Journal articles on the topic 'Industrial productivity Australia Econometric models'

The analysis of the research, demonstrating the interrelation between the efficiency of human resources management and economic results of the enterprise has been conducted. Causal relationship between human resource management and productivity is shown. Contradictions in the formation of human and labor resources are revealed. The defining role of human capital in the structure of intangible resources. The procedure of substantiation of the choice of HR-practices that involves the construction of a generalized cognitive model of the impact of intangible resources on productivity was formed. The structure of the system of labor productivity management is developed. The structure of the blocks of imitation model on the basis of econometric research data, the procedure of selection of the most important HR-factors is proposed. The possibility of substantiating the choice of control actions based on modeling results is shown. Causal scheme of labor productivity management through intangible resources of industrial enterprise is proposed. A set of econometric models built on the basis of generalization of empirical research and statistical data of specific enterprises was used to develop the model.

This study examined the North American Industrial Classification System–based manufacturing industry (NAICS 31-33) from 1997 to 2010 in a cost-based framework. First, both profit and production function models were constructed and estimated for the U.S. manufacturing industry at the state level to allow for spatial spillovers and interactions. A model based on profit and production provided an alternative approach to the dual-cost function. Elasticities associated with infrastructure investment and industry total costs were determined by the inclusion of data on transportation infrastructure spending. Results of the spatial econometric models and the computed elasticities were then delivered in a geographic information system.

Subject. The article reviews the manufacturing industry in Russian regions, calculates the indicators of regional industrial specialization needed for development of econometric models of spatial panel data. Objectives. The purpose is to create a methodology for analyzing the regional industrial specialization based on econometric tools; to test it, using the case of the manufacturing industry, for determining the type of externalities in the Russian Federation. Methods. To build econometric models, we use methods of least squares and maximum likelihood. We apply localization ratios to assess regional industrial specialization in terms of the volume of employment, revenue and investment in manufacturing, workforce productivity, etc. Results. The findings show the clustering of regions by the level of productivity. The localization of manufacturing industry in regions in terms of localization of employment and localization of productivity is negatively related to productivity in the region. This can be explained by the transition of regional economies to the post-industrial mode, where the service sector becomes more important, and by possible over-industrialization and specialization of certain regions in the context of the need to develop related sectors and to build links between them. The presence of direct negative MAR externalities may indicate a need for further research in positive Porter and Jacobs externalities for Russian regions manufacturing industry. Conclusions. The developed methodology enables to identify and analyze relationships between regional industrial specialization and regional indicators; to specify the type of externalities and determine the existence of indirect and direct effects of industry localization.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the sources of postwar U.S. economic growth. The findings presented here allocate more than three-fourths of U.S. economic growth during the period 1948-1979 to growth of capital and labor inputs and less than one-fourth to productivity growth. To provide additional insight into the sources of U.S. economic growth, this paper then analyzes the sources of growth for individual industrial sectors. The final objective of this paper is to complete the explanation of the slowdown in U.S. economic growth that took place after 1973. For this purpose we examine econometric models for individual industrial sectors that make the rate of productivity growth for each sector into an endogenous variable. In addition, these models incorporate inputs of energy and materials along with inputs of capital and labor. The models show that higher energy prices are important in explaining the slowdown in U.S. economic growth.

Purpose – Understanding and simulating construction activities is a vital issue from a macro-perspective, since construction is an important contributor in economic development. Although the construction labor productivity frontier has attracted much research effort, the temporal and regional characteristics have not yet been explored. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the long-run equilibrium and dynamics within construction development under a conditional frontier context. Design/methodology/approach – Analogous to the simplified production function, this research adopts the conditional frontier theory to investigate the convergence of construction labor productivity across regions and over time. Error correction models are implemented to identify the long-run equilibrium and dynamics of construction labor productivity against three types of convergence hypotheses, while a panel regression method is used to capture the regional heterogeneity. The developed models are applied to investigate and simulate the construction labor productivity in the Australian states and territories. Findings – The results suggest that construction labor productivity in Australia should converge to stable frontiers in a long-run perspective. The dynamics of the productivity are mainly caused by the technology utilization efficiency levels of the local construction industry, while the influences of changes in technology level and capital depending appear limited. Five regional clusters of the Australian construction labor productivity are suggested by the simulation results, including New South Wales; Australian Capital Territory; Northern Territory, Queensland, and Western Australia; South Australia; and Tasmania and Victoria. Originality/value – Three types of frontier of construction labor productivity is proposed. An econometric approach is developed to identify the convergence frontier of construction labor productivity across regions over time. The specified model can provides accurate predictions of the construction labor productivity.

The correlation between labor productivity and indicators reflecting the influence of socio-economic and innovative factors in the regions of Russia for 2015-2018 were evaluated. For each year, according to statistics from 82 regions of Russia, econometric models are constructed that allow obtaining elasticity coefficients of labor productivity by capital-labor ratio, foreign investment, average monthly wage, income inequality, producer price index of industrial goods, export share in gross regional product. The prospects of economic policy aimed at increasing labor productivity were estimated.

Under the background of high-quality development led by the new development concept in China, it is imperative to change the development mode, optimize the economic structure, and transform the driving force, and industrial upgrading is the necessary way to promote the optimization of the industrial structure and achieve high-quality economic development. Based on data covering 284 prefecture-level cities in China, this paper first calculates the green total factor productivity (GTFP) of each prefecture-level city and then constructs three spatial econometric models (SLM, SEM, and SDM) based on four spatial weight matrices to empirically analyze the impact of industrial upgrading on GTFP. The results show that the GTFP of all cities in China shows a fluctuating upward trend and significant spatial spillover effect. Both full-sample and regional heterogeneity tests show that industrial upgrading can promote growth in GTFP, but the promoting effect on different regions is different. Regarding the control variables, GTFP has an inverted U-shaped relationship with economic development; additionally, human capital and financial development play a driving role in GTFP, while population density plays a restraining role. Finally, based on the empirical findings, we propose a multipronged policy of differentiated industrial policy and a variety of complementary measures to promote GTFP growth.

To identify determinants of labor productivity, correlation relationships of productivity of various indicators was evaluated, reflecting the influence of a wide range of socio-economic and innovative factors in the regions of Russia for 2015-2017. It has been established that many indicators characterizing socio-economic and innovative factors do not have a significant relationship with labor productivity and are multicollenarity (they have correlation relationships among themselves). For each year, according to statistics of 82 regions of Russia, econometric models in the form of a well-known standard internal linear function - an analog of the Cobb-Douglas production function are constructed. The obtained models indicate a positive impact on labor productivity, capital-labor ratio, foreign investment, wage levels, income inequality, inflation in industrial goods and export markets. The obtained simulation results showing a significant positive effect on labor productivity exerted by income inequality and the inflation rate on the industrial goods market, which indicates the action of economic mechanisms in the country in developed countries. When performing research, it was found that the positive impact of capital-labor ratio on productivity in 2015-2017 was reduced. This indicates a decrease in the efficiency of use of fixed capital in countries, about the crisis in the country's economy.

To assess the impact of production factors on labor productivity in the regions of the Central Federal District, based on cross-regional data, econometric models were built. At the same time, the hypothesis was evaluated that in the process of transition to a post-industrial economy, along with traditional factors, labor productivity is significantly influenced by human capital and new technologies. When performing research, econometric models were obtained in the form of internally linear functions. As a factor of new technologies that determines labor productivity, we used data on the share of innovation costs in the total output of enterprises and organizations in the region. As human capital factors, we used data on the average level of education of employees in the region, which was estimated by the average length of their education in the education system, as well as on the shares of employed workers with different levels of education. The results obtained allow us to conclude that in the regions of the Central Federal District, labor productivity, new technologies in the form of innovation and the human capital of employed workers, measured by the level of education, have a significant positive impact on productivity. The use of labor of workers with higher education and the labor of workers with secondary vocational education who have been trained in training programs for mid-level specialists has a positive impact on labor productivity. Labor productivity is negatively affected by the use of labor of workers with secondary vocational education in training programs for skilled workers and employees, the use of labor of workers with secondary general education, basic general education, who also do not have basic general education.

The results of the research of dissemination of technical and economic paradigms in developed economies are given. A system model of long-term technical and economic development is developed. The model assumes the simultaneous existence in the economy of several subsystems of different technical and economic paradigms. Each techno-economic paradigm is a new stage of development and different from the previous paradigm of higher productivity. Each subsequent industrial techno-economic paradigm provides higher productivity due to higher capital intensity and energy intensity of production. In the post-industrial techno-economic paradigms the higher performance is provided at a lower capital intensity and energy intensity of production due to a higher volume of information used. Beginning, transition to domination, the beginning of the withering away of each paradigm is accompanied by the formation of an upward half-wave of Kondratieff cycle. Econometric models of Kondratieff cycles and econometric models of real GDP per capita is obtained, provided technical and economic paradigms in developed countries. The fourth techno-economic paradigm provides the real per capita GDP value from 1929 to 3258 dollars Gehry-Hemis 1990. The fifth techno-economic paradigm provides a real GDP per capita value of 11,606 to 12,883 dollars Gehry-Hemis 1990. The sixth techno-economic paradigm provides a real GDP per capita value of 22 360 to 28 385 dollars Gehry-Hemis 1990.

Empirical studies regarding the determinants of productivity in developing countries, including Brazil, have demonstrated the negative impact of high inflation rates on the industrial capacity. However, the recent Brazilian experience clearly shows that stabilization since 1996, in and of itself, is not capable of recovering the investment rates. With this in mind, this study's goal is to answer, with the help of econometric simulation models, the questions: (i) what are the key-drivers to assess the Brazilian economy since 1996?; and (ii) what are the key-factors to be considered when investments are made, particulary in productivity? To answer the questions we evaluated the impacts of macro-economic variables on private investments, using a strategic bias and a long term vision plan. The estimates demonstrate empirical crowding-in evidence of public investments in infrastructure over private investments as a real impact to productivity. As for public invetsments (noninfrastructural) we suggest that the crowding-in impact dislocates private investments. All these indicators were obtained as presented in the therory, with the exception of the real interest rates variable (r), in which we observed that the coefficient is positive and insignificant in the estimated equation.

