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The Winners of the Dean's Award for Doctoral Achievement

April 2011

The Pro Vice-Chancellor and Dean of Commerce, Professor Bob Buckle, has announced the winners of the Dean's Award for Doctoral Achievement in the Faculty of Commerce and Administration. Professor Buckle explains that "the purpose of the award is to recognise excellence in the quality of research and writing in the very best of our doctoral theses each year. I am very grateful to the Post-Graduate Research Degrees Committee, Chaired by Professor Rowena Cullen, for proposing and establishing this new award." The award winners for 2010 are:

Jocelyn Cranefield
"Online communities of practice and professional change: a three-tier view of the knowledge embedding process"

Abstract

This interpretivist study, in the field of information Systems, investigates the process of transformative professional change using a knowledge management lens. The goal of the research was to understand how online communities of practice (CoPs) facilitate the transfer and embedding of professional knowledge. It was guided by the question: How do online CoPs facilitate the transfer and embedding of professional knowledge? This topic was of contemporary and strategic significance in New Zealand: The government had embarked on a strategy to transform teaching in NZ schools, aiming to leverage a major investment in IT infrastructure, using online CoPs to help embed a new paradigm of studentcentred, ICT-enriched learning at system level. There was, however, no research to suggest how this might occur. Despite the increasing use of online CoPs by organisations, and an expansion in the number of tools available for this purpose, there is little understanding of how online CoPs can facilitate knowledge transfer. The way in which knowledge embedding (deep transfer) occurs, and the role online CoPs may play in supporting this process, is particularly poorly understood. This is significant issue in this internet-rich era, when developing nations are aiming to cultivate knowledge economies. I conducted the research using a case research strategy, qualitative methods and an inductive process of theory generation. The research case was a national professional development programme for schools, with five CoP subunits: Four were regionally based school cluster CoPs and one was a distributed blogging community. (Membership of this community overlapped with three of the cluster CoPs.) Based on my analysis of data, and on feedback from participants, I found that three complementary mechanisms were operating simultaneously, facilitating the embedding of knowledge at meso, micro and macro levels. The result of my study is a threelevel explanatory theory. At the meso (school) level, knowledge embedding followed a six-stage cycle, with different activities and issues characterising each stage. Online CoPs played a different role at each stage. At the micro (individual) level, knowledge embedding was driven by teachers' crossings of multiple engagement spaces (communication contexts) in a polycontextual environment. Crossings drove personalisation and facilitated the linking of theory and practice, leading to deep individual understanding. At the macro level, the embedding of knowledge was driven by the brokering function of a middle layer community in a system of overlapping, tiered CoPs. Key roles were played by two kinds of knowledge brokers: connector-leaders and follower-feeders. All three embedding-facilitating mechanisms promoted five fundamental knowledge embedding processes: focusing, persuading, aligning, adapting, and owning (developing ownership).

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Elizabeth Eppel
"The Contribution of Complexity Theory to Understanding Public Policy: A Study of Tertiary Education Policy Processes in New Zealand"

Abstract

The thesis examines how policy processes occur in practice over time, and advances a theory for understanding and explaining them using a complexity analytical lens. This lens provides a different way of 'seeing' policy processes holistically, in comparison with dominant alternative actor-focused, institutions-focused or idea-focused perspectives. The overall aims of the thesis are achieved through four phases. First, to construct the complexity lens, the thesis analyses the potential contribution of complexity theory, particularly as it relates to social systems and organisations. Second, existing theories of policy processes are scrutinised to identify areas where a complexity lens could provide new perspectives for their understanding, through a focus on: - 'wholes' of policy processes - policy problems and solutions - multiple participants - interactions within policy processes - dynamics within policy processes. Third, a study of New Zealand's tertiary education policy processes provides new empirical data. Data collected in unstructured interviews is represented in three differently-themed narratives, corresponding to three well-theorised analytical emphases: (1) participants; (2) institutions; and (3) ideas. The selection of three different perspectives takes into account the socially complex nature of policy processes. Fourth, the narrative data are examined through the complexity analytical lens and the results are compared with the views of policy processes obtained using the single lenses in the themed narratives. The four phases come together by demonstrating that viewing tertiary education policy processes through the complexity analytical lens provides a new perspective on policy processes which has implications for designing and intervening in policy processes. From this new perspective, policy processes are understood as complex social systems in interaction with other complex social systems. These systems consist of large numbers of interdependent and self-referencing participants, interacting with each other in ways that are nonlinear, influenced by prior experiences, and unpredictable in any precise sense.

