Richard Monypenny

Cost savings from a telemedicine model of care in northern Queensland, Australia.

Objective: To conduct a cost analysis of a telemedicine model for cancer care (teleoncology) in northern Queensland, Australia, compared with the usual model of care from the perspective of the Townsville and other participating hospital and health services.

A decision support model to evaluate the effects of drought and stocking rate on beef cattle properties in Northern Australia

Beef cattle in northern Australia are raised on extensive pastoral properties in a semi-arid tropical climate subject to droughts. The severity of the effect of drought on cattle depends on the stocking rate. Management of herd size is therefore a compromise between harvesting production in average years and the risk of losses in a drought. The authors report on a spreadsheet model that can be used to evaluate herd performance and cashflow using annual rainfall as the only climate input. The model relies on a proxy for pasture availability derived from annual rainfall and stocking rate. This proxy is used for the estimation of reproduction, mortality and liveweight gain. Economic information is calculated to the level of cashflow The model has been used with groups of pastoralists to evaluate the question of drought and stocking rate in terms of economic risk and deterioration of native pastures. It has also been used in consultations with individual pastoralists to help determine which type, and the number, of cattle that should be sacrificed in a drought.

A decision support approach for the beef cattle industry of tropical Australia

Decision support is an approach to modelling used to evaluate alternatives and to arrive at decisions. This approach recognises that the owner of the problem is responsible for decisions, and that modelling is used to assist with computation. Using a set of hypothetical data we illustrate how the approach has been used to analyse future options in the development of specific beef properties in northern Australia. The options which we have considered are (a) increased branding resulting from supplementary feeding of cows and early weaning, and (b) pasture improvement using tropical legumes for grazing by steers. The results obtained are specific to the input data and parameters, and are discussed. The approach has been very useful to property owners who wish to embark on a programme of development and who have a range of options to consider. The approach could also be used by research workers to evaluate the impact of new technology on the whole farm system; it can also provide a medium for communication between research workers and grazing families.

Evaluation of pasture management systems for beef production in the semi-arid tropics: model development.

Beef production in the Australian semi-arid tropics is currently based mainly on extensive grazing of native pastures, where animal performance is limited by the quantity and/or quality of the pastures. Beef producers are interested in production systems to overcome these limitations to animal production. To assist with comparisons of different systems a spreadsheet model was developed and used to evaluate the whole property implications of two forms of pasture development — killing trees to increase grass production, and oversowing the native pastures with introduced legumes and grasses. Four systems (live trees, native pasture; killed trees, native pasture; live trees, sown pasture; killed trees, sown pasture) were compared under a range of seasonal conditions and over a range of stocking rates. Both killing trees and sowing introduced species increased production and net cash flow with the combination of killed trees and sown pasture giving the greatest increase. The relative changes in net cash flow with different growing seasons were less on sown pasture than native pasture systems. Systems where the trees were killed produced near maximal returns over a wider range of stocking rates than systems with live trees. The results suggest that pasture development using legumes can be a profitable investment. However, when using the model to assist with decisions related to pasture development, individual producers will need to provide basic data on their properties, and to be satisfied that the assumptions made in the model are appropriate for their property and circumstances.

Principalship in an Indonesian School Context: Can Principal Decision-Making Styles Significantly Predict Teacher Job Satisfaction?.

This paper examines relationships between teacher-perceived principal decision-making styles and teacher job satisfaction in schools in Lampung Province, Indonesia. We use the General Decision-making Style instrument, the Job Satisfaction Survey and a demographic questionnaire developed for this study. Our findings show that: 12 out of the 15 relationships tested were significant; rational, intuitive, dependent and avoidant decision-making styles were significant predictors of teacher job satisfaction; and these are still significant predictors after the possible effects of gender, marital status, teacher certification and school location are controlled for.

Leadership Styles and Decision-Making Styles in an Indonesian School Context.

School leadership has been well researched in developed countries. However, in Asia, particularly in Indonesia, school leadership has not been well explored. Using survey data from a sample of 475 teachers in six Lampung school districts, this paper examines the relationships between school principal leadership styles and school principal decision-making styles in an Indonesian school context. Findings are that most of the relationships between school principal leadership styles and school principal decision-making styles are significant. These findings suggest that teachers perceive that principals should exhibit much more transformational leadership style and rational decision-making style but avoid laissez-faire leadership style and avoidant decision-making style.

Link concepts and partitioning in model formulation

For any endeavour (application), the goal is to ensure the chance is high that the conclusions, which flow from the underlying problem-solving, are valid and realistic. The extent and structure of the information available about the application and the degree to which this information is exploited in the modelling are the keys to making the chance high. At one level, this depends on the nature and amount of the available data. At another, it relates to the quality of the modelling which connects the available data to the indicators which characterize the relevant decision-making quantitatively. The interest of this paper is principally the latter aspect. The focus is link concepts which allow a model, which connects the available data to the indicators, to be partitioned into a number of interrelated sub-models. Such partitioning has a dual role in problem-solving in that it is a strategy for the formulation process itself as well as for the implementation of a model in terms of link concepts. The discussion is illustrated with a variety of examples including the modelling developed for a Decision Support System for the management of a beef cattle station in North Queensland.

The driving forces of the level and the growth rate of real per capita income in Indonesia

We investigate the driving forces behind the level and the growth rate in real per capita Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in Indonesia. The ultimate reasons and the proximate causes underlying Indonesias economic growth since the mid-1960s are still unclear. In the literature there have been at least three ways of investigating the driving forces of economic growth in Indonesia, namely: growth accounting system, regression and causality. The difference and improvement in this article is that we employed a two-step bounds testing approach to cointegration, which has not been done before; it uses the endogenous growth model to consider 12 policy variables and two external factors that potentially affect per capita income, this number is more than that has been done before. The empirical results that we obtained using this two-step bounds testing approach help us draw policy implications that if or when implemented would be expected to increase the growth of real per capita income, as well as the welfare of the people of Indonesia. Economic growth in Indonesia is largely driven by government policy, so the ability to increase Indonesias economic growth rate, in the long run, will largely depend on the implementation of appropriate government policies.

Teacher-Perceived Principal Leadership Styles, Decision-Making Styles and Job Satisfaction: How Congruent Are Data from Indonesia with the Anglophile and Western Literature?.

ABSTRACT School leadership is seen as important for both schools and for government and private policy-makers. The relationships between teacher-perceived principal leadership styles, teacher-perceived principal decision-making styles and teacher-perceived job satisfaction in schools in Lampung Province, Indonesia were examined. Data were collected by questionnaires from 475 teachers. This paper uses Indonesian data, but the relationships studied will be of wider interest to school stakeholders in Indonesia and to a wider global readership. Considerable effort was placed on the collection of robust data to address existing gaps in the literature about these relationships. The data are available to be shared with other interested parties. Findings suggest that five variables (of the nine variables that were studied) can significantly (p < .001) predict teacher job satisfaction. Transformational leadership style and rational decision-making style are the best predictors and are likely to contribute to increased teacher job satisfaction. In contrast, laissez-faire leadership style, intuitive decision-making style and avoidant decision-making style are likely to contribute to decreased teacher job satisfaction. This paper is the third paper of five papers about school leadership in Indonesia.