In this study of intercultural communication, I investigate the multi-faceted meaning of the expression " cultural fit " in the sense that it is used by recruiters when shortlisting Indian information technologists to fill skills shortages for the Y2K project in Australia. The data is in the form of ten videotaped interviews in Bangalore and the recruiter commentary on those tapes in Melbourne. A crucial decision to be made by recruiters in any shortlisting process is " How will the candidate fit into the workplace?" This question becomes more problematical when applied to overseas-trained professionals. I take a critical approach, drawing principally on the research traditions of linguistics where studies of intercultural communication and workplace interaction intersect, employing chiefly the tools of Critical Discourse Analysis and Interactional Sociolinguistics and the more abstract notions of Bourdieu. A bridge between these different discourse approaches is provided by Sarangi & Roberts < 1999 < who show the connection between the larger institutional order and interactional routines, through an elaboration of frontstage talk and backstage talk following Goffman < 1959 < . An analysis of the interviews < frontstage talk < reveals "cultural fit" to involve a knowledge of institutional talk, in particular, directness. The recruiter commentary < backstage talk < draws attention to issues of intelligibility, body language, technical expertise and workplace values. the study shows that Indian Information Technologists have "partial fit" in that they possess technical fit but do not demonstrate, or lack the opportunity to demonstrate in the interview, Australian workplace values such as small talk, humour and informality. The recruiter judgments were fleeting and apart from checking for intelligibility, were made on the basis of candidates' body language thus highlighting its importance and its relative absence from the discourse approaches mentioned above. This study shows clearly that there is room for more communicative flexibility on the part of all the stakeholders.

This thesis is a history of the Sydney and Melbourne International Film Festivals, and covers the years from 1945 to 1972. Based primarily on archival material, it is an organisational history dealing with the attempts by the two Film Festivals to negotiate between the demands of �culture� and �industry� throughout this period. The thesis begins with a consideration of the origins of the Festivals in the post-war period �with the attempts by non-Hollywood producers to break into the cinema market, the collapse of the �mass audience�, and the growth of the film society movement in Australia. The thesis then examines the establishment in the early 1950s of the Sydney and Melbourne Festivals as small, amateur events, run by and for film enthusiasts. It then traces the Festivals� historical development until 1972, by which time both Festivals had achieved an important status as social and cultural organisations within Australia. The main themes dealt with throughout this period of development include the Festivals� difficult negotiations with both the international and domestic film trade, their ongoing internal debates over their role and purpose as cultural organisations, their responses to the appearance of other international film festivals in Australia, their relation to the Australian film industry, and their fight to liberalise Australia�s film censorship regulations.

For ten years from 1982, Victoria College was a large multi-campus college of advanced education providing a diverse range of higher education programs to Australian and overseas students. This thesis outlines the history of Victoria College. It considers the circumstances that led to its creation through the forced amalgamation of four previously independent colleges of advanced education: the State Colleges of Victoria at Burwood, Rusden, and Toorak and the Prahran College of Advanced Education and examines the events which led to its merger with Deakin University in 1992. (For complete abstract open document)

Graphic Design is one part of the producer services sector of the modern metropolitan region. It is a sector that has experienced considerable development in terms of number of firms through demand created by the expansion of advertising and multi media. To date research has established that producer services, particularly finance related ones, agglomerate in the central city to take advantage of the agglomeration economies available in large metropolitan areas. This thesis argues that one of the key factors for the agglomeration of graphic design is the need for face-to-face communication with clients and other firms. There has been some work undertaken looking at the location of non-finance producer services, such as design, although these have been presented as snapshots at a point in time.This thesis extends this understanding through an analysis of agglomerations of graphic design firms over a twenty year time horizon. Using details of firm location in Melbourne every five years from 1981 to 2001 the thesis uses a geospatial analytical technique to identify agglomerations and explores the change in the size, location and density of agglomerations of firms. This research shows that the initial agglomeration of 1981 was still present by 2001 and had been joined by a number of new agglomerations ringing the Melbourne CBD while at the same time there has also been a dispersal of firms to the middle suburbs. In order to provide some insight in to the agglomeration of graphic design firms this research also examines the geography of two industries allied to graphic design: advertising and printing. This research shows that graphic designers and advertising agencies tend to locate in similar parts of inner Melbourne which may be due to the need for face-to-face contact between fims in these two industries. (For complete abstract open document)

