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As climate change accelerates, the popularity of adaptive social protection over conventional social assistance programmes is on the rise for they are seen to enhance people's resilience and wellbeing outcomes. Despite this upsurge, little is known about the impacts of adaptive programmes on resilience and wellbeing outcomes compared to conventional programmes. We analyse the economic functions that social protection programmes offer through empirical studies in two climate-vulnerable zones in Bangladesh. By operationalising a simplified analytical framework to understand subjective resilience, the qualitative data show the adaptive programme to be more effective in enhancing beneficiaries' perceived resilience to climate risks. Regrettably, neither programme is found to contribute much significantly in terms of enabling beneficiaries to achieve desired wellbeing outcomes that one might expect to see from social protection. The analysis offers rich insights about the design components of the programmes, affording an on-the-ground understanding of their implications for resilience and wellbeing.

As the consequences of climate change become better understood, there is growing agreement among development practitioners and academics on the need for mainstreaming climate adaptation into social protection. This review paper assesses the progress in mainstreaming efforts, revealing that there has been considerable progress made to date. However, a number of critical issues relating to the challenges of such mainstreaming in the context of developing countries and the conceptual framework needed to assess the outcomes of such developmental programmes are yet to be addressed. These issues are examined in this paper.

While new institutionalism has received considerable attention in recent years to conceptualise socio-technical dynamics in energy transitions, challenges remain in its application to context-specific inter-country comparisons. In this paper, we propose for purpose of such a comparison the application of an institutional framework to the analysis of actors’ agency in renewable energy development occurring within the institutional configuration of two countries’ respective energy systems. For the analysis, institutional configurations are seen as being structured through institutional modes and through multiple regulatory scales from the local to the national. The approach is applied to wind and photovoltaic projects in two local case studies considered to be at the vanguard of climate protection policy in Germany and (Western) Australia. While in the German case, institutional configurations bring about a consistency across institutions at local, state and national scales, enabling the realisation of most RE projects, the Australian case exhibits in-consistencies between the scales, serving to both explicitly and implicitly constrain local actors. The analysis offers insights into how institutions combine to shape local contexts, influence local actor agency and thus affect energy transition. The approach presented here enables the comparison of system-specific configurations and dynamics and sheds light on how actors can gain agency within these. The results indicate that the inclusion of modes and scales in institutional frameworks helps to nuance and refine comparative research on energy transitions.

The ‘social license to operate’ (SLO) concept, whilst ubiquitous in industry and academia, to this day, continues to defy clear definition. This ambiguity encourages the proliferation of conflicting claims to such a license and complicates the assessment of their legitimacy. Observing that a dimension of SLO's ambiguity is normative, this paper seeks to explore this normativity aspect further, with a view to discerning the disagreements on what makes an SLO legitimate and what delegitimizes it. The legitimacy gap in SLO discussions is illustrated in light of a case study from the Australian minerals and energy sector and explained in the context of the normative complexity surrounding the SLO construct, which seems to limit the transferability of findings from the growing number of SLO studies. As possible means for addressing this normative complexity the conceptual widening, approximation and standardization of the SLO are proposed in an attempt to overcome the stalemate resulting from competing social license claims and social license interpretations.

Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) in Australia has had a slow start and—while gaining momentum—continues to lag behind international trends and developments. This chapter seeks to describe the state, and characterise the nature of CSR ‘Down Under’, offering explanations for the somewhat lacklustre approach by business and government to operationalise and regulate CSR, respectively. Answers provided, based on select industry examples, will point to Australia’s political economy of CSR and prevalent ideologies among corporate and political decision-makers as drivers of a kind of CSR that is largely reactive and based on economic legitimacy.

From an instrumental or management perspective, impact assessment (IA) is a process of identifying impacts, finding solutions and achieving project approval. A recipient community, however, has a completely different perspective. For them the IA is about living with impacts, individually and collectively, perhaps over generations, and contested processes of self-determination, consultation and exclusion. IA practitioners live in a third space, usually bound to the proponent but also aware of responsibilities to communities and eco-systems. Seeking to better understand how IA is practiced and experienced, we explore the proposed Wafi-Golpu mine, located in the Morobe Province of Papua New Guinea. Determinably focused on local effects we situate the proposed mine within the context of the national mining experience and discuss how IA practices see local and/or Indigenous communities. We find that the Wafi-Golpu IA is blind to local ways of being and seeing the world, with an opaque and arbitrary assessment that reflects its technical and Western basis and bias. We finish with observations about the proposed Wafi-Golpu mine and IA that is relevant to the approval process, as well as making a decolonial, Southern contribution to IA theory and practice, extractive industry regulation and mining-affected communities elsewhere.

