Search

This study makes use of ministerial portfolios to analyze the scope of government activity. It shows that in comparison with expenditure and employment measures, portfolios have a number of advantages in terms of stability, absoluteness, and in identifying when new activities attract sustained government attention. Portfolios are used to investigate whether there has been any convergence in the scope of government activity across state governments in Australia over the century since 1890, and, also, whether partisanship has had any consistent impact on government activity. Neither hypothesis is confirmed. Rather, long-term patterns of activity are complex and appear to be driven by a wide range of forces. Les budgets ministeriels sont des indicateurs plus fiables de l'action des gouvernements que les depenses publiques et les politiques de creation d'emplois parce qu'ils sont plus stables et intangibles. Apres avoir justifie cette hypothese, les auteurs analysent les budgets ministeriels des gouvernements australiens depuis 1890 afin d'evaluer l'ampleur et la convergence de leur action d'une part, et l'impact des affiliations partisanes sur cette action d'autre part. Aucune des hypotheses precitees n'est cependant confirmee, ce qui tend a demontrer que l'ampleur de l'activite des gouvernements sur le long terme est un phenomene complexe determine par un large eventail de variables.

The number of Australian state and Commonwealth women ministers has increased since 1970. Approximately 15% of the state ministers and 19% of the Commonwealth ministers in 1990-1996 were women. The percentages were 4% and 3%, respectively, in 1970-1979. The Australian Labor Party has appointed more women ministers than other parties. Women ministers have been appointed more in social areas than in defining and physical resources areas., Contrary to expectations based on 1980s west-European research, women's representation in Australian cabinets over the last quarter century has exceeded their proportional strength in parliaments. The paper examines this and [...]

This paper investigates whether, in theoretical terms, corporations can be citizens. The argument is based on the observation that the debate on "corporate citizenship" (CC) has only paid limited attention to the actual notion of citizenship. Where it has been discussed, authors have either largely left the concept of CC unquestioned, or applied rather unidimensional and decontextualized notions of citizenship to the corporate sphere. The paper opens with a critical discussion of a major contribution to the CC literature, the work of Logsdon and Wood (Wood and Logsdon 2001; Logsdon and Wood 2002). It continues with a consideration of the nature and role of metaphors for business and of the contestable nature of the political concept of citizenship. It evaluates corporations as citizens through a four-dimensional framework of democratic citizenship offered by Stokes (2002). The analysis suggests that corporations do not easily fit the "liberal minimalist" model of citizenship. It finds, however some possibilities for fit with the three more participatory models. The paper concludes by cautioning against basing corporate citizenship on legal and administrative status or identity, and mapping out specific criteria by which we might determine whether corporations could be considered as citizens by virtue of their participation in processes of governance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this introductory paper for the special issue "Government and the Governance of Business Conduct: Implications for Management and Organization", we focus on government as an institution in the broader context of the governance of business conduct. We review the longevity and heterogeneity of governmental actors along with, and in relation to, the evolving role and place of business and civil society actors under the double challenge of privatization and globalization over the last three to four decades. In so doing we track the evolution of government's primary governance roles. We suggest that part of the organization and management scholarship builds upon problematic assumptions when it comes to the role(s) of government in the governance of business conduct. We suggest that while governments might be losing some power, they are also acquiring and deploying it in other areas; that governments are taking on new governance roles in relation to business conduct; that government regulation may contribute positively to the governance of business conduct; and that government is an ever-important focus for management and organizational research. We show how the six contributing papers to the Special Issue both illustrate these arguments and reveal new roles for government in the contemporary governance of business conduct. We end by proposing a research agenda for the further exploration of government in governance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

