Business Conference Papers

Building a new brand community through online media: The transition from print to online platforms at Le 10 Sport

Doris Madingou et al. — Tue, 11 Dec 2012 18:52:00 PST

As online media increasingly assumes dominance in the marketplace, we use the case study of French company Le 10 Sport to explore the complexities associated with transition from print to online media and the impact on brand community. Le 10 Sport is a sport media company that has successfully gone online. As traditional print media outlets are increasingly pressured by the need to abandon existing readerships and go online, the essential question explored in this paper is can a sports media producer build and maintain its brand community while transitioning to the online platform?

The findings suggest the transition from print to online was ultimately positive for this company, enabling them to differentiate from competitors and re-position after a tumultuous start. Le 10 Sport’s experience is instructive for seeing how transition to online poses particular challenges for media marketers, particularly those seeking to transition their product and their marketing. Therefore, some general implications are discussed.

Cars for sale! An ethnography of the collusion of space and consumption in power and agency struggles

Hélène de Burgh — Thu, 08 Nov 2012 17:30:37 PST

The importance of space and its “perception-shaping, behaviour-inducing properties” (Sherry 1998) has been long acknowledged by consumer researchers. Public spaces such as shopping malls (Sandicki and Holt, 1998), bridal salons (Otnes, 1998), and converted shopping centres (Maclaren and Brown, 2005) have all been investigated as spaces where meanings are unravelled, contested and entertained. Equally, spaces play out emotive experiences such as escape (Hewer, 2003), utopia and nostalgia (Maclaran and Brown, 2005). Adding to this important opus, the present paper investigates public space as a site of contested power and agency manifested through consumption. The use of public in this context means a "realm in which people define themselves as publics, through ongoing communication, definition and negotiation” (Sargeson 2002, 21).

Using the case of impromptu car yards where private cars for sale are illegally congregated in one space against local council laws and regulations, this paper theorises public space and consumption as interwoven in a larger discourse of power and agency (Visconti, Sherry Borghini and Anderson 2010). Space, in this instance, lays the ground for alternative consumption, sharing (Belk 2010) and exchange which defy the structures of the formal “marketplace” and contest the power held by legal and political entities (Campbell 2005; White 2007). While public space in modernity is ordered and managed by political and cultural entities such as councils, governments etc, space also “complicates the assumption of a collective experience of culture and its products” (de Burgh-Woodman and Brace-Govan 2010).

This paper uses the work of Henri Lefevbre (1974) to theorise the collusion of space and consumption to express power and agency struggles between people and formal structures. In this respect, the present study extends previous use of Lefebvre’s (1974) work in consumer research (Houliez 2010a 2010b) and urban studies (McCann 1999, 1995). While previous work has illuminated the importance of spatial practices and negotiating processes by consumers, this paper advances on this use of Lefebvre by situating space and consumption as two collusive channels to agency and dissent.

A Better Time and A Better Place: Global Political Consciousness and New Forms of Public Intellectualism

Helen Fordham — Tue, 30 Oct 2012 19:56:21 PDT

In 1999 Arab and Israeli musicians were brought together in the German city of Weimer to play in an orchestra as a part of cultural program that celebrated the 250th anniversary of the birth of German writer Johann Wolfgang Goethe. Organized by American Palestinian public intellectual Edward Said and his Israeli friend, musical director of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra Daniel Barenboim, the orchestra played music which celebrated Goethe’s passionate interest in Islam. The experiment was based upon Goethe’s “West-East Divan” poems which Said believed was utterly “unique in the history of Western culture” (Guzelimian 2002) because the poems celebrated other cultures during a time when Europe dominated the world.

Prefatory Remarks on the Open Society and its Enemies in East Asia

Gregory C G Moore — Tue, 10 Jul 2012 23:11:50 PDT

The two volumes of Karl Popper’s The Open Society and its Enemies were published in 1945. Although my central argument in these prefatory remarks is that Popper’s book is of relevance to modern East-Asian societies, I first must first grant the fact, squarely and honestly, that it was a product of a specific time and place, if not a veritable Carlylesean tract for that specific time and place, which in many ways bears little resemblance to modern East Asia. Specifically, the Open Society must be interpreted as a systematic and rhetorically charged assault on the dominant political-cum-philosophical notions that occupied the middling intellectuals of Mitteleuropa in the middle decades of the twentieth century, namely, the totalitarian isms: Nazism, Leninism, Italian Fascismo, Austro-fascism, Stalinism and their many attendant, often equally vicious, forms. Popper admits as much in various prefaces and reflections, but the contention that this intellectual product was an issue of “time and place” and a book of rhetoric for his wavering contemporaries is best driven home by considering the gestation period of the publication. Popper had, in fact, been brooding on the ideas contained in the Open Society for most of the 1920s and 1930s, even though his main occupation was, then and later, crystallising his non-justificatory philosophy of science, a philosophy for which he has subsequently gained just and lasting fame. Indeed, it would have been strange if he had not so brooded on politics, as he was born in 1902 into a prosperous Viennese family of nominal Lutheran faith, but Jewish descent, that held the dominant liberal-humanist values of his cosmopolitan class in the last years of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and thereby he had witnessed the unreason and bloodshed that accompanied the implosion of this world order and the rise of the hideous and brutish totalitarian edifices that replaced it. He was, in short, shaped by the better aspects of the late-Hapsburg civilization (and let us also remember its worst), its death throes and the virus of violence that ensued, and hence he wished to use his considerable intellectual powers to understand this unfolding tragedy and, ultimately, to check its course.

