Politics and school education in Australia : a case of shifting purposes

Purpose – The paper aims to argue that there has been a privileging of the private (social mobility) and economic (social efficiency) purposes of schooling at the expense of the public (democratic equality) purposes of schooling. Design/methodology/approach – The paper employs a literature review, policy and document analysis. Findings – Since the late 1980s, the schooling agenda in Australia has been narrowed to one that gives primacy to purposes of schooling that highlight economic orientations (social efficiency) and private purposes (social mobility). Practical implications – The findings have wider relevance beyond Australia, as similar policy agendas are evident in many other countries raising the question as to how the shift in purposes of education in those countries might mirror those in Australia. Originality/value – While earlier writers have examined schooling policies in Australia and noted the implications of managerialism in relation to these policies, no study has analysed these policies from the perspective of the purposes of schooling. Conceptualising schooling, and its purposes in particular, in this way refocuses attention on how societies use their educational systems to promote (or otherwise) the public good.

From go to woe : how a not-for-profit managed the change to accrual accounting

Purpose – The aim of this paper is to examine the process of change in an Australian not-for-profit organization, from a cash-based to an accrual-based accounting system. Its particular focus is the relationship between the image portrayed by accrual accounting adoption and the technical realities of the new system. Design/methodology/approach – Data were gathered from interviews, documents and meetings, and were contextualized and interpreted using institutional theory. Findings – The decision to change to accrual accounting was made at the top of the organizational hierarchy in response to institutional pressure to present a corporate image. The implementation of the new system was poorly conceived, inadequately resourced, and hampered by an authoritarian structure that effectively ignored the technical incompetence and training needs of many accounting staff. This resulted in an accounting system half way between cash and accrual, and very different from the system as it had been promoted. The process caused conflict at all levels of the organizational hierarchy. Research limitations/implications – Accounting in not-for-profit organizations is an under-researched area offering potential for fruitful research in a changing institutional landscape. This institutional approach, while offering just one interpretation of the qualitative data gathered in this project, provides valuable insights about the process of change. Practical implications – Not-for-profit organizations play a vital economic and social role, and need carefully to assess their responses to ongoing institutional pressures. In implementing change, they face the challenge of balancing the promotion of an institutionally acceptable image and the need for technical efficiencies. Originality/value – The examination of change in an organization provides a rich context for the exploration of the dynamic, problematic process by which a new accounting practice is embedded and institutionalized. Keywords Institutional theory, Not-for-profit organizations, Accrual accounting, Change process, Qualitative research, Change management, Decision making, Training needs, Australia Paper type Research paper

Multiculturalism, education for sustainable development (ESD) and the shifting discursive landscape of social inclusion

Australia has a long and sometimes turbulent relationship with the migrant Other. This paper examines a component of this relationship via the window of contemporary multicultural policy. The paper begins with an analysis of the political and social conditions that enabled a national and bipartisan policy of multiculturalism to emerge as formalised federal policy during the late 1960s and early 1970s. The paper re-problematises the influences that helped shape Australia's articulation of race and ethnicity and argues that multiculturalism, within a post-September 11 environment, can no longer be framed solely within its traditional framework of social justice. The paper positions education for sustainable development (ESD) as an emerging discursive field that provides educators with an alternative road map for critiquing Australia's fluid relationship with the migrant Other. By linking the tenets of multiculturalism with ESD, this paper suggests pre-service teacher educators are presented with a productive, and at the same time politically palatable, means for regaining pedagogical traction for a semi-dormant agenda of social inclusion.

International law and the regulation of violence : shifting perceptions of the legitimacy of the jus ad bellum?

