University Research Papers

Permanent URI for this collectionhttps://ir.wgtn.ac.nz/handle/123456789/17917

University research outputs made available publicly on the ResearchArchive. These are non-thesis outputs.

Browse

Now showing 1 - 20 of 243

Open Access
The 1982 - 84 review of export assistance : problems with paradigms
(Te Herenga Waka—Victoria University of Wellington, 1985) Mason, Geoffrey M.
For some time now, export incentives to non-traditional exports have been an essential part of the Government's development strategy to restore sustainable levels of growth to the economy. New Zealand has had an indifferent record of growth in the 1950s and 1960s and over the last half decade of the 70s, growth has averaged less than 1% per year or under a third of the OECD average. This persistently bad record was not because governments of the day gave growth little priority in their programmes. It has been long thought that the major barrier to economic growth is the balance of payments or foreign exchange constraint. The term 'foreign exchange constraint' alludes to the supposedly critical dependence of New Zealand on imports of raw materials (especially oil:) and capital equipment to increase the productive capacity of domestic producers. Too often it seemed, economic growth grounded to a halt as payments for imports pushed ahead of export earnings. This leads to the suggestion that the main way to raise growth performance is to raise the rate of growth of exports and thereby relax the balance of payments constraint...
Open Access
Academic agency and leadership in Tourism higher education
(Te Herenga Waka—Victoria University of Wellington, 2013) Schott, C.
This paper explores the leadership agency of tourism faculty in higher education and recommends actions to enhance leadership for social change. Based on a review of literature grounded within an agency perspective, a conceptual framework is presented that identifies systemic and individual influences on leadership. Three types of freedom for faculty to engage in leadership behaviors arise: (1) the capacity of the individual to lead; (2) the freedom afforded by the organizational context to lead in accordance with one’s capacity to lead; and (3) the social freedom to lead derived from each faculty member’s disciplinary and departmental norms and structures.
Open Access
The additional gains when integrating drone technology as a business tool in New Zealand’s district council structures
(Te Herenga Waka—Victoria University of Wellington, 2019) Koch, Michael; Potangaroa, Regan
Worldwide, drones are being employed by many industries vital to architectural and engineering practice, including territorial authorities (TAs) and councils. This is largely thanks to the breathtaking speed at which drone technology has developed and become more sophisticated. Drones are now equipped with precise sensors, are made from highly durable materials, and enjoy much longer battery life than they did only a few years ago. In combination with the latest software solution, drones allow TAs and councils to undertake projects which were previously unimaginable. Local authorities in New Zealand are slowly realising the potential of drones and are beginning to integrate them as a recognised tool. This paper weighs the advantages and challenges incurred by New Zealand local authorities in employing drones. Industry data from Airways about drone usage were compared against statistical data. Drone deployment in district councils was mapped and three cases of drone use in councils were compared and analysed. A field study in Wainuiomata was carried out for final demonstration purposes. The findings confirmed the usability of drones as a business tool for TA and council tasks such as aerial mapping and asset inspection but also indicated the need for an overarching organisational structure.
Open Access
Adult career counselling using possible selves—A quasi-experimental field study in naturalistic settings
(Te Herenga Waka—Victoria University of Wellington, 2012) Plimmer, G.
This study examined the effectiveness of an adult career development program designed to reflect the diversity and demands of career choices, the low level of comfort many have with career choices, and the limited resources available to resolve complex adult career problems. A possible selves process was used, delivered through a blend of computer and one-on-one counselling. Compared with a comparison group offered general career counselling, the program was particularly effective in raising participants’ level of comfort with career direction, particularly for those with very low scores on this dimension. Similarly, the possible selves process was effective in increasing the level to which participants were decided about their career direction. Interviews with practitioners found the computerised possible selves-based approach to be effective in engaging clients where career and personal issues were intertwined, and in helping clients find solutions to career problems.
