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Tourism productivity measures are quite diverse, not always compatible and usually based partly on labor productivity for hotels and restaurants. This article develops a holistic approach that integrates the principles of the growth accounting framework and tourism satellite account to measure multifactor productivity, labor productivity and capital productivity for the Australian tourism industry. This study shows that tourism has been identified as a reservoir for other industries through the ebbs and flows of labor demands. Compared with the rest of the economy, the average growth of labor productivity—that is, income per unit of labor—for tourism is stagnant, and has reached an unprecedented low, six times below the market sector average, mainly because of low multifactor productivity. The results are valuable for policy makers and the lobbying groups wanting to identify areas of need for policy changes to ensure the healthy long-term growth of tourism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Non-market sector reform is much overlooked. The sector is the fastest growing part of the economy, the most controlled by governments, and critical to everybody's quality of life. Reforms to healthcare - principally a shift to an integrated care model - would promote patient well-being and could offer benefits of around $145 billion in constant dollars over the next 20 years. Universities play an increasing role in skills acquisition, but need incentives and new structures to give primacy to teaching quality. Australian cities need Hilmer-like competition reform in planning and zoning, and entirely new approaches to funding roads. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study aims to evaluate the productivity change of the Australian Real Estate Investment Trust (REITs) by using a Balance panel data set which cover 10 AREITs operating in the Australian market from 2004 to 2011. The study use a non-parametric approach Data Envelopment Analysis based analysis to investigate the productivity change. Input-oriented Malmquist indices of productivity change are estimated to measure total factor productivity (TFP) change. The TFP changes are decomposed into the product of technological change and technical efficiency change (catch-up). Three inputs are utilized which are operating expenses, administrative expenses, and interest expenses. Meanwhile, outputs used are total assets, enterprise value. Variable Return to Scale Data Envelopment Analysis (VRS-DEA model) is used for the entire sample using the (Coelli, 1996) DEAP version 2.1. The results indicate that the average productivity declined and technology regressed during this decade. It appears that the typical REIT has failed to improve technically, but exerted substantial effort to catch up with the best practice ones relying mainly on aggressive growth strategies. Results indicate that AREITs experienced a 2.4% TFP regress, a 2.6% technological regress, a 0.1% efficiency progress, a 0.5% pure efficiency fall and a 0.6% scale efficiency increase on average between 2004-2011. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article reports that concerns regarding the growing impact of ageing populations on workplace productivity and on welfare budgets have led to several government supported measures intended to retain and upskill older workers in several countries including Australia. It states that a survey of over 250 mature-age workers in mainly professional and administrative roles has identified strong interest and belief in their capacity to engage in learning required to maintain their employability.

Building on a volume of previous work on CI in the supply chain based on the CIMA model, this paper significantly extends the work of Sloan et al. (2005) and Sloan and Sloan (2006) by examining the individual contribution of all organisational departments to organisational CI. We also examine connections between CI dispersion in the organisation and motivations for the implementation of CI; organisational experience with CI; problems encountered with CI implementation; and support and tools used in implementing and monitoring CI. Findings of this study provide support for the proposition that dispersed CI enhances the business performance benefits of CI and that the experience of CI was more positive in firms where CI was dispersed, with fewer implementation problems and higher levels of support and measurement tools. Management in organisations should give serious consideration to strategies which enhance the spread of CI activities throughout their organisations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This review of industrial relations reform in Australia will highlight the changes and challenges since the introduction of the Rudd Labor government's Forward with fairness agenda. In particular, it examines the major issues and areas of change under the new Fair Work Act 2009 and highlights the challenges and opportunities that these might present in the near future given the current economic climate. This review attempts to examine these major themes in industrial relations reform through a 'business lens' - an employer perspective. However, it will also assess the potential impact of the Act within an economic, political and industrial relations context. The reforms are likely to create an environment for greater fairness at workplace level by an increased focus on collective bargaining. However, whether the Act will encourage enterprise bargaining remains and provide a platform for achieving greater productivity and fairness is to be seen. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Australian agricultural TFP is sensitive to climate variability and long-term change. • A new framework is proposed to disentangle climate variability from agricultural TFP. • The new 'climate-adjusted TFP' enables observation of industry progress in productivity. • The climate-adjusted TFP is valuable for both statistical agencies and policy makers. Estimates of agricultural Total Factor Productivity (TFP) can be highly sensitive to both short-run climate variability and long-term climate change. This is particularly true in Australia where drought impacts are responsible for most of the annual volatility in official farm TFP statistics. While climate variability can obscure short-term productivity trends, researchers have typically assumed that long run TFP trends are largely unaffected. However, in the presence of global climate change this assumption becomes problematic. For example, in Australia, shifts to higher temperatures and lower winter season rainfall over the last 20–30 years have had a significant negative impact on agricultural productivity. This study presents a framework to account for the effects of climate variability on TFP estimates. In contrast with previous work, this approach applies a reduced form machine learning based model of farm production to generate synthetic (climate-adjusted) farm-level input and output data sets. It therefore has advantages in terms of flexibility—since the synthetic datasets can be combined with any existing TFP estimation framework. In this study, the approach is applied to estimate climate-adjusted TFP indices (TFP under an assumption of constant long-run average climate conditions) for a range of Australian agricultural sectors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article examines classical political economy and its modern anti-liberal derivatives in the Australian economy. The economic boom conditions in Australia took place in the early 1990s when unemployment was over 10%. Since then, unemployment has steadily decreased. Marxist political economy states that the conception of crisis involves the disruption of capitalist accumulation through falling profits, overproduction, underconsumption, and sectoral disproportionality. The author states that there are still recurrent problems in economic management despite the effects of institutional transformation.