This diploma thesis named "The media image of the 1956 and 1960 Summer Olympic Games in the Czechoslovak contemporary press" follows the media coverage of the XVI. Summer Olympic Games in Melbourne in 1956 and the XVII. Summer Olympics in Rome in 1960, in selected Czechoslovak periodicals. To establish a media image, the diploma thesis utilises a qualitative content analysis, comparing the transformation of Olympic news reporting in Melbourne and Rome. It focuses on media content and its permeation through the communist ideology. The thesis is divided into a theoretical and methodological part. The theoretical part begins with the historical development of Czechoslovakia after 1948, when the Communists seized power, and then characterizes the "melting period". The thesis also inquires into the development of media in Czechoslovakia in the 1950s with an emphasis on media legislation, including the introduction of selected periodicals: Rudé Právo (Red Law), Svobodné slovo (Free Word) and Československý sport (Czechoslovak Sport). The methodological part maps how the Czechoslovak press informed its readers about the Olympic events in Melbourne and in Rome. Both Olympic Games are divided into subchapters according to the topics that most resonated in sports news reporting. The conclusion of the thesis...

On 10 February 1964 during naval night exercises off the south coast of Australia, the destroyer HMAS Voyager was lost after colliding with the aircraft carrier HMAS Melbourne. 82 men were killed. Following the collision, there were two Royal Commissions that sustained a political controversy that lasted for over four years. This thesis examines the loss of Voyager as a watershed in the operational and administrative history of the RAN and as a major event in Australian national history. This study has four broad objectives: to describe the loss of Voyager and the long running controversy that accompanied the disaster; to offer a convincing explanation of the causes of the collision and why two royal commissions concluded that the causes for the disaster were inexplicable; to assess the effect on the RAN, in terms of specific reforms and its influence on Service culture and professional ethos, of the disaster and the inquiries that followed; and finally, to analyse the loss of Voyager as a media and political cause celebre in Australian history. As so little has been written about Voyager using primary sources, this thesis was committed to detailed description of events as well as analysis of themes. This thesis draws upon an extensive body of primary source material in the form of official naval and Royal Commission records to which complete access was given; several large collections of private papers; over one hundred interviews with principal participants; and comprehensive files of press cuttings. The discussion seeks to demonstrate that a series of naval accidents preceding the loss of Voyager contributed in a substantial way to shaping the public reaction to, and political handling of, the disaster; that the method of inquiry played a major role in generating public and political disquiet; that the collision was both a catalyst and stimulus to change in naval operations and reform in naval administration; that the inability of two Royal Commissions to ascertain the causes of the collision and then to public suspicion of a cover-up; and, that the collision was most probably caused by the incorrect relaying of a tactical signal on the bridge of Voyager. The loss of HMAS Voyager appears to be a key event in the development of the RAN, not as a direct result of the collision or its causes, but as a consequence of its long and controversial aftermath.

Suburban centres policies in Greater Vancouver, metropolitan Melbourne, and Bellevue, Washington are examined to derive general lessons toward the improvement of this type of policy. It is found that two attempts to pursue the development of a regional system of suburban centres have been unsuccessful, while a municipally-based policy has achieved some success in terms of the physical design of a suburban downtown. Patterns of private sector development are found to have been very little affected by any of the case study policies. Further, several assumptions concerning the linkages between public transit and land use in suburban centres are found to require further careful examination before they should be used as a basis for future policy development.

Suburban centres policies in Greater Vancouver, metropolitan Melbourne, and Bellevue, Washington are examined to derive general lessons toward the improvement of this type of policy. It is found that two attempts to pursue the development of a regional system of suburban centres have been unsuccessful, while a municipally-based policy has achieved some success in terms of the physical design of a suburban downtown. Patterns of private sector development are found to have been very little affected by any of the case study policies. Further, several assumptions concerning the linkages between public transit and land use in suburban centres are found to require further careful examination before they should be used as a basis for future policy development. / Applied Science, Faculty of / Community and Regional Planning (SCARP), School of / Graduate