Restricted
Already Reading in Early Childhood: Issues of Identification, Accommodation and Collaboration
(Te Herenga Waka—Victoria University of Wellington, 2003) Margrain, Valerie; Carmen Dalli
Children who are precocious readers, or able to read at an unusually young age without having had formal instruction, have attracted considerable interest from literacy researchers (Henderson, Jackson & Mukamal, 1993). This is because precocious readers enable researchers to identify children's reading strategies and methods of decoding. This paper presents data on precocious readers as they transitioned into school from their early childhood education setting (see also Margrain, 1998). Primary questions considered include: how do precocious readers emerge? What role do parents play? And what happens when children who can already read go to school? A fundamental premise of this study was that parents have valuable observational knowledge of their children. This study explored how the parents knowledge, including their recognition of their children's dispositions and abilities, as well as their responsiveness to, and advocacy for, their child, was utilized when children went to school already able to read. A further purpose of this study was to examine whether international findings about precocious readers are pertinent to the New Zealand context. Since New Zealand-based research on examples of precocity is limited, results from other countries, such as the United States, often need to be called upon. It is important therefore to confirm whether findings from overseas are relevant to our own cultural setting. This study explores a range of issues relating to transition to school including parents reports of the effects of beginning school on their children's emotional well-being and reading behaviour. It reports on the experience of transition to school for parents, including school consultation and collaboration, and teacher practices.
Restricted
Ambient Findability and Structured Serendipity: Enhanced Resource Discovery for Full Text Collections
(Te Herenga Waka—Victoria University of Wellington, 2008) Stevenson, Alison; Tuohy, Conal; Norrish, Jamie
University Libraries manage increasingly large collections of full text digital resources. These might be repositories of born digital research outputs, e-reserves collections or online libraries of material digitised to provide open access to significant texts. Whatever the content of the material, the structured data of full text resources can be exploited to enhance research discovery. The implicit connections and cross-references between books and papers, which occur in all print collections, can be made explicit in a collection of electronic texts. Correctly encoded and exposed they create a framework to support resource discovery and navigation both within and between texts by following links between topics. Using this approach the New Zealand Electronic Text Centre (NZETC) at Victoria University of Wellington has developed a delivery system for its growing online digital library using the ISO Topic Map technology. Like a simple back-of-book index or a library classification system, a topic map aggregates information to provide binding points from which everything that is known about a given subject can be reached. Topics in the NZETC digital library represent authors and publishers, texts, and images, as well as people and places mentioned or depicted in those texts and images. Importantly, the Topic Map extends beyond the NZETC collection to incorporate relevant external resources which expose structured metadata about their collection. Innovative entity authority records management enables, for example, the topic page for William Colenso to automatically provide access not only to the full text of his works in the NZETC collection but out to another book-length work in the Auckland University’s “Early NZ Books Collection” and to several essays in the National Library’s archive of the Royal Society Journals. It also enables links to externally provided services providing information on Library holdings of print copies of the text. The NZETC system is based on international standards for the representation and interchange of knowledge including TEI XML, XTM, XSL and the CIDOC CRM. The NZETC collection currently includes over 2500 texts covering 110,000 topics.
Open Access
Animating Ephemeral Surfaces: Transparency, Translucency and Disney’s World of Color
(Te Herenga Waka—Victoria University of Wellington, 2014) Thompson, Kirsten Moana
This paper examines the unusual theatrical and exhibition dimensions of Disney’s World of Color, an outdoor night time entertainment spectacle which screens animated films on ephemeral materials: the water spray and light produced by fountains, water, mist and fire. It considers how this show innovates a new form of theatrical exhibition, combining older art forms from fireworks to pyrodramas, with contemporary computer-controlled light and colour design and immersive effects. It will suggest structural and aesthetic connections between this animated attraction and recent technological innovations such as Google Glass™ in which mobile computer interfaces combine transparency and opacity as an essential part of their formal structure and tactile pleasure. Theorising that the relationship between animation and the ephemeral is also situated in these tensions between the transparent and opaque, I go on to suggest that Disney’s World of Color is a particular instantiation of the ways in which “animation” can be understood not only as a specific technical process, but also as a form of corporeal transformation in which movement, light and colour enlivens individual bodies and screen spaces.