Teaching Economics within John Henry Cardinal Newman’s Ideal University: A Nineteenth Century Vision for the Twenty-first Century Scholar

Gregory C G Moore — Tue, 10 Jul 2012 22:55:22 PDT

"Now, please, let me bring out what I want to say, while I am full of it. I say then, that the personal influence of the teacher is able in some sort to dispense with an academical system, but that the system cannot in any sort dispense with personal influence. With influence there is life, without it there is none; if influence is deprived of its due position, it will not by those means be got rid of, it will only break out irregularly, dangerously. An academical system without the personal influence of teachers upon pupils, is an arctic winter; it will create an ice-bound, petrified, cast-iron University, and nothing else. You will not call this any new notion of mine; and you will not suspect, after what happened to me a long twenty-five years ago, that I can ever be induced to think otherwise. No! I have known a time in a great School of Letters, when things went on for the most part by mere routine, and form took the place of earnestness. I have experienced a state of things, in which teachers were cut off from the taught as by an insurmountable barrier; when neither party entered into the thoughts of the other; when each lived by and in itself; when the tutor was supposed to fulfil his duty, if he trotted on like a squirrel in his cage, if at a certain hour he was in a certain room, or in hall, or in chapel, as it might be; and the pupil did his duty too, if he was careful to meet his tutor in that same room, or hall, or chapel, at the same certain hour; and when neither the one nor the other dreamed of seeing each other out of lecture, out of chapel, out of academical gown. I have known places where a stiff manner, a pompous voice, coldness and condescension, were the teacher's attributes, and where he neither knew, nor wished to know, and avowed he did not wish to know, the private irregularities of the youths committed to his charge. Cardinal John Henry Newman, [1854] 1872, “1. The Rise and Progress of Universities”. Historical Sketches. v3. London. Longmans, Green and Co. (New Impression 1909) 74-5. Emphasis added.

Consuming the aesthetic of the everyday: A visual analysis of Errol Morris’ “High Life”

Hélène de Burgh-Woodman et al. — Tue, 10 Jul 2012 22:06:08 PDT

Co-constructed meaning between marketer and consumer is a key dimension of convergent (Jenkins 2006) media. Using “Miller’s High Life” ads (1999-2005) we discuss how content convergence prompts different co-constructed meanings among consumer segments, how “mundane art” is produced and how the marketer/consumer relationship is transformed into a filmmaker/viewer-consumer one. From an interdisciplinary perspective, we discuss the implications of this transformed relationship for marketing.

Oil and coal price shocks and coal industry returns: international evidence

Ronald A. Ratti et al. — Tue, 27 Mar 2012 23:48:59 PDT

This paper examines the effect of energy price shocks on coal sector stock returns and supplements studies evaluating the effect of oil prices on the stock price of oil and gas companies. A 1% increase in coal price return raises coal sector returns by between 0.22% and 0.30%. This result is robust across developed, emerging and differing groups of Asia-Pacific and Pacific countries, and is analogous with findings that a 1% increase in oil price raises the return of oil and gas companies by between 0.14% and 0.38% depending on country and time period studied. Oil price return also significantly influences coal sector return even controlling for coal price return. Relatively large increases in coal and oil price returns have statistically significant and disproportionate effects on raising coal sector returns. Market return, interest rate premium, and foreign exchange rate risk are also significant risk factors for excess coal sector stock returns. The sensitivity of coal sector returns to oil price shocks suggest a role for investment in stocks that rise when energy prices increase in a well balanced portfolio and in pursuing profitable investment strategies. Natural gas price returns do not influence coal sector returns in the presence of coal price returns.

