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Exploring Workplace Happiness: Islamic Leadership and Work Ethics Driving Engagement and Helping Behaviour
No full textLeadership and work ethics, particularly Islamic or faith-based, are crucial indicators of employees’ well-being and work engagement. It increases helping behaviour through motivation and satisfaction levels achieved from a supportive work environment. The research aim is to examine the influence of Islamic leadership and Islamic work ethics on helping behaviour and work engagement through happiness at work to verify this phenomenon, data has been collected from 320 employees working with Small Medium Enterprises (SMEs) across central Java, Indonesia. All question items from all variables are said to be valid with a value of more than 0.7 and reliable with a value of more than 0.5. This is quantitative design research where a convenience sampling technique was employed. Statistical analysis was done through SmartPLS, revealing a direct relationship among all study variables, such as Islamic leadership, to helping behaviours and work engagement. Additionally, the study identified a direct relationship between Islamic work ethics and helping behaviours, except for a link with work engagement; similarly, employees’ happiness at the workplace acts as a mediator in this study. The hypothesis is accepted because the significance value is more than 1.97. While previous studies have examined workplace happiness and engagement broadly, limited attention has been paid to the role of faith-based leadership and ethics within SMEs in culturally diverse settings like Central Java, Indonesia. This study offers a novel perspective by discussing the pivotal role of Islamic leadership and Islamic work ethics in shaping workplace dynamics</p
Strategic insights into geosustainable Excellence: Unveiling a Resource-Based dynamic approach in global food supply chains for carbon neutrality and economic performance
No full textIn food-centric nations, such as Vietnam, the roles of (1) organizations, (2) the supply chain, and (3) the government are explained theoretically. This study centers on clarifying the influence of each of these determinants on geosustainable performance in terms of carbon neutrality and economics. This research also provides insight into the moderating role of the Food Safety Management System 4.0 (FSMS 4.0). From 225 replies obtained from Vietnamese organizations, we determined that our model could account for 61.4% Carbon Neutrality and 30.5% Economic Performance. As justified by the hypothesis testing, “Top management support,” “Human resource management,” “Infrastructure,” and “Integration” play contributory roles in fostering Carbon Neutrality. Two elements that have only a negligible impact on achieving carbon neutrality are “External assistance” and “Food safety administration.” Irrespective of no prominent influence on Carbon Neutrality, “Food safety administration” has an appreciable and statistically significant impact on Economic Performance. Regarding FSMS 4.0, while Carbon Neutrality bears the negative influence of “Ecosystem” and “Robustness” when engaging with “Food safety administration,” the opposite —a positive impact of the interaction between “Quality standard” and “Integration”—is witnessed on Carbon Neutrality. This study makes three contributions to the current body of knowledge. First, leveraging a plethora of FSMS 4.0-level-specific factors, this research expands resource-based dynamic theory. Second, this research highlights the importance of external FSMS 4.0 activities, such as stakeholder participation and support from various sources, in providing both commercial and regulatory insights into the key determinants of FSMS 4.0 implementation. In addition, as one of the first studies to shed light on the correlation between an organization's carbon neutrality commitment and its geosustainable performance, as influenced by the determinants, this research could serve as an ideal motivator for businesses in the food supply chain to embark on their carbon neutrality journeys. Through a multi-level lens, our study investigates the extent to which stakeholder influence and institutional requirements can exert an impact on the deployment of an efficacious FSMS 4.0 to promote and reinforce carbon neutrality and geosustainable performance. This lays the groundwork for enriching existing literature.</p
Electrolyte-Gated Transistors for Neuromorphic Signal Processing and Biosensing
No full textThis thesis describes the design, fabrication and testing of neuromorphic electronic devices designed to detect target biomolecules in solution. Within these devices, the critical sensing layer was formed from a polymer treated using a plasma processing method known as plasma immersion ion implantation (PIII). Polymer layers with sub-micron thicknesses were effectively modified using a 2.5 kV Ar PIII process, introducing free radical covalent binding sites to their surfaces. When applied to the treated polymer layer, protein enzymes became covalently bound to the activated surface. This binding persisted for up to 24 hours after the PIII process.
The PIII modified polymer sensing layers were integrated as gate dielectric layers in lateral three-terminal electrolyte-gated devices. These devices featured source, drain and gate electrodes with a liquid channel connecting the source and drain. This liquid channel was modulated using an applied gate potential. As well as demonstrating transistor-like output and transfer characteristics, the devices were capable of producing outputs resembling postsynaptic signals given pulsed gate voltage (presynaptic) inputs. The postsynaptic current through the electrolyte solution and between the source and drain electrodes was sensitive to electric double layers formed at these electrodes. The dynamic response of the double layers to the presynaptic input produced a current output that resembled a spiking postsynaptic signal. Paired-pulse depression, postsynaptic saturation and spike rate-dependent plasticity were all observed in the postsynaptic output characteristics.
