Antonia Girardi (she/her)

Australian employers continue to indicate that the development of teamwork skills in graduates is as important as mastering technical skills required for a particular career. In Australia, the reporting on the teaching of teamwork skills has emanated across a range of disciplines including health and engineering, with less of a focus on business related disciplines. Although Australian university business schools appear to value the importance and relevance of developing teamwork skills, implementation of the teaching, learning and assessment of teamwork skills remains somewhat of a pedagogical conundrum. The aim of this paper is to present a systematic literature review so as to better understand the salient issues associated with teaching teamwork skills in Australian higher education business disciplines.

Global perspectives and interpersonal and intercultural communication competencies are viewed as a priority within Australian higher education. For management educators, globalisation, student mobility and widening pathways present numerous challenges, but afford opportunities for curriculum innovation. The Interaction for Learning Framework (ILF) seeks to help academics introduce curriculum change and increase peer interaction opportunities. Although the framework has many strengths to recommend it, the ILF does not provide a process by which academics can easily evaluate the outcomes produced by its implementation. In this paper, we examine the efficacy of a popular four level training evaluation framework – the Kirkpatrick model – as a way to appraise the outcomes of ILF-based curriculum interventions.

Investment in leadership development programs continues to rise as organisations struggle to develop leaders at all levels. In this study personal reflections from 40 senior leaders completing an almost year-long leadership development program are analysed using an integrated series of content analysis techniques. In examining a corpus of over 50,000 words, the study presents evidence that the use of reflective learning activities has led to the formation of leadership wisdom: a necessary set of attitudes and values, cognitive skills and life experiences that enable individuals to lead in uncertain environments. The paper concludes that reflection is a cornerstone of successful leadership development programs, and adds value to the discourse on successful leadership.

This paper is an organisational ethnographic study of the university re-registration process that the SAI (the University) has undergone as part of the new regulatory regime under the Tertiary Education Quality Standards Agency (TEQSA) legislative requirements. This was an arduous and complex ten-month process that resulted in a one hundred and thirty three page application document with more than five hundred and thirty pieces of individual evidence to support the claims being made by the University in responding to the one hundred and two threshold standards. The co-authors were organisationally embedded key actors and this paper is their collective and self-reflective autoethnographic organisational ‘story’ collated into a combined written voice.

Volunteer management is at an impasse in the nonprofit sector. Not yet recognised for its complexity, salary levels tend to be low and organisational support varied for those staff members who are employed to undertake this important role. We contend that it is necessary for volunteer involving organisations to recognise the complex job that is volunteer management, and to value more highly the skill set, role and work of volunteer managers. This will inevitably lead to better volunteer experiences, and to greater appreciation of volunteering as well as ensuring the ongoing commitment of volunteers to their respective organisations.

Findings on the impact of perceived risk and trust in online purchasing are usually based on evidence obtained from the purchase of inexpensive, uncomplicated, and hence low risk products such as books, compact disks (CD’s, DVD’s), or clothing. Antecedents of perceived risk and trust are also not usually addressed in these studies. This study shows that the type of Internet marketing strategy (the place strategy), the buyer’s privacy and security concerns influence a buyer’s perceived risk to purchase gemstones online. Findings also show that perceived risk reduces trust and trust was positively associated with the amount purchased online.