School of Management

Business firms have become the focus in the climate change debate because of their role as consumers of fossil fuels, emitters of carbon dioxide and manufacturers of products which add to carbon emissions. Their role becomes even more significant as they are the single most influential sector with the resources, research and development capabilities and the capacity to innovate and bring to market new products to reduce the world’s dependency on fossil fuels. Existing theories of corporate strategy do not give solutions to the complexities existing in the climate change scenario as business firms operate in turbulent environments with multiple evolving actors and face uncertain futures. Complexity theory with origins in the natural sciences is increasingly being utilised in the study of human organisations to unravel the simplicity underlying complex scenarios consisting of multiple actors, conflicting goals and limited capabilities. This paper analyses corporate responses to climate change by utilising selected concepts from complexity theory, namely dynamism, self-organisation and emergence. Dynamism refers to the continuous movement of all entities as they respond to, adapt, and influence each other and also the environment within which they exist. Self-organisation describes the capacity of complex living systems to evolve according to internally evolving principles. Emergence refers to the new and novel behaviours and actions exhibited by entities as they self organise internally while responding dynamically to external influences. These concepts are explored in this paper in the context of literary evidence of corporate responses to climate change and their effects analysed in relation to a range identified corporate strategies in the current context of climate change.

The world is awakening to the far reaching consequences of human induced global warming if future carbon emissions are not reduced. This paper looks at how businesses are coping in the current environment fraught with uncertainty and lack of clarity, what strategies are being utilised and what factors influence the choice of these strategies based on information from existing literature. Concepts from Complexity theory namely dynamism, self-organisation and emergence are used as a framework for the analysis. This framework enhances understanding of the influencing factors which can help to facilitate or deter businesses towards a carbon neutral regime. This will be a valuable tool for corporate management, regulatory authorities and society groups to assist businesses towards carbon neutral goals.

x emission businesses studied from the five industries of coal, oil and gas, electricity, metals and minerals and chemicals, within the same industry and across the five industries and 4) the pathways for businesses when the win-win opportunities facilitating beneficial outcomes for both businesses and the environment are not available anymore, by studying the big picture. The contributions to policy and practice are related to manipulating the future towards a carbon neutral path, the inadequacy of the invisible hand of the market and to future policy formulation. These insights can assist business and regulatory authorities to design future pathways to assist businesses to substantially reduce their emissions. Recommendations for further research include a longitudinal study of the same sample to identify the effects of the changing environmental conditions including the repealing of the carbon tax on the businesses. Case studies of the two businesses identified as using innovative and pre-emptive strategies to forge into the renewables sector will contribute to studies on innovation in the context of climate change. Further testing of the IDEAS complexity framework for other applications in social contexts, the IDEAS theoretical framework for other studies in business and climate change (B&CC) and the IDEAS strategy selection process model in generic strategy studies to develop a generic model are also recommended. The developed frameworks can be adapted to study the perceptions of the other key agents in the business environment to augment the findings of this research which focused on the perspectives of the businesses. Lastly, the need to bring together experts from multi-disciplines is recommended to enable an understanding of climate change with all its complexities.

Purpose -This study aims to explore the nature of the interactions between two strategies, innovation and market orientation. By examining the components of these constructs the paper seeks to identify key components of market orientation that are antecedent factors of the innovation performance of the firm.

There has been substantial academic interest surrounding innovation, change management, and the individual attributes that permit and promote learning, organisational change and innovative behaviour. This research uses a psychometric tool known as the Instinctive Drives System® to measure preferred working styles in 3,943 employees from a range of international companies. The employees were then classified into three groups (Engineers, Operators and Executives) following Schein's (1996) classification of occupational subcultures. This study reveals significant differences between the occupational subcultures, suggesting that executives are more inclined towards variety, flexibility and change rather than routine and structure. In contrast, operators and engineers demonstrated preferences for logic and certainty. These results have a range of implications, for researchers and practitioners. Researchers can extend the results of this study, and further explore the differences found between executives and managers from different subcultures. Practitioners may use the results to initiate change to integrate preferred working styles.

In this article we discuss the concept of Discontinuous Innovation (DI) and how it differs from incremental (or steady-state) innovation. We propose a model to conceptualise the different aspects of DI and discuss the complex nature of the DI process through an ...