International law’s capacity to influence state behaviour by regulating recourse to violence has been a longstanding source of debate among international lawyers and political scientists. On the one hand, sceptics assert that frequent violations of the prohibition on the use of force have rendered article 2(4) of the UN Charter redundant. They contend that national self-interest, rather than international law, is the key determinant of state behaviour regarding the use of force. On the other hand, defenders of article 2(4) argue first, that most states comply with the Charter framework, and second, that state rhetoric continues to acknowledge the existence of the jus ad bellum. In particular, the fact that violators go to considerable lengths to offer legal or factual justifications for their conduct – typically by relying on the right of self-defence – is advanced as evidence that the prohibition on the use of force retains legitimacy in the eyes of states. This paper identifies two potentially significant features of state practice since 2006 which may signal a shift in states’ perceptions of the normative authority of article 2(4). The first aspect is the recent failure by several states to offer explicit legal justifications for their use or force, or to report action taken in self-defence to the Security Council in accordance with Article 51. Four incidents linked to the global “war on terror” are examined here: Israeli airstrikes in Syria in 2007 and in Sudan in 2009, Turkey’s 2006-2008 incursions into northern Iraq, and Ethiopia’s 2006 intervention in Somalia. The second, more troubling feature is the international community’s apparent lack of concern over the legality of these incidents. Each use of force is difficult to reconcile with the strict requirements of the jus ad bellum; yet none attracted genuine legal scrutiny or debate among other states. While it is too early to conclude that these relatively minor incidents presage long term shifts in state practice, viewed together the two developments identified here suggest a possible downgrading of the role of international law in discussions over the use of force, at least in conflicts linked to the “war on terror”. This, in turn, may represent a declining perception of the normative authority of the jus ad bellum, and a concomitant admission of the limits of international law in regulating violence.

Big, bigger, best? The impact of reforms on the not-for-profit sector in Queensland

Organisations within the not-for-profit sector provide services to individuals and groups that government and for-profit organisations cannot or will not consider. The not-for-profit sector has come to be a vibrant and rich agglomeration of services and programs that operate under a myriad of philosophical stances, service orientation, client groupings and operational capacities. In Australia these organisations and services are providing social support and service assistance to many people in the community; often targeting their assistance to the most difficult of clients. Initially, in undertaking this role, the not-for-profit sector received limited sponsorship from government. Over time governments assumed greater responsibility in the form of service grants to particular groups: ‘the worthy poor’. More recently, they have entered into contractual service agreements with the not-for-profit sector, which specify the nature of the outcomes to be achieved and, to a degree, the way in which the services will be provided. A consequence of this growing shift to a more marketised model of service contracting, often offered-up under the label of enhanced collaborative practice, has been increased competitiveness between agencies that had previously worked well together (Keast and Brown, 2006). Another trend emerging from the market approach is the entrance of for-profit providers. These larger organisations have higher levels of organisational capacity with considerable organisational slack to allow them to adopt new service roles. Shaped almost as ‘shadow governments’ they appear to be a strong preference for governments looking for greater accountability of outcomes and an easier way to control the interaction with the conventional not-for-profit sector. The question is will governments’ apparent preference for larger organisational arrangements lead to the demise of the vibrancy of the not-for-profit sector and impact on service provision to those people who fall outside of the remit of the new service providers? To address this issue, this paper uses information gleaned from a state-wide survey of not-for-profit organisations in Queensland, Australia which included organisational size, operational scope, funding arrangements and governance/management approaches. Supplementing this information is qualitative data derived from 17 focus groups and 120 interviews conducted over ten years of study of this sector. The findings contribute to greater understanding of the practice and theory of the future provision of social services.

Not for profit income tax exemption : is there a hole in the bucket, dear Henry?

Australia’s Future Tax System Review, headed by the then head of the Australian Treasury, and the Productivity Commission’s Research Report on the not for profit sector, both examined the state of tax concessions to Australia’s not for profit sector in the light of the High Court’s decision in Commissioner of Taxation v Word Investments Ltd. Despite being unable to quantify with any certainty the pre- or post-Word Investments cost of the tax concessions, both Reports indicated their support for continuation of the income tax exemption. However, the government acted in the 2011 Budget to target the not for profit income tax concessions more precisely, mainly on competitive neutrality grounds. This article examines the income tax exemption by applying the five taxation design principles, proposed in the Australia’s Future Tax System Review, for assessing tax expenditure. The conclusion is that the exemptions can be justified and, further, that a rationale for the exemption can be consistent with the reasoning in the Word Investments case.

