The incessant trend towards the internationalisation of the marketplace will continue to dominate the agendas of managers of Australia's manufacturing establishments as they approach the next millennium. Empirical studies of the determinants of the firm's export marketing behaviour have been quite prolific and internationally comprehensive (Aaby and Slater 1989) and the characteristics and attitudes of the firm's main decision makers are often posed as important explanatory variables. The current study also examines the significance of managerial characteristics, commitment and attitudes towards exporting behaviour, by concentrating on a sample of firms drawn from a single industry (food and beverage processors) and with similar size and locational characteristics (small-medium firms located in regional Victoria).

A logistic regression model with a binary dependent variable (ie current exporter vs non-exporter) and, initially, 19 independent variables was formulated and estimated. An optimal model utilising only six of the most significant, management-related variables was able to predict the probability of a firm being an exporter with an accuracy of over 90% . The importance of management's willingness to commit both its mind and its firm's resources to the export endeavour and its recognition of the importance of price competitiveness were significant discriminators of active export behaviour. Exporting managers were also found more likely to be tertiary educated and foreign language fluent but not necessarily any younger than their non-exporting counterparts.

The dual career couple is a contemporary and growing phenomenon in western industrialised nations. There are numerous human resource management issues associated with the dual career couple. The focus of this paper is on just one of these issues — employee relocation. The research reported here found that dual career employees are concerned about their partner's career prospects and unless current career levels can be maintained for the trailing partner, organisations may experience relocation resistance. Of specific interest in the Australian context is that organisations with operations in country areas may be particularly affected, since country areas are less likely to offer desirable career opportunities for trailing partners. Further, organisational mobility expectations frequently force couples to decide which partner's career will take precedence. Historically it has been the male partner's career, even in dual career relationships. The findings from this study suggest that such decisions are becoming more complex, with couples placing greater emphasis on economic and quality of life concerns. Traditionally, organisations have relied on employee mobility as a career development strategy. However, greater emphasis on long-term human resource planning is advocated to facilitate career development strategies which are less reliant on geographical relocation. Further, if organisations are to retain their dual career employees, relocation assistance packages may need re-assessment to reflect the needs of those employees who are unwilling to sacrifice their partners' careers for the sake of their own.

This paper is born of a deep concern about the premise upon which Enterprising Nation, Report of the Industry Task Force on Leadership and Management Skills (The Karpin Report), was undertaken. I argue that the review, report and recommendations are based on a set of simplifying assumptions that are essentially limiting. By conforming to a view of business embedded in neoclassical economic theory, the Task Force has not explored the implications of current developments worldwide that demonstrate the remarkable capacity of small-scale production to galvanise regions like the Third Italy and the Basque provinces of Spain. These enormously productive regions base their economic activity upon a capacity to cooperate as well as compete and this is anathema to the unmitigated competition that the Task Force takes as given in its recommendations about the development of management/leadership in Australia. Moreover, a reliance on this particular theoretical perspective has limited the Task Force's understanding of, and response to, organisational inequality. Ultimately, I argue that the five challenges articulated by the Task Force are important, but I interpret them differently in the light of a broader and more socially-embedded understanding of the importance and nature of business. In particular, management/leadership of the future will be an integral part of all worker's roles; it will no longer be confined to an organisational or societal elite. Understanding and preparing for the universalism of management in the future is a key challenge for both industry and management education.

Information Technology (IT) provides great scope for small business to gain benefits in terms of customer service, productivity, business growth, return on investment, profits and time based competitiveness. Yet these outcomes are not guaranteed. In this study of 80 small businesses in Victoria, which have been drawn into IT networks by larger organisations and invested in IT, factors which inhibit or promote gains are investigated. One important aspect is whether certain characteristics related to the small business manager show a relationship with ‘success’ or positive outcome indicators. Data analysis indicates that factors such as length of time using computers, accessibility of information and positive attitude towards IT change are associated with the extent to which business benefits are realised.

The recent Karpin Committee report once again focused attention on managerial skills and competencies, as it prognosticated on the skills and knowledge required by current and future Australian managers, and the kinds of educational experiences necessary to foster them. In doing so, the report made critical assumptions about the kinds of functions and behaviours that can be properly called ‘managerial’. Indeed, leadership is elevated as the conspicuous task of managers (leaders?). But is this what managers should be doing?

Closer examination of the Karpin model of ‘management’, in the broader context of the literature on management and managerial behaviour, shows that the Karpin view is narrow and partial — it ignores or devalues key managerial functions while promoting others. This is due, in part, to the fact that the committee's approach is devoid of any theoretical framework for designating particular behaviours as ‘managerial’. If the Karpin recommendations are to steer management education into the third millennium, the result will be, in turn, a narrow and partial educational experience.

This paper argues for an approach to management education driven, not by a populist vision of managers simply as entrepreneurial leaders, but by an appreciation of the necessarily broader range of managerial functions and the way in which they are integrated. It proposes such an approach, derived from management theory and elaborated in the context of Australia and the Asia-Pacific region in the 1990s and beyond.

The impact of executive leadership on organisational performance has been the focus of study for many years. This study, of CEOs of Australian publicly listed companies, used the Competing Values Framework developed by Hart and Quinn (1993) to measure CEO role behaviour. It consists of four competing roles: Vision Setter, Motivator, Analyser, and Task Master. These roles were tested against three dimensions of firm performance: Financial, Business, and Organisational Effectiveness Performance. The results showed that there was little functional connection between executive leadership and firm performance.

Further, the organisational effectiveness factor was the domain of firm performance most influenced by CEOs. Task Master role was the only role behaviour which had a positive relationship with any domain of firm performance.

Behavioural complexity of leadership behaviour had a positive relationship with organisational effectiveness performance in large firms and for firms following an analyser type of strategy. Behavioural complexity also had a positive relationship with business performance for firms following an analyser type of strategy. However, there was no association between behavioural complexity and financial performance regardless of situational factors.

These findings suggest that effective CEOs are required to demonstrate paradoxical skills, and that any approach for developing management skills must involve a heavy dose of practical application.

In recent times, an increasing number of writers have noted the important contribution that the management competency movement is making to contemporary organisations. However, there is widespread evidence to suggest that a comprehensive framework for understanding managerial competencies has not yet been established in Australia. This paper reports the results of a survey on a sample of 234 managers drawn from private and public sector organisations into the perceived importance of 99 managerial competency elements. Findings indicate a substantial number of competency elements are perceived to be generic across occupations and situations, but they also indicate in some instances differing levels of importance attached to these competencies across hierarchical levels and between sectors. Evidence of a range of significant competency groupings is presented along with a proposed framework to interpret competency elements. Additionally, this study provides assistance in developing a platform for further research into the competency field.

Contemporary writers on management highlight the need for improved leadership within organisations. In this respect, this paper proposes and tests a model that incorporates leadership behaviours, situational variables, and traditional managerial behaviours. The results of this study indicated that, in highly formalised work environments, increasing work group cooperation reduces the need for direction provided by management. Furthermore, the transformational leader behaviours of individualised consideration and intellectual stimulation appeared to impact positively on perceptions of work group cooperation. These findings provide a basis for further research that examines the effects of transformational leader behaviours together with situational variables.