Short Term Placements: An Exercise in Organisational Culture Exchange

This article explores the process of setting up some short (one week) and longer (six month) exchanges between two government departments on the Central Coast of NSW, with the express purpose of assisting organisational change through this form of professional development. The article outlines the program's objectives and achievements, as well as the evaluation results and benefits to the two departments taking part. The exchanges all occurred within a context of services for children and families, but the concept of the exchanges and their educational and organisational benefit have much broader application to any instance where a number of government departments are being asked to collaborate or work more closely on issues. On the Central Coast of New South Wales, the Area Health Service and the Department of Community Services have undertaken an organisational cultural exchange experiment through short placements between various sections of the two government departments and also some longer term secondments. The purpose was to increase the understanding and skills of professionals within the two agencies to understand each other's roles better, and to also achieve better client outcomes for the often shared client group of the two departments. The exchanges have all taken place in services that work with children and families and were organised with a child protection focus in mind, although the program is transferable to other contexts.     

THE IMPLICATIONS OF HIGH LEVELS OF PUBLIC SECTOR DEBT FOR ECONOMIC POLICY-MAKING: THE CASE OF SOUTH AUSTRALIA

Abstract: The relatively small and open South Australian economy has been facing the difficulties associated with the structural adjustment of its industry for over 15 years. In addition, the South Australian public sector has been contending with financial difficulties largely as a result of a reduction in grants from the commonwealth before the failure of the State Bank of South Australia. This paper reviews the growth and current level of government indebtedness in South Australia and discusses which group(s) is likely to bear the main burden of such debt. The main consequences of high levels of state public sector debt, including budgetary inflexibility, are also examined. The paper suggests that it will be necessary for relative wages and prices to adjust more freely if the negative impacts of an inevitable state government budgetary consolidation are to be minimised. If wages and prices are not free to adjust then unemployment will continue to take the brunt of the adjustment process. In addition, out-migration of businesses and people from South Australia will accelerate, leading to a further erosion of the taxation base. The State Bank indemnity arrangements and consequent levels of public sector debt incurred will require the state government to reduce the level and quality of services provided by the state public sector, sell state public sector assets and further improve efficiency and effectiveness. However, there are a number of important arguments why taxation should be an important means by which the South Australian government moves to retire public sector debt as soon as practicable. Not the least important of these arguments is the need to ensure accountability by elected representatives of government for their expenditure decisions.     

South Australia: Caution and Consistency

During the 1990s public service industrial relations in South Australia have followed the state's long‐standing practice of being moderate and careful. From 1993 onwards, processes of corporatisation and privatisation that had commenced under the Bannon Labor government were continued and extended under the new Liberal government, in part as a response to financial pressures arising from the State Bank collapse, and in part as a reflection of the same trends that were widespread elsewhere. Where possible the government avoided direct confrontation with unions. There were various contests where the parties explored options in the changing environment, but the most prominent trend was that government policies of financial restraint and outsourcing tended to reduce most unions' bargaining power. Those policies were initially conjoined with agency‐specific enterprise bargaining, but the resulting variations in outcomes finally led to a Wages Parity Agreement to restore consistency.     

Digital Government: A Primer and Professional Perspectives

Digital technology is a critical enabler of public administration reforms. It can improve the efficiency and productivity of government agencies and allow citizens to transact with government anytime, anywhere. It can also deepen the democratic process, empowering citizens to participate in policy formulation. In this article Andrew Botros, the director of Expressive Engineering, and Maria Katsonis, from the Department of Premier and Cabinet (Victoria), explore the challenges of the digital world for the public sector. Katsonis presents a primer on digital government tracing its evolution from the e‐government movement of the 1990s to Government 2.0 in the 2000s to today's digital‐by‐default agenda. As technology and its role in public sector reform have progressed, so too have the governance, cultural, and leadership challenges deepened. Botros examines NSW approach to open innovation with the Premier's Innovation Initiative in NSW, the state's open data experience, and Transport for NSW and its management of public transport data. He argues NSW's approach involves a significant innovation trade‐off, requiring fresh thinking in digital‐era collaboration.     