A literature review regarding the consequences of trade liberalization on trade flows, productivity and internal demand has led us to consider a simple operational model of how to measure these consequences. This model is applied to the passenger motor vehicle (PMV) industry in Australia. There is clear evidence that this liberalization has increased the volume of trade and productivity, but reduced the locally produced cars for internal consumption. In addition, there are significant estimated lags concerning the reaction of these variables as a consequence of trade liberalization. Econometrically, this paper is an application of the bounds-testing procedure based on the Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) approach to cointegration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The author reflects on the significant role of the fashion industry in establishing productivity growth in the economy in Australia. He considers fashion as consumer entrepreneurship and serves as essential complement to producer entrepreneurship in bringing new goods and services to the market. Fashion fulfills its role in the consumer economy by providing a mechanism to periodically liquidate certain elements of a consumer lifestyle.

Abstract: Between 1870 and 1890 Australian incomes per capita were 40 percent or more above those in the United States. About half this gap is attributable to Australia’s higher labor input per capita, and half to its higher labor productivity. The higher labor input is due in part to favorable demographic attributes and partly to a favorable workforce participation rate. The higher productivity results from an advantageous natural resource endowment. By 1914 the income lead over the U.S. had all but disappeared due to declines in Australia’s advantages both in labor input per capita and in labor productivity. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Work-life conflict has a damaging effect on job satisfaction, organizational commitment, productivity turnover, and absenteeism. On an individual level, work-life conflict is associated with employee burnout, mental health issues, substance abuse, and diminished family functioning. Thus, work-life balance is an important issue to the construction industry, in terms of both organizational effectiveness and occupational health. Long and inflexible work hours are the most consistent predictor of work-life conflict among construction employees, particularly those working on-site or in a project office. There is considerable resistance to the adoption of new ways of scheduling work within the industry. This paper describes the post hoc evaluation of a compressed work week (reducing the length of the working week, but increasing the length of the working day) in a case study project alliance in Queensland, Australia. Quantitative and qualitative data are presented to demonstrate the beneficial impact of the initiative on employees’ work-life balance. The evaluation provides prima facie evidence that alternative work schedules can improve construction employees’ work-life balance, creating benefits for construction employees and organizations. The paper concludes that project alliances provide an ideal environment in which work-life balance initiatives can help to create high-performance work systems in the construction sector. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper reports findings of research into the dynamics of customer satisfaction formation amongst fruit producers and their distribution channel(s), within the economically important northern Victorian (Australia)fruit industry. The paper suggests reasons why previous approaches to the issue of satisfaction in channel member relationships, which typically utilize constructs of `economic' and `non-economic' satisfaction, may usefully be supplemented by application of the `disconfirmation of expectations' model. The research actually tests a modification of the traditional disconfirmation model that incorporates dimensions of `outcome' and `process' at the levels of expectations, performance and disconfirmation-a `dualistic' model. This had previously been tested only in a radically different business-to business context, that of advertising creative services. The findings suggest that satisfactory measurement of growers' expectations can be achieved They also suggest that the discomfirmation model does appear to apply in this previously untested service context, whether unitary measures of expectations and performance, or the dualistic interpretation of expectations/performance, are utilized. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article proposes a mechanism to solve the contradictory position of the government in providing equal employment opportunities in Australia. Misunderstanding on several aspects of individual management is considered as the main cause of prevailing age employment discrimination in the country. To address the management imperatives, the policy is required to include a realistic analysis of the job destruction and recruitment processes, clear measurement of employment performance and funding for resource transfer.

Examines the total factor productivity (TFP) growth rates of Telstra company in Australia from 1980 to 1997. Comparison of TFP growth rates between the post- and pre-reform periods; Decrease in ratio of output prices received and input prices paid by the company; Factors attributing to increase in company sales.

Within the last few years in a number of countries, industrial groups have initiated research and studies that have attempted to identify skills that are desirable in new employees. In Australia, the set of key competencies that have been developed bear marked similarities with developments in other countries, also stimulated by concerns about economic productivity and competitiveness and the smooth and effective transition of young people into the workforce. Simultaneous with these developments in industry, technical education has undergone a dramatic resurgence in an attempt to focus on the optimal and unique contribution of this area of study to the development of an individual in preparation for life in a technological environment. The thesis of this paper is that such a confluence of goals is beneficial in many respects, but is limiting to technology education. Technology education as general education must go beyond the needs of industry for its goals, to some of the principles of a liberal education that are applicable to technology. This distinction is becoming more difficult to utilize as the lines between general and vocational education are becoming blurred. In some countries such as the USA they have always been fuzzy, but in general a convenient and appropriate categorization and hence description of technology education has been its classification as general education. As general education becomes vocationalized and vocational education becomes generalized, the rationales necessarily change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents the insights of Transport Minister Anthony Albanese on the National Ports Strategy proposed by the Federal Government of Australia which lies on the productivity reform agenda. He states in "The Australian" newspaper that the strategy ensures that ports will serve the needs of the mining industry, manufacturing, and production sectors. He also mentions that the National Ports Strategy focuses on the improvement of ports to provide efficient landside operations.

Bechtel has started work on a US$1.8 billion expansion that will more than double the production at Rio Tinto Aluminium''s Yarwun alumina refinery in Australia. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]