Restricted
An Annotated Bibliography of Scientific Publications on the Risks Associated with Genetic Modification
(Te Herenga Waka—Victoria University of Wellington, 2003) Weaver, Sean; Morris, Michael
In order to help facilitate scientific debate on GMO risks a literature search of peer-reviewed science was conducted on GMO risks resulting in the following bibliography. While there is a great deal of published science on genetic modification in general, there is far less that specifically targets the bio-safety issues associated with genetic modification. In order to make scientifically informed decisions relating to the adoption or regulation of this emerging technology, it is important that all of the relevant information is available to decision makers. One of the themes that has coloured the portrayal of the “GE” debate in the popular media is that of science on one side (supporting these innovations) and uninformed emotional arguments on the other. This bibliography is designed to help bring this debate into a scientific arena by providing references to bio-safety concerns that can be obtained by any decision making body. The decision to restrict this bibliography to scientific publications is designed to ensure that the arguments and the information presented has been scrutinised by scientists in the peer review or editorial process and as such should guard against non-scientific contributions to this important scientific debate. This has meant, however, that books written by scientists have been excluded from this bibliography, even though they may provide important contributions to the scientific debate. Of course, the issues surrounding the adoption and regulation of genetic modification are more than scientific, and include ethical, economic, cultural, legal, intellectual property, and liability dimensions. These themes are beyond the scope of this bibliography, which is explicitly focused on biological science.
Restricted
Annotating UI Architecture with Actual Use
(Te Herenga Waka—Victoria University of Wellington, 2008) Ramsay, Neil; Potanin, Alex; Stuart, Marshall
Developing an appropriate user interface architecture for supporting a system's tasks is critical to the system's overall usability. While there are principles to guide architectural design, confirming that the correct decisions are made can involve the collection and analysis of lots of test data. We are developing a testing environment that will automatically compare and contrast the actual user interaction data against the existing user interface architectural models. This can help a designer more clearly understand how the actual tasks performed relate to the proposed architecture, and enhances feedback between different design artifacts.
Open Access
Apple and the human costs of production
(Te Herenga Waka—Victoria University of Wellington, 2016-10-19) Bridgman, T.
Apple is the world’s most valuable company. Based on market capitalisation value, it was worth over US$539 billion in early 2012, which makes it worth more than Google and Microsoft combined1. At the start of 2013, its shares were trading around US$500 per share, having started 2012 at $424. In February 2012 it reported a quarterly profit of $13.06 billion on sales of $46.3 billion, which according to the New York Times was “one of the most lucrative quarters of any corporation in history”2. Its products are ubiquitous – the iPhone, the iPad, the iPod – symbols of coolness and chic. Many of its customers see these products as not just electronic gadgets, but as extensions of their personalities. When new models of the iPhone and iPad are released there are queues outside Apple stores in cities all over the globe. And yet, despite this remarkable success, Apple has been in the news lately for all the wrong reasons, its brand tarnished by growing criticisms over inhumane working conditions in the factories in China that make these products.
Open Access
Assassins in academia? New Zealand academics as critic and conscience of society
(Te Herenga Waka—Victoria University of Wellington, 2007) Bridgman, T.
This paper uses literature on the positioning of intellectuals in society to consider the enactment of the ‘critic and conscience’ role within New Zealand universities. The critic and conscience of society is a statutory obligation for universities but is seen to be threatened by a combination of market forces and challenges to the status of knowledge. Drawing on the work of Laclau and Mouffe, the identity of the ‘critical and engaged expert’ is constituted, which recognises the vital role that New Zealand academics can play as a force for democratic social change.
Open Access
The Axisymmetric Prandtl-Batchelor Eddy Behind a Circular Disc in a Uniform Stream
(Te Herenga Waka—Victoria University of Wellington, 1998) Harper, J F
Analytical support is given to Fornberg's numerical evidence that the steady axially symmetric flow of a uniform stream past a bluff body has a wake eddy which tends towards a large Hill's spherical vortex as the Reynolds number tends to infinity. The viscous boundary layer around the eddy resembles that around a liquid drop rising in a liquid, especially if the body is a circular disc, so that the boundary layer on it does not separate. This makes it possible to show that if the first-order perturbation of the eddy shape from a sphere is small then the eddy diameter is of order R1/5 times the disc diameter, where R is the Reynolds number based on the disc diameter. Previous authors had suggested R1/3 and ln R, but they appear to have made unjustified assumptions.
