The Role of IPAA: Public Presentation — Key Issues in Governance

In the December 1997 issue of this journal our editors expressed concern about the decline in teaching of public administration. This does not reflect any decline in the overall level of involvement by government in the economy or society. Rather it seems to reflect changing perceptions of what is needed to succeed in public administration.
This in turn raises the very important issue of what we as a society expect from our future public administrators. While many management skills are common to both business and the public sector, public administration needs to extend beyond the limits of business management to comprehend issues such as accountability, probity and policy processes. Indeed it is increasingly being recognised that what is at stake is not just management per se, but rather the broader array of relationships involved in good governance.
The Institute of Public Administration Australia has over the years played an important role in bringing practitioners and teachers together to help foster a better appreciation of these issues. Now more than ever, when the public sector is experiencing considerable change, there needs to be a lively forum where these broader issues of public administration can be debated and new approaches can be tested.
The National Council of the Institute has accordingly been considering how the Institute might encourage a wider public appreciation of good governance. In order to assist in this process and to provide some guidance to spokepersons, the Council has agreed the following Statement. We hope that all members of the Institute will find this Statement helpful and will be encouraged to promote the ideals it seeks to uphold.     

Reviews & Resources

Theater

Split Britches, by Lois Weaver in collaboration with Deborah Margolin and Peggy Shaw, directed by Lois Weaver for the Split Britches Company, Open Gate Theatre, New York City.

Beauty and the Beast—The Otic and Only World‐Famous Vaudeville Revue, written by Deborah Margolin in collaboration with Lois Weaver and Peggy Shaw, directed by Lois Weaver, Spring 1983, WOW Cafe, New York City.

'night, Mother, by Marsha Norman directed by Tom Moore, Golden Theatre, New York City.

The Department, by Barbara Gar‐son, directed by Chris Kraus, May 1983, Theater for the New City, New York City.

Sappho and Aphrodite, by Karen Malpede, directed by Lois Weaver, presented by the Sappho and Aphrodite Company as a work‐in‐progress, Provincetown Playhouse, March 1983, New York City.

Cloud 9, by Caryl Churchill, directed by Tommy Tune, Lucille Lortel Theatre, New York City.

Dance

With Longings to Realize, Johanna Boyce and Performance Group, January, 1983, Dance Theatre Workshop, New York City.

Theory and Play of the Duende, by Pilar Rioja, Repertorio Espanol's Gramercy Arts Theater, April 1983, New York City.

Ms. Barbie and Her Friends or Whose Life to Live, by the Barbara Mahler Dance Theater, March 1983, Cash Performance Space, New York City.

Music

Thoughts on Women's Popular Music

Meg Christian, Bottom Line, April 1983, New York City.

Holly Near and Ronnie Gilbert in Concert, Lincoln Center, Avery Fisher Hall April 13, 1983, New York City.

Books

Divine Dancer: A Biography of Ruth St. Denis by Suzanne Shelton. Garden City, New York: Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1981. 338 pp. Bibliography. Index.

American Women Dramatists of the Twentieth Century, A Bibliography. Brenda Coven. Metuchen, New Jersey & London: Scarecrow Press, 1982. 237 pp.

Women in Film: Both Sides of the Camera by E. Ann Kaplan. New York and London: Methuen, Inc., September, 1983.

Biographical Dictionary of Dance.Barbara Naomi Cohen‐Stratyner. New York: Schirmer Books, 1982. 970 pp.

American Women in Jazz: 1900 to the Present—Their Words, Lives, and Music.Sally Placksin. U.S.A.: Wideview Books, 1982. 322 pp. Bibliography, index, and discography.

Women in Theatre: Compassion and Hope.Karen Malpede. New York: Drama Book Publishers, 1983. 265 pp. Selected bibiography and index.

Listings     

A social-ecological approach to voluntary environmental initiatives: the case of nature-based tourism

This paper addresses the role of voluntary environmental initiatives by the tourism industry to alleviate social dilemmas for the management of natural resources. The objective is to explore whether previous findings on the determinants of voluntary action in the management of common-pool resources (CPR) also apply to a sector, such as tourism, where non-extractive uses are dominant. The paper applies the social-ecological systems framework recently developed by Ostrom (Science, 325, 419–422, 2009) to analyze qualitative data from meta-analyses of successful voluntary environmental initiatives in tourism. Results show that the determinants of voluntary action in tourism are partially consistent with previous research on CPR, finding relevant the presence of leadership, norms of behavior among members of the voluntary initiatives, shared mental modes, salience of the resource for users, and substantial productivity of the resource system in the likelihood of self-organization. However, other variables that have been shown to be relevant in non-tourism CPR situations are not supported by this analysis, such as: most variables regarding the ecological system (its size, predictability, and the mobility of its derived resource units) as well as the number of users and supportive collective choice rules that enable users to craft and enforce some of their own rules. The implications of this partial mismatch in findings are not straightforward. The paper presents a set of research questions that open a path for further research.