Oil price shocks and volatility in Australian stock returns

Mohammad Zahidul Hasan et al. — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 16:46:27 PST

This paper examines the effect of oil shocks on return and volatility in the sectors of Australian stock market and finds significant effects for most sectors. For the overall market index, an increase in oil price return significantly reduces return, and an increase in oil price return volatility significantly reduces volatility. An advantage of looking at sector returns rather than a general index of stock returns is that sectors may well differ markedly in how they respond to oil price shocks. The energy and material sectors (as expected) and the financial sector (surprisingly) are out of step (in different ways) with results for the other sectors and for the overall index. A rise in oil price increases returns in the energy and material sectors and an increase in oil price return volatility reduces stock return volatility in the financial sector. Explanation for the negative (positive) association between oil return (oil return volatility) and returns (volatility of returns) in the financial sector must be based on the association via lending to and/or holdings of corporate bonds issued by firms with significant exposure to oil price fluctuations and their speculative positions in oil related instruments.

Marketing and the Other: A study of women in the sailing marketplace and its implications for marketing discourse

Hélène de Burgh-Woodman et al. — Sun, 22 Jan 2012 20:31:14 PST

This paper analyses the concept and function of the “Other” in marketing discourse – a consumption space that speaks about the tension between the “expected” demographic according to stereotypical cultural norms and the possibility of an unseen demographic that remains unacknowledged and thus unidentified in the marketplace. Our discussion of the Other is extrapolated through the feminist lens and uses women in the sailing culture as a case study. We focus on the role women play in this masculinist activity, how they find avenues into participation and what their consequent consumption needs may be. We also discuss their relegation to an invisible space in the marketing discourses that cater to the traditionally male-dominated sailing culture. This paper, thus, explores possible implications and benefits for marketing to an unfixed, liminal group who do not coalesce with the dominant norm in their culture; those who occupy the space of the Other.

Silverstone Industries Ltd: Whistle-blowing – A case study of actual events in a leading Australian charity

Stephen Treloar — Thu, 05 Jan 2012 17:11:01 PST

Silverstone Industries Ltd commenced almost 50 years ago as a registered charitable organisation. Over the years it evolved into a ‘best practice’ ‘social enterprise’ that provided vocational training and employment to over 600 persons with a disability. The company demonstrated how with good training and support disabled persons could do a lot more than low‐skill level tasks traditionally associated with ‘sheltered workshops’.

For the financial year ending 2008, the company reported a record turnover of $31M, a trading surplus of over $1M and a net asset value of $12M. It was a thriving successful business. In March 2009 and at the height of the global financial crisis, the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Silverstone Industries reported to the board of directors he “...no longer had any confidence in the integrity of the financial figures, information or reports emanating from the Chief Financial Officer or his department”. The CEO had become a whistle‐blower. The board appointed a special audit firm to investigate and report back. A ‘window’ of four weeks was provided…..

This workshop will discuss the case study and explore what can be learned from the situation.

The private fishery - and reality

George Kailis — Sun, 31 Jul 2011 20:46:00 PDT

In discussing property rights, efficiency and fisheries management economic literature often refers to a hypothetical single owner, comparing it to fisheries with more fragmented ownership. Through a range of effort reductions, since the near collapse of the fishery in the early 1980s, the Exmouth Gulf Prawn fishery in Western Australia has emerged with a single owner. The fishery's economic, social and environmental performance was recently rated by a panel of experts at 9.8 out of 10. In the presentation the history and context in which a single operator emerged is outlined. Practical constraints and issues for a single owner are discussed in the context of the history of the fishery, corporate strategy, legislative restrictions and market structure. Comparison is also made with other prawn fisheries in Australia which have a more diverse ownership base.

Fish for Food for the Future: The great crossover

George Kailis — Sun, 31 Jul 2011 20:29:54 PDT

Since the 1970s the Australian fishing industry² has been characterised by the development of key exports for high value, low volume products such as crustacean (such as prawns and lobsters), molluscs and high value fish such as mariculture southern blue fin tuna. Although Australia imported larger volumes of fish in than that which we exported, nonetheless Australia maintained a favourable balance in relation to the value of exports over imports. In 2007-8 a key ‘cross -over’ event occurred, both the volume AND value of imports exceeded that of Australian production³. This cross-over represents a ‘game change’ milestone. For the domestic fishing industry it cements a long term shift towards domestic markets and consumers. Current trends point towards domestic markets and domestic consumers becoming the primary focus for the industry, with ongoing cost and productivity improvements the key strategic issue. These shifts require changes in industry and government if the fishing industry is to thrive.

