Of ‘Strong’ Leadership,Crisis Communication,and Pooper Scoopers: Change in the Queensland Public Service Under Newman

Governments have historically offered their workforce a public service bargain founded on stable pay and conditions and job security. However, while the Westminster system aims for public service employment to be protected from the whims of government, public servants are nonetheless affected by the political environment in which they operate and changes to this bargain can occur with a new government. This paper focuses on a Queensland public service change process that resulted in large‐scale forced redundancies, non‐renewal of temporary contracts, and legislative changes that nullified the provisions in job security, organisational change, and redundancy policies. Using communication as a lens through which to understand leadership, it examines how the government communicated with the public service about this organisational change, immediately before and after the 2012 election. In particular, through analysis of public and media commentary, speeches and Hansard records, it examines Premier Newman's change leadership and communication by contrasting pre‐election messages to the public service with post‐election messages about the public service and the justifications for change during this period of downsizing. This analysis is used to reflect on political leadership, communication, fair treatment, and trust in public service change.     

When markets fail to deliver: An examination of the privatization and de‐privatization of water and wastewater services delivery in Hamilton,Canada

Abstract: The emergence of the “New Public Management” (NPM) and its faith in markets led governments to search for alternative methods in the delivery of public services. One of the most popular methods was privatization. The rationale behind the choice of privatization is based on what Charles Wolf describes as “non‐market failure.” This article argues that the market may not be as efficient as its proponents have asserted, especially when there is a monopoly over service delivery. This has been the case in many municipalities, in some developed countries, where privatization of water service delivery has reverted to public delivery. Using the City of Hamilton's experience with its water and wastewater services as an example, the authors' finding is that the nature of the good to be delivered is essential in determining whether the “market” or the “public” provides the best method of service delivery. Sommaire : L'émergence de la Nouvelle gestion publique (NGP) et sa foi dans les marchés ont conduit les gouvernements à rechercher des méthodes de rechange pour la prestation des services publics. L'une des méthodes les plus populaires est la privatisation. La justification du choix de la privatisation est fondée sur ce que Charles Wolf décrit comme un ≪“échec du non marché”≫. L'article fait valoir que le marché pourrait ne pas être aussi efficace que ses adeptes l'ont prétendu, en particulier lorsqu'il existe un monopole dans la prestation des services. Cela fut le cas dans de nombreuses municipalités de certains pays développés, où la privatisation de la prestation de leurs services en eau est repassée à la prestation publique. En prenant comme exemple l'expérience de la ville d'Hamilton concernant ses services d'approvisionnement en eau et d'évacuation des eaux usées, l'article conclut que la nature du produit à livrer est déterminante pour savoir si c'est le “marché” ou le “public” qui fournit la meilleure méthode de prestation de services.     

Rethinking the Boundaries of Intimacy at the End of the Century: The Role of Victim-Defendant Relationship in Criminal Justice Decisionmaking Over Time

I investigate whether the degree of intimacy between victims and defendants affects legal responses to violence and how this association has changed over time. Using data on homicides between 1974 and 1996, I examine court outcomes in more than 1,000 cases. I demonstrate that intimacy matters at three criminal justice stages: charging, mode of conviction, and sentencing. However, moving beyond the traditional conceptualization of intimacy, I show that defendants who kill intimates do not always receive the same treatment, nor are all defendants who kill nonintimates treated similarly. Finally, I show that criminal justice leniency toward intimate violence is less evident in recent years.     

Onward and Upward: the Significance of Mentorship for Formerly Incarcerated Students and Academics

In the era of mass incarceration, millions of American citizens have been disenfranchised by the social stigma of a felony conviction. Mentorship of formerly incarcerated (FI) students by FI academics—many of whom identify with Convict Criminology (CC)—is slowly forging a pathway out of the social wasteland of past felony convictions. A common goal of CC is to help FI students and academics overcome the social and structural barriers that severely limit their life chances, as well as those of millions of FI citizens in the world’s largest prison system. In this article, three FI criminology faculty members focus on the vital importance of mentorship presented through individual autoethnographic writings. We emphasize four prominent narratives or themes: (1) common narratives of the role of mentorship: encouragement, inclusion, and social capital; (2) differing narratives of the role of mentorship; (3) common narratives of the role of mentorship: experiences of mentoring as activism and advocacy; and (4) common narratives of the role of mentorship in reducing professional fragility. We also consider other dynamics that might emerge in the mentor–mentee relationship involving FI individuals, including the complexities of “coming out” as FI and the fragility of FI identity in the academic world. We conclude with recommendations for future research on the role of mentorship for FI individuals and make suggestions for other areas of study for CC, more generally.

     

Collective Reputations Affect Donations to Nonprofits

Maintaining their organization's reputation is an important challenge for nonprofit managers. Organizations are often linked via a common reputation within their industry or sector such that publicity about one organization can spill over to affect how stakeholders view its peers. The linkages of common reputations may be particularly pronounced among nonprofits because important dimensions of their quality are difficult to observe directly. In this paper, we show that when the third‐party evaluator Charity Navigator rates nonprofits and displays ratings of their peers, it creates a collective reputation among groups of nonprofits performing similar functions in the same region. Through an analysis of 3,413 charities from 1993 through 2008, we find that donations to nonprofits rated by Charity Navigator rise and fall with the published Charity Navigator ratings of their peers. The effect appears to be due to the charity updating fundraising choices in response to the ratings rather than donor reactions. The presence of collective reputations has important implications for nonprofit management, such as collective self‐regulation programs.     

Self‐Determination in the Constitutional Future of the EU

This article analyses three prominent proposals for the functional and political transformation of the EU from a constitutional perspective. It argues that existing EU reform proposals, to varying degrees, entrench rather than reverse the challenges to individual and political self‐determination brought about by the EU's response to its Euro crisis. As the article will conclude, challenging ‘authoritarian liberalism' in an EU context may require the development of a constitutional structure for the Union able to contest, rather than set in stone, the EU's existing economic and political goals.