A seasonal and long-term analysis of the vertical structure of currents in the nearshore is conducted to determine the role of the wind in driving currents and consequently affecting littoral transport processes. Approximately ten years (January, 2002 – October, 2011) of nearshore current profiles are examined using the data collected with an Acoustic Doppler Current Profiler (ADCP) installed off of Spessard Holland North Beach Park located in Melbourne Beach, Florida. Additionally, wind data collected with a directional anemometer from September, 2002, until October, 2008, are used to further characterize the long-term hydrodynamic forcing. With the shoreline oriented nominally 17o west of magnetic north, both the current profiles and the wind vectors have been rendered into longshore and cross-shore components. The water level record from a NOAA tide station located at the Trident Pier at nearby Port Canaveral is utilized in establishing the water depth and conditioning the data for statistical analysis. Monthly mean vertical profiles reveal that during the winter months the surface currents are usually toward the south, and toward the north in the summer. In spring and fall, they are mixed, demonstrating a clear seasonality in both direction and intensity of the longshore current. Subjecting the longshore and cross-shore current data to Empirical Orthogonal Function Analysis reveals that the first spatial Eigenfunction accounts for more than 98% of the variability in the vertical profile of the longshore current, and more than 86% of the variability in the profile of the cross-shore current. However, there is a rotation of the current to the right (clockwise) with the rotation angle increasing and the variance decreasing with depth below the surface. The spiral structure of the water column follows a surface Ekman veering, but for very shallow water. The upper layer of the current is almost aligned with the direction of the wind. Monthly correlations between 2-hour average time series of longshore current and 2-hour average time series of wind speed reveal the seasonal patterns of the wind and longshore current in which the upper layer of the water column is highly correlated with the longshore component of the wind speed for most of the year and slightly less correlated for the lower layer of the water column. Most importantly, on average, wave height (Hmo) is larger when the longshore current is heading to the south (Hmo=0.95 m) than when the current is going to the north (Hmo=0.73 m). Additionally, there is a stronger correlation between southerly directed currents and incident wave energy flux than northerly directed currents and wave energy flux. These results indicate that the net long-term north-to-south sediment transport known to characterize the region is heavily influenced by wind-driven currents.