This paper provides an overview of unconventional gas developments in Australia and attendant public reactions to them through the lens of the ‘social license’ concept. An analysis of some of the relevant academic literature offers insights into how social license is understood, conceptualised and operationalised across Australian states and territories, surveying a variety of approaches to understand social and health impacts of developments; perceptions of developments, including their perceived legitimacy; and regulatory influences. Case examples from across Australia highlight the importance of procedural justice in industry-community conflict situations and the heterogeneity of social license outcomes. These insights suggest that social infrastructure can play an important role in social license negotiations. Further research priorities into the social dimensions of unconventional gas development are identified in the areas of cumulative health and social impacts; governance (and social license) implications in relation to resources; place and people; and better understanding social license in the context of other States and local contexts, specifically Australia’s First Nations. Both the ways in which a social license evolves over space and time, and how community concerns are responded to by industry and decision makers in different contexts, raises questions for further inquiry, specifically in relation to power asymmetries between industry, government and communities.

Economic development in Australia, especially resource development, has purportedly long been pursued for the greater good of the nation and its people and is thus often equated to moral progress. Yet, despite the celebrated spoils of the resources sector, Indigenous Australians have persistently been denied the benefits of economic progress owing to a history of colonialism, dispossession, segregation and assimilation policies, which have contributed to the marginalisation of Indigenous people to the present day. Thus, this article asks whether orthodox resource-led development has a social licence, and importantly for whose greater good? This paper applies a social licence lens to current water extraction proposals for Western Australia's remote Martuwarra Fitzroy River region where ecological values have largely remained intact and Indigenous people make up over 60 per cent of the population. It is argued the proposed water extraction plans hold little promise of serving either local or national interests when judged holistically and risk perpetuating adverse socio-cultural and ecological legacies from extractive activities for local Indigenous peoples. Within the Martuwarra Fitzroy River context, this paper seeks to redefine the ‘greater good’ and to articulate ‘socially licenced’ development alternatives without the ecological and cultural trade-offs typical of orthodox development.

While historically the extractives sector has done little to address the impacts of its activities (Harvey, 2014, 8), recent decades have seen resource companies “become more socially and environmentally conscious” (de Lange et al., 2018, 269). The sector appears to have undergone profound changes as reflected in industry discourses around sustainable and responsible mining and mining for development (International Council on Mining and Metals, 2001; International Institute for Environment and Development, 2002)...

With the widespread shift from models of welfare to business-led development, capacity development offers a useful lens from which to consider the emergence of Indigenous social enterprise as a business-led development approach. We explore capacity development from the international development literature and identify capacity development principles in the context of an Indigenous social enterprise in remote northeast Arnhem Land. Here, Aboriginal Australians continue to experience poverty and marginalisation. This paper provides an ethnographic example of the relationship between Indigenous social enterprise and capacity development. Identifying principles of capacity development in this rich context reveals the remit of the Indigenous social enterprise privileges environmental stewardship and cultural maintenance.

The social license to operate, as promoted within the fields of corporate social responsibility and impact assessment studies, has entered the business mainstream, especially in the mining and extractives sector. While it is invoked increasingly as a means of claiming legitimacy, the concept remains conflicted, implying that the social license terrain may be more complex and broader than conventional conceptualizations suggest. In this paper the authors draw attention to a suite of licenses and related risks that shape the issues surrounding mining and extractives companies’ quest for a social license to operate. These are captured in a holistic license and risk model, the social, actuarial and political risk and licensing model (SAP Model). Drawing on research from corporate social responsibility and impact assessment studies fields, the paper introduces the SAP Model and suggests how it enables improved exploration of the meaning, intention and probable implications of the various licenses and associated risks facing the mining and extractives sector. In so doing, it contributes a more contextualized understanding of social license to operate, especially for the corporate social responsibility and impact assessment fields of research.