BACKGROUND: Recent reports suggest that public hospitals are unable to respond to changing population needs. It is critical that innovative approaches be developed to assess and improve the management of hospital resources, and improve patient flow. This article presents findings from a study that applies process management principlestypically used in the manufacturing industryto healthcare services. METHOD: An interactive visual software program, Tecnomatix Plant Simulation®, was used to map processes within sonography in the imaging department of a public hospital. The map was informed by data, which included the department layout; number of diagnostic rooms available; available equipment; staff rosters; procedure times; scheduling processes; and patient-wait periods. Using the software, data were integrated to provide a visual animation, superimposed on the layout of the department. RESULTS: To assess opportunities for improvement, parameters influencing patient flow were manipulated using the software program. These included variables that influence room use, including staffing, room availability and scheduling procedures. Simulating improvement strategies within a virtual environment had several benefitsstrategies were tested instantaneously; they could be viewed as a visual animation; there was no disruption to existing hospital processes; and there was no risk of resistance to change among clinicians. CONCLUSIONS: This article demonstrates the potential value of process management tools in improving patient flow in hospital settings. It indicates that, using interactive animation, innovative ways to manage and deploy hospital resources can be tested virtually, devoid of the many challenges typically associated with trialling changes in the physical setting. This finding has important implications for hospital managers charged with the responsibility of doing more with less.

THE NEW ENGLAND Fold Belt is one of several orogenic belts that accreted onto eastern Gondwana during the Palaeozoic. It comprises numerous terranes, the westernmost being the Gamilaroi Terrane (Flood & Aitchison, 1988), which is separated from the remainder by the Peel-Manning fault system. This terrane consists of island arc volcanics, pyroclastics and epiclastics, minor limestone and radiolarian siltstone (Flood & Aitchison, 1993). Rocks in this terrane range in age from at least as old as Late Cambrian to possibly as young as Late Devonian. Until the mid 1970s it was considered that sediment accumulation in the New England Fold Belt took place during the Middle to Late Palaeozoic (e.g. Leitch, 1974). Subsequently, Cambrian trilobites and Ordovician conodonts were discovered in limestone clasts in a siltstone-sandstoneconglomerate succession near Woolomin in northeastern NSW (Cawood, 1976). The Cambrian faunas occurred near the base of the sequence (Murrawong Creek Formation) and the Ordovician faunas near the top (Haedon Formation), with no mixing of faunas in any of the conglomerate lenses. To Cawood (1976, p. 318) this implied a more or less contemporaneous age relationship between the faunas in the blocks and rudite deposition at each level, with the limestone blocks possibly derived from an adjacent carbonate platform. Flood & Aitchison (1988) cast doubt on this inference in stating that there is no a priori reason to assume that these strata are the same age as the blocks they contain. However, Stewart (1995) has more recently recorded abundant paraconodonts, but no euconodonts, from a thinly bedded chert near the middle of the sequence, in the Pipeclay Creek Formation. These indicate a Middle to early Late Cambrian age for the deposition of that unit and confirm Cawoods (1976) inference that the faunas from the clasts are not much older than the time of deposition of the conglomerates. STRATIGRAPHY The Murrawong Creek Formation (Cawood, 1980, 1983) consists of a sequence of andesitic and basaltic sandstones and conglomerates abutting the western side of the Peel Fault conformably overlain by, and in some places laterally equivalent to, the finer grained Pipeclay Creek Formation (Crook, 1961). These two formations are thought to have formed as channeled segments of a base-of-slope submarine fan complex situated in relatively deep water on the eastern side of an active volcanic chain of high relief. These sequences young westward and

Children who have been assessed at “risk of significant harm” may be removed from their biological parents and placed in out-of-home care as an interim measure until permanent placement orders are made. To maintain attachment with their birth family a schedule of contact visits is normally mandated during this period. With the aim of determining an optimal protocol for visitation scheduling, this research has identified a great inconsistency in the reporting of birth family contact visits. It further identifies a need for the provision of consistent guidelines for reporting and training of case workers in report writing. These are significant results as the reports are an important consideration in the determination of final court orders for the placement of children.

This paper demonstrates a holistic business process reengineering framework. Processes and data are integrated with patient journey modelling and mathematical simulation to support flexible patient scheduling and planning of healthcare operations and logistics to improve patient-flow. The framework is demonstrated through application to computed tomography (CT) services in a hospital. Mathematical modelling and simulation precisely reveal the impact of booking and rebooking on departmental performance. This innovative framework has potential value for other services, within and beyond hospital and healthcare settings.

