When it comes to organisational values, Bruce Highfield of Olam International believes they hold a deeper meaning for companies than some may think.
“I think in the beginning most organisations felt that they needed to placate the HR department and find some words to stick on the wall, but I think we’ve moved on from there,” Highfield said at the co-hosted WOW/ GBS Alumni Breakfast and Networking Series on Thursday (10 August).
Joined by UnitingCare Queensland’s Shannon Foley and Dr Rebecca Loudon of the Centre for Work, Organisation and Wellbeing, the three laid out the significance of strong values for today’s businesses.
“I think most organisations of any note understand that it is the role of the CEO and senior leadership team to set the values of the organisation and to give people some context within the organisation about how the organisation should operate and how people in the organisation should behave,” Highfield
Category: Griffith University Feed
Business student turns producer for RAW performance
Business student Zayne Woodley Lake is taking theory to the theatre with at an LA-bound show at Brisbane’s Metro Arts.
Billed ‘Part Art Exhibition, Part Performance, Part Experiment’ RAW will pose some uncomfortable questions about a culture of conformity and changing up conversations to generate dialogue that borders on the controversial.
RAW – Find out more
The hybrid physical theatre performance, which runs for two nights on Friday and Saturday (Aug 18-19), features the voices of 10 young artists from around the world and has been curated by Brisbane-born, Los Angeles-based Zed Hopkins of Hara Productions.
Griffith double degree student, Zayne Lake, is its producer.
Serious production
“Producing this project is a great fit for me,” Zayne (20) says. “I’m putting theory from the event management classroom on a Friday afternoon directly into practice with a serious production in Brisbane CBD.
“I still see this piece of physical theatre through creative eyes, but now through my studies
Griffith to offer physiotherapy, speech pathology and occupational therapy in Brisbane in 2018
Growing demand for allied health services has translated to growing opportunities for students seeking healthcare careers outside the traditional medicine and dentistry degrees.
The sector is surging, with an ageing population and onset of chronic disease driving patient volumes, and a focus on prevention and new technologies improving outcomes.
Griffith University has responded by bringing three of its most-respected allied health programs—physiotherapy, occupational therapy and speech pathology—to Brisbane for the first time.
Professor Andrea Bialocerkowski, Griffith’s School of Allied Health Services Head, says the new degrees are great news for Brisbane students.
“Griffith has offered these programs on the Gold Coast for many years—we’re certainly not new to the game. From 2018 Brisbane students will benefit directly from our faculty’s experience and industry connectivity,” says Andrea.
Just as allied health professionals collaborate to deliver care, Griffith allied health students undertake interprofessional learning alongside one another.
“Students in these degrees learn with those studying other health degrees
Griffith researchers tackle human evolution in Sumatra
Hunting was not easy in a rainforest in ancient times but new research has found modern humans made a way for themselves in Indonesia.
New evidence not only suggests that modern humans were present in Southeast Asia 20,000 years earlier than previously thought – but they were colonising dense rainforests at earlier ages as well.
The research, presented in the prestigious journal Nature, involves three members of the Australian Research Centre for Human Evolution (ARCHE) at Griffith University, drawing in their different scientific expertise to solve complex evolutionary discoveries.
ARCHE has experts in dating, ancient rainforest ecology, and dental anatomy – among other topics – making it a unique collaborative team.
Because the findings suggest humans were in Southeast Asia between 73-63 thousands years ago, it means they could have potentially made the crossing to the Australian continent even earlier than 50,000 years ago.
This is consistent with a recent Nature paper that also featured
Lab on a chip: The future for drug discovery
A leading micro and nano technologist has revealed a new way to drug screen, saving the health system money and time.
With the lab-to-market timeframe of a new drug being up to 20 years, Dr Say Hwa Tan of Griffith University’s Queensland Micro- and Nanotechnology Centre hopes his new technology and methods will slash that period to a few years.
Dr Tan, an Australian Research Council DECRA Fellow, works with “lab on a chip” technology, developing miniscule and intricate ways for lab work to be conducted on a small chip. These chips are about the size of a $2 coin.
Because current screening techniques are time consuming and expensive, Dr Tan is working with the Griffith Institute for Drug Discovery (GRIDD) to develop a novel microfluidic platform to address this problem.
The platform uses pico-liter droplets instead of a microliter size, meaning much lesser drug compounds are needed. The chips also provides automation which
Entrepreneurship in a multinational enterprise
Entrepreneurship isn’t just for start-ups.