Despite the recognized need for transdisciplinary teaching and learning to drive the operationalization of sustainability and ethical business conduct, disciplinary silos continue to dominate the curricula and administrative structures of many business schools. While with growing social and environmental stakes a reorientation of teaching and learning approaches is a sine qua non, the learning contexts typical of business schools worldwide continue to fall short of meeting the needs of students, society, and wider natural systems. The ‘sustainability and ethics void’ within established business curricula leaves future business leaders ill equipped for dealing with the complexities of social systems, institutions, and their environment and unable to solve growing global meta-problems (e.g. poverty, climate change). Against this background this chapter reports on efforts currently underway at the School of Business and Governance, Murdoch University to create new learning contexts where disciplinary knowledges can converge, values are included, and reflexive learning is embraced, allowing students to adopt a meaning orientation and a deep approach to learning. The School has recently become a signatory to the United Nations Principles for Responsible Management Education (PRME), and this chapter outlines the steps taken by members of the School-based Centre for Responsible Citizenship and Sustainability (CRCS) to support efforts to meet the School’s obligations under PRME. Specifically, attention is directed to the formation of the CRCS to drive transdisciplinary teaching and research in the School and the use of a Delphi approach as a platform towards the development of transdisciplinary collaborations through a shared understanding of the conceptual and methodological frameworks of responsible citizenship. The authors also report on how sustainability and responsible citizenship theories are applied in teaching and project contexts.

The stories have shed light on social licence contestations in WA, where both legal and political licence interplays were shown to have stymied community efforts to assert social licence claims. The examples are offered with a view to give guidance to communities and eco-activists who may see parallels between the cases detailed and their own lived experience. Cases are presented from Queensland, Mongolia and Indonesia, detailing the nature of political, legal and social licence interactions and how these have been navigated by local activists. These cases illustrate the impact of legal and political contexts on social, actuarial and political risk and licence dynamics. The legal and political environments of Queensland, Mongolia and Indonesia were all found, albeit to varying degrees, to have been restrictive concerning activists’ ability to assert their social licence concerns given the dominance of the political licence and relative weakness of the actuarial licence.

The social licence to operate is a notoriously ambiguous concept that encompasses a patent normative heterogeneity, making the emergence of a widely accepted standard capable of settling controversies on its legitimate use seem unlikely. To cope with this issue, the article builds a model (adapted from Arnstein’s ladder of public participation) to measure “contact quality,” used here as a proxy for gauging the legitimacy of the social licence to operate. This model is tested on a case study from the minerals and energy sector (Base Titanium Mine in Kenya). Our findings show that a company can move up and down on the legitimacy scale, depending on the contact quality with company stakeholders. The interest of providing a social licence heuristic is to make sense of the theoretical controversies surrounding this concept and to offer also realistic guidance to practitioners searching to understand where a firm sits on the legitimacy scale, to enhance transparency and accountability of its social licence to operate and ultimately improve business practice.

Purpose Using an integrated framework for performance management of nonprofit organizations, this paper aims to present an analysis of the activities of an Indigenous social enterprise in the town of Yirrkala in northeast Arnhem Land in the Northern Territory of Australia. The evaluation focuses on the social effectiveness of the organization and its ability to help generate income and employment and drive social capital creation. Design/methodology/approach The analysis is informed by data derived from “yarns” with social enterprise staff and semi-structured interviews conducted with key informants who were selected using snowball sampling. Data were transcribed and analyzed thematically. Findings The analysis reveals that the organization provides a successful community-based pathway for increasing Indigenous economic participation on local terms at a time of regional economic decline and high levels of Indigenous unemployment nationally. Practical implications The measured effectiveness of Nuwul highlights the need for targeted policy support for Indigenous enterprises and that social entrepreneurship is far more likely to be successful in a supportive government policy environment, a critical need for government-initiated policies to encourage the formation of Indigenous social enterprises that are entrepreneurial and innovative in their solutions to poverty and marginalization. Such policies should not only aid the establishment of Indigenous ventures but also facilitate their long-term growth and sustainability. Originality/value Although Indigenous entrepreneurial activities have been found to be effective in addressing Indigenous disadvantage in Australia, little is known about their community impact. The article provides original empirically grounded research on the measurement of Indigenous entrepreneurial activities and their wider community impact. The data show, against the backdrop of mixed results of government efforts to drive Indigenous economic mainstreaming, that the entrepreneurial activities analyzed in this paper are an example of more flexible and culturally appropriate pathways for achieving Indigenous equality in rural and remote regions of Australia.

