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The purpose of this paper is to understand the career development and employability needs of undergraduate information technology (IT) students at an Australian University, and their relation to students’ career interest. While many factors and stakeholders contribute to student career development, this study focused specifically on the student experience. Social cognitive career theory (SCCT) is used as an approach to understand the students’ needs of career development and employability.

An online survey was completed by 126 IT students to record information about students’ career development and employability background and needs.

The results demonstrate that SCCT helps understand the factors that impact on IT students’ career development, with their outcome expectations and self-efficacy informed by prior studies in IT and their need for access to “IT professionals” to contribute towards their career interest. In addition, IT students rely on academic achievement and experiential learning, rather than career resources, to guide their career development and employability.

The data collected in this study are limited to one discipline (IT) at one university, which necessarily limits the generalisability of the specific results.

Career development is a complex, life-stage-dependant and discipline-specific process that varies for every decision maker. This research makes an important contribution in presenting the IT student experience and demonstrates how an appropriate career development model can help understand students’ needs. This outcome will help educators better support IT students to build the career interest.

This study explored the often-overlooked student experience of career development, providing valuable insight into IT students’ needs.

Sustainable construction is widely considered to be the best practice in construction, helping to create a healthy built environment. Social media is identified as a valuable data source for research on sustainable construction, and Twitter is a popular social media platform in relation to the construction. Green Building construction is identified as one of the methods that promotes sustainable construction. The purpose of this study is to characterise “Green Building” as a topic in Twitter.

Social network analysis methods were applied to a large set of Twitter data related to “green building”. Time sequence analysis and network visualisation were used to characterise Twitter activity and to identify influential users. Text analytics and visualisation methods were applied to the same data set to visualise the text content of Twitter posts relating to green building.

Peaks in Twitter activity were associated with physical “green building” events. The network visualisation of the Twitter data revealed a complex structure and a range of types of interactions. The most “influential” users depended on the ranking method used; however, a number of users had high influence in all measures used. The tweet text visualisation showed evidence of a global and interactive audience on Twitter engaged in conversations about green building. Also, it was found that external links, emoji and popular terms related to a particular topic can be used to increase the engagement of Twitter users on that topic.

Certain Green Building events were observed to be associated with high levels of Twitter activity. The virtual was found to be closely linked to the physical, and for the promotion of green building construction, their respective impact is potentially the most powerful when used in conjunction. The most influential Twitter accounts did not belong to one class of user, including both individuals and organisations. Twitter offers a platform for a range of stakeholders in the area of green building construction to reach a substantial audience and to be influential in the public sphere. The findings of this research provide a valuable reference for industry practitioners and researchers to deepen their understanding of the application of Twitter to green building construction, and the methods of using Twitter to promote important information related to sustainable construction.

Fabric pilling is a serious problem for the apparel industry. Resistance to pilling is normally tested by simulated accelerated wear and manual assessment of degree of pilling based on a visual comparison of the sample to a set of test images. A number of automated systems based on image analysis have been developed. The authors propose new methods of image analysis based on the two-dimensional wavelet transform to objectively measure the pilling intensity in sample images. Initial work employed the detail coefficients of the two-dimensional discrete wavelet transform (2DDWT) as a measure of the pilling intensity of woven/knitted fabrics.

This method is shown to be robust to image translation and brightness variation. Using the approximation coefficients of the 2DDWT, the method is extended to non-woven pilling image sets. Wavelet texture analysis (WTA) combined with principal components analysis are shown to produce a richer texture description of pilling for analysis and classification. Finally, employing the two-dimensional dual-tree complex wavelet transform as the basis for the WTA feature vector is shown to produce good automated classification on a range of standard pilling image sets.

Regardless of their virtual nature, research suggests that social media networks are still influenced by geography. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the connections between Australian universities on the Twitter social media system.

This research employs network analysis and visualisation to characterise the connections between Australian universities on Twitter.

A strong relationship to geography, both at the intra-state level and the inter-state level, was observed in the connections between Australian universities on Twitter. A relationship between number of followers and time since joining Twitter was also observed.

The research presented is limited to Australian universities only and represents a snapshot in time only.

Australian universities have the opportunity to reach beyond the geographically restricted connections observed here, to actively seek new audiences, and to realise the cited benefits of online social media relating to increased connection across physical and digital frontiers. By capitalising on the strong “locality” observed in social media connections, a university could become a desirable source of information that is likely to be of interest to, and valued by, local constituents.

This paper contributes to the research literature on university use of social media by addressing the so far largely silent area of inter-institutional connections via social media, and the influence of physical geography on the connections between universities on Twitter. It also offers a practical methodology for those interested in further research in this area.

According to behavioral research, aspirations influence a firm's search – exploitive and explorative – for solutions that satisfy a firm's goals. Yet, such goal seeking behavior is adaptive to a firm's past experiences and not to a manager's expectations of its firm's future. A manager's expectations are often explained in terms of their confidence in future events. The purpose of this study is to address the following research question: how does a manager's confidence influence its expectations of a firm's future performance and goals; and how do these future expectations influence a firm's exploitive/explorative search?

In drawing on cognition and legitimacy research, a conceptual model was developed to explain the antecedents and outcomes of a firm's “forward-looking” aspirations. The antecedents to a firm's forward-looking aspirations are attributed to a manager's overconfidence – anchoring, confirmation and availability – biases. In using strategic legitimacy explanations, these biases introduce distinct types of forward-looking (exploitive/explorative) search that legitimize/de-legitimize a manager's forward-looking aspirations.

A key finding of this study is that it introduces a strategic decision-making process in which a firm's exploitive/ explorative search is adaptive toward its forward-looking aspirations.

This forward-looking strategic decision-making process offers research implications to understand how a firm's future goals and expectations can offer new understandings of their past experiences and traditions and explains how a manager's overconfidence biases can influence the assessment of a firm's social aspirational groups.

In addition, this study also offers practical implications in which illustrative examples are used to explain this study's forward-looking strategic decision-making process.

A distinct contribution of this study is that it introduces a forward-looking orientation that has not been previously examined the backward focus of behavioral research.

“The entire focus of this book is on the interpersonal relations work of the supervisor. Although he may engage in many other activities, such as job analysis and work simplification, these are less central and occupy less of his attention than interpersonal relations.” In this way the authors of ‘The Challenge of Supervision’ state their faith that the fundamental ability in good supervision is what we loosely call ‘human relations’.

Communications regarding this column should be addressed to Mrs. Cheney, Peabody Library School, Nashville, Tenn. 37203. Mrs. Cheney does not sell the books listed here. They are available through normal trade sources. Mrs. Cheney, being a member of the editorial board of Pierian Press, will not review Pierian Press reference books in this column. Descriptions of Pierian Press reference books will be included elsewhere in this publication.

Outlines the general reasons behind negligent supervision such as lack of training, lack of communication and lack of understanding. Outlines a case study regarding a corporate law department in some depth. Provides three other case studies before proceeding to consider the effects on employees and suggest solutions to prevent negligent supervision. Concludes that supervisors have significant roles to undertake and sufficient training must be provided, together with professional recruitment to minimize unsuitable candidates.