In the corporate world, it involves new business creation within established companies, the strategic renewal of existing business and, ultimately, the search for sustainable competitive advantage in an increasingly globalized economy.
Yet it remains elusive for many firms.
A collaboration between a practicing executive and a professor of international business, Joe Amberg and Sara McGaughey explore corporate entrepreneuring within a large conglomerate multinational enterprise – Siemens AG.
In early 2009, following a prolonged period of business stagnation and a huge bribery scandal, Siemens’ top management identified a severe lack of entrepreneurship as a critical issue.
The strengthening of ‘local entrepreneurship’ became a new priority in the strategic planning for 2010 to 2014.
By examining three contrasting ventures in the Siemens business unit ‘Fire Safety’ between 2008 and 2012, the authors identify key drivers and impediments that sustain inertia in corporate entrepreneuring within this global organisation.
A novelty of this study is the attempt
Reoffending rates reduced under new Griffith model
A pilot study on a new model of probation and parole in Queensland has been found to reduce reoffending rates by 28%.
The Environmental Corrections model of offender supervision was designed by Griffith University criminologist Dr Lacey Schaefer, and trialled at a probation and parole district office in southeast Queensland.
After six months, the recidivism rate for offenders supervised at the trial office was substantially lower following the introduction of the new model of supervision compared to the rate of reoffending for those offenders supervised at the control office.
Dr Lacey Schaefer
“Queensland has a high rate of recidivism, so we proposed a new model to enhance the efficacy of its community supervision of offenders,’’ Dr Schaefer said.
Opportunity and propensity
The Environmental Corrections model addresses the two main factors leading to crime – opportunity and propensity.
“Rather than applying generic supervision stipulations, offenders’ routine activities are restructured so that exposure to crime opportunities are minimised.
“Probation and
All aboard the culture train
Queensland Conservatorium jazz student Mario Conde is travelling to remote corners of the state as part of the annual Culture Train line-up.
The musical roadshow is part of Queensland Multicultural Month celebrations and features a series of free concerts in regional centres, from Bundaberg to Barcaldine, Longreach, Rockhampton and Winton.
Creating a musical melting pot
Mario originally hails from Bolivia and plays panpipes, fusing traditional South American and Western music.
Mario embarked on a Bachelor of Music (Jazz) at the Queensland Conservatorium several years ago, picking up several new instruments including trumpet, saxophone and flute.
“It was the best decision of my life,” he says.
“Learning to play jazz has changed me as a musician – I’ve learnt to play new instruments, but also been able to play jazz using traditional instruments like panpipes.
“I love creating a musical fusion – it makes my soul happy.”
Queensland Conservatorium Director Professor Scott Harrison said Mario was part of a diverse
Griffith curator unveils gateway to the Gold Coast
Queensland College of Art lecturer Professor Jay Younger is curating a major public art commission that will establish iconic gateways to the Gold Coast.
Professor Younger is lead curator for the Gateway Public Art Commission, which recently unveiled the winning design by New York-based design studio LO-TEK.
The work, HI-LIGHTS, will feature nearly 100 modified highway lights and poles that spell out the city’s name at two of its busiest entry points.
Both artworks will be located in highly visible areas, in the north along the Pacific Highway and in the south, near the airport on the Gold Coast Highway.
The northern artwork will stretch 100 metres and reach a height of 11 metres, with gold metallic paint highlighting the letters at each location.
The $2 million installation will bookend the Gold Coast for the next 50 years and is part of the Public Domain Improvement Program – a legacy project of the Gold Coast 2018 Commonwealth
Beauty in decay for QCA artist
As a child in Poland, Dr Renata Buziak would collect plants from her family garden and the nearby forest to create all kinds of natural remedies.
It was part of life – knowing which plants were useful for healing.
It sparked a passion that would eventually lead her to the Queensland College of Art, working at a unique intersection between art and science.
Dr Buziak creates biochromes – images that form as plant matter and photographic materials decay together over time.
RENATA BUZIAK
“Science and art were one discipline in the past, before people and industry separated them,” she said.
“There are many similarities in the way artists and scientists work. We experiment, we look at results, we keep developing processes. We have questions we want answers to.”
Dr Buziak began creating biochromes when she was studying a Bachelor of Photography.
“I experimented with different processes, but I specifically chose this one because nature has always been my