Covalently immobilizing horseradish peroxidase (HRP) on the plasma-modified dielectric gate layer of the devices significantly influenced the dynamics of the double layers (formed around the bound HRP), the channel conductance and the device characteristics. Hence, the ability to sense the presence of bound biomolecules via the modulation of the neuromorphic device output was demonstrated using the inexpensive HRP biomolecule. Tests were then performed with transactive response DNA binding protein (TDP-43), a biomarker for neurodegenerative diseases. Detection occurred when the target antigen (present in solution at physiologically realistic concentration) bound to TDP-43 antibodies which were covalently immobilised on the PIII modified gate-insulating layer within each device.
This postsynaptic signal was sensitive to the presence of bound and unbound biomolecules. Crucially, the paired-pulse index, postsynaptic current decay, and the cumulative charge passed in tailored pulse sequences enabled the true detection of TDP-43 antigen-antibody binding within the device electrolyte, even in the presence of interfering biomolecules. The devices reported were designed for scalable production and are suitable for disposable use in population screening applications. In summary, the findings reported in this thesis demonstrate the potential for the electrolyte gated biosensing devices as low-cost, sensitive and rapid biosensing devices.</p
Cardigan Commons: Co-Design Toolkit and Workshop Guidelines
No full textAs part of RMIT PlaceLab’s ‘Cardigan Commons’ Research Project, this Toolkit has been developed as a playful way of bringing different – often confronting – voices together to have their say on what they’d like to do in public spaces. The methodology includes co-design dynamics, prompts for facilitators and useful ways to systematise and analyse the data that is captured. Our ‘blob’ modules, a visual and playful way of organising ideas in space, helps envision without the design constraint co-design methodologies often face.</p
Temporal Resonance Choirs of Modulation
No full textAs part of Cities & Memory network (https://citiesandmemory.com/) Sonic Heritage is the first collection of the sounds of the world's most famous sights. The project presents the sound of 270 UNESCO World Heritage Sites and items of intangible heritage. My audiowork creation uses field recording 115 labelled, Hospicio Cabañas at Guadalajara in Mexico. When I first listened to the field recording, I was drawn to its spatial rendering, which made me curious to learn more about the place and its surroundings. Historically, it functioned both as an orphanage and a hospital, with certainly thousands traces of stories. This history, along with the architecture, inspired me to explore the relational characteristics of frequencies, materials, and memories. Also, I’ve always been fascinated by how a cathedral's dome is designed to shape frequencies, creating what could be described as "the chant of the angels." So I started to engage with the volume and height of the space, imagining how sound might behave within it—how frequencies would rapidly reflect across various distances, spreading in all directions within the massive structure of the Hospicio Cabañas in Guadalajara. I engage with Sonic Heritage by focusing on the relational and spatial aspects of sound within historically and culturally significant environments. By interpreting and exploring the acoustics of Hospicio Cabañas, I consider how sound interacts with architecture and memory, emphasizing how sonic imprints persist in spaces with deep historical resonance. I used only the field recording as the primary material, processing it in SuperCollider. I enjoy the forensic nature of coding, allowing me to dissect sound and explore its possibilities.</p
The excess of qualitative interviews and the feminist anticolonial reimaginings of research methods
No full text●Feminist, anti-colonial research requires an attentiveness to power relations and positionalities, which shape research and interview processes.
●This chapter critiques the coloniality of interviews.
●This chapter contributes to anti-colonial and methodological scholarship by advocating for researchers to reimagine the possibilities of approaching interviews as careful and liberating projects.
●Individual and collective reflexivity are critical to research and interviewing.</p
Postmodern Historiography: Centres, Margins and Peripheries in the Historical Narrative in turn of the millennium Spanish Conquest Films
No full textThe historical narrative of the Spanish Conquest of the Americas has been presented as a victory by the enlightened, civilised European over the savage, primitive indigenous peoples. Postmodern theory, however, challenged objective, universal histories such as this, allowing for the consideration of new historical positions. This thesis, therefore, forms a postmodern historiographic re-negotiation of the Spanish Conquest by exploring three Conquest films; each presented in an individual case study to demonstrate change and continuity in the Hispanic historiographical debate over the turn of the millennium.
This research analyses film and visual imagery to explore how film shapes Spanish and Latin American historiography. In the digitized age of streaming services, historical TV shows and films are increasingly popular and profitable, thus film histories are becoming more widely produced, disseminated and consumed. Despite this, film histories have not been seen as real histories; thus, not subjected to the same historiographical analyses as written histories.
The Spanish Conquest has been selected because it allows a comparison of colonialism and neocolonialism due to its historical ties with Spain and its geographic proximity to the United States. Importantly, by the very nature of the imposition of colonial narratives, Latin American narratives are heterogenous and multiple, changing across temporal and geographic spaces, including both authoritative and silenced narratives.
This thesis, therefore, performs a deconstructive analysis of the creation and imposition of narrative but also the rebirth and revisitation of minimalised or previously silenced narratives. It does this through the lens of Latin American postmodernity because this postmodernity serves, post-Conquest and across the next five centuries, as a counter to the externally created and imposed narratives coming from Spain as ‘mother’ country and former imperial master, coming from various points of US hegemonic practice over the eighteenth and nineteenth century and culminating with Hollywood’s contribution to the continuation of the idea of US hegemony.