Empirical studies regarding the determinants of productivity in developing countries, including Brazil, have demonstrated the negative impact of high inflation rates on the industrial capacity. However, the recent Brazilian experience clearly shows that stabilization since 1996, in and of itself, is not capable of recovering the investment rates. With this in mind, this study's goal is to answer, with the help of econometric simulation models, the questions: (i) what are the key-drivers to assess the Brazilian economy since 1996?; and (ii) what are the key-factors to be considered when investments are made, particulary in productivity? To answer the questions we evaluated the impacts of macro-economic variables on private investments, using a strategic bias and a long term vision plan. The estimates demonstrate empirical crowding-in evidence of public investments in infrastructure over private investments as a real impact to productivity. As for public invetsments (non-infrastructural) we suggest that the crowding-in impact dislocates private investments. All these indicators were obtained as presented in the therory, with the exception of the real interest rates variable (r), in which we observed that the coefficient is positive and insignificant in the estimated equation.

Abstract. The economic evaluation of drought impacts is essential in order to define efficient and sustainable management and mitigation strategies. The aim of this study is to evaluate the economic impacts of a drought event on the agricultural sector and measure how they are transmitted from primary production to industrial output and related employment. We fit econometric models to determine the magnitude of the economic loss attributable to water storage. The direct impacts of drought on agricultural productivity are measured through a direct attribution model. Indirect impacts on agricultural employment and the agri-food industry are evaluated through a nested indirect attribution model. The transmission of water scarcity effects from agricultural production to macroeconomic variables is measured through chained elasticities. The models allow for differentiating the impacts deriving from water scarcity from other sources of economic losses. Results show that the importance of drought impacts are less relevant at the macroeconomic level, but are more significant for those activities directly dependent on water abstractions and precipitation. From a management perspective, implications of these findings are important to develop effective mitigation strategies to reduce drought risk exposure.

Certification is an instrument to add value to a product, and it addresses a growing worldwide demand for healthier and more socially and environmentally friendly products. Globally, coffee certification has received strong recognition as it is proved to increase smallholder farmers’ access to input and output markets, production, productivity and income. This study investigates the major determinants of coffee certification participation. It also analyzes the welfare gains of participation in the certification schemes by smallholder coffee growers. Both primary and secondary data were used. Primary data were collected from randomly selected 247 coffee producers. Structured questionnaires, focus group discussions and key informant interviews were employed to collect the primary data. Descriptive statistics and econometric models were used for data analysis. Probit model was used to identify factors affecting participation in coffee certification schemes. Propensity score matching technique was used to estimate the impact of coffee certification participation on smallholders’ annual revenue from coffee production. The probit model result revealed that access to training, family size, land size owned, experience in coffee production, education status were significantly determined the smallholders farmers’ participation decision in coffee certification. The propensity score matching model result also shows that participation in coffee certification significantly (p=0.001) improved farmers’ annual revenue by 2,902 Ethiopian birr compared to selling coffee without the certification schemes. This income impact is mainly attributed to the premium price the certification offer to farmers for high quality coffee. Therefore, policies or projects related to coffee value chains should target improving farmers’ access to training, boosting the access to education, working on farmers’ productivity and increasing their technical knowhow on coffee certification to increase farmers’ participation in coffee certification and to improve their annual revenue earning level in the study area.

The purpose of the work was to identify new long-term cycles of modern world economic dynamics. In the world economic dynamics, long-term - half-century cycles were identified, identified as the cycles of N. Kondratiev, which were formed during the formation of the industrial economy. The transition to a post-industrial economy could change the cyclic nature of economic dynamics. To assess possible changes in the system of long-term cycles of economic dynamics, a spectral analysis of the series of per capita GDP of the leaders of the world economy in terms of labor productivity was performed. The results showed that in the 20th century the economic dynamics of Great Britain and the United States formed powerful cycles with a period of 25-30 years. A spectral analysis of the series of per capita GDP in the world for the period 1962-2019 has been performed. The results obtained indicate that at the turn of the 20th-21st centuries, powerful cycles with a period of 25-30 years were formed in world economic dynamics, significantly exceeding half-century cycles in terms of power. Econometric models with a cyclic (harmonic) component are constructed to estimate the parameters of cycles. At the first stage of research, the model of world per capita GDP was guarded, the optimized period of which was 65. At the second stage, a model was built, the optimized period of which was 25 years. The possibility of the existence of two models indicates that in the economic systems of developed countries, in the world economy, transitional processes are taking place. Both models may reflect the beginning of the formation at the beginning of the second decade of a new technological order, characteristic of the post-industrial economic system. This means the possibility of a systemic global economic crisis in 2022-2023.

The work is devoted to obtaining quantitative estimates of the impact of the dis-tribution of income between labor and capital on the rate of economic growth in the modern world. We used UN data on a set of European countries, post-Soviet countries, Israel, Canada, the USA and Turkey. To assess the impact of the distribution of income between labor and capital on economic growth rates, linear econometric models of the dependence of economic growth rates on the share of labor force in GDP by years of the period from 2007 to 2019 built. The obtained results showed that the relationship between the rates of economic growth and the share of labor force in GDP in the mod-ern world is not significant, the influence of the share of labor force in GDP on econom-ic growth is negative, but declining obliquely, in recent years it has become insignificant. it can be expected that in the 2020s this influence may become positive. Outpacing wage growth rates can help increase labor productivity and accelerate economic growth in the transition to a post-industrial economy.

The model of long-term technical and economic development of industrial and post-industrial economic systems is constructed. The system consists of several subsystems existing simultaneously. Each new subsystem, embodying a new technical and economic mode, provides a higher level of per capita income. The transition to each new stage of technical and economic development — the transition to the predominance, the dominance of the technical and economic paradigm, and the beginning of the spread of a new technical and economic paradigm occurs at the moment when the upward half-wave of the Kondratiev cycle begins to form. To establish the moments of the onset of the upward halfwaves of Kondratiev cycles and the timing of the start of the spread of new techno-economic modes, econometric models of real per capita GDP in developed countries, including a smooth and cyclic (harmonic) component, were constructed. The average duration of the third cycle in these countries was 51.9 years, the fourth cycle — 49.8 years. Because of the construction of econometric models, it was possible to evaluate the productivity of relic, fourth, fifth and sixth technical and economic paradigms in developed countries. The average value of the maximum productivity of the fourth techno-economic mode was 2594 Geri-Hemis $ 1990, the fifth — 12,245 Geri-Hemis $ 1990, the sixth — 25 374 Geri-Hemis $ 1990. The average contribution to the real per capita GDP of relict modes and the fourth mode in the period of its domination was 5004 Geri-Hemis $ 1990, which corresponds to the value of 161,379 rubles. 2008. The excess of this value in Russia provided isdue to the spread of the fifth technical and economic mode. Its significant contribution to the real per capita GDP of the country began to observe since 2001 and by 2015 reached 47%. Modeling the period of the contribution of the fifth paradigm to Russia’s per capita GDP made it possible to predict the transition to its dominance in 2040. The forecast of the transition to the domination of the fifth mode in the regions of Russia is to include this time from 2010 to 2200. Construction of production functions based on data on per capita GRP over the years made it possible to establish that investment in fixed assets and an increase in the share of employed persons with a higher education can accelerate the spread of the fifth techno-economic mode and have received estimates of their effectiveness in the regions of Russia. A feature of the regions in which new modes did not receive proliferation was the low capitalization of new fixed assets and the increased number of employees of territorial bodies of federal executive bodies.

Based on the analysis of the quantitative assessment of the influence of the factors of innovative activity on the dynamics of economic development and the endogenous determination of its contribution to the economic growth of the country, it is revealed that in foreign researches it is identified with the concept of the influence of scientific and technological progress. However, the impact of innovative factors on economic growth is not considered separately. Attempts of such a definition in Ukrainian researches are limited to well-known approaches: methods of integral assessment, methods of expert assessments, the method of multipliers, econometric models. Most of the approaches considered are focused on defining the innovative impact on economic development, rather than on economic growth. The main tool for assessing the role and innovative contribution to economic growth is the aggregate supply function model, usually based on the Cobb-Douglas production function. The analysis of the approaches used revealed a number of comments on econometric approaches. In contrast to this, an approach is proposed based on the neoclassical production function of Cobb-Douglas with a constant return to scale in the form of J. Tinbergen, with technical progress neutral according to J. Hicks, decreasing marginal productivity of macrofactors with limited interchangeability, which provides a causal functional (and not a statistical) relationship between input and output variables; does not require long time series. It is characterized by dynamic coefficients of elasticity, capital utilization rate and taking into account the innovation factor in each separate period. The innovation factor includes: the gross domestic expenditures on research and development, the expenditures on innovation, general expenditures on education. To define the contribution of formal innovation factor in economic growth applied "method of Solow residual", which by taking the logarithm and obtaining logarithmic derivatives in the production function, provides a formalized information about the contribution of each factor to economic growth and allows to develop the necessary regulatory measures. The method has been tested at the level of the country and old industrial regions of Ukraine: Dnepropetrovsk, Zaporozhye and Kirovograd regions of the Dnieper economic region of Ukraine. The role, importance and influence of the main factors of economic growth along with innovative ones on the part of the aggregate supply are considered and the cost-effectiveness of innovative factors is estimated.

