PurposeDespite the increasing attention of organizational commitment in the management literature, most studies predominantly focus on full‐time workers in traditional work settings. This paper examined the antecedents of organizational commitment among casual academics working in the tertiary education sector in Australia.Design/methodology/approachA questionnaire survey was developed and distributed to casual academics working in a large Australian public university.FindingsAnalysis of the data shows that personal characteristics (gender, marital status, family responsibilities and education), job‐related characteristics (supervisor support, co‐worker support, role clarity and resource availability) and job involvement characteristics (tenure, second job and post‐graduate study at the employing university) all impact on organizational commitment.Research limitations/implicationsAustralian tertiary institutions are prominent employers of casual workers, however, very little is known about the work behavior of this group of academics. The results of this study highlight important directions for implementing strategies to increase casual academic's organizational commitment. Organization commitment is important because it is known association with other important organizational variables such as turnover, absenteeism and work effort.Originality/valueGiven the increasing reliance on casual academics in tertiary institutions, this study provides the first step in better understanding the factors that affect the organization commitment of casual academics.

If you would like to write for this, or any other Emerald publication, then please use our Emerald for Authors service information about how to choose which publication to write for and submission guidelines are available for all. Please visit www.emeraldinsight.com/authors for more information. About Emerald www.emeraldinsight.comEmerald is a global publisher linking research and practice to the benefit of society. The company manages a portfolio of more than 290 journals and over 2,350 books and book series volumes, as well as providing an extensive range of online products and additional customer resources and services.Emerald is both COUNTER 4 and TRANSFER compliant. The organization is a partner of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) and also works with Portico and the LOCKSS initiative for digital archive preservation. AbstractThe increasing trend for the globalisation of business has highlighted the need for a better understanding of the factors that influence levels of intercultural awareness within organisations. Within the higher education sector, one initiative that aims to address this issue is student study abroad programs. This paper reports on a study that investigates factors that influence Australian students' propensity to engage in these programs. Using both qualitative and quantitative analysis, we examined the role of students' personality in the decision to participate in study abroad programs. The implications for education in international business are discussed.

PurposeThe aim of this study is to investigate the relationship between employee perceptions of their organization's management of cultural diversity, their perceived organizational support and affective commitment.Design/methodology/approachA questionnaire survey was developed and distributed to a sample of employees working in a large Australian financial institution.FindingsAnalysis of the data shows that, when controlling for perceived organizational support, there is no direct relationship between cultural diversity management perceptions and affective commitment. Rather, the data support an indirect relationship between the two variables via perceived organizational support.Research limitations/implicationsImplications are, first, that managers need to recognize the potential contribution of developing a positive workplace atmosphere for cultural diversity to strengthen employee perceived organizational support, which in turn enhances affective commitment. Second, the research findings underscore the importance of perceived organizational support in linking cultural diversity management perceptions to organizational outcomes, such as affective commitment. Third, managers should not underestimate the influence of initiatives, such as making all employees feel included in the “taken‐for‐granted” informal networks in engendering positive organizational and individual attitudes.Originality/valueThe paper examines cultural diversity management from the employees' (rather than a management) perspective to develop a fully mediated model using organizational support to link cultural diversity management perceptions to commitment. The study reinforces the need to rethink simple relationships between cultural diversity management perceptions and organizational/individual outcomes, to consider more complex models that include important mediating variables to more fully understand the effects of cultural diversity management.

The period since 1980 has seen unprecedented interest in Australia by Europeans, particularly from the UK, Germany and Italy. The importance of these nations, as well as of Europe as a whole, in terms of providing tourists to Australia, is the focus of this paper. More specifically, our aim is to generate demand models which seek to explain what determines tourism flows to Australia from Europe. To this end we build models of tourism demand which take into consideration the factors influencing tourism suggested by the literature. Our aim is to model total tourism flows from all European countries, as well as from the three largest providers of European visitors to Australia. Furthermore, we break down ‘total visits' into those visits for ‘holiday reasons' and ‘visiting relatives’; this gives us 12 different models to consider. Our analysis leads us to conclude that, in the case of all visits, whereas there is little difference between the all-Europe model and the UK model, there are important differences between these two models and the Germany and Italy models. A different pattern of results emerges when models of ‘holiday visits' and ‘visiting relatives' are regression tested for the all-Europe and country-specific models. The all-Europe models are then used for forecasting purposes and achieve mixed success.

The rapid growth in the size and nature of 'non-standard' work arrangements (such as co-employment) has raised questions about their effect on the commitment and loyalty of the workers concerned. While maintaining and encouraging employee commitment is a core human resource management function in standard work arrangements, there is far less guidance available for equivalent practice within a non-standard context. Additionally, it remains unclear as to whether organisational behaviour theories used to explain commitment in the standard work context are generalisable to less traditional work settings. The study described here measured the commitment and perceived support (organisational and social) of labour-hire workers in the Australian construction industry to their employing agency and their current host firm. Also investigated was the relationship between these forms of support and affective commitment to both entities. The results indicate that the workers were committed to both entities although their commitment to and their perceptions of organisational and social support from the employing agency was higher. Further, we found a positive association between employing agency affective commitment and both forms of perceived support and a positive association between host affective commitment and perceived host organisational support. These results affirm the existence of dual commitment and highlight the role that positive perceptions of support play in engendering this commitment. While the findings indicate that conventional organisational theories are relevant to human resource management practices in coemployment relationships, it is suggested that such practices must account for the great diversity of contexts, employees and employment arrangements that characterise these relationships.