The aim of this research is to understand how stakeholder interactions can facilitate the patient flow process within a hospital. An analysis of the findings reveals that nurses are in a perfect position to be a conduit between doctors and managers. This is due to several factors including the nurses understanding of both the clinical and control worlds, as well as nurses ability to form networks based on their pivotal characteristics. As a result of these findings, a model for better understanding stakeholder relationships is developed. In this research, a mixed methods approach was used by undertaking a cultural assessment via survey questionnaire, complemented by observations of interactions between organisational actors, including formal semi-structured interviews and reflections of many hours of observation. Glouberman and Mintzberg’s four world’s models is used as a foundation for the arguments of this paper. Mitchell, Agle and Wood’s (1997) model is used to discuss the three ...

Data mining psychometric measures for a multinational sample of 8,759 adults (including 445 female and 973 male leaders), led to abductive research to develop an alternate explanation for studies positing that women comprise the preferred candidates for leadership positions associated with high probabilities of failure. Drive to Improvise™ (DI) scores were analyzed to explore the traits shared by senior managers and executives who occupied precarious positions. Results confirmed significantly higher DI in both female and male leaders, and that female leaders showed significantly higher DI than their male peers. Female leaders may knowingly accept difficult but personally motivating leadership positions, providing an alternate explanation of the glass cliff construct-agentic women are neither naïve nor passive when accepting demanding leadership roles.

In common with many countries, Emergency Departments (EDs) in Australia are under stress. To reduce "access block" (where service demands exceed the ED's capacity) work processes in the ED of a public hospital were analysed using animated simulation. This article describes organizational culture changes supported by the use of simulation as an impartial form of analysis and communication. Data collected included time stamps and booking schedules in the Imaging Department (ID), semi-structured interviews and patient flow observations from the ED to the ID. Implementation of ID staff-suggested improvements resulted in a 25% increase in the capacity of the Ultrasound department and a doubling of its ED cases. Improved communication between the ED and the ID as a direct result of this project has led to ongoing interdepartmental cooperation. One implication is that changes to health organisational culture can be assisted by computer simulations providing rapid and accurate predictions of change outcomes.

Floods constitute the worst type of disaster in the South of Mexico, where Tabasco is located. The resulting damages have had the largest economic, social, and environmental consequences. Recently, floods have increased spatially and in magnitude in a drastic way which has become a risk for a great number of the population. This phenomenon would increase due to global warming. Although it is impossible to eliminate floods in the area, the identification of vulnerabilities and the generations of capabilities will protect the population as well as the economic and social infrastructure minimizing their effects. Rainfalls higher than 400 mm throughout 24 hours are nowadays common in some areas of the State. Tabasco has undergone an important land cover change, mainly because of two activities: oil extraction and cattle ranch affecting natural landscapes, especially wetlands. Satellite images, aerial photos and historical data were reviewed to evaluate changes of the hydrological system related to floods. Due to the increase in extraordinary precipitation events, a risk analysis was carried out to assess the loss of environmental services and to configure vulnerability and risk maps. Results show that some of the infrastructure built to protect urban areas against floods has not been supported with studies related to the natural components of the area, affecting the hydrodynamic of the basin and increasing drastically the risk to the population. Water management, restoration policies and infrastructure alternatives are proposed as adaptation strategies to be able to minimize population risk of floods in the future.

Purpose-This editorial briefly outlines present applications of lean systems applications in healthcare and then summarises the contributions to this special edition. Design/methodology/approach-A brief background to lean is introduced to provide the context for the subsequent papers in this special issue Findings-The requirements for successful introduction of Lean Systems Thinking (LST) to healthcare organizations share much in common with the requirements for the initial introduction of lean to manufacturing organizations. However, introducing LST in healthcare is further complicated by the necessity of navigating complex social and organisational structures associated with the professional identities of healthcare practitioners. Originality/value-Though there has been a recent increase in the reported research on LST in healthcare, these reports have focused on the gains achieved through the application of lean tools and techniques. This work explores the under-reported socio-technical aspects that greatly affect the success of lean interventions.

Recent policy announcements by State and Federal Governments have centred on the need to explore the use of process management principles, normally applied to manufacturing industry, to health services management. The work presented in this paper is part of a broader project that will provide methods to reduce patient waiting times in emergency departments through making these processes visual, and plan for work process improvements. This paper discusses the development of an innovative method to analyse patient flow in an emergency department and provide solutions for health services. The expected outcomes include improvements in the efficiency and effectiveness of emergency departments through the visual optimisation methodologies for identifying and improving process inefficiencies that can be readily adapted to other contexts. DEMAND AND SUPPLY OF HOSPITAL SERVICES