Book reviews : "Biosecurity interventions: global health and security in question"

International Relations’ engagement with global health governance has proliferated in the last decade. There are a number of excellent works that seek to understand how the relationship between politics and health shapes and informs people’s lives and governments’ policies. However, the overt securitization of health by the IR field has, Biosecurity interventions argues, remained relatively unproblematized...

Law and Global Health

Law and Global Health, the sixteenth volume in the Current Legal Issues series, offers an insight into the scholarship examining the relationship between global health and the law. Covering a wide range of areas from all over the world, articles in the volume look at areas of human rights, vulnerable populations, ethical issues, legal responses and governance.

The Politics of Urban Cultural Policy : Global Perspectives

The Politics of Urban Cultural Policy brings together a range of international experts to critically analyze the ways that governmental actors and non-governmental entities attempt to influence the production and implementation of urban policies directed at the arts, culture, and creative activity. Presenting a global set of case studies that span five continents and 22 cities, the essays in this book advance our understanding of how the dynamic interplay between economic and political context, institutional arrangements, and social networks affect urban cultural policy-making and the ways that these policies impact urban development and influence urban governance. The volume comparatively studies urban cultural policy-making in a diverse set of contexts, analyzes the positive and negative outcomes of policy for different constituencies, and identifies the most effective policy directions, emerging political challenges, and most promising opportunities for building effective cultural policy coalitions. The volume provides a comprehensive and in-depth engagement with the political process of urban cultural policy and urban development studies around the world. It will be of interest to students and researchers interested in urban planning, urban studies and cultural studies.

Social audits and global clothing supply chains : some observations

This study provides some preliminary insight in relation to the use of social audits by the global clothing and retail companies that source garment products from developing nations. In the era of globalisation, companies based in developed nations have transferred their production locations to many parts of the developing nations. At the same time, there are widespread global stakeholder concerns about the use of child labour, inadequate health and safety standards and poor working conditions at many of these production locations. Social audits appear to be a tool used by companies to monitor working conditions and to ensure that manufacturing takes place in a humane working environment. The study finds that companies use social auditing in order to maintain their legitimacy within the wider community.

Social Compliance Accounting : Managing Legitimacy in Global Supply Chains

This book covers key discussions involving major US and European multinational companies (MNCs) that source products from suppliers in developing countries. Due to the transfer of production from developed to developing nations, there is an urgent need to establish social compliance as a new form of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) and a means by which MNCs can meet expected social standards. The cases described are internationally relevant and can be seen to reflect or represent the behavior of many MNCs and their suppliers in developing nations. The discussion offers essential insights into how different levels of social compliance risk and pressure (including broader stakeholder concerns) move managers to adopt or embrace particular social compliance accounting, reporting and auditing strategies. The book will help readers to understand the major concerns, challenges and dilemmas faced by management in the supply chains of MNCs, and proposes measures that can be taken to resolve those dilemmas. Most importantly, it develops a systematic method of assessing the social compliance performance of suppliers to MNCs. This includes highly detailed accounts of the social compliance performance of suppliers within the clothing industry (in a developing nation) that supply goods to the extensive US and European markets. The book offers a valuable guide, not only for corporate managers but also for practitioners, researchers, academics, and undergraduate and postgraduate business students.

The evolving landscape of natural resource planning and governance in Australia

Australia’s governance of land and natural resources involves multiple polycentric domains of decision-making from global through to local levels. Although certainly complex, these arrangements have not necessarily translated into better decision-making or better environmental outcomes as evidenced by the growing concerns over the health and future of the Great Barrier Reef, (GBR). However within this system, arrangements for natural resource management (NRM) and reef water quality, which both use Australia’s integrated regional NRM model, have showed signs of improving decision-making and environmental outcomes in the GBR. In this paper we describe the latest evolutions in the governance and planning for natural resource use and management in Australia. We begin by reviewing the experience with first generation NRM as published in major audits and evaluations. As our primary interest is the health and future of the GBR, we then consider the impact of changes of second generation planning and governance outcomes in Queensland. We find that first generation plans, although developed under a relatively cohesive governance context, faced substantial problems in target setting, implementation, monitoring and review. Despite this, they were able to progress improvements in water quality in the Great Barrier Reef Regions. Second generation plans, currently being developed, face an even greater risk of failure due to the lack of bilateralism and cross-sectoral cooperation across the NRM governance system. The findings highlight the critical need to re-build and enhance the regional NRM model for NRM planning to have a positive impact on environmental outcomes in the GBR.

A social licence to operate: Corporate social responsibility, local communities and the constitution of global production networks

This article contributes to the theorization of the role of informal regulation (undertaken by leading firms) in the ongoing organization of global production networks. It does so through a qualitative case study of BHP Billiton's Ravensthorpe Nickel Operation (RNO) in the rural Shire of Ravensthorpe in Western Australia. This less tangible, and to date under-researched, dimension of global production networks is foregrounded through a focus on the corporate social responsibility strategy implemented by RNO in the service of achieving and/or demonstrating a broader ‘social licence to operate’. This ‘licence’ functions – beyond the corporation – as a legitimated and legitimating multi-scalar mechanism through which to gain and maintain access to mineral resources and thus to establish viable and ongoing global production networks. Further, this informal regulation is shown to shape social relations and qualities of place conducive to competitive global mineral extraction and to facilitate the positioning of local communities and places in mineral global production networks.