Restricted
The Baby Friendly Hospital Initiative Implementing the Process in New Zealand
(Te Herenga Waka—Victoria University of Wellington, 2005) Jackson, Christine; Skinner, Joan; Lennox, Sue
The Baby Friendly Initiative is a global initiative jointly with the World Health Organization (WHO) and the United Nations (UNICEF). The Baby Friendly Hospital Initiative has become the primary intervention strategy for strengthening the capacity of national health systems to protect and promote breastfeeding. WHO supports committees coordinating the BFHI process by placing particular emphasis on developing core groups of trainers, at national and regional levels developing reassessment and monitoring tools, to ensure the Initiative’s continued integrity and credibility and broadening the Initiative. This is a reflective paper that has documented the implementation of Baby Friendly Hospital (BFHI) in New Zealand. It describes the collaborative processes that were necessary to achieve such a goal and the sheer determinedness of a few. It demonstrates that with collegial passion and partnership, success and a political stance can be achieved from which health policy and reform can be directed. The International context is outlined simplistically with an explanation of the important documents and global initiatives which underpin the implementation of BFHI. The scientific evidence supporting the Ten Steps to Successful Breastfeeding is documented so that the reader has an appreciation of the importance of BFHI and good health. Background to the implementation of BFHI in New Zealand has been acknowledged. This process has been observed by the international community and seen as inspirational. With ministerial commitment and support the international documents have been rewritten to fit our unique maternity system, presented to the New Zealand community and instituted into health reforms. To conclude this paper looks to the future, the establishment of a National Breastfeeding Committee, and implementation of the Baby Friendly Initiative into the community.
Open Access
"Back From the Edge of the World": Re-Authoring a Story of Practice with Stress and Trauma Using Gestalt Theories and Narrative Approaches
(Te Herenga Waka—Victoria University of Wellington, 2008) Pack, Margaret
The aim of this article is to offer an ongoing reflection of the difficulties of working with trauma survivors within mental health agencies which provide brief models of intervention. The dilemma of how to work safely, respectively, and collaboratively with clients who present with a history of trauma is highlighted. The author reflects on her own experience of vicarious traumatization through her practice with a long-term survivor of domestic abuse. The team and organizational narratives which are embedded in the medical and managerial models in the mental health services are reflected upon as constraining the environment in which the author is able to provide a context for the client's healing and collegial practice. By witnessing the abuse survivor's story of survival drawing upon themes in the "New Trauma Therapy," Gestalt and Narrative therapy practice frameworks, the author suggests that other versions of the "story" are made available for the client and for the worker that offer a greater sense of "personal agency." These "re-authored" narratives offer a way forward for the client, individual worker, and team.
Open Access
Ban the Bullet-Point! Content-Based PowerPoint for Historians.
(Te Herenga Waka—Victoria University of Wellington, 2007) Maxwell, Alexander
Powerpoint arouses many strong feelings, but the debate over the popular program typically pits advocates against detractors: fewer people discuss how PowerPoint should best be used in the classroom. Howard Strauss of Princeton University has observed that "a lot of the stuff that people try to do in smart classrooms is done badly," but University PowerPoint guidelines, with their lists of "dos and don'ts," appear mostly to be the work of IT professionals, not humanities instructors. Drawing on my own experiences lecturing with PowerPoint, I suggest in this article that historians should use the program to display primary sources. They should avoid using PowerPoint as a summary of lecture notes, and abandon bullet points altogether. This advice apparently contradicts conventional wisdom; at least it contradicts the advice given at several major research universities. I will provide some sample lecture slides to justify my approach and end with a brief list of technical hints on designing PowerPoint presentations for history lectures.
Open Access
The battle for ‘Middle-Earth’: The constitution of interests and identifies in the Hobbit dispute
(Te Herenga Waka—Victoria University of Wellington, 2017) Bridgman, T.