Indigenous tourism products, attractions and activities can offer a point of difference for tourism destinations, and consequently the role of, and opportunities for, Indigenous people in providing these tourism experiences have been recognised increasingly by government and industry alike. This paper reviews and discusses the factors influencing successful Indigenous tourism development and provides a global comparison of best practice to inform future decision-making processes in achieving sustainable Indigenous tourism development. Data was derived from interviews with key government and non-government organisations, and Indigenous tourism organisations and operators were analysed as a means of critically engaging with the sustainability problematic of Indigenous tourism development. Furthermore, a comprehensive analysis of international case studies focusing on Indigenous accommodation provision was carried out to complement the research, as were observations during site visits. By offering a ...

After its first election win in August 2001 since the Northern Territory of Australia (NT) was granted self-government (1978), the incoming NT Labor government released a new tourism plan, the Northern Territory Tourism Strategic Plan—2003–2007 in the following year. Turbulent events of 2001 that had a significant impact on the tourism industry in the NT and included the collapse of the Australian carrier Ansett Airlines and "September 11" provided the impetus for the new strategy. Purportedly, this plan was designed to direct and guide the NT tourism industry's future development based on sound research and extensive consultation with key stakeholders. Such a partnership approach was regarded as crucial for the success of future tourism in the Territory. This article specifically focuses on the formulation process of this Tourism Strategic Plan, exploring in particular the effectiveness of the underlying consultation process. Adopting a microperspective on tourism planning processes with the NT case example we portray a unique case that allows us to highlight not only the complex and dynamic nature of tourism planning during times of significant change in the Territory's political landscape, but also the often-experienced contradictions between tourism planning rhetoric and practice. Even though we explore a planning process that dates back about a decade, we believe that the findings of the study are relevant and inform current tourism policy and planning discourses.

The complicity of business schools in corporate wrong-doing has long been receiving public attention (Orr 1994), especially in more recent years following the collapse of companies like Enron, Tyco and WorldCom and the 2008 Global Financial Crisis (Crane and Matten 2016). Perceptions of widespread corporate malfeasance have triggered growing calls—inter alia—for a greater emphasis on ethics in management education (Swanson and Frederick 2003; Alsop 2006; Crane 2004; Cornelius et al. 2007). Further compounding the moral dilemma of business schools are mounting socio-ecological problems globally, which have at their core the very economic model enshrined in business curricula world-wide (Willard 2004; Hart 2007; von der Heidt and Lamberton 2011; Godemann et al. 2014). Thus, places of higher education, and business schools in particular (especially since they attract the largest student numbers) are called upon not only to help students build their ethical identities (Swanson and Dahler-Larsen 2008), but also to equip them with the requisite tools to become earth-literate future leaders (after Martin and Jucker 2005) able to navigate and manage the complex challenges that have come to characterise this era (Lozano et al. 2015) we tellingly call the Anthropocene (see Steffen et al. 2011). It is considered a moral imperative but also a question of social relevance that business schools uphold their identity as places of learning with a conscience and purpose; driving positive social change by way of informing and shaping managerial and professional attitudes and practices (Adams et al. 2011; Jose Chiappetta Jabbour 2010; Tilbury et al. 2004; Green et al. 2017). As suggested by Seto-Pamies and Papaoikonomou (2016: 524): Academic institutions help shape the attitudes and behaviour of business leaders through business education, research, management development programs, training, and other pervasive, but less tangible, activities, such as the spread and advocacy of new values and ideas. Through these means, academic institutions have the potential to generate a wave of positive change, thereby helping to ensure a world where both enterprises and societies can flourish.

