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Human resource (HR) practices are increasingly concerned with adding value through increased skills, autonomy and contribution. Whilst useful in some cultural and industry contexts, there is potential for incompatibility with other norms, especially those outside western culture or the manufacturing industry mainstream. Australian construction companies in Malaysia use the language of normative HR, but they are challenged by the differing cultural norms of Asia. It is concluded that HR policies and corporate culture are used as marketing devices not solely as management strategy.

To examine the incidence and prevalence rate of drug‐related complaints against police in the New South Wales Police Service (Australia) and compare these rates to officer demographics.

Seven years of complaints data (1993‐2000) are examined. The data showed that of nearly 40,000 complaints amounting to over 80,000 allegations, less than 2 percent relate to drug‐related allegations. These allegations were isolated and the pattern of officer demographics from these incidents were compared to the police service as a whole, with the aim of exploring if particular groups (such as length of service, age, gender etc.) were particularly susceptible to attracting drug‐related allegations.

The most common drug‐related allegation was for supplying drugs. The distribution of drug‐related complaints follows the general demographic pattern of officers in the police service, though female officers attracted fewer drug‐related allegations. Adverse findings, while rare, are most likely to be recorded against lower ranking police officers who have served less time in the police service.

The paper shows that demographics alone are not sufficient to identify officers at risk of being on the receiving end of a drug‐related complaint. The age, service and rank analysis conducted in this paper has not revealed any particular groups that are more susceptible to allegations of drugs misconduct. This paper therefore supports the idea that a more thorough early warning system tailored to individual officers may be necessary for an effective strategic complaints system.

With a pool of nearly 80,000 allegations to draw upon, the research employs one of the largest data sets ever examined. The findings are therefore sufficient to provide robust statistical comparisons, and are of interest to police practitioners, law enforcement managers, and researchers.

This paper aims to examine the antecedents of customer inertia (i.e. knowledge, confusion, perceptions of competitor similarity and switching costs) and their relationship to customer satisfaction, service providers’ switching intentions and actual switching behavior. Customer inertia is said to reduce the incidence of service provider switching; however, little is known about the antecedent drivers of inertia.

The conceptual model was tested by a longitudinal/discontinuous panel design using an online survey research of 1055 adult (i.e. +18 years old) subscribers to cell phone services. Partial least squares (PLS) path modeling was used to simultaneously estimate both the measurement and structural components of the model to determine the nature of the relationships between the variables.

Findings of the PLS structural model provide support for the direct relationship between customer inertia and its antecedents (i.e. knowledge, confusion, perceptions of competitor similarity and switching costs). The results show that customer inertia has a moderate negative effect on the intention to change service providers but had no measurable effect on the actual behavior of changing service providers, other than indirectly, by influencing the perception of difficulty in switching some 11 months later. Further results from an analysis of indirect pathways of the antecedents to inertia show that switching costs are the only variable which indirectly reduce intentions to change service providers. The results also show that the effect of satisfaction on switching service providers is partially moderated by inertia. Importantly, these relationships are reasonably robust given past switching behavior and contract status of consumers.

The authors find evidence which explains some of the causes of inertia, and show that it has both direct and moderating effects on service provider switching intentions, though not necessarily the behavior of changing service providers. However, support was found for its indirect role through intent as an influence on switching behavior. Importantly, the authors find that inertia has lingering effects, in that it influences the perception of switching difficulties and, hence, behavior up to 11 months in the future.

Managerial implications are that service firms can profit from customer inertia through a reduction in churn. However, high levels of customer inertia over the longer term may increase the level of customer vulnerability to competitor offers and marketing activities, as satisfaction with the provider does not in itself explain switching intentions or behavior.

This study is the first study to contribute to an understanding of the antecedent drivers of customer inertia with respect to service provider switching and to empirically evaluate a variety of antecedent factors that potentially affect switching intentions. Importantly, the long lasting latent effect of inertia in indirectly influencing service switching behavior was found to persist some 11 months later.

In 1939, an English artist, designer and teacher named Ann Gillmore Rees arrived in New South Wales. Over the next nine years Rees taught design and craft to adults in Sydney, working for the Children’s Library and Craft Movement (later to become the Creative Leisure Movement), the Australian Red Cross, and the Society of Arts and Crafts of New South Wales. Although the period from 1939 until 1948 represents only a short period in what was a long and diverse career, Rees’ students included some notable figures, among them Margaret Oppen who went on to establish the Embroiderers Guild of NSW, Ysobel Irvine, later a popular teacher at the Workshop Art Centre in Willoughby, and the noted interior designer Marion Hall Best. Despite her active participation in the cultural life of Sydney, Rees is curiously absent from most of the histories of craft and design in Australia and very little has been written about her work as a teacher. This article outlines Ann Gillmore Rees’ teaching activities in Sydney, with particular focus on the Craft Training School and Correspondence Courses in Colour and Design and Fabric Printing that she developed for the Society of Arts and Crafts of New South Wales. It also analyses the role these classes played at a time of limited access to formal educational programmes in craft and design and consider how, in these classes, Rees combined elements of vocational, recreational and informational adult education so as to appeal to a wide audience.

