Economics - Theses
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ItemEssays on the economics of services outsourcing : the case of the Indian software services industry(University of Melbourne, 2007)
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ItemThe attainment and influence of skill in Australia(University of Melbourne, 2007)
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ItemHigh-profile crisis management in Australian and New Zealand organisations( 2007-10)This thesis demonstrates that it is paramount to develop crisis-preparedness strategies and practices based on empirical research, in order to improve an organisation‘s ability to manage effectively and, ultimately to survive, a high-profile crisis event. Although there are many high-profile crises that have been managed successfully by applying strategies to make organisations more resilient, there is still considerable confusion and uncertainty about the way these crises have been evaluated and the way their success can be measured in relation to other crises.There are no international crisis-preparedness standards in relation to a set of crisis outcomes indicators that could be applied. This lack of empirically proven relationships between crisis-preparedness strategies and their effect on crisis outcomes makes the identification of effective strategies very difficult. Case studies, anecdotal evidence and a limited number of empirical crisis management studies (i.e. effect on share price) suggest a great variability in the effectiveness of certain strategies and practices that have produced inconclusive results. This study analyses the strategies variability to advance knowledge in the field of crisis management. (For complete abstract open document)
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ItemFair valuation of insurance liabilities - a case study( 2007-12)Insurance contracts will be reported at fair values on insurers’ balance sheets from 2010. In this thesis, we will review the conceptual and theoretical backbone of the insurance fair valuation project while providing a summary of the key features of the fair valuation project. Then, we will conduct a case study aimed at finding, under the fair valuation regime, the best asset allocation strategy for a particular business unit that carries a hypothetical annuity portfolio using a single modelling framework for valuation, risk calculation and business appraisal.
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ItemMental health care roles and capacities of non-medical primary health and social care services: an organisational systems analysis( 2007-05)Top-down, centralised approaches to reform of mental health services implemented over the past 15 years in Australia have failed to achieve the widely shared aim of comprehensive, integrated systems of care. Investment to date has focused on the development and integration of specialist mental health services and primary medical care, and evaluation research suggests some progress. Substantial inadequacies remain however in the comprehensiveness and continuity of care received by people affected by mental health problems, particularly in relation to social and psychosocial interventions. Intersectoral collaboration that includes the diverse range of non-medical primary health and social care services is one of the most fundamental remaining challenges facing mental health system reform.
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ItemThe architecture of Balinisation: writings on architecture, the villages, and the construction of Balinese cultural identity in the 20th century( 2007-03)A number of studies of Bali emerging in the last three decades have come to read Balinese culture as a cultural construct that has been invented and reinvented as a means to legitimate power relations on the island (e.g. Schulte Nordholt 1986, 1996, 1999; Vickers 1990; Picard 1996, 1999). Constructions of 'Balinese culture' have been explored and identified as central projects within the island's internal contestation of dominance as well as within the establishment of colonial and postcolonial orders. Despite this scholarly exploration of the discursive nature of 'authentic Balinese culture', public obsession with a traditional Balinese architecture, conceived as an apolitical, exotic, and pre-existing architectural other, prevails. Architecture has been and continues to be an arena within which the notion of authentic Bali is convincingly authorised by its diverse proponents: the Dutch colonial government, the orientalist scholars, the travellers, the architects, and the local elites. This thesis explores the role of architectural discourses within the construction of identity in 20th century Bali. It investigates the way writings on Bali's architecture and contemporary formations of domestic architecture on the island are implicated by the political imagining of an 'authentic Balinese' cultural identity. Invoking the architecture of Balinisation, this thesis argues that writings and domestic architectural realms are productive fields in which and by which identity and power relations are continuously formulated by those who observe Bali and by the observed 'Balinese' people. The first half of the thesis demonstrates that dominant writings on Bali's architecture, while claiming to produce an account of the island's 'authentic' architecture, have instead configured a preferred architectural otherness of Bali - the so-called traditional Balinese architecture. Embodying certain notions of Balinese cultural othemess, the invented traditional Balinese architecture secures the sovereignty of the other subject positions occupied by those who write about the island. For orientalist scholars and the colonial government an 'ancient Hindu Balinese' civilisation was a strategic contrast to the political Moslem population of the Netherlands East Indies. For modern intellectuals and tourists a 'spiritual and exotic' Bali is the otherness compensating for their longing for a non-modem realm and 'cultural continuity'. For the local elites, a 'traditional' Bali is an enterprise which asserts and maintains their socio-cultural privileges. Investigating the mechanisms of interpretation and representation of 'Balinese architecture', this thesis demonstrates how architecture is incorporated within the formation of a 'Balinese' other and how it subsequently complicates the process. It explores how the writings carry and maintain certain assumptions regarding Bali's cultural otherness and how they perpetuate certain methodologies in framing the island's built environment. Through this process the writings select and frame preferred architectural examples, organise and narrate their assumed coherence and cultural meaning, and eventually display and simulate an imagined traditional Balinese architecture. This process constraints the 20th century interpretation and production of architecture of the island within fixed notions of identity and tradition, excluding the possibility of further imagining and configuring of new architectural formations in dealing with contemporary conditions of Bali. Such a persistent desire for an architectural authenticity eventually displaces the architectural culture of the island's multifaceted local inhabitants from the discourse about the authentic, which rather coincides with the architectural simulacra of the conceived exotic and spiritual Bali: the