The dynamics of global visual effects and games development industries: lessons for Australia’s creative industries development policy

The paper critiques the focus of creative industries policy on capability development of small and medium sized firms and the provision of regional incentives. It analyses factors affecting the competitiveness and sustainability of the games development industry and visual effects suppliers to feature films. Interviews with participants in these industries highlight the need for policy instruments to take into consideration the structure and organization of global markets and the power of lead multinational corporations. We show that although forms of economic governance in these industries may allow sustainable value capture, they are interrupted by bottlenecks in which ferocious competition among suppliers is confronted by comparatively little competition among the lead firms. We argue that current approaches to creative industries policy aimed at building self-sustaining creative industries are unlikely to be sufficient because of the globalized nature of the industries. Rather, we argue that a more profitable approach is likely to require supporting diversification of the industries as ‘feeders’ into other areas of the economy.

Framing pandemic management: New governance, science or culture?

Management of a pandemic engages multiple sites where previously settled or uncontroversial understandings may be transformed by global and domestic forces. This article examines the iconography of social distancing implicated in the discourses of ‘quarantine’ and ‘risk control’ in public health, and the tension between scientific and popular media readings of the contours of acceptable public health models for managing particular pandemics. The role of culture in shaping and reshaping borders at an operational level is explored as a basis for explaining the apparent paradoxes in the way historic and contemporary pandemics are actually managed, and the different ways particular pandemics are framed. The article argues that a rational-scientific approach to pandemic management is insufficient and that a more nuanced socio-political blend of science, culture and public perceptions offers a more substantial basis for public health policy.

Enterprise technology governance: New information and technology core competencies for boards of directors

Boards of directors have legal and ethical responsibilities to be competent. Yet, in a world where business models and whole sectors are being disrupted by rapid information and technology change, a majority of directors lack IT governance knowledge and skills. Individual IT competency and collective board Enterprise Technology Governance capability is a global problem. Without capability, boards are potentially flying blind, and risk is increased and opportunities to lead and govern digital transformation lost. To address this capability gap, this research provides the first multi-industry validated Enterprise Technology Governance competency set for use in board evaluation, recruitment and professional development.

Anti-bribery disclosures: A response to networked governance

This study examined the posited link between networked governance (the activities of NGOs and the media) and the anti-bribery disclosures of two global telecommunication companies. Based on a joint consideration of legitimacy theory, media agenda setting theory and responsive regulation, the findings show that anti-bribery disclosures are positively associated with the activities of the media and NGO initiatives. The findings also show that companies make anti-bribery disclosures to maintain symbolic legitimacy but are less prominent in effecting a substantive change in their accountability practices.

Women's health and a framework convention on global health

This paper considers the role for a Framework Convention on Global Health in addressing key challenges in women’s health at a global level. Part I analyses the conceptualization of health in terms of human rights and the linking of women’s rights and human rights. Part II seeks to identify pressing issues for women’s health, articulating 10 key challenges for women’s health. Part III considers the proposal for a Framework Convention on Global Health to meet global health needs. Finally, Part IV asks whether international law can provide a valuable platform to support recognition and achievement of women’s health rights and identifies key elements for supporting and promoting women’s health.

Communication and Political Crisis: Media, Politics and Governance in a Globalized Public Sphere

Communication and Political Crisis explores the role of the global media in a period of intensifying geopolitical conflict. Through case studies drawn from domestic and international political crises such as the conflicts in the Middle East and Ukraine, leading media scholar Brian McNair argues that the digitized, globalized public sphere now confronted by all political actors has produced new opportunities for social progress and democratic reform, as well as new channels for state propaganda and terrorist spectaculars such as those performed by the Islamic State and Al Qaeda. In this major work, McNair argues that the role of digital communication will be crucial in determining the outcome of pressing global issues such as the future of feminism and gay rights, freedom of speech and media, and democracy itself.

Governance of enterprise Information and Technology: A new core competency for boards of directors

With the level of digital disruption that is affecting businesses around the globe, you might expect high levels of Governance of Enterprise Information and Technology (GEIT) capability within boards. Boards and their senior executives know technology is important. More than 90% of boards and senior executives currently identify technology as essential to their current businesses, and to their organization’s future. But as few as 16% have sufficient GEIT capability. Global Centre for Digital Business Transformation’s recent research contains strong indicators of the need for change. Despite board awareness of both the likelihood and impact of digital disruption, things digital are still not viewed as a board-level matter in 45% of companies. And, it’s not just the board. The lack of board attention to technology can be mirrored at senior executive level as well. When asked about their organization’s attitude towards digital disruption, 43% of executives said their business either did not recognise it as a priority or was not responding appropriately. A further 32% were taking a “follower” approach, a potentially risky move as we will explain. Given all the evidence that boards know information and technology (I&T***) is vital, that they understand the inevitably, impact and speed of digital change and disruption, why are so many boards dragging their heels? Ignoring I&T disruption and refusing to build capability at board level is nothing short of negligence. Too many boards risk flying blind without GEIT capability [2]. To help build decision quality and I&T governance capability, this research: • Confirms a pressing need to build individual competency and cumulative, across-board capability in governing I&T • Identifies six factors that have rapidly increased the need, risk and urgency • Finds that boards may risk not meeting their duty of care responsibilities when it comes to I&T oversight • Highlights barriers to building capability details three GEIT competencies that boards and executives can use for evaluation, selection, recruitment and professional development.