Lessons from NPAs crisis in Indian banks

Nonperforming assets (NPAs) crisis in Indian public sector banks is one of the biggest challenges before the current government in 2017. The finance ministry, Government of India, and the central bank, the Reserve Bank of India, are worried about the surging NPAs in Indian public sector banks because of their huge macroeconomic impact and systemic risk to the financial system. If not paid timely attention, it can hamper the economic and financial stability of the nation. Rising NPAs in Indian public sector banks are a result of bank specific, macroeconomic, and political factors. In order to control the surging NPAs in Indian public sector banks, the government and the Reserve Bank of India have implemented new crisis management framework which however is not immune to several challenges. This paper looks at NPAs crisis from the lens of crisis management, stakeholder's engagement, government relations, and issue management. Harris and Fleisher ( 2016 ) identify crisis management, stakeholder engagement, government relations, and issues management as important organizational activities that constitute part of public affairs. This paper follows a tripartite structure where it first investigates the causes of NPAs in Indian public sector banks. Second, it examines the crisis management framework developed by the policy makers and highlights the key challenges. Third, in light of these challenges, it makes recommendations to tackle the NPAs crisis in Indian public sector banks.     

Efficiency,equity and girls' education

This article analyses World Bank strategies for education in the context of gender equity. Developing countries face the challenge of expanding education with limited resources. At the same time, promoting gender equity is vital to achieving basic development goals. Appropriate governance strategies are needed to provide education in a way that is cost‐effective and inclusive. Privatisation, decentralisation and citizen participation are three strategies that are promoted by the World Bank to control costs and improve transparency in education. Intended to promote efficiency, these strategies can harm equity. This study compares World Bank strategies to proven effective programs in girls' education. Empirical analysis reveals that while many World Bank projects include effective strategies for girls' education, governance reforms generally do not promote awareness of gender. Implications for expansion of girls' education are discussed. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.     

Public entrepreneurship and organizational performance in Asia: Do entreprneurial leadership,ethical climate and Confucian values matter in Korea and China

This is an empirical study on the effects of Confucian values and entrepreneurial leadership on public entrepreneurship and organisational performance in Asia based on data collected from China and South Korea. This study focuses on the differences in the effects of Confucian values, entrepreneurial leadership, and ethical climate on public entrepreneurship and organisational performance between government agencies in South Korea and China. Contrary to the conventional Western perspective, this study shows that Confucian values are not necessarily negatively associated with public entrepreneurship and organisational performance. Entrepreneurial leadership and public entrepreneurship (as a mediating variable) appear to be significant factors to organisational performance. The similarities and differences between China and South Korea are discussed.     

Governmental policy preferences and foreign capital allocation: The case of China

This paper compares the determination of foreign direct investment and World Bank loans in China, with a focus on the role of its government. The statistical analysis reveals that World Bank loans responded sensitively to the major regional policy changes since the mid-1990s, but foreign direct investment did not. These findings pose an analytic challenge to the “strong” version of the state-centered approaches to the politics of economic development represented by the developmental state literature. However, they lend support for a “weak” version of the state-centered approaches developed by American political scientists Stephen Krasner and Theda Skocpol. He has taught comparative and international politics in Nankai University, China, Kent State University, and Walsh University. He is currently working on his dissertation about the political economy of foreign aid in China. The author wishes to thank Dr. Dennis Hart and Dr. Steven Hook and the three anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments on early versions of this paper. The author also wishes to thank Brian Juliao for his linguistic help.     

Governing in a constrained environment: Policy making in the Greek banking deregulation and privatisation reform∗

The deregulation and privatisation programmes of the Greek banking system in the late 1980s and early 1990s were both largely due to EC pressures. However, in each case the patterns of policy making differed although in neither did a policy network’ type of governance emerge. This intra‐sectoral dissimilarity reflected the interrelation of macro‐political institutional variables with different organisational arrangements and traditions between the Central Bank, on the one hand, and state‐controlled banks on the other.     