Today’s global challenges not only threaten humanity’s survival but also that of millions of other species. It is generally agreed that these challenges are the product of anthropogenic impacts on the planet through humanity’s pursuit of economic ends. Due to the intractable nature of these challenges they are often referred to as wicked problems as their complexity and scale are “interconnected, contradictory, located in an uncertain environment and embedded in landscapes that are rapidly changing” (Sardar 2010: 183). However, the global pursuit of economic growth not only threatens to bring about ecological brinkmanship it also produces large societal costs. Dominant neoliberal development policies have largely failed to adequately address inequality or reduce poverty in an age of plenty, which suggests—as argued widely (Kates et al. 2000; Barth et al. 2007; Vare and Scott 2007; Rieckmann 2012; Barth and Rieckmann 2012; Thomas et al. 2013)—that future human wellbeing within environmental limits requires a fundamentally new and different approach; for the purposes of this book we regarded the concepts of responsible citizenship, corporate social responsibility (CSR) and sustainable development as expressions of this new approach and the kind of social change agendas that share a vision of a more socially and environmentally just future. It has been the premise of this volume that universities have both the capacity and the responsibility to be the drivers of change towards this vision (Kates et al. 2000).

Dieses Kapitel gibt Einblicke in den Stand der CSR Integration an australischen Hochschulen. Im internationalen Vergleich wird der Integrationsprozess als langsam gewertet, was auf universitatsexterne und -interne Barrieren zur CSR-Agenda an australischen Hochschulen zuruckgefuhrt wird. Speziell im Kontext eines starken Neoliberalisierungsdruckes auf die Hochschulen, der die Curriculum-Reform erschwert, wird eine akademische Aktivistenkultur als mogliche Antwort auf den CSR-Mangel an australischen Universitaten vorgestellt.

The much-maligned field of economics has long had an uneasy relationship with ethical and value-based concepts such as sustainability . This chapter shows how a shift towards teaching a heterodox, socially and ecologically literate economics that is also sensitive towards questions of power , equity and justice can help overcome the autism the dominant neoclassical school of economics is standing accused of. Such an approach may not only serve to make the field more attractive again to students but also to help restore its relevance within the sustainability context.

Numerous empirical and conceptual studies describe waste minimisation as a key environmental performance indicator for industry. ISO 14001certification in this regard is widely considered the tool of choice for driving waste minimisation efforts. To this day, however, the evidence remains mixed as it pertains to the effectiveness of ISO 14001 in helping firms reduce waste, especially in developing countries. This paper explores the waste minimisation efforts among Indian small and medium enterprises. Specifically, improvements in waste minimisation are analysed from small and medium enterprises operating in the cities of Delhi and Noida. Our proposed model is tested for a model-fit, and the hypotheses are tested through regression coefficient (β) scores to determine the influence of ISO 14001 on the degree of waste minimisation among certified and non-certified companies. The data reveal that ISO 14001 certification alone helped account for a 25% increase in waste minimisation in certified companies after controlling for other critical factors (correlated to the variable ‘waste minimisation’) that may influence this relationship. The analytical tools described in this paper lend themselves to be applied to similar research problems in future studies. The study provides baseline data for further research into ISO 14001 effectiveness in the Indian SME context – a field with still only limited research insights – and offers policy prompts for targeted environmental management improvements in Indian firms.

The concepts of ‘corporate social responsibility’ (CSR) and ‘social licence to operate’ (SLO) have moved from obscurity to the business mainstream in recent years and indeed become cornerstones of many companies’ risk management strategies. Notwithstanding both concepts’ steep ascent, gaps in our understanding remain not only of their commonalities and differences but also of their politicality and conflicted nature.