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Michael Fraser
"Social Accounting and Organisational Change: An Exploration of the Sustainability Assessment Model"

Abstract

There is increasing recognition that social and ecological challenges necessitate societal change. In responding to these challenges a number of tools have been mooted as having the potential to facilitate change at the organisational level. Accounting is one such tool which is implicated in changing the mental models of those making decisions in organisations (Bebbington, 2007a). However, the role that accounting performs is uncertain and calls have been made to extend our understanding by exploring further empirical cases (Bebbington, 2007a, 2007b; Bebbington, Brown and Frame, 2007a; Bebbington, Brown, Frame and Thomson, 2007b; Tilt, 2006) in a way which can make explicit a priori assumptions of change (Broadbent and Laughlin, 2005). Experimenting with social accounting technologies may provide greater insight into their limiting and enabling aspects. Examples of such technologies include full cost accounting (FCA), the sustainable cost calculation (SCC) and, most recently, the sustainable assessment model (SAM). The SAM is an accounting technology developed to incorporate sustainability considerations into organisational decisionmaking and, potentially, accountability processes. In constructing and implementing new accounting technologies such as the SAM, researchers are confronted with two key challenges: first, a lack of empirical exploration within field studies means the impact a new technology may have is not well documented (Gray, 2002); second, the extant theorisation with which to evaluate 'successful' implementations remains underdeveloped (Gray, 2002). For example, use of non-explicit evaluative criteria glosses over the necessary aspects by which people can facilitate and evaluate change (Thomson and Bebbington, 2004, 2005; Dillard, 2007). This thesis explores the potential of the SAM to foster more critically reflective organisational accounts in the pursuit of sustainability, and involved the application of the SAM in two New Zealand case-study sites. In total, forty-seven individual and group semi-structured interviews were conducted over a three-year period. The resulting empirics provided the basis of an organisational narrative, structured according to Laughlin's (1991) organisational change framework, and evaluated using a Freirian heuristic. Laughlin (1991) provides a framework that sensitises the researcher to identify facets of change considered salient in the application of the SAM. His framework provides a structure for the organisational narrative (that is, both a 'technical' account on how the SAM was applied and a descriptive account on what specific change may have occurred in the organisation). However, drawing on Laughlin's (1991) framework presented two key challenges: first, the SAM requires a critical evaluation framework that makes explicit a priori assumptions of change that are not evident using Laughlin's (1991) 'real' and 'superficial' change categorisation; second, the skeletal nature of the framework focuses insufficient attention on how change occurs (Laughlin, 1991, p.229). To address the above challenges and to evaluate the effectiveness of the SAM, a Freirian dialogic heuristic framework (DHF) is applied to the organisational narrative. The human agency focus of Freire's work makes the evaluative framework complementary to Laughlin's (1991) framework by providing greater insight into how change occurs. To date, the application of a Freirian lens in social accounting literature has been restricted to papers theorising the engagement of the SAM (Bebbington et al., 2007b), generic samples of social accounting reports (Thomson and Bebbington, 2005), accounting education (Coulson and Thomson, 2006; Thomson and Bebbington, 2004), and calls to extend stakeholder engagement (O'Dwyer, 2004a). In this thesis the SAM is explored in an empirical organisational setting and evaluated using the DHF. Findings indicate that the SAM did promote more critically reflective organisational accounts. The SAM created a space which amplified the agency of operational managers and researchers to challenge dominant organisational beliefs held typically by senior staff. Beliefs, such as the organisational commitment to sustainability, were exposed, interrogated, and challenged. The process of applying the SAM fostered the problematisation of organisational issues, broadened the perspectives of participants involved in decision-making, and challenged existing notions of who might have legitimate, 'expert' knowledge. It also made visible differences among viewpoints, highlighted the socially constructed nature of accounting technologies, made visible the interrelationships among different elements in an account, and changed project decisions. However, on several occasions the use of SAM was challenged and in one instance resulted in termination of the SAM application. Findings from this thesis contribute to social accounting and organisational change literature by exploring one form of engagement and extending organisational change frameworks. These two contributions provide possibilities for future research and have implications for those involved in policy and practice.

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Peter Mumford
"Enhancing performance-based regulation: lessons from New Zealand's building control system"

