Kingdom, Singapore, Hong Kong and Malaysia. It is concluded that the tendency in all the standards has been to under‐emphasise these three conceptual issues, despite auditing standards and guideline frameworks that profess interest in broad theoretical issues. As a result, the auditing standards have tended to focus upon procedural ‘how to’ questions rather than more complex questions of ‘why’, or ‘how much’. It is recommended mat the auditing standard setters in all the countries included in this analysis should consider the adoption of a conceptual framework of auditing to better inform the process of standard setting, and to assist the achievement of internal consistency within the standards and guidelines.

I argue that while group and organizational identity research is gaining in popularity, there has not been sufficient attention paid to explicating what identity refers to at the level of the collective. The goal of this chapter is to ‘disentangle’ various issues associated with the concept of collective identity. To meet this goal, I pose questions that scholars should consider when engaging in identity-related research. I begin by asking, “Is it identity?” Here, I address the characteristics that are central to identity, and that differentiate it from similar constructs (e.g. culture). I then ask, “Is it collective identity?” Here, I address issues of levels of analysis, identity locus and origin, as well as how identity comes to be shared in the collective via socialization and media. I conclude by discussing how identity research can be enhanced by more carefully considering these fundamental questions, and suggest some terms that scholars can employ to make their identity-related assumptions and arguments clearer and more precise.

In an era when improved accountability and more comprehensive annual reporting was sought from all parts of the New Zealand public sector, this paper focuses on universities to explore the political influences on accountability. The changing nature of accountability is considered and the internal political factors that may impinge on annual report disclosures are discussed. Issues considered at the societal level include the public right to know, the interest in public sector annual reports and the influence of the accountancy profession in determining the form and content of annual reporting. A case study recounts events on a university campus surrounding the issue of resource allocation and the lack of publicly available information, to provide insights about the political influences upon annual reporting. Fulfilling public accountability obligations is as important for organizations involved in learning and caring as it is for other organizations with more overt commercial, administrative or political objectives.

Describes the Auckland, New Zealand, sharemarket of the early 1880s which possessed many features in common with the same sharemarket 100 years later. Creative accounting practices and questionable auditing judgements were some of these shared features. The Auckland sharemarket was dominated by an elite group of businessmen who controlled most of the leading companies. When the market collapsed in 1886 many of these companies experienced grave financial difficulties. Focuses on the accounting and auditing contribution to these difficulties.

Complementing prior research by Staw et al. (“Threat‐rigidity effects in organizational behavior: a multilevel analysis”, Administrative Science Quarterly, Vol. 26 No. 4, 1981, pp. 501‐24), the authors develop a new conceptual model of organizational change, “autogenic crisis”. The authors’ update of Staw et al.’s threat‐rigidity model shows that top managers may initiate strategic “pre‐adaptations” to future crises, thereby using latent threat to generate organizational flexibility, learning, renewal and, possibly, longer life.

Understanding people and how they factor into complex information technology (IT) implementations is critical to reversing the growing trend of costly IT implementation failures. Accordingly, this article presents an approach to dissecting the social and organizational influences impacting peoples’ acceptance of technology designed to improve business performance. This article applies the diffusion of innovation theoretical framework to understand and analyze IT innovation implementation challenges. The diffusion approach is applied to two recent cases of implementations of IT supply chain innovations at two aerospace firms, both with complex, global, inter‐firm supply chains. Results indicate that several social and organizational factors do affect the implementation's success. Those factors include users’ perceptions of the innovation, the firm's culture, the types of communication channels used to diffuse knowledge of the innovation and various leadership factors.

The purpose of this paper is to present research results in analyzing image contents to improve the accuracy of using an artificial neural network (ANN) to detect embedded data in a digital image.

A texture measure based on the MPEG‐7 texture descriptor is applied to assess the local texture amount. Those image blocks with high texture are masked out and the remaining blocks with low texture are used to derive features for an ANN to classify an image as embedded or clear. The high‐texture blocks are not discarded and can be tested independently for embedded data.

By masking out the high‐texture image blocks, an ANN has improved detection performance especially when the original embedding rate is low. Bypassing the low‐texture image blocks do not pay off for a steganographer because the effective embedding rate in the high‐texture blocks is driven higher.

Hidden data detectors should take the image content into account in order to improve detection performance.

The results can be integrated into a steganalytic system.

This paper presents evidence that image texture affects steganalytic performance and proposes a solution that incorporates texture that has improved detection performance.

Presents the results of a telephone survey of 801 consumers concerning the relationship between bank mergers and service quality perceptions. The setting of the study is a US state which has seen much merger activity. The survey results provide evidence of a significant relationship between bank mergers and service quality perceptions that differs based on the demographic characteristics of the respondents. Among these demographic characteristics are gender, ethnicity, education, and income. In addition to the survey results, the article also contains several managerial implications, including a need for complementarity of marketing strategies for both acquired and non‐acquired banks.