The authors present a review and an assessment of the Candide1and Cofor2models as instruments for estimating manpower requirements at the industry and provincial levels. In summary form the approach is as follows. Following upon a forecast of Real Domestic Product by industry generated by Candide, Cofor allows the preparation of estimates of total employment by industry at the national level by making use of productivity equations of the following form: In Y/L = f (T) where Y is Real Domestic Product, L is employment and T is a time trend. In certain instances K (capital stock) is used instead of T. Then total employment by industry is estimated at the provincial level by extrapolating the ratio of total employment in the industry by province to that at the national level. Finally employment by occupation is obtained by applying the 1971 Census occupational distribution of experienced labour force by industry at the provincial level. Adjustments are made for death and retirement rates as observed at the all industry and Canada levels. The paper then illustrates the use of the models with results obtained for the Canadian industrial chemicals and Québec textiles and total Québec industries. Comments are then made concerning the strenght and weaknesses of the models. Among these are: 1) The use of average productivity estimates to examine manpower requirements in industries contemplating large scale projects. 2) An implicit hypothesis to the effect that capacity is utilized fully. 3) The aging of the occupational distributions, and the use of experienced labour force rather than employment in the analysis of occupational distributions. 4) Estimates for both sexes together rather than by sex. 5) Lack of adjustments to reflect the age-experience profiles by industry. 6) Lack of adjustment for recent significant increases in turnover rates. 7) Insufficient adjustment for cyclical effects. 8) Inadequate disaggregation at the provincial level, etc.. 1 Canadian Disaggregated Interdepartmental Econometric Model operated by the Economic Council of Canada. 2 Canadian Occupational Forecasting Model developed and operated by the Canadian Department of Manpower and Immigration.

The Nigerian power problem resulted to incessant and erratic supply of electricity and this has destroyed many industrial processes in the country. It has reduced productivity and has increased unemployment rate in the country to over 50million (this figure is over 70% of Nigerian youths). This has led many of the youths in the country to crime. It has led to the deaths of many innocent people in the country. As of 2016, the electricity energy consumption in the world from the world fact book revealed that the average power per capita (watts per person) in the United States is 1,377 Watts. In Canada, it is 1704 Watts per person and in South Africa; it is 445 Watts per person and in Australia, average power per capita (watts per person) is as high as 1,112 Watts. Whereas, the average electricity consumed in watts per person in Nigeria is just 14 Watts. Unfortunately, this has put the country in a rank of 189 out of 219 countries estimated. In this research work, a Hybrid Electric Power System (HEPS) which comprises Hydro Electric Power Plant (HEPP) and Diesel Generator (DG) was modelled and a control algorithm was established to improve the performance of the system. Hybrid power system mathematical and Simulink models were developed. The output power of the developed Simulink model was be optimized using optimum power point optimization techniques and control algorithms. Simulink models of the two components of the Hybrid Electric Power System were produced using MATLAB/Simulink software. The develop Simulink models was interconnected and final model was developed. The results obtained revealed that the problems associated with conventional methods of power generation was overcomed by the development of this renewable and non-renewable energy resources Hybrid Electric Power System (HEPS) models.

Purpose – Work-life balance (WLB) is an issue of focus for organisations and individuals because individuals benefit from having better health and wellbeing when they have WLB and this, in turn, impacts on organisational productivity and performance. The purpose of this paper is to explore relevant WLB factors contributing to employee health and wellbeing, and to understand the interactive effects of individual WLB strategies and organisational WLB policies/programmes on improving employee health and wellbeing. Design/methodology/approach – Using the data collected from 700 employees located in Queensland, Australia, multiple regression analysis was conducted to examine the variables related to individual WLB strategies and organisational WLB programmes. Several multiple regression models were used to evaluate interrelated relationships among these variables and their combined effects on employee health and wellbeing. Findings – The authors found that employees exercising their own WLB strategies showed better health conditions and wellbeing that those who do not; they were also more capable of achieving WLB. Both availability and usage of organisational WLB programmes were found to help employees reduce their stress levels, but interestingly to have no direct association with WLB and employee health. Several control variables such as age, working hours, education level and household incomes were found to have moderate effects on employee health and wellbeing. Originality/value – Employee health and wellbeing are determined by multiple factors. In distinguishing from prior research in this field, this study discovers an important interface between individual WLB strategies and organisational provision of WLB policies/programmes supplemented by several exogenous factors in addressing overall employee health and wellbeing. The results have implications for organisational delivery of WLB policies and other human resource management practices to support employees.

Purpose – Developed economies with high-cost environments face industrial transitions from scale-based manufacturing (MAN) to knowledge, technology and intangible asset-based sectors. The purpose of this paper is to examine the changes in employment and value-adding profiles of transitioning industry sectors in Australia and discuss the implications for policy that influences the intellectual capital (IC) profile of industrial sectors in transition. Design/methodology/approach – The approach borrowed concepts from the firm-level strategic management literature and applied them to a macro level of industry analysis. In this paper the authors examine the transitions in the Australian economy which, due to a rising cost base, is experiencing a decline in its value chain-oriented MAN sector. The authors contrast four industry sectors with the MAN sector and examine the different value creation models. Findings – The findings clearly show how the contribution to employment and value added (termed Economic Value Contribution ) of the different sectors vary. The authors extend these findings to a discussion on policy and the dimensions of IC that may have a role to play in facilitating transitions within an economy. The main conclusion is that a more rapid transition and higher value may be created if innovation and entrepreneurship are facilitated by targeted policies in transitioning sector. Research limitations/implications – This work is based on a single country analysis of selected industry sectors. Further work needs to be done across many more countries to contrast the findings across nations/regions that differ in industrial complexity and to refine the analytical framework to improve construct validity and increase analytical power. Practical implications – This work has implications for policy-makers facing the challenges of a transitioning economy, whether national or regional. Governments that are hands-on with respect to interventions to salvage and/or extend the life of sectors are at risk of missing opportunities to build the capacities and capabilities of emerging sectors while those governments that are hands-off, deferring to market mechanisms, risk transitions that are too little and/or too late to maintain a national or regional competitiveness. Originality/value – To the authors knowledge, this is the first attempt to integrate the specific firm-level strategic management perspectives, used in this paper, with the macro-policy level to examine industry sectors with the twin metrics of economic productivity and employment in transitioning economies.

paper session 29: Molecular biology - forage quality. In: Proc. XVII International Grassland Congress, pp. 1105-6. Keeling and Mundy Ltd., Palmerston North, New Zealand. United States Department of Agriculture. (1980). Report and recommendations on organic farming. U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, DC. VanTassel, L. W., Heitschmidt, R.K. and Conner, J.R. (1987). Modeling variation in range calf growth under conditions of environmental uncertainty. J. Range. Manage. 40: 310-4. Walker, B.H. (1993). Stability in rangelands: ecology and economics. In: Proc. XW International Grassland Congress, pp. 1885-90. Keeling and Mundy Ltd., Palmerston North, New Zealand. Walker, J.W. (1994). Multispecies grazing: the ecological advantage. Sheep Res. J. Special Issue: 52-64. Walker, A.B., Frizelle, J.A. and Morris, S.D. (1994). The New Zealand policy framework for sustainable agriculture and some implications for animal production research. Proc. N. Z. Soc. Anim Prod. 54: 369-72. Walker, J.W., Heitschmidt, R.K., DeMoraes, E.A., Kothmann, M.M. and Dowhower, S.L. (1989). Quality and botanical composition of cattle diets under rotational and continuous grazing treatments. J. Range Manage . 42: 239-42. Whitson, R.E., Heitschmidt, R.K., Kothmann, M.M. and Lundgren, G.K. (1982). The impact of grazing systems on the magnitude and stability of ranch income in the Rolling Plains of Texas. J. Range Manage .35: 526-32. Wight, J.R. and Hanson, C.L. (1993). Simulation models as decision aids for management of rangeland ecosystems. In: Proc. XVII International Grassland Congress, pp. 770-1. Keeling and Mundy Ltd., Palmerston North, New Zealand. Wilson, A.D., Harrington, G.N. and Beale, I.F. (1984). Grazing management. In: Management of Australia's rangelands (Eds G.N. Harrington, A.D. Wilson and M.D. Young) pp. 129-40. Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization, Australia. Wood, W.R. and Thiessen, T.D. (Eds) (1985). Early fur trade on the Northern Plains: the narratives of John Macdonnell, David Thompson, Francois-Antoine Laraocque and Charles McKenzie. University of Oklahoma Press, Norman, Oklahoma. Manuscript received 4 April 1996, accepted 30 July 1996. Rangel. J. 18(2) 1996, 216-43 EVALUATING STOCKING RATE IMPACTS IN RANGELANDS: ANIMALS DON'T PRACTICE WHAT WE PREACH A.J. Ash1 and D.M. Stafford Smith2 'CSIRO Division of Tropical Crops and Pastures, PMB, Aitkenvale, Qld 4814 2CSIR0 Division of Wildlife and Ecology, PO Box 2111, Alice Springs, NT 0871 Abstract Stocking rate is the most important management variable affecting productivity and stability in rangelands. In this paper we examine the relevance of stocking rate research to the complex and highly variable ecosystems that make up most rangeland enterprises. We review a number of stocking rate experiments that have been conducted in both rangelands and more intensively grazed, improved pastures and demonstrate a fundamental difference in the nature of the stocking rate - animal production relationship between the two environments. Animal production in rangelands is less sensitive to increases in utilisation rate than in improved pastures, at least in the short to medium time frame of most experiments. These differences can largely be explained by factors relating to the much greater spatial and temporal variability of rangelands such as: inter-annual and seasonal fluctuations in vegetation composition and quality; long-term vegetation changes; and spatial and temporal patterns of diet selection in complex vegetation. Together, these factors limit the application of linear stocking rate models to complex rangeland environments for prediction of animal production responses. We suggest that dynamic simulation models, which incorporate the spatial and temporal variability of rangelands, may be the best way of developing simple but useful management principles for setting stocking rates that are more appropriate than simplified regression relationships.