expatriate houses and the resorts. The second half of the thesis explores empirically the way elements of the island's multifaceted local society diversely engage with the enforcement and consumption of the imagined traditional Balinese architecture. It looks at the cases of Ubud, Legian, and Penglipuran, three customary villages which are commonly introduced in tourism discourses as respectively the 'real', the 'polluted', and the pilot project of 'traditional Balinese village'. Examining contemporary formations of houses in these villages, this thesis interprets the way architectural production accommodates the three villages' unfolding contestations of identity. The experiences of Ubud and Legian bring into view identity formulations that are undertaken by respectively the extravagant and the marginal elements of Bali Majapahit society - the dominant segment of Bali's local inhabitants who link their identity to the legendary Hindu Javanese Majapahit kingdom. The experience of Penglipuran - a member of the minority Bali Aga society that maintains an older interpretation of Hinduism - entails a different architectural development that for a while has been exempted from the authorisation and consumption of traditional Balinese architecture. However, as a pilot project of the 1992 Bali Regional Village Tourism Development, the village has had to appropriate its architectural formation according to the more dominant architectural images of the Bali Majapahit society. Through these two stages of analysis, the thesis re-examines what has been included, excluded, and produced by the Balinisation of architecture in the realms of both writings and domestic architectural sites on the island. Attempting to transcend the debates on cultural and architectural identity in Bali, the thesis offers a rereading of architecture that considers its constructive role within the broader history of 20?1 century Bali. Beyond its well-perceived exotic entity, the thesis argues that architecture in Bali is a site wherein identity can be observed as both a construct and a means of becoming. Through writings on architecture and productions of domestic architecture, 'Balinese culture' is continuously imagined and appropriated by observers of Bali and also by the island's multifaceted local society. Destabilising the canonical conceptions of Bali's otherness and cultural authenticity, domestic architecture offers a space wherein a dynamic imagining of the island's culture and self that oscillates with time can be reclaimed.
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ItemKnowledge sharing through inpatriate assignments in multinational corporations: a social capital perspective( 2007-05)This study conceptualizes inpatriates – foreign nationals who are temporarily assigned to the corporate headquarters (HQ) of a multinational corporation (MNC) – as knowledge agents that link the HQ to its subsidiaries. Along these lines, the thesis examines the determinants of knowledge sharing between inpatriates and HQ staff as well as the resulting implications for inpatriates’ careers. Integrating research on international assignments and MNC knowledge flows with social capital theory, the main argument is that inpatriates can only share their local subsidiary knowledge with and learn from HQ employees if they establish social capital with them. The empirical investigation of inpatriates as the study’s principal unit of analysis follows a multi-method approach. First, a qualitative and inductive case study based on 13 interviews with inpatriates at three German MNCs is conducted, aiming to provide a deeper understanding of the inpatriate phenomenon. The interview findings highlight inpatriates’ role as knowledge conduits and derive various factors that may impact on inpatriates’ knowledge sharing, such as inpatriates’ acculturation attitudes, their host language fluency, host ethnocentrism and available organizational support.
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ItemEfficiency and productivity analysis of the Australian banking sector under deregulation( 2007)This thesis examines the efficiency and productivity performance of Australian banking sector during the post-deregulation period of 1983 to 2001. Three major issues are explored using a number of quantitative methods. In particular, the window analysis technique is adopted in order to relieve the small sample problem that has proved problematic in previous studies of this industry. The first issue is to quantify the effects of financial deregulation on the efficiency and productivity of commercial banks operating in Australia. Using data envelopment analysis and Malmquist productivity index, bank efficiency performance is measured in Chapter 5. The DEA results show that all the sampled banks appeared to be performing reasonably well. The major banks and the existing regional banks were found to be the least and the second least efficient groups, respectively. Foreign banks and newly licensed regional banks showed superior performance. The major source of inefficiency was scale inefficiency arising from operating at above optimal size. The Malmquist indices show that the industry was experiencing small productivity loss over the sample period, resulting from an increase in pure technical efficiency, a fall in scale efficiency, combined with technical progress. The year-to-year change in efficiency and productivity has shown that banks were under intensive pressure to catch up with their moving industry frontier. The second issue is to provide useful information for bank managers to improve bank performance by identifying the major factors that may affect bank efficiencies. Second-stage regression results in Chapter 5 show a negative relationship between market power and efficiency change in the industry. Productivity improvements were generally higher for banks that were relatively inefficient in the preceding year, smaller in size and less market-share driven. After controlling for many other factors, banks of different ownerships were found to experience the same level of productivity change during the deregulated period. The third issue is to examine the efficiency implications of bank mergers with particular reference to the four pillars policy preventing mergers among the four major banks. Results in Chapter 7 show that post-merger technical efficiency was determined by the merging entities' average efficiencies prior to merger, as well as a number of other pre- and post-merger characteristics of banks, such as size and profitability. Newly established banks were found to have an advantage over existing banks in terms of program efficiency; however, new entrants have lost much of their efficiency advantage since the Wallis Inquiry was conducted. The empirical findings suggest that financial deregulation in Australia has produced some mixed outcomes. On the positive side, by allowing new entrants to enter into the market, deregulation has stimulated competition and encouraged efficiency improvement and technological innovation in the industry. Bank mergers can be socially beneficial if the market is competitive and contestable. When a satisfactory degree of competition exists in the market, mergers among the four major banks should be permitted. The policy implication is that the role of the government should be to focus on promoting deregulation and competition in the banking industry and in the economy.