The physics motivations and characteristics of the new gamma-experiment TAIGA (Tunka Advanced Instrument for cosmic ray physics and Gamma Astronomy) are presented. The TAIGA experiment addresses ground-based gamma-ray astronomy at energies from a few TeV to several PeV, as well as cosmic ray physics from $100$ TeV to several EeV. For the energy range $30 - 200$ TeV the sensitivity of the planned for future extension of TAIGA up to $5$ km$^2$ area for detection of the local sources is expected to be $10^{-13}$ erg cm$^{-2}$ sec$^{-1}$ for $500$ h of observation. The combination of the wide angle Cherenkov timing detectors of the TAIGA-HiSCORE array and the $4$ m class Imaging Atmospheric Cherenkov Telescopes of the TAIGA-IACT array with their FoV of $10x10$ degrees offers a cost effective-way to construct a $5$ km$^2$ array. Reconstruction of an EAS energy, direction and core position based on the TAIGA-HiSCORE data will allow us to increase the distance between comparatively expensive IACTs up to $800 - 1200$ m. The low investments together with the high sensitivity for energies $\geqslant 30-50$ TeV make this pioneering technique very attractive for exploring the galactic PeVatrons and cosmic rays. In addition to the Cherenkov light detectors we intend to deploy an array of muon detectors (TAIGA-Muon array) over an area of 1 km$^2$ with a total area of about $2000 - 3000$ m$^2$. The TAIGA-IACT-HiSCORE together with the TAIGA-Muon array will be used for selection of gamma-ray induced EAS. At present the first stage of TAIGA have been constructed in the Tunka valley, $\sim 50$ km West from the Lake Baikal in Siberia. Now it consists of 28 TAIGA-HiSCORE Cherenkov stations distributed over an area of $0.25$ km$^2$ and the first IACT of the TAIGA-IACT array. We are planning to test operation of the single telescope in coincidence with the HiSCORE up to shower impact distances of $\sim 500 - 600$ m; for this purpose we already started construction of the second imaging telescope at $300$ m distance from the first one. During 2017 -- 2019 years we intend to increase the number of the TAIGA-HiSCORE stations up to $100 - 120$, spread on the area of $1$ km$^2$ and to deploy $2$ additional IACTs.

This paper examines the social licence to operate (SLO) of Western Australia's (WA's) mining industry in the context of the state's ‘developmentalist’ agenda. We draw on the findings of a multi-disciplinary body of new research on the risks and challenges posed byWA's mining industry for environmental, social and economic sustainability. We synthesise the findings of this work against the backdrop of the broader debates on corporate social responsibility (CSR) and resource governance. In light of the data presented, this paper takes issue with the mining sector's SLO and its assessment of social and environmental impacts in WA for three inter-related reasons. A state government ideologically wedded to resource-led growth is seen to offer the resource sector a political licence to operate and to give insufficient attention to its potential social and environmental impacts. As a result, the resource sector can adopt a self-serving CSR agenda built on a limited win–win logic and operate with a ‘quasi social ...

Despite growing interest in, and government support for, ISO14001 certification across Asia in recent years, little is known about issues surrounding the uptake and the effectiveness of environmental management systems in this region. There is a particular void of academic work in relation to ISO certification in India and the country's large number of small and medium enterprises; a field of inquiry this paper seeks to advance. Specifically, as a means of providing a basis for classification of firms for an analysis of the state of ISO14001 in India we test the adequacy of critical factors such as nature of business, size, year of establishment and internationalisation among small and medium enterprises and industry best companies. An analysis is presented of secondary data derived from the websites of a sample of ISO14001 certified firms located in the cities of Delhi and Noida. The data show that in the area of manufacturing the highest number of ISO14001 certifications can be recorded and that established small and medium enterprises with high turnover are more likely to adopt ISO14001 certification compared to low turnover firms. The findings inform the status of environmental management systems in India and have implications for government policy intended to foster ISO14001 uptake by Indian firms.

The practices and public reputation of mining have been changing over time. In the past, mining operations frequently stood accused of being socially and environmentally disruptive, whereas mining today invests heavily in ‘socially responsible’ and ‘sustainable’ business practices. Changes such as these can be witnessed internationally as well as in places like Western Australia (WA), where the mining sector has matured into an economic pillar of the state, and indeed the nation in the context of the recent resources boom. This paper explores the role of mining in WA, presenting a multi-disciplinary perspective on the sector's contribution to sustainable development in the state. The perspectives offered here are drawn from community-based research and the associated academic literature as well as data derived from government sources and the not-for-profit sector. Findings suggest that despite noteworthy attitudinal and operational improvements in the industry, social, economic and environmental problem areas remain. As mining in WA is expected to grow in the years to come, these problem areas require the attention of business and government alike to ensure the long-term sustainability of development as well as people and place.

Upcoming Gamma-Ray and Cosmic-Ray experiments require relative time calibration of all detector components with (sub-)nanosecond precision. White Rabbit, a new technology for time and frequency transfer, can be applied here. We describe a White Rabbit (WR) based design for trigger time-stamping, originally developed for Tunka-HiSCORE a timing array for Gamma-Ray astronomy now under construction. Subnsec synchronization results from cosmic ray shower data, in-situ artifical light source calibrations and laboratory tests taken over several years are presented.