Abstract

Performance-based regulation establishes mandatory goals rather than enforcing prescriptive standards. Performance-based regulation has become popular over the past two decades as an alternative to prescriptive regulation, as it holds out the promise of simultaneously achieving health, safety and environmental outcomes while facilitating innovation and reducing regulatory costs. In the early 1990s New Zealand adopted a performance-based building control regime. This demonstrably failed and was replaced in 2004 with a new regime, still performance-based but more conservative. Using legal determinations, adjudications and court cases, and reviews of the failures, contributing factors have been identified. An assessment has been made of the extent to which these factors can be attributed to the performance philosophy and features of the regime. Strategies to addresses the weaknesses of performance-based regulation have been explored. The change from a standards-based regulatory regime, where technology shifts are on the margin and occur through a process of incremental trial-and-error, to a performance-based regime, displaced traditional institutions for aggregating knowledge required for risk-based decision-making. At the same time, the new performance-based regime was permissive of greater technology shifts, which demands more of decision-makers who are operating in an environment of inevitable uncertainty. The significance of the regime change was not well understood and new institutions did not evolve. Reverting to traditional institutions is not an option as they are inherently conservative and therefore innovation as one of the normative benefits of performance-based regulation is likely to be constrained. New institutions are required to aggregate knowledge, but also permit decisions that enable the technology threshold to be pushed out in situations where it is not possible to measure accurately how a novel technology will perform in all of the circumstances of its use, and failure in the field is a possibility. This requires knowledge that is both technical and evaluative. Technical knowledge is more than science, but increasingly knowledge in other domains such as psychology, economics, and both domestic and international law. Evaluative knowledge is that which is required to assess risks and consequences. This study explores two strategies for resolving the challenges of decision-making in a permissive performance-based regulatory environment: improving the predicative capability of decision-making systems through the better application of the intuitive judgment associated with expertise and wisdom, and treating novel technologies as explicit experiments. Both strategies show promise, but may be difficult to implement. If the conditions for materially pushing out the thresholds of technology while managing the risks cannot be met, it may be necessary to revert to incremental trial-and-error in high-risk areas. This does not preclude innovation, but it will be at a slower rate.

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Heike Schanzel
"Family time and own time on holiday: generation, gender, and group dynamic perspectives"

Abstract

This thesis is about the family holiday experiences of the whole family group and its individual members by studying the anticipations before the holiday and the short- and longer-term holiday experiences/recollections after their holiday. This primarily qualitative study links a survey with data triangulation of whole-family interviews. The combination of different methods reflects the holistic and critical research approach within the interpretive research paradigm. It takes a symbolic interactionist perspective which allows a focus on inter-personal relations and forms the basis for a grounded theory methodology (GTM). There is an absence of family tourism research on the experiences of the father, the child, and on group dynamics which has excluded the individual and collective perspectives on the different phases of the holiday. The conceptual framework addresses the gaps identified (as reflected in the research question) by exploring the social experiences and meanings of family holidays over time using gender, generation, and group perspectives. This study is based on a parental survey through schools which was followed by three rounds of whole-family interviews (once before and twice after the holiday) conducted over about one year (2006-2007). The survey with 110 parents provided context and selection of participants for the intensive study of 10 families and their members (20 parents and 20 children). This study resulted in a definition of family holidays based on parental perspectives from the survey and familial perspectives from the interviews which encapsulated notions of togetherness, plurality of families, purpose, change of routine, fun, balance, individual pursuits, compromise, conflict, and length. The iterative research combined with the GTM resulted in a theoretical framework of the main themes on family holidays as governed by family time and own time. Family time encapsulates the time spent together with the immediate and extended family while own time encapsulates freedoms from family commitments to pursue own interests alone or with peers. The relationship between these notions of time leads to the internal family group dynamics of cooperation, compromise, and conflict which are influenced by contextual factors. While family time dominates the Western discourse on family life, it is the inclusion of more individualistic elements in own time that acknowledges a more realistic and sustainable presentation of family holidays. Other results highlight that parents and children bring different purposes on holiday in that parents are more deliberate about social identity formation whereas children seek fun and sociality. The findings also emphasise the undervaluation of the fathers' role as main entertainer of the children. Thus, more debate is needed about the different generational, gendered, and group roles and understandings on holiday. Family holidays, then, have multiple meanings and purposes reflecting the multivocality of its members. A more holistic and critical approach in thinking and research is needed to allow for a homeostasis between social identities based on collective pursuits and on more individual interests.

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Mary Tate
"Reflections on Online Service Quality: Theory, Ontology, Measurement and Antecedents"

Abstract

Online services are becoming increasingly ubiquitous, and this growth has been accompanied by increased business interest in measuring and managing online service quality. This interest is also reflected in a large number of academic studies. Despite this, there is very little consensus about the dimensions and antecedents of perceived online service quality (POLSQ). We consider two possible reasons for this: first that the phenomenon of online service quality is changing as new technology affordances arise, so instability in the dimensionality would be a result of changes in the underlying phenomenon. Second, the theoretical approach and assumptions that studies of online service quality are usually founded on is flawed. My research questions are: 1) what is the structure of perceived online service quality? 2) What are the antecedents of perceived online service quality? 3) What is the ontology of perceived online service quality? 4) What are the most appropriate modelling and measurement methods for measuring online service quality quantitatively, and what insights can be gained from psychometrics?5) What insights does this offer IS researchers for the measurement of user attitudes and perceptions towards technologies? We find that leading models and instruments tend to be based on exploratory factor analysis and have not been informed by advances in measurement theory, particularly co-variance-based structural equation models, and a sub-set of those models known as multi-indicator structural models. We apply recent advances in measurement theory to a dataset. We apply and compare four different modelling methods, exploratory factor analysis, confirmatory factor analysis, formative models, and multi-indicator structural models, and discuss the theoretical foundations of each method. We conclude that POLSQ may not have a separate ontology as a multi-dimensional construct, but overall affect towards the service quality of a website is likely to be the result of the perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use, and perceived trust towards the service. This finding supports the explanatory power of information systems theories over marketing and consumer behaviour theories when studying this phenomenon. We find that user's perceptions of detailed affordances of the service, such as the relevance and timeliness of the information are antecedent to overall affect towards the service, rather than being additional dimensions of POLSQ. We find that widely used techniques such as exploratory factor analysis have serious drawbacks. We find that multi-indicator structural models provide an accurate and nuanced method for modelling the formation of attitudes and perceptions towards technology, which is also well-grounded in theory from social psychology. Finally, we suggest that the approach we take to measuring POLSQ is has potential value for other research which aims to measure customer attitudes and perceptions towards technologies.

