Sheila Bellamy

Why Business Academics Remain in Australian Universities Despite Deteriorating Working Conditions and Reduced Job Satisfaction: An intellectual puzzle

In the last two decades, Australias 38 universities have been subjected to profound changes affecting the working lives of their academic staff. That the working conditions of staff have deteriorated cannot be denied, while many studies have shown that job satisfaction has been affected adversely. Paradoxically, there is little evidence that academics are seeking employment outside the university system. In this article, the authors report the findings from their survey of over 3000 academics employed in business disciplines in Australian universities, which aimed to find explanations for this phenomenon.

Performance evaluation in the Australian public sector

At all levels of the Australian public sector, cost constraints, coupled with the adoption of a total quality culture and associated performance evaluation techniques, have turned the attention of senior management away from financial accounting to the management of costs within a strategic framework. Argues that management accounting, planning and control systems can play a leading role in today′s dynamic and challenging public sector environment. Unlike traditional costing systems, which are often historical in focus and price‐based, new costing systems – such as activity‐based costing (ABC) – operate on the premiss that it is the activities and processes undertaken within the organization which add costs and value to the products and services. An ABC system also focuses management′s attention on the underlying causes of costs. However, warns that, in applying total quality management and ABC approaches, it is important to recognize the fundamental differences between the manufacturing industries in whi...

Changes in higher education and valuing the job: the views of accounting academics in Australia

In a previous article (Bellamy et al., 2003), the authors reported on survey research that investigated reasons why academics from business disciplines enter and remain in academia, and the conditions they deem necessary to creating ideal work satisfaction. For both entering and remaining, as well as in achieving ideal work satisfaction, the most important factors were found to be autonomy and flexibility, with teaching and research the next most important factors. In a subsequent analysis of the data, reported in this article, the authors identify and explore significant differences between accounting academics and other business academics in the relative importance placed on these key factors. The findings may be used to inform policy makers and university administrators of the importance of discipline differences when identifying key factors for recruitment and retention of accounting academics specifically, and business academics generally.