Party Politics and the Common Good in Swedish Local Government

Local government in Sweden is usually classified as the northwest European type of local government, together with the local government systems of the other Nordic countries and Britain. In the 1990s and the early years of the new millennium, Swedish local government has been especially susceptible to the ideas of 'new public management' (NPM). At the same time there has been a long-ongoing trend of increasing party-politicisation of local councils. In this paper a selection of five local authorities are examined in order to see how party politics and party-politicisation are confronted by the new organisational doctrines. It is concluded that in this respect the doctrines guiding local government organisation can be characterised by three common traits: the legitimacy of particular interests is denied in favour of the common good of the locality; it is denied that conflict and competition between political parties perform any democratic function; finally, when it comes to the relation between politics and administration there is a common confession of the management-by-objectives doctrine. Somewhat surprisingly, these three principles guide organisation and politics not only in those authorities most enthusiastically adopting NPM but also in the authorities implementing organisational reforms based on more communitarian principles and even organisationally conservative municipalities not even considering any organisational change. One interpretation of this contradictory observation may be that NPM concepts and ideas have also found their way into local doctrines that are based on quite different principles. Another interpretation is that there is a consensus tradition in Swedish political culture that can also account for similar results in municipalities not explicitly introducing an apolitical organisation doctrine.     

Privatisation — A History and Survey of Changes in Organisation Structures, Cultural and Environmental Profiles

This paper provides a brief history of changes after privatisation to organisational structures and cultural profiles of affected entities. It assesses the experience of change in the electricity industry in New Zealand, the Commonwealth Serum Laboratories and the State Electricity Commission of Victoria and then examines results of a survey of senior executives of organisations privatised in Australia between 1990 and 1998. These senior executives had access to knowledge of pre- and post-privatisation conditions and their answers to a series of questions on organisational structure, cultural and environmental issues were analysed. The detailed answers involve limited areas of 'no change' but, critically, significant cultural changes relating to private ownership are established. These are summarised for readers' convenience by tables and discussed within the text.     

UK Privatisation Revisited: Ideas and Policy Change, 1979–92

Privatisation in the UK was facilitated by the interplay of ideas, institutions, actors, and economic interests. The motivations of the programme were ideational and political, but the objectives were economic and administrative. Together these paved the way for the success of the policy. Although several rationales were at play in the unfolding of privatisation, the ideological predilection of the Thatcher governments underpinned this far-reaching policy reform. This explains why the Thatcher government did not reform nationalized industries within the public sector, but instead shifted them into the private sector. Privatisation succeeded because it was championed by new right policy entrepreneurs, was supported by interest groups prepared to support, or least not impede, such dramatic policy change, and when the public enterprise status quo was deemed in need of reform. Of course, ideas only act as a catalyst for policy change when an established policy agenda having withered, been worn-out or otherwise discredited, can then be successfully challenged.     

The Impact of Energy Asset Privatisation on State Government Debt Management and Service Provision in Victoria and New South Wales

The purpose of this article is to look at the impact of the privatisation of the electricity and gas industries in the state of Victoria on the level of state government debt and subsequent ability of the state to deliver public services in the areas of health, education and law and order. In order to undertake this, a comparison is made with the state of New South Wales (NSW), where the privatisation of the electricity industry was often debated during the 1990s and 2000s, but never undertaken.     

Epistemic Communities and the Diffusion of Ideas: Central Bank Reform in the United Kingdom

In May 1997 the incoming Labour government gave the Bank of England operational independence in the setting of interest rates. This reform is puzzling as it was introduced by a party whose roots lie with the trade union movement, and resisted by the Conservatives whose political support comes largely from business, the financial sector and homeowners who stand to benefit most from price stability. Economic ideas are central to explaining the outcome. The Labour Chancellor was convinced by an epistemic community of monetary experts that central bank independence would achieve New Labour's electoral goals. These political incentives were absent for the Conservatives, who preferred to set interest rates strategically to increase their popularity with voters.     

The Life Cycle of Party Manifestos: The Austrian Case

Election manifestos are one of the most prominent sources of data for the study of party politics and government. Yet the processes of manifesto production, enactment, and public reception are not very well understood. This article attempts to narrow this knowledge gap by conducting a first investigation into the ‘life cycle’ of election manifestos from the drafting stage to their use in the campaign and post-election periods. Specifically, it investigates the Austrian case between 1945 and 2008 (with special emphasis on the 1990s and 2000s), employing a wealth of qualitative and quantitative data. While the research is thus mostly exploratory, it develops systematic expectations about variation between parties according to their ideology, organisation, government status, and characteristics of their electorates across the stages of the manifesto life cycle. Of those factors, organisational characteristics and status as government or opposition parties were found to be relevant.     