Not so long ago, defining green energy was generally straightforward: renewables. It may not have been quite that simple, but the development of agreed-upon definitions based on science has become much more complex and contentious, even within the past year. It’s not just a highbrow debate about semantics. The standardization of criteria or a widely accepted taxonomy is critical as the focus increases on not only greenwashing, but on the actual processes and technologies enabling what were thought of as at least “greener” energy. The hammering out of definitions is needed to keep the energy transition moving forward globally. This scrutiny affects the options for companies seeking alternatives in carbon markets where the price of permits for emitting a tonne of CO2 is escalating. In early February, the price of CO2 permits in the EU reached a record high above 96 Euros ($109)/tonne CO2. Reuters reported that the carbon price has risen more than 200% since the start of 2021, partly due to high natural gas prices and the switch made to coal by some power generators. This resulted in higher emissions and increased the demand for permits. In January, the EU Platform on Sustainable Finance, comprising members from utilities, banks, nongovernmental organizations, and corporations, rejected the EU Commission’s draft sustainable finance rules which proposed labeling nuclear power and natural gas as green transition fuels. Nuclear projects permitted until 2045 were to be classified as green, but only if countries can safely dispose of the radioactive waste. Gas was to be included until 2030 with emissions thresholds specified. The EU Platform concluded that even if a gas plant stays under the emissions threshold, it “is not green at any point in its life.” Nuclear energy was acknowledged as already being part of the transitioning energy system and having near to zero greenhouse-gas emissions, but it would not meet the taxonomy’s requirement to “do not significant harm” to the environment because of the toxic waste that cannot be recycled or reused. The EU Commission’s taxonomy will be sent to the European Parliament and Council for review. Blue hydrogen was questioned as a transition fuel by a peer-reviewed study published in August 2021 in Energy Science & Engineering by coauthors from Cornell and Stanford universities. They wrote, “Far from being low-carbon, greenhouse-gas emissions from the production of blue hydrogen are quite high, particularly due to the release of fugitive methane. … Perhaps surprisingly, the greenhouse-gas footprint of blue hydrogen is more than 20% greater than burning natural gas or coal for heat and some 60% greater than burning diesel oil for heat, again with our default assumptions.” They added, “Our analysis assumes that captured carbon dioxide can be stored indefinitely, an optimistic and unproven assumption. Even if true though, the use of blue hydrogen appears difficult to justify on climate grounds.” In a study published last month in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison combined econometric analyses, land use observations, and biophysical models to estimate the realized effects of the US Environmental Protection Agency’s Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS) mandate to partially replace petroleum-based fuels with biofuels. They found that the RFS increased corn prices by 30% and the prices of other crops by 20%, which, in turn, expanded US corn cultivation by 8.7% and total cropland by 2.4% in the years following the policy’s enactment (2008 to 2016). “These changes increased annual nationwide fertilizer use by 3 to 8%, increased water-quality degradants by 3 to 5%, and caused enough domestic land use change emissions such that the carbon intensity of corn ethanol produced under the RFS is no less than gasoline and likely at least 24% higher. These tradeoffs must be weighed alongside the benefits of biofuels as decision makers consider the future of renewable energy policies and the potential for fuels like corn ethanol to meet climate mitigation goals.” The move toward energy transition has been pivotal for our industry and many others. It could be argued that no country, business, or individual will remain unaffected by the changes in progress and yet to come. “Transition” is defined as “the process or a period of changing from one state or condition to another.” And this process will take time, effort, technology, buy-in, scientific study and verification … and consensus, which may be the most challenging piece of all. A significant announcement demonstrating the application and acceptance of a scientific taxonomy was Santos Ltd.’s recent booking of 100 million metric tons of CO2 storage capacity in the Cooper Basin in South Australia. The company believes it represents the industry’s first-ever booking to be made under SPE’s CO2 Storage Resource Management System.

The study provides a method using econometric analysis to create corporate organizational knowledge in order to enhance innovation and competitiveness of the corporation. Improving the efficiency of industrial business processes involves analyzing cost information using specialized statistical and econometric software. Gretl package fully solves the problem of determining the relationship between performance, cost center classification, forecasting and simulating the consequences of the decisions taken, highlighting the segments and building predictive profiles of each costs segment. The authors demonstrate capabilities of panel data to prove the necessity of modern analysis methods in the management of business processes. To this end, the paper suggests the methodical approach to measuring drivers of resource productivity on the basis of panel data models, taking into account the individual differences between the economic units by the example of oil production. Measuring and identifying the drivers of business processes efficiency on the basis of panel data models can be one of the possible areas of management cognitive supporting. The results obtained with the use of Gretl software of empirical assessment confirmed their feasibility in the management of business processes in oil and gas production.

Studies of foreign direct investment in Bulgarian economy have had a decades-long history since the beginning of the transition to a market economy. This subject was particularly topical in the early transition period, when foreign investments were expected to be a major driver of the recovery and renewal of Bulgarian economy. Thirty years later, the relevance of this topic has not diminished, given the extraordinary degree of globalization of the world business into which Bulgarian economy must successfully integrate. The main goal of the current study is to present preliminary results of a statistical analysis of the dependence of sectoral labor productivity on the level of foreign direct investment allocated to various sectors of Bulgarian economy. For this purpose, two basic specifications of econometric models are built, adapted for estimation using panel data for the 2008-2019 period. The models are estimated using annual data for the sectors defined in the framework of the International Standard Industrial Classification of economic activities (ISIC-2008). Statistically significant results are obtained on various effects of the sectoral allocation of FDI in Bulgarian economy.

