Innovation Agents in the Public Sector: Applying Champion and Promotor Theory to Explore Innovation in the Australian Public Service

Innovation is critical to organisational success and is a process steered, and potentially thwarted, by individuals. However, despite the importance of public sector innovation given the complexity of policy issues faced and the sector's specific contextual features, our understanding of innovation processes in government requires expansion. This study, using in‐depth case analyses of three Australian Public Service agencies, focuses on understanding the ‘human component’ of the innovation process by drawing on both innovation champion and promotor theories to explore, through the lens of organisational power, how multiple human agents progress public sector innovations. The results highlight the key, and often tandem, roles of individuals at multiple organisational levels who work to inspire and motivate others to progress an innovation (champions) and those with specific power bases who help overcome organisational barriers to innovation (promotors).     

Do You Wish to Prosecute the Person Who Assaulted You?: Untested Sexual Assault Kits and Victim Notification of Rape Survivors Assaulted as Adolescents

In jurisdictions across the country, sexual assault kits (SAKs) have not been consistently submitted for testing and many cities are now submitting large quantities of SAKs for forensic DNA testing. As a result, some survivors will be asked to re-engage with the criminal justice system, a process that may raise complex issues for victims who were adolescents at the time of their assaults. The authors examine the experiences of 15 adolescent victims whose SAKs were not tested, and their decision-making pathways regarding reengagement with the criminal justice system years after the initial investigation. Findings reveal that characteristics of the initial assault, victim-blaming experiences, and the social support appear to be related to the decision to re-engage with law enforcement years after the initial assault. Implications for future research and practice are discussed.     

The Impact of the Unemployment Rate on Unemployment Benefits in Barbados: An Impulse Response Approach

The purpose of this article is to determine how the rate of unemployment will impact on unemployment benefits in Barbados using annual data from 1982 to 2009 with the use of an impulse response function. The results show that when a shock is applied to the rate of unemployment, which causes it to rise, unemployment benefits will contract marginally and this reaction will not stabilize until the 14th period when a new equilibrium will be attained. Since this new equilibrium will lie below the original equilibrium, rising unemployment will impact negatively on unemployment benefits although this decline will only be marginal.     

Civic Engagement and Education: An Empirical Test of the Sorting Model

According to the sorting model of education, the impact of education on civic engagement is relative, rather than absolute. Education correlates with greater engagement because it is a marker of social status; the degree of status conferred by your level of education is determined by the average level of education within your environment. This article tests the sorting model by paying strict heed to its assumptions. The analysis confirms the model, but considerably narrows its reach. Sorting applies only to one particular type (electoral activity), only when the educational environment accounts for variation across age and place, and only when one models the interactive relationship between education at the individual and environmental levels. Furthermore, sorting applies more to men than women. The same analytical framework demonstrates that being in a more highly educated environment amplifies the relationship between education and democratic enlightenment (political knowledge and tolerance).     

Determinants of interest group formation

It is widely recognized that interest groups affect both microeconomic and macroeconomic outcomes. However, few researchers have attempted to discern empirically the factors that contribute to interest group activity. This paper provides a test of several theories of group formation in a panel setting. A nation’s stability, socioeconomic development, political system, size, and diversity all appear to contribute to interest group formation, as predicted by theory.     

The Party Systems of the Australian States: Patterns of Partisan Competition, 1945-1986

There has been a longstanding interest in the relationship betweenthe party system in reflecting regional diversity and maintainingthe dispersal of power in federations. Given the relative scarcityof information on this question in the Australian federation,this article examines the extent to which the party systemsof the Australian states differ by looking at a number of indicatorssummarizing patterns of partisan support in elections and legislaturesover a period of forty years. Its findings demonstrate persistentdifferences in the structure and dynamics of the state partysystems. In particular, the study shows that, in spite of thedichotomizing tendencies of a parliamentary system, electoralcompetition in the A ustralian states is characterized by astrong tendency to dispersed multi-partyism rather than simplebipartyism, although the individual states occupy varying positionswithin this range. The charting of this partisan diversity isimportant in questioning some of the presumptions of regionaluniformity that have been applied to the study of the Australianfederal system.     

Self-reported delinquency and home life: Evidence from a sample of British girls

This study examines the correlation between family variables and delinquency (both self-reported and official) in a small sample of British teenage girls. Factor analysis of the 72-item Home Life Questionnaire (from T. H. Hirschi [1969] Causes of Delinquency, University of California Press, Berkeley) revealed a clear four-factor structure of caring and communication, discipline, pressure and mother-daughter closeness, which cumulatively accounted for 31% of the variance. Multiple regression of these factors onto self-reported delinquency indicated the maternal factor to be most powerful, explaining 25% of the variance in self-reported delinquency. Institutionalized and noninstitutionalized girls showed only chance differences in terms of the quality of their home life.Anne Campbell's research interests are in sex differences in antisocial behavior, especially aggression.     

Feminist literary studies

Elaine Showalter (ed), The New Feminist Criticism: Essays on women, literature and theory (Virago) London, 1985.

Gayle Green and Coppélia Kahn (eds), Making a Difference: Feminist literary criticism (Methuen: New Accents) London, 1985.

Toril Moi, Sexual/Textual Politics: Feminist Theory (Methuen: New Accents) London, 1985.