Interest rates in Australia may be on hold for the time being, but that may not make those with a hefty home loan sleep any easier, thanks to talk of a bubble in the Australian housing market. One estimate is that residential property may be overvalued by as much as 50%, a figure which has made home owners, prospective buyers and investors understandably nervous. And there are signs that some of the drivers of housing demand may be hitting reverse. Among them are changes in the rules preventing some foreign investors from investing in residential property. Julian Lorkin of Knowledge@Australian School of Business asks Glenn Otto, a professor of Economics at the Australian School of Business, for his analysis.

Do management consultants have a stranglehold on corporate strategy? Some chief executives and boards may be too reliant on consultants to provide advice at the expense of developing skills within their senior management teams. Alarm bells should ring when the outsiders start calling the shots in companies or when high-potential managers see career opportunities effectively outsourced to a consultant. However, serious risks also exist on the other side of the relationship, warns Graham Bradley, president of the Business Council of Australia. Consultants who become rusted onto management are not only in danger of becoming overly dependent on one income stream, but may one day find themselves dismissed as an overhead.

Crisis management, business ethics, sustainability and cross-cultural operations are hot executive education topics in the wake of the global financial meltdown. The development needs of corporate leaders across the world look different in 2010. Clear trends were identified when Frank Horwitz, director of the Cranfield School of Management in the UK, met Alec Cameron, dean of the Australian School of Business, to explore how learning programs are shifting the mindsets of today's executives in an interview for Knowledge@Australian School of Business.

As the varying approaches of recent marketing campaigns suggest, Australia’s tourism industry is on a perpetual search for its true identity, slewing between attracting the "platinum" big spenders and the more skint but eager backpackers. The industry fared comparatively well in the economic downturn, and looks set to take off again as more international travellers shift their destination preferences to East Asia and the Pacific. But Australia may have another identity in the mix as it competes for tourist dollars. It’s a natural to pick up on the global trend towards more sustainable tourism – but there is a catch.

That familiar question - “Do you want fries with that?” - was a precursor to a global trend. Now many organisations across sectors are seeking to boost revenue by pushing their service staff into selling. But new research from the Australian School of Business shows that this “ambidexterity” does not come naturally and must be carefully planned and executed to avoid fall-out from staff and customers.

Catastrophic business collapses may hog the headlines but more commonplace organisational glitches are usually ignored or glossed over. That's because failure always gets a bad rap. But this approach is unbalanced, argues Gavin Schwarz, a lecturer at the Australian School of Business. Inevitably, the business life cycle includes "sickness", typically brought on by bad corporate decisions and mismanagement. And quite often people choose to fail as they try to unravel change. Then they rationalise their actions and, oddly enough, cast them in a positive light. The process may not be avoidable – or even acceptable – but at least it can be understood.

Have the employers of half of the Australian workforce been short-changed in the recent round of reforms? Two-thirds of small businesses will not even qualify for lower company tax rates. What has been offered to the nation's 2.4 million small businesses in the wake of the Henry tax review is too little and too late, they say. However, it's not all bad, according to experts. The new rules do trim a little red tape and improve cash flow for some small employers. But they want more.

Australia's first female prime minister Julia Gillard may not have set out to crash her "head on any glass ceilings", as she told the media immediately after being elected leader. But the historic moment when Australia's first woman governor general, Quentin Bryce, swore Gillard into office on 24 June was viewed as an iconic breakthrough in gender equality. In the corporate world, Australia has a "dire" track record for putting women into top jobs, according to sex discrimination commissioner Elizabeth Broderick. However, signs of change are clearly afoot. Programs aimed at promoting women into senior roles in corporations recently have found the support of some big business heavy hitters. And the first half of 2010 has delivered a shift in the number of women on Australian boards, creating high hopes that women in senior roles may finally be getting even.

An ambiguous relationship has evolved between the public and the third sector as increasingly not-for-profit organisations have been handed responsibility for delivering government services. Some not-for-profits may be at risk of "mission drift" and losing sight of their goals. While new policy directions in the National Compact with the third sector are designed to clarify and improve the collaboration, the emphasis must be on outcomes and not just rhetoric, insists Peter Shergold, head of the Centre for Social Impact.

Innovation is in the strategy – or on the wish list – of almost every leading organisation. It seems everyone wants to innovate but few understand how to do it. For big business, it means demolishing silos to ensure the people with great ideas bump into each other – and accepting that not all the smart people work for your company. Some global organisations have overcome the threats to innovation posed by organisational structure and corporate culture and turned them into opportunities. Here’s how.