I contribute to the 'political CSR' debate on whether companies can or should fill public governance gaps by exploring how related business–government interactions may result in corporate social irresponsibility. I studied interactions between mining companies and the government in South Africa between 2002 and 2012, focusing on processes that contributed to the deterioration of living conditions in the Marikana area, site of an infamous massacre in 2012. The analysis resulted in a process model of dynamic de-responsibilization, in which business–government interactions progressively dissipate the adopted and enacted social responsibilities of both the government and business. This extends extant critiques of political CSR and elaborates CSiR as not only a systemic, but also a processual phenomenon, and it focuses related scholarly and practical attention on problematizing the government's role as custodian of democratic accountability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Political CSR has made great strides towards a better appreciation of the political involvement of corporations in global governance. However, its portrayal of the shifting balance between business and government in the globalized economy rests on a central, yet largely uncontested, assumption: that of a zero-sum constellation of substitution in which firms take on public responsibilities to fill governance gaps left by governments. This conceptual paper expands the political CSR perspective and makes three contributions to the debate on the political role of business and the role of government in global governance. First, it deconstructs the problematic assumptions underlying the zero-sum notion of governance gaps filled by corporations. Second, it offers a variable-sum mapping of how private and public authority interact in global governance where substitution is only one of four constellations. The mapping identifies 'soft steering' as a prominent mode of governments governing business conduct. Third, the paper theorizes 'orchestration', a 'soft steering' tool discussed in the global governance literature, from an organizational, corporate perspective. It identifies the mechanisms through which orchestration may address the barriers to corporate engagement with the public good and applies these mechanisms to the case of the Global Reporting Initiative. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The dynamics of governmental activity in Australia is examined based on long-run changes in scope and profile of ministerial portfolios. Topics include 20th-century trends in government's scope, categories of government activity, range and intensity of government, and dynamics, including temporal and federal dynamics and the relationship between innovation and intensification of activity., This paper provides a long-run analysis of the scope and profile of government in Australia using the indicator of ministerial portfolios. By scope we refer to the range and intensity [...]

Philomena Murray and Paul Rich (eds), Visions of European Unity (Boulder, CO and Oxford: Westview Press, 1996), viii + 232 pp., US$51.50, ISBN 0 8133 8965 8. This volume promises [...]

This article introduces the concept of ecological citizenship to management theory and in particular to ways of understanding the roles and responsibilities of the corporation. It begins by establishing the case for incorporating citizenship thinking into the literature on organizations and the environment and specifically for developing a greater political orientation to new corporate environmentalism. It goes on to identify the nature of the ecological citizenship concept and the three different understandings that are prevalent in the literature. Applying these perspectives to corporations, it then establishes how ecological citizenship can help us to examine corporate responsibilities for exporting liberal citizenship, rethink the stakeholder set, and reconfigure the community of the corporation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Focuses on the politics of unemployment in Great Britain. Issue of unemployment and its place in British politics; Presentation of unemployment issue to the electorate; Policy priorities of the government in the office.

The paper demonstrates that minority governments have long been part of the Australian state political landscape. However, it argues that the dynamics of minority governments vary according to the Mode of Acton (individual or collective) and Motivation (particularistic or general challenge) of the balance of power holders. A model to this effect is presented and tested with reference, to the recent New South Wales and Western Australian minority governments. The former is described as a case of Minoritarianism and the latter as a mix of Ersatz Coalition and Ad Hoc Minoritarianism. The distinctive characteristics of minoritarianism are investigated, particularly with reference to their compatibility with consensus politics. The case of Tasmania demonstrates that, potential for minoritarianism notwithstanding, the nature of the consensus is still a function of the balance of policy preferences of all MPs in the House. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article examines the political party system and change of regime in Tasmania and Western Australia. The change of regime in Western Australia generated substantial evidence for the importance of partisan factors. The two major party groupings produced election manifestos that differed in the mix and relative importance of policy commitments, and these differences were born out in the policies of the new regime. However, Tasmania did not produce evidence for the importance of similar partisan factors either in the process of electoral change or in the subsequent policies of the new regime.

This paper presents an analysis of the Esperance Local Enterprise Initiatives Committee, which is at the heart of an archetypal emerging pattern of local economic development distinct both from top-down statist models and from market alternatives. The model is composed of a mixture of state resources (notably finance, information and legitimacy), elements associated with entrepreneurialism, grass-roots orientation, bottom-up implementation, the pursuit of profit, and a network system which interlocks the ELEIC with different government departments and agencies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the government and politics in post-war years which has become, by virtue of the spread of radio and television, potentially more familiar spheres to the people of Great Britain. It discusses that the trend has been furthered by the style with which media producers have chosen to portray politics and its personalities. Not only does the television cover party conferences, and the BBC broadcast parliamentary debate, but political leaders also appear on late night chat shows and on daytime radio.