This article draws on an industrial dispute over the filming of The Hobbit in New Zealand in 2010 to contribute to the theorisation of the interplay between interests and identities and our understanding of mobilisation and collective identity. While industrial disputes are typically viewed as a conflict between groups with opposing material interests, this may miss the way in which both the identities of those involved and their interests are discursively constituted in articulatory processes. Specifically, we apply Laclau and Mouffe’s discourse theory and in doing so demonstrate that the dispute was more than a conflict over working conditions, it was a hegemonic struggle to fix meaning. In making this conceptual contribution we highlight a tendency within industrial relations analysis to reify interests.
Open Access
Behavioural insights and regulatory practice: A review of the international academic literature
(Te Herenga Waka—Victoria University of Wellington, 2019) van der Heijden, Jeroen
This research report presents findings from a broad range of international academic literature on the use of insights from the behavioural sciences in regulatory practice—an approach to regulation colloquially known as ‘nudging’. The report is targeted at managers and frontline workers in regulatory organisations and units who are interested in this approach to regulation. The report addresses six themes: (1) the evolution of thinking about rational behaviour, (2) examples of the use of behavioural insights in regulation, (3) evidence of the workings of this approach, (4) experiments and randomised control trials to understand those workings, (5) ethical challenges, and (6) epistemic challenges.
Restricted
Benchmarking Google Scholar with the New Zealand PBRF Research Assessment Exercise
(Te Herenga Waka—Victoria University of Wellington, 2008) Smith, Alastair G.
Google Scholar was used to generate citation counts to the web-based research output of New Zealand Universities. Total citations and hits from Google Scholar correlated with the research output as measured by the official New Zealand Performance-Based Research Fund (PBRF) exercise. The article discusses the use of Google Scholar as a cybermetric tool and methodology issues in obtaining citation counts for institutions. Google Scholar is compared with other tools that provide web citation data: Web of Science, SCOPUS, and the Wolverhampton Cybermetric Crawler.
Open Access
Beyond the Manager’s Moral Dilemma: Rethinking the ‘Ideal Type’ Business Ethics Case
(Te Herenga Waka—Victoria University of Wellington, 2010) Bridgman, T.
Case teaching occupies a central place in the history of business education and in recognition of its significance, the Journal of Business Ethics recently created a new section for cases. Typically, business ethics cases are used to teach moral reasoning by exposing students to real-life situations which puts them in the position of a decision-maker faced with a moral dilemma. Drawing on a critical management studies’ critique of mainstream business ethics, this paper argues that this ‘ideal type’ decision-focused case underplays the social, political and economic factors which shape managerial decisions. An alternative ‘dark side’ case approach is presented, which highlights the structural features of capitalism and the role of government in regulating the market. The ‘dark side’ approach is illustrated with the case of a New Zealand woman, dependent on an oxygen machine, who died when her power was disconnected by her State-owned electricity supplier because of an unpaid bill. The case considers the actions of both the company and the industry regulator within the context of a ‘light-handed’ approach to government regulation. The paper concludes with a discussion of how this approach to the case method, which moves beyond managers and their moral dilemmas, can provide students with a deeper understanding of the complexity of business ethics.
Restricted
Biculturalism in Employee Selection or 'Who Should Get the Job'? Perceptions of Maori and Pakeha Job Applicants in a NZ European Student Sample
(Te Herenga Waka—Victoria University of Wellington, 2007) Fischer, Ronald; Jackson, Bryony
The current study reports an experiment assessing how Pakeha/European New Zealanders' perceptions of job applicants are shaped by ethnicity, merit and need. A sample of 114 undergraduate students viewed the curricula vitae of both high and low merit New Zealand European/Pakeha and Maori job applicants. Individual versus group need was made salient before participants provided general ratings and recommended salaries for the job applicants. Participants provided more positive assessments of high merit Maori than high merit New Zealand European/Pakeha applicants, but less favourable assessments of low merit Maori in comparison to low merit New Zealand European/Pakeha applicants. This trend was also observed for recommended salaries, but only if individual need was made salient. The implications for employee selection, Affirmative Action policies, and attitudes towards biculturalism in general are discussed.