In 1986 the 'Affirmative Action (Equal Employment Opportunity for Women) Act' was passed by the Australian federal government to address the problem of inequality of employment opportunity for women in Australia. Equal employment opportunity was the stated goal of the legislation and affirmative action was the name given to the interventionary practices designed to achieve the goal. Organisations covered by the legislation are required to implement affirmative action programs and report to the Affirmative Action Agency annually, outlining their programs. This thesis explores the 'practice' of affirmative action from two major perspectives. The first perspective involves a description of the types of affirmative action policies that organisations covered by the legislation reported to the Affirmative Action Agency. In the absence of a descriptive typology of affirmative action policies in Australia, one was developed which distinguished among five types of affirmative action policies - 'temperamental', 'work & family', 'non-traditional', 'social structural' and 'opportunities'. This typology was then used to classify the affirmative action policies of 288 organisations with well developed affirmative action programs in place. The most commonly reported policies were 'social structural'; that is, policies seeking to ensure personnel practices within the organisations were non discriminatory. Policies which challenged the 'traditional order' within organisations (that is, 'non–traditional' and 'opportunities' policies) were less common than those primarily concerned with removing discriminatory practices. In the second part of the thesis, the 'practice' of affirmative action was examined in three organisations which were, by standards set by the Affirmative Action Agency, 'exemplary' performers in affirmative action. The focus of this part of the thesis was on how employees within these organisations perceived the affirmative action programs in place in their organisations, and their employment opportunities. The findings from interviews and subsequent surveys of employees suggest that despite the various efforts of these companies to create an environment in which women and men enjoy the same employment opportunities, the goal has yet to be fully achieved. A significant percentage of women perceived their employment opportunities to be somewhat less than those of men and that the employment processes were not 'fair'. This suggests that the promise of affirmative action has yet to be fulfilled; the practice has not matched the rhetoric. From the insights gained from employees' perceptions of affirmative action and their work environments and consideration of the pertinent literature, some strategies for enhancing the practice of affirmative action are canvassed.

The thesis presents the first reporting of the story of Continuing Professional Education (CPE) in Australia. CPE is a different style of educational provision and has not been recognised as a distinct stand alone sector. However it is perceived in this thesis as an accepted sector and that it is cross-professional and a legitimate part of professional education. The story is not a history of the field. The writer is not an historian but his work as an active participant, researcher, consultant and colleague in the field has allowed him to develop this generalised tale from the individual experiences of the many professions, as managed by their associations. The culmination of the story is the 2010 creation of a national registration regime for select health professions. In the research on CPE's origins and early development, the situation appeared regularly of opportunities that CPE had missed for gaining recognition and acceptance. When similar circumstances were also discovered in more recent years and the current century, the general theme of 'missed opportunities' was adopted. Having established the nature of CPE in an introduction, the origins and early development of CPE are noted. Then the educational context in which CPE developed is described and various opportunities identified.

