Business papers

Creating trading systems with fundamental variables and neural networks: The Aby case study

Bruce Vanstone et al. — Mon, 01 Apr 2013 19:13:12 PDT

The consumer experience of holidays booked via Daily Deal promotions: An online content analysis of traveller reviews

Carmen Cox — Sun, 24 Feb 2013 20:49:39 PST

While Daily Deal accommodation promotions through sites such as LivingSocial, Groupon, Scoopon, Ouffer and Cudo have become increasingly popular amongst industry operators and travellers alike, there is limited research about the extent to which they satisfy the end-users expectations. Consumers‟ self-reported evaluations of accommodation promotions sold through Daily Deal sites are analysed in this paper based on a content analysis of more than 500 online reviews submitted to TripAdvisor® by travellers who had purchased a ‘daily deal voucher’ to be used across a variety of Australian properties. The results find that while the majority of reviewers rated their stay experience positively and that many recommend the property to others, their own return was questionable without a similar deal.

Pitting real options theory against risk diversification theory: International diversification and joint ownership control in economic crisis

Chris Changwha Chung et al. — Thu, 17 Jan 2013 22:44:41 PST

This study examines how MNE divestment decisions differ according to real options vs. risk diversification perspectives. We develop competing hypotheses in relation to international diversification and joint ownership control. Empirical results give consistent support to the real options perspective. We find that large MNEs with greater international diversification are less likely to divest their subsidiaries during times of economic crisis. The negative effect of joint ownership control is however manifested in both crisis-stricken and non-crisis country subsidiaries as well as in their interaction effect.

Teaching strategic thinking in management education

Ingrid Bonn — Mon, 14 Jan 2013 22:26:51 PST

Business sustainability and undergraduate management education: An Australian study

Josie Fisher et al. — Mon, 14 Jan 2013 17:58:11 PST

The academic literature arguing that there is an urgent requirement for businesses to become more sustainable is rapidly expanding. There is also a demonstrated need for managers to develop a better understanding of sustainability and the appropriate strategies required to improve business sustainability. In addition, there have been international calls for educators to address sustainability in their programs. The aim of this study was to investigate the extent to which business sustainability was incorporated into undergraduate business and management courses in Australian universities. The high percentage of international students enrolled in these courses suggests our findings have implications beyond the Australian context. Students currently studying these courses are the managers and leaders of the future and their knowledge and skills will influence the extent to which business sustainability will be achieved. The findings demonstrate that more than half of Australian universities did not explicitly identify sustainability as part of their business/management curricula and those universities that did address sustainability did so, in most cases, only in a limited way.

An ultra-lightweight Java interpreter for bridging CS1

Phil Stocks — Sun, 25 Nov 2012 16:36:06 PST

This paper presents an ultra-lightweight Java interpreter for use in teaching CS1 courses. The interpreter is targeted specifically at complete beginner programmers and addresses aspects particularly relevant or troublesome to novices, such as expressions, method calls, method calls as sub-expressions, and recursion. The interpreter works on a subset of Java and is intended as a bridge to a more complete environment. Experiences using the interpreter in a semester of CS1 are favourable, and an analysis of its deployment is presented.

Stewardship behaviour as governance in family businesses

Justin B. Craig et al. — Tue, 16 Oct 2012 23:12:37 PDT

Extract:

To demonstrate the potential of stewardship behavior in the governance of family businesses, we introduce a statistically valid and reliable measure that captures the degree to which family leaders act to engender stewardship governance in their family's firm. Demonstrating nomological validity of our measure through significantly positive relationships with innovativeness and firm performance further links our scale to entrepreneutrial behaviors. We discuss the contribution to our research for practitioners and scholars.

Research beginnings: Researching family business in Australia

Ken Moores — Sun, 14 Oct 2012 21:55:29 PDT

Despite their widely acknowledged economic significance family owned business
have largely been ignored by the local business research community. This has
led to a lack of understanding of the unique features of family firms and how to
manage their challenges. These challenges, particularly during transition
periods, often result in conflicts that can be destructive to both firm and family
and may contribute to the high mortality rate of family owned firms.
Discontinuity of ownership or executive leadership, the distribution of power
and assets and the role of the business in the community are also major
challenges for family businesses. The purpose of this paper is to highlight the
significance of, and challenges confronting family businesses; to outline
research approaches and opportunities; and to describe institutional
developments aimed at facilitating the execution of local family business
research. This paper distils the essence of overseas research and integrates it
with the limited descriptions we have of Australian family businesses to identify approaches and frameworks for the pursuit of family business research.

Ethics-based financial transactions: An assessment of Islamic banking

Mohamed Ariff — Sun, 14 Oct 2012 21:37:54 PDT

Extract:

This is an analytical chapter with the modest aim of assessing a 48-year old experiment commonly termed Islamic finance, which describes the profit sharing and risk-sharing contracting in financial transactions as being ethically consistent with human welfare. Profit-earning after risk-sharing in debt contracts (as has always been the case throughout history in equity contracts) has been practiced in financial dealings in settled societies for over four millennia, before the birth of modern banking practices which are debt-based on no risk-sharing, with pre-agreed fixed interest charges. In just 48 years, the ethics-based Islamic finance has gained a respectable foothold in some 76 countries, including seven major financial centers, as will be supported by evidence in this chapter. Its presence is felt in many countries. With the Bank of England’s adoption of a landmark liberal regulation in 2002, after careful study over many years, to accept Islamic financial institutions as another niche in banking, the pace of growth of adoption of this experiment has substantially accelerated.

Performance of Islamic banks and conventional banks

Mohamed Ariff et al. — Sun, 14 Oct 2012 20:47:27 PDT

Extract

In this chapter an attempt is made for the first time to assess the financial performance of Islamic banks and conventional banks by choosing a matched sample of banks to assess their financial performance across the world over a lengthy period. Islamic banking is based on replacing the prefixed-interest-based bank deposit-turn-lending activities with risk-sharing and profit-sharing principles advocated by Islam, which in turn appears to be consistent with the social norms of pre-modern societies prior to the rise of interest-based fractioning banking in the last 200 years, which refers tothe fractional-reserve banking from the close of the 18th century. Risk- and profit-share principles in financial transactions have been with humanity for a long time and they are still practiced silently in most rural non-bank lending activities across the world.