This research conducts historiographical analyses of Spanish Conquest films to explore how Latin American and Hispanic identities have been constructed. It then analyses the change and continuity of this narrative constructions.
The three selected films are Ridley Scott’s 1492: Conquest of Paradise (1992), Salvador Carrasco’s The Other Conquest (1998) and Icíar Bollaín’s Even The Rain (2010). Each film presents three separate and distinct perspectives on the Spanish Conquest, from re-enforcing the traditional Conquest narrative to the outright questioning of it. This research uses selected postmodern theories and thematic, narrative and semiotic analysis methodologies to demonstrate the subjective nature of history and question ideas of universalities. This allows historiographical analyses of different contextual situations of power and authority over time.
Screen representations of historical characters influence historical interpretations. In the Latin American context, Conquest historiography centres on historical figures such as Christopher Columbus and Hernan Cortés. In postmodern terms, however, these historical characters are only ever simulations. This thesis applies postmodern ideas of simulacra and pastiche to deconstruct the historical authority of these figures. This deconstruction allows alternative historical positions to arise, therefore, this research explores how the examination of multiple voices creates continued incredulity towards present and past metanarratives. The modern commodification of the film aesthetic creates more alternative historical and historiographical positions. Several of these will be explored through a textual analysis of elements of each director’s use of mise-en-scène, dialogue, costume, narrative and symbolism to examine how cinematic semiotics shape film historiography.
Present filmic and academic historiographical debates in Spain and Latin America are framed around re-negotiation of ideas of Latin and Hispanic nationalism and national identity. The changing landscape of film historiography has led to conservative and progressive historians alike re-examining and contesting Hollywood’s construction of the Spanish Conquest. Thus, this research contributes to this by exploring how postmodern historiographical film analysis contests and re-negotiates how cinema and screen histories influence historiographical interpretations.</p
Social media and the journalist-source relationship: how digital death knocks might exacerbate moral injury
No full textSocial media use is commonplace for journalists in newsgathering, including reporting newsworthy deaths. Journalists have revised their death knock practice of physically doorknocking bereaved families to a preference for digital methods to solicit comment and context for stories about fatal incidents. This is gleaned from social media. A 2021–2022 Australian mixed-methods study, including a survey and semi-structured interviews, found that journalists use social media as a tool to find, contact, and interview people, and as a source of facts, photographs, and comments for stories. Journalists are at risk of moral injury, which occurs when they breach their own moral code, including through institutional betrayal. This article argues the digital death knock increases the risk of moral injury because unfettered access to, and sanctioned use of, social media material creates new ethical complexities. It proposes that fundamental to the journalist’s risk of moral injury is their view of the journalist–source relationship, which might in turn reflect their underlying ethical framework. The journalist who preferences utilitarian ethics—the greatest good for the greatest number—may see a source as means to an end; however, the journalist who preferences deontological ethics—respect for persons as an end in themselves—may owe the source a greater duty of care, which, if breached, may make them vulnerable to moral injury.</p
‘Clean and safe’?: Swimming ethically in compromised times and polluted places
No full textIn this article we explore emergent and enduring tensions that exist in thinking about outdoor swimming and what these can tell us about the expectations swimmers have for the possibilities in the world today and the world becoming. We will explore and describe encounters that let us see the complexities between the desire for encounters with nature, and the desire to maintain ‘clean and safe’ swimming experiences. Thinking in dialogue with Clifton Evers (2019, 2021, 2023) work on ‘polluted leisure’ and Alexis Shotwell’s (2016) concerns ‘about the evocations of purity and cleanliness’ (p.2), we are interested in how swimming spaces create barriers of access to healthy encounters by limiting the vulnerability swimmers feel in relation to various risks. Like Shotwell, we aim to challenge the privilege afforded to some groups of people to ‘perceive things how they should be, rather than how they are’ (p.7). By exploring the politics of maintaining ‘safe and clean’ swimming spaces, we aim to engage with how ‘Purity politics arise not only in our response to potential physical contamination but are also an issue for our ethical and political situation in the world’ (p.6). Maintaining purity, safety and cleanliness for ourselves and our communities of practice is an impossible task, and one that ensures we remain complicit in ongoing social and environmental injustices as well as re-producing social and cultural hierarchies related to nature, wellbeing, place, and health.</p
The Defeat of the Proposed Aboriginal Voice to Parliament in Australia
No full textThe voters of Australia have just rejected a proposed constitutional amendment to create a special “Voice” for Aboriginal and Torrens Strait Islander people in the national Constitution. This essay assesses the proposal from the point of view of an opponent of it, provides a legal analysis on some disputed points and attempts to provide reasons why the people decisively rejected it. The main obstacles to its success were the over-confidence of its proponents and their refusal to compromise. There were also some disturbing misuses of the concept of misinformation to hamper debate.</p