The introduction of ultralow-k dielectrics is a recent milestone in the quest for higher clock speeds and lower power consumption in ICs. One tradeoff, however, is that interconnect stacks layered with low-k materials rather than SiO2 are more vulnerable to mechanical damage. This article presents a method that makes it possible to assess the mechanical integrity of interconnect stacks at the wafer level. The new bump-assisted BEOL stability indentation (BABSI) test uses a nanoindentation tool to apply lateral and vertical forces to solder bumps and copper pillars on the wafer surface. By applying appropriate stresses, various aspects of integrity, such as the onset of failure modes or the weakest interface in the stack, can be determined by subsequent SEM/FIB analysis. The authors describe the basic principles of the measurement technique and some of the applications in which it was used.

Pathways towards a post-carbon society are being explored across all levels of government, within the scientific community and society in general. This chapter presents scenarios for cities and regions in Australia after the Age of Oil, particularly the energy-intensive state of Western Australia (WA). It argues that a post-carbon WA would ideally use technological and wider social choices to reduce carbon emissions close to zero. It focuses on policy requirements, institutional and governance arrangements and socio-technical systems to provide an industry-focussed renewable energy development plan that will help to balance ongoing and past emissions and lead to a low-carbon society.

Successive governments in Western Australia (WA), and in Australia as a whole, have traditionally pursued economic development. In 2001, however, the Labor Party came into office with a professed commitment to sustainable development and seemed to promise a departure from, and alternative to, economic developmentalism. However, despite a series of government initiatives, the initial euphoria dissipated, the government failed to deliver a lasting break with the developmentalist policy agenda, and the state returned to its traditional path of resource-based economic expansion. The dramatic rise and fall of sustainability in WA is addressed here.

The aim of this article is to investigate the governmentalities of volunteering in regional Western Australia. Drawing on interviews with 25 consenting volunteers and their managers, a thematic analysis revealed the experiences and perceptions of the research participants. Two distinct governmentalities exist: one reflecting neo-liberal governmentality and the other reflective of classic liberalism. Whilst this study is limited to regional Western Australia, the results suggest that there are variations in ‘governmentalities’ of volunteering comprising a mix of sometimes contradictory elements. This article also demonstrates the usefulness of governmentality for expanding the understanding of volunteering that has the potential to illuminate vital elements of the volunteer sector, which are being missed. There are many niches where volunteer groups exist or are emerging that are not visible and out of reach of the control techniques commonly used by governments adopting advanced (neo) liberal governmentalities.

This paper critiques dominant corporate social responsibility (CSR) theory, which claims that commercial and social goals overlap and coincide. It is suggested that this uncritical portrayal and treatment of complex industry–community relations risks neglecting the potential tensions that may arise should these goals diverge or be in conflict. In this context, the experiences of residents in a small Western Australian town are presented to describe a long-running conflict between community members and their corporate neighbour. The data point to a range of community impacts as a result of corporate activities and unearth strong differences between ‘local’ and ‘corporate’ understandings of CSR. Based on the perceived shortcomings of an economically underpinned CSR approach, we question the possibility of meeting local needs by means of economic efficiency. Calls are made for critical reflection on the key assumptions underlying dominant CSR theory and consideration is given to questions of guidance for CSR practitioners.

The bottom of the pyramid (BoP) approach popularised by Prahalad and Hart (2002), calls for the engagement of business with the bottom segment of the global income pyramid, and has attracted considerable attention and debate. The BoP lens is applied chiefly to communities experiencing ‘extreme poverty’ in low income countries with little reference to the growing number of people living in ‘relative poverty’ in high income countries. For the purpose of stimulating academic debate this paper seeks to explore the role of the so-called fourth sector, a domain for hybrid business ventures of social (and, in the case of this paper, Indigenous) entrepreneurs, at what we refer to as ‘the bottom at the top of the income pyramid’ in Australia. Using examples of Indigenous and social entrepreneurship within disadvantaged communities, we seek to highlight the scope for fourth sector enterprises at the lower end of the income spectrum within developed countries. It is suggested that the business models found within the fourth sector offer promising, alternative approaches for addressing the economic as well as social and cultural needs of those living on the fringes of today’s increasingly fragmented high-income societies.