In recent years ecological thinking has been applied to a range of social, cultural, and aesthetic systems, including performing arts as a living system of policy makers, producers, organisations, artists, and audiences. Ecological thinking is systems-based thinking which allows us to see the performing arts as a complex and protean ecosystem; to explain how elements in this system act and interact; and to evaluate its effects on Australia’s social fabric over time. According to Gallasch, ecological thinking is “what we desperately need for the arts.” It enables us to “defeat the fragmentary and utilitarian view of the arts that dominates, to make connections, to establish overviews of the arts that can be shared and debated” (Gallasch NP). The ecological metaphor has featured in debates about the performing arts in Brisbane, Australia, in the last two or three years. A growing state capital on Australia’s eastern seaboard, Brisbane is proud of its performing arts culture. Its main theatre organisations include the state flagship Queensland Theatre Company; the second major presenter of adapted and new text-based performances La Boite Theatre Company; venues which support local and touring performances such as the Judith Wright Centre for Contemporary Arts and the Brisbane Powerhouse; emerging talent incubator Metro Arts; indigenous companies like Kooemba Jdarra; independent physical theatre and circus companies such as Zen Zen Zo and Circa; and contemporary play-producing company 23rd Productions (cf. Baylis 3). Brisbane aspires to be a cultural capital in Australia, Australasia, and the Asia Pacific (Gill). Compared to Australia’s southern capitals Sydney and Melbourne, however, Brisbane does have a relatively low level of performing arts activity across traditional and contemporary theatre, contemporary performance, musicals, circus, and other genres of performance. It has at times been cast as a piecemeal, potentially unsustainable arts centre prone to losing talent to other states. In 2009, John Baylis took up these issues in Mapping Queensland Theatre, an Arts Queensland-funded survey designed to map practices in Brisbane and in Queensland more broadly, and to provide a platform to support future policy-making. This report excited debate amongst artists who, whilst accepting the tenor of Baylis’s criticisms, also lamented the lack of nuanced detail and contextualised relationships its map of Queensland theatre provided. In this paper we propose a new approach to mapping Brisbane’s and Queensland’s theatre that extends Baylis’s “value chain” into a “value ecology” that provides a more textured picture of players, patterns, relationships, and activity levels. A “value chain” approach emphasises linear relationships and gaps between production, distribution, and consumption in a specific sector of the economy. A “value ecology” approach goes further by examining a complex range of rhizomatic relationships between production, distribution, and consumption infrastructure and how they influence each other within a sector of the economy such as the performing arts. Our approach uses a “value ecology” model adapted from Hearn et al. and Cherbo et al. to map and interpret information from the AusStage performing arts database, the Australian Bureau of Statistics, and other sources such as previews, reviews, and an ongoing local blogosphere debate. Building upon Baylis’s work, our approach produces literal and conceptual maps of Queensland’s performing arts as they change over time, with analysis of support, infrastructure, and relationships amongst government, arts organisations, artists, and audiences. As debate on Mapping Queensland Theatre gives way to more considered reflection, and as Baylis develops a follow-up report, our approach captures snapshots of Queensland’s performing arts before, during, and after such policy interventions. It supports debate about how Queensland artists might manage their own sustainability, their own ability to balance artistic, cultural, and economic factors that influence their work in a way that allows them to survive long term, and allows policy makers, producers, and other players to better understand, articulate, assess, and address criticisms. The Ecological Metaphor In recent years a number of commentators have understood the performing arts as an “ecology,” a system characterised by interacting elements, engagements, flows, blockages, breaks, and breakthroughs whose “health” (synonymous in this context with sustainability) depends on relationships between players within and without the system. Traditionally, performing arts policies in Australia have concentrated on singular elements in a system. They have, as Hunt and Shaw argue, “concentrate[d] on individual companies or an individual artist’s practice rather than the sector as a whole” (5, cf. 43). The focus has been on how to structure, support, and measure the success—the aesthetic and social benefits—of individual training institutions, artists, administrators, and arts organisations. The “health” of singular elements has been taken as a sign of the “health” of the system. An ecologies approach, by contrast, concentrates on engagements, energies, and flows as signs of health, and thus sustainability, in a system. Ecological thinking enables policy makers, practitioners, and scholars to go beyond debate about the presence of activity, the volume of activity, and the fate of individual agents as signs of the health or non-health of a system. In an ecologies context, level of activity is not the only indicator of health, and low activity does not necessarily equate with instability or unsustainability. An ecological approach is critical in Brisbane, and in Queensland more broadly, where attempts to replicate the nature or level of activity in southern capitals are not necessarily the best way to shore up the “health” of our performing arts system in our own unique environment. As the locus of our study Queensland is unique. While Queensland has 20% of Australia’s population (OESR; ABS ‘ Population Projections’), and is regularly recognised as a rapidly growing “lifestyle superstate” which values innovation, creativity, and cultural infrastructure (Cunningham), it is still home to significantly less than 20% of Australia’s performing arts producers, and many talented people continue to migrate to the south to pursue career opportunities (Baylis 4, 28). An ecologies approach can break into oft-cited anxieties about artist, activity, and audience levels in Brisbane, and in Queensland, and create new ideas about what a “healthy” local performing arts sector might look like. This might start to infuse some of the social media commentary that currently tends to emphasise the gaps in the sector. Ecologies are complex systems. So, as Costanza says, when we consider ecosystem health, we must consider the overall performance of the system, including its ability to deal with “external stress” (240) from macro-level political, legal, social, cultural, economic, or technological currents that change the broader society this particular sector or ecosystem sits within. In Brisbane, there is a growing population and a desire to pursue a cultural capital tag, but the distinctive geographic, demographic, and behavioural characteristics of Brisbane’s population—and the associated ‘stresses’, conditions, or constraints—mean that striving to replicate patterns of activity seen in Sydney or Melbourne may not be the straightest path to a “healthy” or “sustainable” sector here. The attitudes of the players and the pressures influencing the system are different, so this may be like comparing rainforests with deserts (Costanza), and forgetting that different elements and engagements are in fact “healthy” in different ecosystems. From an ecologies point of view, policy makers and practitioners in Brisbane and in Queensland more broadly might be well advised to stop trying to match Sydney or Melbourne, and to instead acknowledge that a “healthy” ecosystem here may look different, and so generate policy, subsidy, and production systems to support this. An ecological approach can help determine how much activity is in fact necessary to ensure a healthy and sustainable local performing arts sector. It can, in other words, provide a fresh approach that inspires new ideas and strategies for sector sustainability. Brisbane, Baylis and the Blogosphere Debate The ecological metaphor has clearly captured the interest of policy makers as they consider how to make Queensland’s performing arts more sustainable and successful. For Arts Queensland: The view of the sector as a complex and interdependent ‘ecosystem’ is forging new thinking, new practices and new business models. Individual practitioners and organisations are rethinking where they sit within the broader ecology, and what they contribute to the health and vitality of the sector, and how they might address the gaps in services and skills (12). This view informed the commissioning of Mapping Queensland Theatre, an assessment of Queensland’s theatre sector which offers a framework for allocation of resources under the Queensland Arts & Cultural Sector Plan 2010-2013. It also offers a framework for negotiation with funded organisations to ensure “their activities and focus support a harmonious ecology” (Baylis 3) in which all types and levels of practice (emerging, established, touring, and so on) are functioning well and are well represented within the overall mix of activities. Utilising primary and secondary survey sources, Mapping Queensland Theatre seeks: to map individuals, institutions, and organisations who have a stake in developing Queensland’s professional theatre sector; and to apply a “value chain” model of production from supply (training, creation, presentation, and distribution) to demand (audiences) to identify problems and gaps in Queensland’s professional theatre sector and recommend actions to address them. The report is critical of the sector. Baylis argues that “the context for great theatre is not yet in place in Queensland … therefore works of outstandingly high quality will be rare” (28).Whilst acknowledging a lack of ready answers about how much activity is required in a vibrant theatre culture, Baylis argues that “comparisons are possible” (27) and he uses various data sets to compare numbers of new Australian productions in different states. He finds that “despite having 20% of the Australian population, [Queensland] generates a dramatically lower amount of theatre activity” (4, cf. 28). The reason, according to Baylis (20, 23, 25, 29, 32, 40-41, 44), is that there are gaps in the “value chain” of Queensland theatre, specifically in: Support for the current wave of emerging and independent artistsSpace for experimentation Connections between artists, companies, venues and festivals, between and within regional centres, and between Queensland companies and their (inter)national peers Professional development for producers to address the issue of market distributionAudience development “Queensland lacks a critical mass of theatre activity to develop a sustainable theatre culture” (48), and the main gap is in pathways for independent artists. Quality new work does not emerge, energy dissipates, and artists move on. The solution, for Baylis, is to increase support for independent companies (especially via co-productions with mainstage companies), to improve (inter)national touring, and to encourage investment in audience development. Naturally, Queensland’s theatre makers responded to this report. Responses were given, for example, in inaugural speeches by new Queensland Theatre Company director Wesley Enoch and new La Boite Theatre Company director David Berthold, in the media, and in blogosphere commentary on a range of articles on Brisbane performing arts in 2010. The blogosphere debate in particular raged for months and warrants more detailed analysis elsewhere. For the purposes of this paper, though, it is sufficient to note that blogosphere debate about the health of Queensland theatre culture acknowledged many of the deficits Baylis identified and called for: More leadershipMore government supportMore venuesMore diversityMore audience, especially for risky work, and better audience engagementMore jobs and retention of artists Whilst these responses endorse Baylis’s findings and companies have since conceived programs that address Baylis’s criticisms (QTC’s introduction of a Studio Season and La Boite’s introduction of an Indie program in 2010 for example) a sense of frustration also emerged. Some, like former QTC Chair Kate Foy, felt that “what’s really needed in the theatre is a discussion that breaks out from the old themes and encourages fresh ideas—approaches to solving whatever problems are perceived to exist in ‘the system’.” For commentators like Foy the blogosphere debate enacted a kind of ritual rehearsal of an all-too-familiar set of concerns: inadequate and ill-deployed funding, insufficient venues, talent drain, and an impoverished local culture of theatre going. “Value Chains” versus “Value Ecologies” Why did responses to this report demand more artists, more arts organisations, more venues, and more activities? Why did they repeat demands for more government-subsidised venues, platforms, and support rather than drive toward new seed- or non- subsidised initiatives? At one level, this is to do with the report’s claims: it is natural for artists who have been told quality work is “rare” amongst them to point to lack of support to achieve success. At another level, though, this is because—as useful as it has been for local theatre makers—Baylis’s map is premised on a linear chain from training, to first productions, to further developed productions (involving established writers, directors, designers and performers), to opportunities to tour (inter)nationally, etc. It provides a linear image of a local performing arts sector in which there are individuals and institutions with potential, but specific gaps in the production-distribution-consumption chain that make it difficult to deliver work to target markets. It emphasises gaps in the linear pathway towards “stability” of financial, venue, and audience support and thus “sustainability” over a whole career for independent artists and the audiences they attract. Accordingly, asking government to plug the gaps through elements added to the system (venues, co-production platforms, producer hubs, subsidy, and entrepreneurial endeavours) seems like a logical solution. Whilst this is true, it does not tell the whole story. To generate a wider story, we need to