<div>The security, resilience and sustainability of water supply in urban areas are of major concern in cities around the world. Their dynamics and long-term trajectories result from external change processes, as well as adaptive and maladaptive management practices aiming to secure urban livelihoods. This dissertation examines the dynamics of urban water systems from a social-ecological-technical systems perspective, in which infrastructure and institutions mediate the human-water-ecosystem relationship. </div><div><br></div><div>The three concepts of security, resilience and sustainability are often used interchangeably, making the achievement of goals addressing such challenges somewhat elusive. This becomes evident in the international policy arena, with the UN Sustainable Development Goals being the most prominent example, in which aspirations for achieving the different goals for different sectors lead to conflicting objectives. Similarly, the scientific literature remains inconclusive on characterizations and quantifiable metrics. These and other urban water challenges facing the global urban community are discussed, and research questions and objectives are introduced in Section 1. </div><div><br></div><div>In Section 2, I suggest distinct definitions of urban water security, resilience and sustainability: Security refers to the state of system functioning regarding water services; resilience refers to ability to absorb shocks, to adapt and transform, and therefore describes the dynamic, short- to medium-term system behavior in response to shocks and disturbances; sustainability aims to balance the needs in terms of ecology and society (humans and the economic systems they build) of today without compromising the ability to meet the needs of future generations. Therefore, sustainability refers to current and long-term impacts on nature and society of maintaining system functions, and therefore affects system trajectories. I suggest that sustainability should include not only local effects, but consider impacts across scales and sectors. I propose methods for the quantification of urban water security, resilience and sustainability, an approach for modeling dynamic water system behavior, as well as an integrated framework combining the three dimensions for a holistic assessment of urban water supply systems. The framework integrates natural, human and engineered system components (“Capital Portfolio Approach”) and is applied to a range of case study cities selected from a broad range of hydro-climatic and socio-economic regions on four continents. Data on urban water infrastructure and services were collected from utilities in two cities (Amman, Jordan; Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia), key stakeholder interviews and a household survey conducted in Amman. Publicly available, empirical utility data and globally accessible datasets were used to support these and additional case studies. </div><div><br></div><div>The data show that community adaptation significantly contributes to urban water security and resilience, but the ability to adapt is highly heterogeneous across and within cities, leading to large inequality of water security. In cities with high levels of water security and resilience, adaptive capacity remains latent (inactive), while water-insecure cities rely on community adaptation for the self-provision of services. The framework is applied for assessing individual urban water systems, as well as for cross-city comparison for different types of cities. Results show that cities fall along a continuous gradient, ranging from water insecure and non-resilient cities with inadequate service provision prone to failure in response to extant shock regimes, to water secure and resilient systems with high levels of services and immediate recovery after shocks. Although limited by diverse constraints, the analyses show that urban water security and resilience tend to co-evolve, whereas sustainability, which considers local and global sustainable management, shows highly variable results across cities. I propose that the management of urban water systems should maintain a balance of security, resilience and sustainability.</div><div><br></div><div>The focus in Section 3 is on intra-city patterns and mechanisms, which contribute to urban water security, resilience and sustainability. In spite of engineering design and planning, and against common expectations, intra-city patterns emerge from self-organizing processes similar to those found in nature. These are related to growth processes following the principle of preferential attachment and functional efficiency considerations, which lead to Pareto power-law probability distributions characteristic of scale-free-like structures. Results presented here show that such structures are also present in urban water distribution and sanitary sewer networks, and how deviation from such specific patterns can result in vulnerability towards cascading failures. In addition, unbounded growth, unmanaged demand and unregulated water markets can lead to large inequality, which increases failure vulnerability. </div><div><br></div><div>The introduction of infrastructure and institutions for providing urban water services intercedes and mediates the human-water relationship. Complexity of infrastructural and institutional setups, growth patterns, management strategies and practices result in different levels of disconnects between citizens and the ecosystems providing freshwater resources. “Invisibility” of services to citizens results from maximized water system performance. It can lead to a lack of awareness about the effort and underlying infrastructure and institutions that operate for delivering services. Data for the seven cities illustrate different portfolios of complexity, invisibility and disconnection. Empirical data gathered in a household survey and key stakeholder interviews in Amman reveals that a misalignment of stakeholder perceptions resulting from the lack of information flow between citizens and urban managers can be misguiding and can constrain the decision-making space. Unsustainable practices are fostered by invisibility and disconnection and exacerbate the threats to urban water security and resilience. Such challenges are investigated in the context of urban water system traps: the poverty and the rigidity trap. Results indicate that urban water poverty is associated with local unsustainability, while rigidity traps combined with urban demand growth gravitate towards global unsustainability. </div><div><br></div><div>Returning to the city-level in Section 4, I investigate urban water system evolution. The question how the trajectories of urban water security, resilience and sustainability can be managed is examined using insights from hydrological and social-ecological systems research. I propose an “Urban Budyko Landscape”, which compares urban water supply systems to hydrological catchments and highlights the different roles of supply- and demand-management of water and water-related urban services. A global assessment of 38 cities around the world puts the seven case studies in perspective, emphasizing the relevance of the proposed framework and the representative, archetypal character of the selected case studies. </div><div><br></div><div>Furthermore, I examine how managing for the different dimensions of the CPA (capital availability, robustness, risk and sustainable management) determines the trajectories of urban water systems. This is done by integrating the CPA with the components of social-ecological system resilience, which explain how control of the different components determines the movement of systems through states of security and resilience in a stability landscape. Finally, potential feedbacks resulting from the global environment are investigated with respect to the role that globally sustainable local and regional water management can play in determining the trajectories of urban water systems. These assessments demonstrate how the impact of supply-oriented strategies reach beyond local, regional and into global boundaries for meeting a growing urban demand, and come at the cost of global sustainability and communities elsewhere.</div><div><br></div><div>Despite stark differences between individual cities and large heterogeneities within cities, convergent trends and patterns emerge across systems and are revealed through application of the proposed concepts and frameworks. The implications of these findings are discussed in Section 5, and are summarized here as follows: </div><div>1) The management of urban water systems needs to move beyond the security and resilience paradigms, which focus on current system functioning and short-term behavior. Sustaining a growing global, urban population will require addressing the long-term, cross-scale and inter-sector impacts of achieving and maintaining urban water security and resilience. </div><div>2) Emergent spatial patterns are driven by optimization for the objective functions. Avoiding traps, cascading failure, extreme inequality and maintaining global urban livability requires a balance of supply- and demand-management, consideration of system complexity, size and reach (i.e., footprint), as well as internal structures and management strategies (connectedness and modularity).</div><div>3) Urban water security and resilience are threatened by long-term decline, which necessitates the transformation to urban sustainability. The key to sustainability lies in experimentation, modularization and the incorporation of interdependencies across scales, systems and sectors.</div><div><br></div>