A formal group, within a University, is typically created to accomplish work goals through on-going coordination, combination, and integration of member resources. Group behaviour emerges from the confluence of individual and social forces and behaviours enacted to pursue desired goals. Interactions between group members in context create patterns of group processes and behaviours, and how these patterns change over time creates group dynamics. However, group dynamics do not simply reflect intra-group processes; they also reflect influences that arise from larger contexts within which the group is embedded. Group behaviour can, therefore, be argued to reflect emergent self-organisation, sensitivity to time and initial conditions, and causal ambiguity, properties associated with complex, dynamic and adaptive systems. Much of the research into group dynamics and behaviour (especially experimental social psychology research employing a positivist reductionist theoretical perspective) has tended not to look at groups through such a complexity lens. The research reported in this thesis was intended to push into this frontier. The fundamental question addressed in this thesis is: 'What occurs during group interactions associated with the emergence and maintenance of different types of group dynamics and how do those dynamics tend to unfold over time?' I argue in this thesis that a deep and contextual understanding of the complexity of group dynamics can be achieved using an interpretivist/constructivist perspective coupled with a grounded theory approach employing methodologies that permit the deeper exploration of the meaning of individual as well as collective group behaviours. To achieve the depth of learning needed in this research, I focused on a single long-standing group, a committee that existed within a larger university. I gathered qualitative data using three distinct data gathering strategies: (1) participant observation of the group at its regular monthly meetings over a 12- month period; (2) semi-structured interviews with current and former individual group members; and (3) the review of historical documents (e.g., minutes of meetings, discussion papers) relevant to the group's initial genesis and evolution over the time period prior to this research as well as my own field notes amassed over the duration of the study. I employed MAXQDA 11 Plus to support my analyses of the qualitative data amassed using these three strategies and to aid the development of grounded theory that accounted for the group's contextual dynamics. The results of this study revealed that when the focal group was addressing routine group tasks, systematic and consistent patterns of behaviour were observed. However, when the group was exposed to or perceived an internal or external shock, some interesting and unexpected emergent patterns of behaviour were observed. These behaviours could be traced to the desire for a select few members to maintain the historically based group identity, function, and direction. This maintenance process was accomplished through the application of varying types of power to offset possible bifurcation. For example, one class of such behaviours focused on 'leadership hijacking', where control over the group's consideration of an issue was taken over by a person who was not the discussion leader but for whom that issue was 'hot' and perceived to be strongly threatening. Of the number of external shocks observed, the interplay between the university's and other larger contextual agendas and the group's agenda was visible and often vigorous. This type of shock caused confrontation and escalation behaviours to emerge with the goal, once again, to maintain the historically based group identity and agenda. The addition of data gathered from semi-structured interviews with current and former group members and the review of historical documents relevant to the group provided further evidence relevant to how members strived to maintain the historically based group agenda through the application of their unique brand of group dynamics. In some cases, depending upon the issue at hand, the maintenance of this historically based group agenda centred upon one group member and, in other cases, involved the creation of shorter- and longer-term coalitions. Thus, an understanding of the dynamics of interaction within this group was achieved through close examination of the various contexts within which the group was embedded as well as the contexts of the individual group members. The results support the need to employ a complex adaptive systems perspective when trying to unpack group dynamics as they play out in real time. This research also reinforces the value of adopting an interpretivist perspective to enhance the depth of this learning.

The purpose of this exploratory case study was to investigate the factors that influence the quality and effectiveness of the communication that a resident experiences in a low care Hostel setting within a residential aged care facility, and the way that those factors interact. In particular, the study aimed to provide a rich description of the communication complexities and interactions for residents in a residential aged care facility by using the residents' own words, experiences, perceptions and interpretations. Previous research has focused on aged care facilities providing high-level health care and support. This research represents the first rigorous study that has attempted to understanding the important issue of effective communication in the context of a low-care residential facility for the aged – a facility in which the residents are still comparatively healthy and mentally acute. The study was guided by four key research questions: What is the context for communication in a low-care residential aged care facility? What factors impede effective communication from the resident's perspective in those facilities? What factors assist effective communication from the resident's perspective in those facilities? What model is most likely to maximize the quality of communication for residents in a low-care residential aged care facility? The research paradigm used to investigate these questions was case study research using a symbolic interactionist approach. Symbolic interaction is a type of interpretive ethnomethodology that focuses on the ways that people construct meaning in a context. The case for the study was a not-for-profit aged care residential facility in a semi-rural area of Queensland, Australia, and the research focused on the lived experiences of ten residents at the facility. The findings from the study suggest that the factors that most influence effective communication in a low-care residential facility for the aged are: the personalities and intentions of the staff members; what residents have in common with their friends; family and other residents; life-long relationships; religion; and face-to-face communication. Hindering communication appear to be: time and distance apart; staff who do not genuinely talk with and listen to residents; patronizing talk; and feelings of dependency. A conceptual model has been developed that diagrammatically illustrates how those factors interact to affect the quality of communication in the case study facility.

In 1995, the seven South Asian countries: Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka, instigated a framework for region-wide integration under the South Asian Preferential Trading Agreement (SAPTA). Subsequently, the member countries agreed that SAPTA would take steps towards transformation into a South Asian Free Trade Area (SAFTA) by the beginning of 2006, with full implementation completed by 31 December 2015. The momentum towards regional preferential trading arrangements and greater regional economic integration raises many important issues for the individual countries and for the South Asian region as a whole; the region has second largest incidence of poverty in the world next to Sub-Saharan Africa. Even though the South Asian Association for Regional Co-operation (SAARC) members initiated regional economic initiatives in 1995, intra-regional trade still stands at an extremely low level, below five per cent even after a decade or so. Hence, it is important to evaluate the economic impacts of SAFTA relative to alternative trade policies to determine which policies boost intra-regional trade and best deliver increased welfare to citizens, thereby helping to alleviate income disparities and poverty in the region. This study does so with a particular emphasis on the income inequality and poverty effects of trade liberalisation in South Asia on households in Sri Lanka.