consider: What the expected elements in a “healthy” ecosystem would be (e.g. more versus alternative activity);What other aesthetic, cultural, or economic pressures affect the “health” of an ecosystem;Why practices might need to cycle, ebb, and flow over time in a “healthy” ecosystem. A look at the way La Boite works before, during, and after Baylis’s analysis of Brisbane theatre illustrates why attention to these elements is necessary. A long-running company which has made the transition from amateur to professional to being a primary developer of new Australian work in its distinctive in-the-round space, La Boite has recently shifted its strategic position. A focus on text-based Australian plays has given way to adapted, contemporary, and new work in a range of genres; regular co-productions with companies in Brisbane and beyond; and an “Indie” program that offers other companies a venue. This could be read as a response to Baylis’s recommendation: the production-distribution-consumption chain gap for Brisbane’s independents is plugged, the problem is solved, the recommendation has led to the desired result. Such a reading might, though, overlook the range of pressures beyond Brisbane, beyond Queensland, and beyond the Baylis report that drive—and thus help, hinder, or otherwise effect—the shift in La Boite’s program strategies. The fact that La Boite recently lost its Australia Council funding, or that La Boite like all theatre companies needs co-productions to keep its venue running as costs increase, or that La Boite has rebranded to appeal to younger audiences interested in postdramatic, do-it-your-self or junkyard style aesthetics. These factors all influence what La Boite might do to sustain itself, and more importantly, what its long-term impact on Brisbane’s theatre ecology will be. To grasp what is happening here, and get beyond repetitive responses to anxieties about Brisbane’s theatre ecology, detail is required not simply on whether programs like La Boite’s “plugged the gap” for independent artists, but on how they had both predicted and unpredicted effects, and how other factors influenced the effects. What is needed is to extend mapping from a “value chain” to a full ”value ecology”? This is something Hearn et al. have called for. A value chain suggests a “single linear process with one stage leading to the next” (5). It ignores the environment and other external enablers and disregards a product’s relationship to other systems or products. In response they prefer a “value creating ecology” in which the “constellation of firms are [sic] dynamic and value flow is multi-directional and works through clusters of networks” (6). Whilst Hearn et al. emphasise “firms” or companies in their value creating ecology, a range of elements—government, arts organisations, artists, audiences, and the media as well as the aesthetic, social, and economic forces that influence them—needs to be mapped in the value creating ecology of the performing arts. Cherbo et al. provide a system of elements or components which, adapted for a local context like Brisbane or Queensland, can better form the basis of a value ecology approach to the way a specific performing arts community works, adapts, changes, breaks down, or breaks through over time. Figure 1 – Performing Arts Sector Map (adapted from Cherbo et. al. 14) Here, the performing arts sector is understood in terms of core artistic workers, companies, a constellation of generic and sector specific support systems, and wider social contexts (Cherbo et al. 15). Together, the shift from “value chain” to “value ecology” that Hearn et al. advocate, and the constellation of ecology elements that Cherbo et al. emphasise, bring a more detailed, dynamic range of relations into play. These include “upstream” production infrastructure (education, suppliers, sponsors), “downstream” distribution infrastructure (venues, outlets, agents), and overall public infrastructure. As a framework for mapping “value ecology” this model offers a more nuanced perspective on production, distribution, and consumption elements in an ecology. It allows for analysis of impact of interventions in dozens of different areas, from dozens of perspectives, and thus provides a more detailed picture of players, relationships, and results to support both practice and policy making around practice. An Aus-e-Stage Value Ecology To provide the more detailed, dynamic image of local theatre culture that a value ecology approach demands—to show players, relations between players, and context in all their complexity—we use the Aus-e-Stage Mapping Service, an online application that maps data about artists, arts organisations, and audiences across cityscapes/landscapes. We use Aus-e-Stage with data drawn from three sources: the AusStage database of over 50,000 entries on Australian performing arts venues, productions, artists, and reviews; the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) data on population; and the Local Government Area (LGA) maps the ABS uses to cluster populations. Figure 2 – Using AusStage Interface Figure 3 – AusStage data on theatre venues laid over ABS Local Government Area Map Figure 4 – Using Aus-e-Stage / AusStage to zoom in on Australia, Queensland, Brisbane and La Boite Theatre Company, and generate a list of productions, dates and details Aus-e-Stage produces not just single maps, but a sequential series of snapshots of production ecologies, which visually track who does what when, where, with whom, and for whom. Its sequences can show: The way artists, companies, venues, and audiences relate to each other;The way artists’ relationship to companies, venues, and audiences changes over time;The way “external stressors” changes such as policy, industrial, or population changes affect the elements, roles, and relationships in the ecology from that point forward. Though it can be used in combination with other data sources such as interviews, the advantage of AusStage data is that maps of moving ecologies of practice are based not on descriptions coloured by memory but clear, accurate program, preview, and review data. This allows it to show how factors in the environment—population, policy, infrastructure, or program shifts—effect the ecology, effect players in the ecology, and prompt players to adapt their type, level, or intensity of practice. It extends Baylis’s value chain into a full value ecology that shows the detail on how an ecology works, going beyond demands that government plug perceived gaps and moving towards data- and history- based decisions, ideas and innovation based on what works in Brisbane’s performing arts ecology. Our Aus-e-Stage mapping shows this approach can do a number of useful things. It can create sequences showing breaks, blockages, and absences in an individual or company’s effort to move from emerging to established (e.g. in a sudden burst of activity followed by nothing). It can create sequences showing an individual or company’s moves to other parts of Australia (e.g. to tour or to pursue more permanent work). It can show surprising spaces, relations, and sources of support artists use to further their career (e.g. use of an amateur theatre outside the city such as Brisbane Arts Theatre). It can capture data about venues, programs, or co-production networks that are more or less effective in opening up new opportunities for artists (e.g. moving small-scale experiments in Metro Arts’ “Independents” program to full scale independent productions in La Boite’s “Indie” program, its mainstage program, other mainstage programs, and beyond). It can link to program information, documentation, or commentary to compare anticipated and actual effects. It can lay the map dates and movements across significant policy, infrastructure, or production climate shifts. In the example below, for instance, Aus-e-Stage represents the tour of La Boite’s popular production of a new Australian work Zig Zag Street, based on the Brisbane-focused novel by Nick Earls about a single, twentysomething man’s struggles with life, love, and work. Figure 5 – Zig Zag Street Tour Map In the example below, Aus-e-Stage represents the movements not of a play but of a performer—in this case Christopher Sommers—who has been able to balance employment with new work incubator Metro Arts, mainstage and indie producer La Boite, and stage theatre company QTC with his role with independent theatre company 23rd Productions to create something more protean, more portfolio-based or boundary-less than a traditional linear career trajectory. Figure 6 – Christopher Sommers Network Map and Travel Map This value of this approach, and this technology, is clear. Which independents participate in La Boite Indie (or QTC’s “Studio” or “Greenroom” new work programs, or Metro’s emerging work programs, or others)? What benefits does it bring for artists, for independent companies, or for mainstage companies like La Boite? Is this a launching pad leading to ongoing, sustainable production practices? What do artists, audiences or others say about these launching pads in previews, programs, or reviews? Using Aus-e-Stage as part of a value ecology approach answers these questions. It provides a more detailed picture of what happens, what effect it has on local theatre ecology, and exactly which influences enabled this effect: precisely the data needed to generate informed debate, ideas, and decision making. Conclusion Our ecological approach provides images of a local performing arts ecology in action, drawing out filtered data on different players, relationships, and influencing factors, and thus extending examination of Brisbane’s and Queensland’s performing arts sector into useful new areas. It offers three main advances—first, it adopts a value ecology approach (Hearn et al.), second, it adapts this value ecology approach to include not just companies by all up- and down- stream players, supporters and infrastructure (Cherbo et. al.), and, thirdly, it uses the wealth of data available via Aus-e-Stage maps to fill out and filter images of local theatre ecology. It allows us to develop detailed, meaningful data to support discussion, debate, and development of ideas that is less likely to get bogged down in old, outdated, or inaccurate assumptions about how the sector works. Indeed, our data lends itself to additional analysis in a number of ways, from economic analysis of how shifts in policy influence productivity to sociological analysis of the way practitioners or practices acquire status and cultural capital (Bourdieu) in the field. Whilst descriptions offered here demonstrate the potential of this approach, this is by no means a finished exercise. Indeed, because this approach is about analysing how elements, roles, and relationships in an ecology shift over time, it is an ever-unfinished exercise. As Fortin and Dale argue, ecological studies of this sort are necessarily iterative, with each iteration providing new insights and raising further questions into processes and patterns (3). Given the number of local performing arts producers who have changed their practices significantly since Baylis’s Mapping Queensland Theatre report, and the fact that Baylis is producing a follow-up report, the next step will be to use this approach and the Aus-e-Stage technology that supports it to trace how ongoing shifts impact on Brisbane’s ambitions to become a cultural capital. This process is underway, and promises to open still more new perspectives by understanding anxieties about local theatre culture in terms of ecologies and exploring them cartographically. References Arts Queensland. Queensland Arts & Cultural Sector Plan 2010-2013. Brisbane: Arts Queensland, 2010. Australian Bureau of Statistics. “Population Projections, Australia, 2006 to 2101.” Canberra: ABS (2008). 20 June 2011 ‹http://www.abs.gov.au/AUSSTATS/abs@.nsf/Lookup/3222.0Main+Features12006%20to%202101?OpenDocument›. ——-. “Regional Population Growth, Australia, 2008-2009: Queensland.” Canberra: ABS (2010). 20 June 2011 ‹http://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/abs@.nsf/Latestproducts/3218.0Main%20Features62008-09?opendocument&tabname=Summary&prodno=3218.0&issue=2008-09&num=&view=›. Baylis, John. Mapping Queensland Theatre. Brisbane: Arts Queensland, 2009. Bourdieu, Pierre. “The Forms of Capital.” Handbook of Theory and Research for the Sociology of Education. Ed. John G. Richardson. New York: Greenwood, 1986.241-58. Cherbo, Joni M., Harold Vogel, and Margaret Jane Wyszomirski. “Towards an Arts and Creative Sector.” Understanding the Arts and Creative Sector in the United States. Ed. Joni M. Cherbo, Ruth A. Stewart and Margaret J. Wyszomirski. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2008. 32-60. Costanza, Robert. “Toward an Operational Definition of Ecosystem Health”. Ecosystem Health: New Goals for Environmental Management. Eds. Robert Costanza, Bryan G. Norton and Benjamin D. Haskell. Washington: Island Press, 1992. 239-56. Cunningham, Stuart. “Keeping Artistic Tempers Balanced.” The Courier Mail, 4 August (2010). 20 June 2012 ‹http://www.couriermail.com.au/news/opinion/keeping-artistic-tempers-balanced/story-e6frerc6-1225901295328›. Gallasch, Keith. “The ABC and the Arts: The Arts Ecologically.” RealTime 61 (2004). 20 June 2011 ‹http://www.realtimearts.net/article/61/7436›. Gill, Raymond. “Is Brisbane Australia’s New Cultural Capital?” Sydney Morning Herald, 16 October (2010). 20 June 2011 ‹http://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/art-and-design/is-brisbane-australias-new-cultural-capital-20101015-16np5.html›. Fortin, Marie-Josée and Dale, Mark R.T. Spatial Analysis: A Guide for Ecologists. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005. Foy, Kate. “Is There Anything Right with the Theatre?” Groundling. 10 January (2010). 20 June 2011 ‹http://katefoy.com/2010/01/is-there-anything-right-with-the-theatre/›. Hearn, Gregory N., Simon C. Roodhouse, and Julie M. Blakey. ‘From Value Chain to Value Creating Ecology: Implications for Creative Industries Development Policy.’ International Journal of Cultural Policy 13 (2007). 20 June 2011 ‹http://eprints.qut.edu.au/15026/›. Hunt, Cathy and Phyllida Shaw. A Sustainable Arts Sector: What Will It Take? Strawberry Hills: Currency House, 2007. Knell, John. Theatre’s New Rules of Evolution. Available from Intelligence Agency, 2008. Office of Economic and Statistical Research. “Information Brief: Australian Demographic Statistics June Quarter 2009.” Canberra: OESR (2010). 20 June 2012 ‹http://www.oesr.qld.gov.au/queensland-by-theme/demography/briefs/aust-demographic-stats/aust-demographic-stats-200906.pdf›.