Thu Phuong Truong "The Influence of Corporate Governance on Management Earnings Forecast Behaviour in a Low Private Litigation Environment"

A hard copy of this thesis is available from the Commerce Library , Victoria University, Pipitea Campus.

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(Richard) Wang Zhe 
"A Study of Accounting Conservatism"

Abstract

This thesis provides an in-depth examination of accounting conservatism, which is one of the oldest and most important principles of accounting (Sterling, 1967;Watts, 2003a). Two main questions relating to accounting conservatism are extensively studied in this thesis: (1) How to measure accounting conservatism? (2) Why do firms adopt accounting conservatism? This thesis consists of three main chapters that answer these two questions from three different perspectives. The first chapter studies the existing empirical measures of accounting conservatism from a construct validity perspective and concludes that construct validity of the existing measures is mixed to low. The second chapter examines the validity and bias in the Basu (1997) measure of accounting conservatism - one of the most widely used measure of conservatism in the accounting literature. The second chapter shows, analytically and empirically, that the Basu (1997) measure is biased upwards by the default risk of a firm, and proposes a new measure of conservatism that is free from this bias. This new measure of conservatism is called the "Default-Adjusted-Basu" measure. The third chapter investigates the economic rationale for accounting conservatism, and proposes a signalling theory for accounting conservatism. In a debt market characterized by information asymmetry, a borrower firm's degree of conservatism can serve as a credible signal about that borrower firm's level of operating risk to the lenders in the debt market. Thus, one potential benefit of accounting conservatism is that it can reduce the degree of information asymmetry in the debt market.

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Latest VMS publication

March 2011

Prof Steve Cummings and Dr Todd Bridgman have just had the article "The Relevant Past: Why the History of Management Should Be Critical for Our Future" published in the Academy of Management Learning and Education journal. Not only is this an A* journal, it is ranked 8th highest (and rising) in business journals as ranked by Thomson ISI. An earlier version of the paper won a best paper prize at the Academy of Management conference in 2008.

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"The Iron Cage Recreated" The Performance Management of State Organisations in New Zealand edited by Derek Gill

Performance Measurement affects everyone. There are strong views on the role of performance measures and whether measurement actually improves performance. A senior former Cabinet minister observed that 'no-one in their right mind' would rely on New Zealand government management reporting. But relatively little is known about how performance measures are actually used by governments around the world. Even less is known about how they are used in New Zealand.

"Recreating the Iron Cage" explores the results of a major three-year research project on the use of performance information in the New Zealand state sector by a team of academic researchers and public officials. It examines the formal design of the performance management system, how this system has evolved over time, and uses survey and case study evidence to show how performance information has been used in state sector organisations.

The Recreated Iron Cage in the title reflects the surprising research finding that while there is much dull compliance, performance information of various kinds is actively used by decision-makers at all levels of executive government. This information is not, however, used in the ways envisaged by the designers of the formal system. The book concludes with proposals for ongoing development of performance management in New Zealand.

Lead contributors to the book include:

  • Rodney Dormer - lecturer at the VUW School of Accounting and Commercial Law
  • Derek Gill - senior fellow at the Institute of Policy Studies
  • Susan Hitchiner - independent consultant
  • Lynley Hutton -principal adviser at the Ministry of Transport
  • Rob Laking - senior associate at the Institute of Policy Studies
  • Dr Bill Ryan - associate professor at the VUW School of Government

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Financial Modelling: Avoiding the Crunch

"I think high performance computing is very important in this area of finance. If you want to get realistic and push the boundaries, the more computer power you have got the better."

Toby Daglish

If investment bankers had been modelling the US real estate markets using supercomputers we might have avoided the recent credit crisis. As Victoria University researcher Toby Daglish points out, one of the causes of the crisis was the simplistic mathematical models bankers were using to value the markets.

Read more...