The purpose of this paper is to adapt the market performance indicator (MPI), used by the European Commission to evaluate market conditions, over time, to show that the MPI explains actual switching behavior better than stated intent and satisfaction. While research on service provider switching has focused on the outcomes of service transactions and the benefits of switching, there is little research on how consumers view market conditions as being favorable or not for switching.

The authors used a mixed methodology of focus groups and longitudinal survey research of cell phone consumers to evaluate the effect of the MPI on satisfaction, perceptions of value, switching intentions and behavior.

The MPI was found to influence perceptions of satisfaction and value, and was found to contribute strongly to actual switching behavior. The results also showed that an improvement in the MPI or market conditions lead to a much greater relationship between it and actual switching behavior, suggesting that there may well be important threshold level, upon which greater switching behavior occurs.

The MPI provides marketers and policy-makers with benchmarks to compare the consumer welfare of different markets in different countries. Switching studies with MPI figures can be more easily generalized to different contexts.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the potential benefits as well as some of the practical barriers to the implementation of a collective impact initiative in law enforcement and public health (LEPH) in Tasmania, Australia.

The paper is based on a review of programs, agencies and initiatives that are at the intersection of LEPH in Tasmania, through an analysis of the findings in evaluation reports, and the views of practitioners identified at a workshop on LEPH held at a national AOD conference and facilitated by the authors.

The strengths of collective impact initiatives, particularly in LEPH, are presented and some weaknesses identified. Some major obstacles to the consolidation of LEPH initiatives include siloed ways of working and budgets, lack of leadership and political will. Some progress has been made in addressing these weaknesses, although addressing complex social problems by moving beyond inter-agency collaboration toward an integrated model of service provision remains challenging.

The authors argue that there are practical benefits to the adoption of a collective impact model to address problems in Tasmania that lie at the nexus between LEPH. In reviewing existing collaborations, the authors demonstrate the value of a structural mapping process to identify ways forward for government and non-government agencies that are inclined to go further in merging the two disciplinary areas. The authors offer some suggestions with respect to identifying the preconditions for a collective impact model and how to build on these to initiate action.

A significant proportion of the literature on LEPH remains at a conceptual and theoretical level. This contribution highlights some practical issues while looking at existing examples of collaboration across LEPH at a state level in Australia, and starts mapping a way forward for constructing more integrative LEPH initiatives.

The “hypercompetitive environment” within which businesses are now operating demands that organizations look for ways to continually improve their competitiveness if they are to remain viable and successful. This paper integrates ideas on competitive strategies and effective mentoring to demonstrate the link between employee mentoring and organizational competitiveness. It is proposed that mentoring can offer a unique opportunity to enhance competitiveness through a carefully designed and structured program that both supports and drives an organization’s business strategy.

This bibliography is offered as a practical guide to published papers, conference proceedings papers and theses/dissertations on the finite element (FE) and boundary element (BE) applications in different fields of biomechanics between 1976 and 1991. The aim of this paper is to help the users of FE and BE techniques to get better value from a large collection of papers on the subjects. Categories in biomechanics included in this survey are: orthopaedic mechanics, dental mechanics, cardiovascular mechanics, soft tissue mechanics, biological flow, impact injury, and other fields of applications. More than 900 references are listed.

In the US, a growing number of organizations and industries are seeking to affirm their commitment to and efforts around diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) as recent events have increased attention to social inequities. As health care organizations are considering new ways to incorporate DEI initiatives within their workforce, the anticipated result of these efforts is a reduction in health inequities that have plagued our country for centuries. Unfortunately, there are few frameworks to guide these efforts because few successfully link organizational DEI initiatives with health equity outcomes. The purpose of this chapter is to review existing scholarship and evidence using an organizational lens to examine how health care organizations can advance DEI initiatives in the pursuit of reducing or eliminating health inequities. First, this chapter defines important terms of DEI and health equity in health care. Next, we describe the methods for our narrative review. We propose a model for understanding health care organizational activity and its impact on health inequities based in organizational learning that includes four interrelated parts: intention, action, outcomes, and learning. We summarize the existing scholarship in each of these areas and provide recommendations for enhancing future research. Across the body of knowledge in these areas, disciplinary and other silos may be the biggest barrier to knowledge creation and knowledge transfer. Moving forward, scholars and practitioners should seek to collaborate further in their respective efforts to achieve health equity by creating formalized initiatives with linkages between practice and research communities.