On May 18, 2003, the Australian Minister for Education, Brendon Nelson, appeared on the Channel Nine Sunday programme. The Yoda of political journalism, Laurie Oakes, attacked him personally and professionally. He disclosed to viewers that the Minister for Education, Science and Training had suffered a false start in his education, enrolling in one semester of an economics degree that was never completed. The following year, he commenced a medical qualification and went on to become a practicing doctor. He did not pay fees for any of his University courses. When reminded of these events, Dr Nelson became agitated, and revealed information not included in the public presentation of the budget of that year, including a ‘cap’ on HECS-funded places of five years for each student. He justified such a decision with the cliché that Australia’s taxpayers do not want “professional students completing degree after degree.” The Minister confirmed that the primary – and perhaps the only – task for university academics was to ‘train’ young people for the workforce. The fact that nearly 50% of students in some Australian Universities are over the age of twenty five has not entered his vision. He wanted young people to complete a rapid degree and enter the workforce, to commence paying taxes and the debt or loan required to fund a full fee-paying place. Now – nearly two years after this interview and with the Howard government blessed with a new mandate – it is time to ask how this administration will order education and value teaching and learning. The curbing of the time available to complete undergraduate courses during their last term in office makes plain the Australian Liberal Government’s stance on formal, publicly-funded lifelong learning. The notion that a student/worker can attain all required competencies, skills, attributes, motivations and ambitions from a single degree is an assumption of the new funding model. It is also significant to note that while attention is placed on the changing sources of income for universities, there have also been major shifts in the pattern of expenditure within universities, focusing on branding, marketing, recruitment, ‘regional’ campuses and off-shore courses. Similarly, the short-term funding goals of university research agendas encourage projects required by industry, rather than socially inflected concerns. There is little inevitable about teaching, research and education in Australia, except that the Federal Government will not create a fully-funded model for lifelong learning. The task for those of us involved in – and committed to – education in this environment is to probe the form and rationale for a (post) publicly funded University. This short paper for the ‘order’ issue of M/C explores learning and teaching within our current political and economic order. Particularly, I place attention on the synergies to such an order via phrases like the knowledge economy and the creative industries. To move beyond the empty promises of just-in-time learning, on-the-job training, graduate attributes and generic skills, we must reorder our assumptions and ask difficult questions of those who frame the context in which education takes place. For the term of your natural life Learning is a big business. Whether discussing the University of the Third Age, personal development courses, self help bestsellers or hard-edged vocational qualifications, definitions of learning – let alone education – are expanding. Concurrent with this growth, governments are reducing centralized funding and promoting alternative revenue streams. The diversity of student interests – or to use the language of the time, client’s learning goals – is transforming higher education into more than the provision of undergraduate and postgraduate degrees. The expansion of the student body beyond the 18-25 age group and the desire to ‘service industry’ has reordered the form and purpose of formal education. The number of potential students has expanded extraordinarily. As Lee Bash realized Today, some estimates suggest that as many as 47 percent of all students enrolled in higher education are over 25 years old. In the future, as lifelong learning becomes more integrated into the fabric of our culture, the proportion of adult students is expected to increase. And while we may not yet realize it, the academy is already being transformed as a result. (35) Lifelong learning is the major phrase and trope that initiates and justifies these changes. Such expansive economic opportunities trigger the entrepreneurial directives within universities. If lifelong learning is taken seriously, then the goals, entry standards, curriculum, information management policies and assessments need to be challenged and changed. Attention must be placed on words and phrases like ‘access’ and ‘alternative entry.’ Even more consideration must be placed on ‘outcomes’ and ‘accountability.’ Lifelong learning is a catchphrase for a change in purpose and agenda. Courses are developed from a wide range of education providers so that citizens can function in, or at least survive, the agitation of the post-work world. Both neo-liberal and third way models of capitalism require the labeling and development of an aspirational class, a group who desires to move ‘above’ their current context. Such an ambiguous economic and social goal always involves more than the vocational education and training sector or universities, with the aim being to seamlessly slot education into a ‘lifestyle.’ The difficulties with this discourse are two-fold. Firstly, how effectively can these aspirational notions be applied and translated into a real family and a real workplace? Secondly, does this scheme increase the information divide between rich and poor? There are many characteristics of an effective lifelong learner including great personal motivation, self esteem, confidence and intellectual curiosity. In a double shifting, change-fatigued population, the enthusiasm for perpetual learning may be difficult to summon. With the casualization of the post-Fordist workplace, it is no surprise that policy makers and employers are placing the economic and personal responsibility for retraining on individual workers. Instead of funding a training scheme in the workplace, there has been a devolving of skill acquisition and personal development. Through the twentieth century, and particularly after 1945, education was the track to social mobility. The difficulty now – with degree inflation and the loss of stable, secure, long-term employment – is that new modes of exclusion and disempowerment are being perpetuated through the education system. Field recognized that “the new adult education has been embraced most enthusiastically by those who are already relatively well qualified.” (105) This is a significant realization. Motivation, meta-learning skills and curiosity are increasingly being rewarded when found in the already credentialed, empowered workforce. Those already in work undertake lifelong learning. Adult education operates well for members of the middle class who are doing well and wish to do better. If success is individualized, then failure is also cast on the self, not the social system or policy. The disempowered are blamed for their own conditions and ‘failures.’ The concern, through the internationalization of the workforce, technological change and privatization of national assets, is that failure in formal education results in social exclusion and immobility. Besides being forced into classrooms, there are few options for those who do not wish to learn, in a learning society. Those who ‘choose’ not be a part of the national project of individual improvement, increased market share, company competitiveness and international standards are not relevant to the economy. But there is a personal benefit – that may have long term political consequences – from being ‘outside’ society. Perhaps the best theorist of the excluded is not sourced from a University, but from the realm of fictional writing. Irvine Welsh, author of the landmark Trainspotting, has stated that What we really need is freedom from choice … People who are in work have no time for anything else but work. They have no mental space to accommodate anything else but work. Whereas people who are outside the system will always find ways of amusing themselves. Even if they are materially disadvantaged they’ll still find ways of coping, getting by and making their own entertainment. (145-6) A blurring of work and learning, and work and leisure, may seem to create a borderless education, a learning framework uninhibited by curriculum, assessment or power structures. But lifelong learning aims to place as many (national) citizens as possible in ‘the system,’ striving for success or at least a pay increase which will facilitate the purchase of more consumer goods. Through any discussion of work-place training and vocationalism, it is important to remember those who choose not to choose life, who choose something else, who will not follow orders. Everybody wants to work The great imponderable for complex economic systems is how to manage fluctuations in labour and the market. The unstable relationship between need and supply necessitates flexibility in staffing solutions, and short-term supplementary labour options. When productivity and profit are the primary variables through which to judge successful management, then the alignments of education and employment are viewed and skewed through specific ideological imperatives. The library profession is an obvious occupation that has confronted these contradictions. It is ironic that the occupation that orders knowledge is experiencing a volatile and disordered workplace. In the past, it had been assumed that librarians hold a degree while technicians do not, and that technicians would not be asked to perform – unsupervised – the same duties as librarians. Obviously, such distinctions are increasingly redundant. Training packages, structured through competency-based training principles, have ensured technicians and librarians share knowledge systems which are taught through incremental stages. Mary Carroll recognized the primary questions raised through this change. If it is now the case that these distinctions have disappeared do we need to continue to draw them between professional and para-professional education? Does this mean that all sectors of the education community are in fact learning/teaching the same skills but at different levels so that no unique set of skills exist? (122) With education reduced to skills, thereby discrediting generalist degrees, the needs of industry have corroded the professional standards and stature of librarians. Certainly, the abilities of library technicians are finally being valued, but it is too convenient that one of the few professions dominated by women has suffered a demeaning of knowledge into competency. Lifelong learning, in this context, has collapsed high level abilities in information management into bite sized chunks of ‘skills.’ The ideology of lifelong learning – which is rarely discussed – is that it serves to devalue prior abilities and knowledges into an ever-expanding imperative for ‘new’ skills and software competencies. For example, ponder the consequences of Hitendra Pillay and Robert Elliott’s words: The expectations inherent in new roles, confounded by uncertainty of the environment and the explosion of information technology, now challenge us to reconceptualise human cognition and develop education and training in a way that resonates with current knowledge and skills. (95) Neophilliacal urges jut from their prose. The stress on ‘new roles,’ and ‘uncertain environments,’ the ‘explosion of information technology,’ ‘challenges,’ ‘reconceptualisations,’ and ‘current knowledge’ all affirms the present, the contemporary, and the now. Knowledge and expertise that have taken years to develop, nurture and apply are not validated through this educational brief. The demands of family, work, leisure, lifestyle, class and sexuality stretch the skin taut over economic and social contradictions. To ease these paradoxes, lifelong learning should stress pedagogy rather than applications, and context rather than content. Put another way, instead of stressing the link between (gee wizz) technological change and (inevitable) workplace restructuring and redundancies, emphasis needs to be placed on the relationship between professional development and verifiable technological outcomes, rather than spruiks and promises. Short term vocationalism in educational policy speaks to the ordering of our public culture, requiring immediate profits and a tight dialogue between education and work. Furthering this logic, if education ‘creates’ employment, then it also ‘creates’ unemployment. Ironically, in an environment that focuses on the multiple identities and roles of citizens, students are reduced to one label – ‘future workers.’ Obviously education has always been marinated in the political directives of the day. The industrial revolution introduced a range of technical complexities to the workforce. Fordism necessitated that a worker complete a task with precision and speed, requiring a high tolerance of stress and boredom. Now, more skills are ‘assumed’ by employers at the time that workplaces are off-loading their training expectations to the post-compulsory education sector. Therefore ‘lifelong learning’ is a political mask to empower the already empowered and create a low-level skill base for low paid workers, with the promise of competency-based training. Such ideologies never need to be stated overtly. A celebration of ‘the new’ masks this task. Not surprisingly therefore, lifelong learning has a rich new life in ordering creative industries strategies and frameworks. Codifying the creative The last twenty years have witnessed an expanding jurisdiction and justification of the market. As part of Tony Blair’s third way, the creative industries and the knowledge economy became catchwords to demonstrate that cultural concerns are not only economically viable but a necessity in the digital, post-Fordist, information age. Concerns with intellectual property rights, copyright, patents, and ownership of creative productions predominate in such a discourse. Described by Charles Leadbeater as Living on Thin Air, this new economy is “driven by new actors of production and sources of competitive advantage – innovation, design, branding, know-how – which are at work on all industries.” (10) Such market imperatives offer both challenges and opportunity for educationalists and students. Lifelong learning is a necessary accoutrement to the creative industries project. Learning cities and communities are the foundations for design, music, architecture and journalism. In British policy, and increasingly in Queensland, attention is placed on industry-based research funding to address this changing environment. In 2000, Stuart Cunningham and others listed the eight trends that order education, teaching and learning in this new environment. The Changes to the Provision of Education Globalization The arrival of new information and communication technologies The development of a knowledge economy, shortening the time between the development of new ideas and their application. The formation of learning organizations User-pays education The distribution of knowledge through interactive communication technologies (ICT) Increasing demand for education and training Scarcity of an experienced and trained workforce Source: S. Cunningham, Y. Ryan, L. Stedman, S. Tapsall, K. Bagdon, T. Flew and P. Coaldrake. The Business of Borderless Education. Canberra: DETYA Evaluation and Investigations Program [EIP], 2000. This table reverberates with the current challenges confronting education. Mobilizing such changes requires the lubrication of lifelong learning tropes in university mission statements and the promotion of a learning culture, while also acknowledging the limited financial conditions in which the educational sector is placed. For university scholars facilitating the creative industries approach, education is “supplying high value-added inputs to other enterprises,” (Hartley and Cunningham 5) rather than having value or purpose beyond the immediately and applicably economic. The assumption behind this table is that the areas of expansion in the workforce are the creative and service industries. In fact, the creative industries are the new service sector. This new economy makes specific demands of education. Education in the ‘old economy’ and the ‘new economy’ Old Economy New Economy Four-year degree Forty-year degree Training as a cost Training as a source of competitive advantage Learner mobility Content mobility Distance education Distributed learning Correspondence materials with video Multimedia centre Fordist training – one size fits all Tailored programmes Geographically fixed institutions Brand named universities and celebrity professors Just-in-case Just-in-time Isolated learners Virtual learning communities Source: T. Flew. “Educational Media in Transition: Broadcasting, Digital Media and Lifelong Learning in the Knowledge Economy.” International Journal of Instructional Media 29.1 (2002): 20. There are myriad assumptions lurking in Flew’s fascinating table. The imperative is short courses on the web, servicing the needs of industry. He described the product of this system as a “learner-earner.” (50) This ‘forty year degree’ is based on lifelong learning ideologies. However Flew’s ideas are undermined by the current government higher education agenda, through the capping – through time – of courses. The effect on the ‘learner-earner’ in having to earn more to privately fund a continuance of learning – to ensure that they keep on earning – needs to be addressed. There will be consequences to the housing market, family structures and leisure time. The costs of education will impact on other sectors of the economy and private lives. Also, there is little attention to the groups who are outside this taken-for-granted commitment to learning. Flew noted that barriers to greater participation in education and training at all levels, which is a fundamental requirement of lifelong learning in the knowledge economy, arise in part out of the lack of provision of quality technology-mediated learning, and also from inequalities of access to ICTs, or the ‘digital divide.’ (51) In such a statement, there is a misreading of teaching and learning. Such confusion is fuelled by the untheorised gap between ‘student’ and ‘consumer.’ The notion that technology (which in this context too often means computer-mediated platforms) is a barrier to education does not explain why conventional distance education courses, utilizing paper, ink and postage, were also unable to welcome or encourage groups disengaged from formal learning. Flew and others do not confront the issue of motivation, or the reason why citizens choose to add or remove the label of ‘student’ from their bag of identity labels. The stress on technology as both a panacea and problem for lifelong learning may justify theories of convergence and the integration of financial, retail, community, health and education provision into a services sector, but does not explain why students desire to learn, beyond economic necessity and employer expectations. Based on these assumptions of expanding creative industries and lifelong learning, the shape of education is warping. An ageing population requires educational expenditure to be reallocated from primary and secondary schooling and towards post-compulsory learning and training. This cost will also be privatized. When coupled with immigration flows, technological changes and alterations to market and labour structures, lifelong learning presents a profound and personal cost. An instrument for economic and social progress has been individualized, customized and privatized. The consequence of the ageing population in many nations including Australia is that there will be fewer young people in schools or employment. Such a shift will have consequences for the workplace and the taxation system. Similarly, those young workers who remain will be far more entrepreneurial and less loyal to their employers. Public education is now publically-assisted education. Jane Jenson and Denis Saint-Martin realized the impact of this change. The 1980s ideological shift in economic and social policy thinking towards policies and programmes inspired by neo-liberalism provoked serious social strains, especially income polarization and persistent poverty. An increasing reliance on market forces and the family for generating life-chances, a discourse of ‘responsibility,’ an enthusiasm for off-loading to the voluntary sector and other altered visions of the welfare architecture inspired by neo-liberalism have prompted a reaction. There has been a wide-ranging conversation in the 1990s and the first years of the new century in policy communities in Europe as in Canada, among policy makers who fear the high political, social and economic costs of failing to tend to social cohesion. (78) There are dense social reorderings initiated by neo-liberalism and changing the notions of learning, teaching and education. There are yet to be tracked costs to citizenship. The legacy of the 1980s and 1990s is that all organizations must behave like businesses. In such an environment, there are problems establishing social cohesion, let alone social justice. To stress the product – and not the process – of education contradicts the point of lifelong learning. Compliance and complicity replace critique. (Post) learning The Cold War has ended. The great ideological battle between communism and Western liberal democracy is over. Most countries believe both in markets and in a necessary role for Government. There will be thunderous debates inside nations about the balance, but the struggle for world hegemony by political ideology is gone. What preoccupies decision-makers now is a different danger. It is extremism driven by fanaticism, personified either in terrorist groups or rogue states. Tony Blair (http://www.number-10.gov.uk/output/Page6535.asp) Tony Blair, summoning his best Francis Fukuyama impersonation, signaled the triumph of liberal democracy over other political and economic systems. His third way is unrecognizable from the Labour party ideals of Clement Attlee. Probably his policies need to be. Yet in his second term, he is not focused on probing the specificities of the market-orientation of education, health and social welfare. Instead, decision makers are preoccupied with a war on terror. Such a conflict seemingly justifies large defense budgets which must be at the expense of social programmes. There is no recognition by Prime Ministers Blair or Howard that ‘high-tech’ armory and warfare is generally impotent to the terrorist’s weaponry of cars, bodies and bombs. This obvious lesson is present for them to see. After the rapid and successful ‘shock and awe’ tactics of Iraq War II, terrorism was neither annihilated nor slowed by the Coalition’s victory. Instead, suicide bombers in Saudi Arabia, Morocco, Indonesia and Israel snuck have through defenses, requiring little more than a car and explosives. More Americans have been killed since the war ended than during the conflict. Wars are useful when establishing a political order. They sort out good and evil, the just and the unjust. Education policy will never provide the ‘big win’ or the visible success of toppling Saddam Hussein’s statue. The victories of retraining, literacy, competency and knowledge can never succeed on this scale. As Blair offered, “these are new times. New threats need new measures.” (ht tp://www.number-10.gov.uk/output/Page6535.asp) These new measures include – by default – a user pays education system. In such an environment, lifelong learning cannot succeed. It requires a dense financial commitment in the long term. A learning society requires a new sort of war, using ideas not bullets. References Bash, Lee. “What Serving Adult Learners Can Teach Us: The Entrepreneurial Response.” Change January/February 2003: 32-7. Blair, Tony. “Full Text of the Prime Minister’s Speech at the Lord Mayor’s Banquet.” November 12, 2002. http://www.number-10.gov.uk/output/Page6535.asp. Carroll, Mary. “The Well-Worn Path.” The Australian Library Journal May 2002: 117-22. Field, J. Lifelong Learning and the New Educational Order. Stoke on Trent: Trentham Books, 2000. Flew, Terry. “Educational Media in Transition: Broadcasting, Digital Media and Lifelong Learning in the Knowledge Economy.” International Journal of Instructional Media 29.1 (2002): 47-60. Hartley, John, and Cunningham, Stuart. “Creative Industries – from Blue Poles to Fat Pipes.” Department of Education, Science and Training, Commonwealth of Australia (2002). Jenson, Jane, and Saint-Martin, Denis. “New Routes to Social Cohesion? Citizenship and the Social Investment State.” Canadian Journal of Sociology 28.1 (2003): 77-99. Leadbeater, Charles. Living on Thin Air. London: Viking, 1999. Pillay, Hitendra, and Elliott, Robert. “Distributed Learning: Understanding the Emerging Workplace Knowledge.” Journal of Interactive Learning Research 13.1-2 (2002): 93-107. Welsh, Irvine, from Redhead, Steve. “Post-Punk Junk.” Repetitive Beat Generation. Glasgow: Rebel Inc, 2000: 138-50. Citation reference for this article MLA Style Brabazon, Tara. "Freedom from Choice: Who Pays for Customer Service in the Knowledge Economy?." M/C Journal 7.6 (2005). echo date('d M. Y'); ?> <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0501/02-brabazon.php>. APA Style Brabazon, T. (Jan. 2005) "Freedom from Choice: Who Pays for Customer Service in the Knowledge Economy?," M/C Journal, 7(6). Retrieved echo date('d M. Y'); ?> from <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0501/02-brabazon.php>.