Contents
Number 1 - Special Issue
- Keeping up Appearances: The Quest for Governance Legitimacy
Graham Bowrey - Financial Sustainability and the Imperative for Reform in Investment Organisation in Australia's Local Government Sector
Martin Gold - Moving to Sustainability: An Application of a Matrix Model to Gain Insight into the Research Literature
Dianne McGrath and M. Reg Matthews
Number 2 - Special Issue
- Management Control Systems and Public Sector Reform: A Fijian Case Study
Manzurul Alam and Ruvendra Nandan - A Critical Comment on the Analysis of Shared Services in the Queensland Local Government Associations's Size, Shape and Sustainability Program
Brian Dollery and Alexandr Akimov - Corporate Social Performance and Financial Performance
Inga Kristoffersen, Paul Gerrans and Marilyn Clark-Murphy
Full copies of all articles are available for purchase at the Proquest or Informit websites.
Abstracts
Number 1
Keeping up Appearances: The Quest for Governance Legitimacy
Graham Bowrey
An effective corporate governance structure is as crucial to a public sector organisation as it is to a private sector organisation. This paper reviews the profile of directors on governance boards of government controlled organisations and finds that, while the governance structures are similar with those in the private sector, the real power to set the strategic, financial and operational directions of these organisations is not in the hands of the directors, as it is in the private sector, but in the hands of the responsible ministers. This de-coupling, it is argued, is due to the perception that private sector governance practices are superior to public sector practices and therefore these government organisations, in an attempt to maintain the appearance of good governance and to legitimise their place in society, have adopted on the surface private sector governance structures and practices.
Financial Sustainability and the Imperative for Reform in Investment Organisation in Australia's Local Government Sector
Martin Gold
Recent losses reported from the so-called sub-prime category have brought renewed scrutiny of the investment practices employed across the Australian local government sector. Currently, different prudential investment standards apply: an anomalous situation which suggests legislative reform is needed to introduce standardised portfolio management practices that can deliver optimal economic outcomes for communities. Any reform of investment governance within the sector, however, must be cognisant of the broader imperative of addressing the financial sustainability of the sector. Following recent investment debacles in the sector - and in the context of the rhetoric of cooperative federalism - this paper argues that uniform investment powers should be promulgated across the Commonwealth, and the local government sector empowered to develop appropriate investment objectives which feature a centralised funds management model.
Moving to Sustainability: An Application of a Matrix Model to Gain Insight into the Research Literature
Dianne McGrath and M. Reg Matthews
This paper proposes a matrix structure to gain an insight into the research literature that has provided the basis for the development of the current concept of sustainability. The literature during the decade 1995 to 2005 is adopted for the purpose of providing an example of the matrix structure. As noted by Gray (2002), this research field serves a diverse purpose and may be perceived as lacking in coherence. This perception may be particularly true for those new to the field. The matrix model adopted in this paper is an extension of the matrix model developed by Mathews (2004), which built on an earlier framework (Mathews, 1997b) to organise the literature. The Mathews (2004) extended model combined the underlying research philosophies with the nature of the research. The inclusion of time and nation of origin, as quasi measures of the underlying social, economic and political forces, presents an opportunity to gain a greater appreciation of the drivers of sustainability accounting research.
Number 2
Management Control Systems and Public Sector Reform: A Fijian Case Study
Manzurul Alam and Ruvendra Nandan
Even though new public management (NPM) has been viewed as a transferable technology, its adoption in developing countries has often been questioned. As most developing countries have colonial pasts, it is important to see public sector changes within the prevailing institutions, traditions and practices that originated in colonial eras. By using a case study approach, this study explores how organisational accounting and control systems, as part of the reform process, are implicated in the complex web of social, cultural and political contexts. The implementation of such a reform process can be seen as problematic due to contradictions between the applicability of new technologies, such as accounting techniques, and the prevailing social practices, which are influenced by different values, beliefs and traditions.
A Critical Comment on the Analysis of Shared Services in the Queensland Local Government Associations's Size, Shape and Sustainability Program
Brian Dollery and Alexandr Akimov
Recent national and state-based inquiries into the financial circumstances of Australian local councils have demonstrated unequivocally that many municipalities are in a parlous monetary state. This has inter alia shed severe doubt on the efficacy of recent forced amalgamation programs in several Australian local government jurisdictions and has stimulated the search for alternative methods of improving the operational efficiency of local councils in an effort to generate costs savings. While all these inquiries have recommended shared service institutional arrangements as the best alternative to amalgamation, only the now defunct Queensland Local Government Association?s (2006) Size, Shape and Sustainability Program has provided a detailed analysis of the purported benefits of shared services. In this paper, we show that the Size, Shape and Sustainability Report and its main supporting study are fraught with errors and misleading interpretations of available evidence on shared services and should thus be treated with great caution in future by local government policymakers.
Corporate Social Performance and Financial Performance
Inga Kristoffersen, Paul Gerrans and Marilyn Clark-Murphy
The debate on whether corporate social performance and financial performance are substitutes or complements has been long and unresolved. The evidence presented in this paper demonstrates that there are clear associations between measures of corporate environmental, social and governance performance and financial characteristics and, moreover, that they are sensitive to industry classification. There is no evidence of trade-offs between environmental, social and governance performance and shareholder wealth, in terms of either risk or return. For firms in the banking, diversified financials, insurance and telecommunications industries high governance performance is strongly related to superior financial performance.