Integrated Fisheries Management: Implementation and Allocation of Rights

George Kailis — Sun, 31 Jul 2011 20:12:16 PDT

Exploring terminologies and a case study to devise a new instrument that optimizes operational information systems sustainability

Peter Gall — Thu, 24 Feb 2011 22:30:38 PST

The pervasive use of modern infrastructure and collaborative frameworks have the potential to create sustainable multi-organisation, multi-institution, multi-linkage industry and research and development collectives to open up opportunities for the design and development of revolutionary products and services. This paper begins by defining a number of innovative new concepts including virtual organisations, living labs and digital ecosystems in an effort to identify practical answers to the paradox between the traditional disconnected organisation and operationally integrated information systems sustainability. The paper then introduces a framework and case study that is used to devise a new instrument designed to enable organisations in unleashing the power of their ICT infrastructure to maximise their competitive advantage.

ISSN: 1935-4576

DOI: 10.1109/INDIN.2009.5195829

Effects of global trade liberalisation on forestry products and forest sustainability using the GTAP model

Luz C. Stenberg et al. — Thu, 10 Feb 2011 16:43:55 PST

The paper analyses the effects of trade liberalization amongst the leading exporters and importers of forest products, in particular, as well as global merchandise, in general. The study utilises the Global Trade Analysis Project (GTAP) model and its database, version 7. Given that forest products only comprise a small proportion of world merchandise trade, it is expected that trade liberalisation would cause small changes in terms of trade, real GDP, production, consumption and prices of forest products in most countries. In the short-run, national welfare in China and Japan would increase substantially by more than $US400 million while the opposite is true for the United States. In the long-run, national welfare in China, Mexico and Thailand would increase between $US230 million and $US295 million. Food production in Australia, Chile and New Zealand would increase slightly but significantly compared to other countries/regions. Similarly, food consumption in Malaysia and Thailand would increase by about 0.10 per cent.

Placing Donald Winch's Wealth and Life in Context

Gregory C G Moore — Mon, 22 Nov 2010 21:21:51 PST

In this review essay I critically analyze Donald Winch's Wealth and Life (2009) by drawing upon the contextual approach to the history of idea that is associated with the Sussex School to which Winch belongs. In other words, I seek to contextualize the publication and thereby deploy the very contextual approach that is promoted by the members of the Sussex School to examine Winch's own work. A secondary goal of the review essay is to disentangle the various traditions that use the contextual approach to the history of ideas - ranging from the Oxford tradition in the history of philosophical ideas that is associated with R. G. Collingwood to the Cambridge tradition in the history of political ideas that is associated with Andrew Skinner - to determine whether or not there is anything singular about the tradition associated with the Sussex School.

Multiple Methods: How to Help Students Succeed in Quantitative Methods for Business Unit

Luz C. Stenberg et al. — Thu, 21 Oct 2010 18:16:44 PDT

Helping students succeed in a quantitative analysis courses is often difficult especially when students have little or no prior mathematical training. Without denying the significance of traditional lectures and tutorials in undergraduate education, an increasing number of academics are recognising the value of practical sessions, informal small-group learning and online learning facilities. By recognising that each person processes information differently, by reducing student’s anxiety towards the unit and by making teaching accessible to students of multiple learning styles, the lecturer can give all students a better chance of successfully completing the unit. This paper looks at the links between the multiple learning activities adapted in Quantitative Methods for Business unit to the students’ academic performance and their attitude towards the unit.

Mathematics Aptitude, Attitude, Secondary Schools and Student Success in Quantitative Methods for Business Subject in an Australian Catholic University Experience

Luz C. Stenberg et al. — Wed, 20 Oct 2010 23:42:12 PDT

There is a consensus in the literature that mathematical ability contributes to student success in tertiary education. More importantly, mathematical skills are necessary when successfully completing mathematics- and/or science-based degrees. Social sciences such as psychology and economics require statistical skills which also require knowledge of mathematics. Even business students such as marketing and accounting students need the necessary mathematical skills to successfully complete their degrees at university. This paper suggests that student success in a core business subject is dependent on their mathematical aptitude, attitude and type of secondary schooling whether government or non-government schools. There is urgency for universities to recognise that high failure rates are due to insufficient mathematics exposure in secondary schooling and remedial classes might not be enough. Specifying a minimum (maths, e.g. 2unit) requirement for entry and/or providing bridging programmes to ensure students have the necessary basic mathematical skills would increase student success in quantitative units.

The Regulatory Horizon

David Gilchrist — Tue, 21 Sep 2010 20:59:09 PDT

This presentation covered the following with the key concepts of Not-for-profit, Corporate Governance, Accounting Standards:

- Key Reports

- Regulation in the next 5 years

- Key Accounting Developments

- Some Resources for Consideration

Excellence in the Not-for-profit Sector: Pipe Dreams and Reality Checks

David Gilchrist — Mon, 06 Sep 2010 18:05:17 PDT

This presentation discussed the issue of excellence in the provision of Not-for-profit service delivery and particularly the issue of governance toward excellent outcomes. Its essential points are that the governance structure should be simple, focused and mission centric while clarity of purpose is fundamental.