Efficiency Measurement in Australian Local Government: The Case of New South Wales Municipal Water Services

Australian local government has experienced a series of reforms directed at increasing economic efficiency. An important element in the reform program has been the development of a number of partial indicators of local government service delivery in the states and territories. This paper attempts to augment this literature on performance measurement in Australian local government by using data envelopment analysis (DEA) with holistic indices of allocative and technical efficiency in New South Wales (NSW) municipal water services. It also seeks to incorporate qualitative indicators into efficiency measures. “Best-practice” councils are identified and the underlying causes of municipal water service efficiency are analyzed.     

NATIONAL AND STATE COORDINATION OF AUSTRALIAN COLLEGES OF ADVANCED EDUCATION

Abstract: Until recently little work has been done on the government of post-secondary education in Australia. The development of the present arrangements for the coordination of post-secondary education is thus described and analysed, as are the structure and functions of the two national agencies and the various State bodies which have responsibility for coordination of colleges of advanced education. This analysis shows the growing size, complexity and costs of this sector of education, and the increasing involvement of the Commonwealth government in an area of traditional State responsibility. Yet there is still no single agency to coordinate the various activities of the Commonwealth government in higher education and only two States have such agencies. For the colleges of advanced education there are two national coordinating bodies, and at State level the arrangements vary markedly. There is also great variety in the relationships between individual colleges (which themselves differ greatly) and their State agencies, but overall there appears to be tension and dissatisfaction. In three ways could these relationships be improved: creating a greater degree of mutual recognition of rights and responsibilities; a revision of areas over which control is exercised; and a revision of the actual mechanics of coordination. Further, the assumption by the Commonwealth government of full financial responsibility for all tertiary education in January 1974 has added new sources of tension in the relationships between Federal and State governments and their agencies. The present pattern, however, is not static, but in a process of change.     

Talk is not cheap: Policy agendas,information processing,and the unusually proportional nature of European Central Bank communications policy responses

This article unveils the policy agenda of the European Central Bank (ECB) Governing Council as found in the speeches that Governing Council Members gave between 1999 and 2018. Using a dynamic topic‐modeling approached based on non‐negative matrix factorization, we demonstrate how the issues discussed by ECB Governing Council members have evolved over time, and how the general punctuation hypothesis (Jones, B. D. & Baumgartner, F. R. (2005). The politics of attention: How government prioritizes problems. University of Chicago Press) sheds light on what drives this process. We find that unlike policy outputs from many other policymaking systems, ECB communications evolve in a proportional manner. We attribute this finding to the information‐processing capacities of the bank. Our findings speak to the literatures on central bank communications, the evolution of policy agendas, and the application of topic models to speech texts.     

Working with Complexity: Community Engagement and the Murdi Paaki COAG Trial 2002–2007

Achieving improvements in indigenous health and education and reducing the incidence of crime and domestic violence in indigenous communities has proved heartbreakingly difficult. The Murdi Paaki COAG trial in western NSW aimed to break this pattern of failure by tailoring flexible Commonwealth and State government support to indigenous communities, working within a framework of shared responsibility. In this article we assess the trial as a policy strategy by comparing outcomes and patterns of outcomes across the sixteen communities. We found that the strategy worked best where ‘good enough’ governance was aligned with flexibility, rather than with control. This way of working is difficult for governments as it can be a slow process, and requires stability in the policy and engagement framework to deliver results. More broadly, our findings confirm the usefulness of complexity theory to illuminate and to explain the evolution of process in administrative contexts involving networked governance.     

THE INFLUENCE OF E‐GOVERNMENT ON ADMINISTRATIVE DISCRETION: THE CASE OF LOCAL GOVERNMENTS IN EGYPT

One important but often understudied area of research in public administration is the effect of e‐government on administrative discretion. This article examines e‐government factors that influence administrative discretion through a survey of local governments. The focus of this study is on Egyptian local governments, which are using e‐government to modernise public service delivery. Through a survey of administrative officials in these governments, this study found evidence that e‐government factors of collaboration and organisational change influenced administrative discretion. Other common factors noted in the literature such as size of the local government and demand by citizens for e‐government did not register an effect on administrative discretion. The results of this study imply that local governments should do more to enhance e‐government to reduce administrative discretion, especially in the area of increasing collaboration. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.