A hybrid shifting bottleneck procedure algorithm for the parallel-machine job-shop scheduling problem

In practice, parallel-machine job-shop scheduling (PMJSS) is very useful in the development of standard modelling approaches and generic solution techniques for many real-world scheduling problems. In this paper, based on the analysis of structural properties in an extended disjunctive graph model, a hybrid shifting bottleneck procedure (HSBP) algorithm combined with Tabu Search metaheuristic algorithm is developed to deal with the PMJSS problem. The original-version SBP algorithm for the job-shop scheduling (JSS) has been significantly improved to solve the PMJSS problem with four novelties: i) a topological-sequence algorithm is proposed to decompose the PMJSS problem into a set of single-machine scheduling (SMS) and/or parallel-machine scheduling (PMS) subproblems; ii) a modified Carlier algorithm based on the proposed lemmas and the proofs is developed to solve the SMS subproblem; iii) the Jackson rule is extended to solve the PMS subproblem; iv) a Tabu Search metaheuristic algorithm is embedded under the framework of SBP to optimise the JSS and PMJSS cases. The computational experiments show that the proposed HSBP is very efficient in solving the JSS and PMJSS problems.

Corporate profit and impression management in developing markets

In this study, we examine how organisations in Fiji communicate or legitimise their profit. We base the need for understanding this phenomenon on the following premise. Organisations are part of a wider society, and in competition for scarce resources. Organisations obtain the rights to consume resources upon conception, but must continually legitimise their rights of existence and the need to access the resources. Legitimacy is the ability to continue to justify one’s authority to exist in a society. Organisations rights to resources are contractual, and have a moral obligation to act in a responsible manner and justify their outcomes, actions, and activities to external stakeholders. Such justifications would be an attempt at legitimizing their existence by some form of impression management. Impression management refers to the process by which individuals attempt to influence the impression of others (Melo et al. 2009). In corporate reporting, impression management occurs when management selects, display, and presents that information in a manner that distorts readers’ perceptions of corporate achievements (Neu 1991; Patten 2002), and is managed best through disclosures (O’Donovan 2002). In developing economies, there is significant Government protection that creates near-monopoly sectors and industries. The rendered protection permits organisations to provide essential services to the community at reasonable costs. Organisations in these sectors and industries have an ominous need to legitimise their position and actions. The bond between the organisations and the society is much stronger, making organisations devote more effort in communicating their activities. Protection permits organisations to make reasonable profits to sustain their operations. Society may not accept abnormal profits from operational efficiencies. Profit is fundamental to the society’s perception of an organisation, amplifying the need for the firm to justify a level of profit. Abnormal profit for organisations construes bad news, and organisations would make relevant disclosures to manage stakeholder impressions on profit (Patten 2002). Organisations can manage impressions by disclosing information in a particular way. That is, organisations would want to put the impression that the abnormal profit is justified and the society will obtain its benefits in future. Such form of impression management requires unambiguous disclosure of information. The readability of corporate disclosures is an important indicator of organisational abnormal profit-related legitimacy efforts in developing economies.

Profit and organisational legitimacy in an emerging market

While there is common acknowledgement that the main aim of organisations is to maximise shareholder wealth, firms also have the obligation to manage the needs of a broader group of stakeholders as these firms are a product of social creation. In this study, we test the notion that the concept, profit, is fundamental to society’s perception of the firm in an emerging market, and the need for a firm to legitimise a level of profit. We evaluate the relationship between the readability of various components of corporate annual reports and the level of profit, and we also take into account the nature of disclosure (mandatory and non-mandatory), the size of the firm and the nature of setup (public enterprises and publicly listed companies). Our findings suggest that, as with developed markets, in emerging markets profit is indeed an important determinant of the nature of operations of a firm, and that firms consider readability of their disclosures in attempting to legitimise a level of profit.

Not-for-profit ratios for financial resilience and internal accountability : a study of Australian international aid organisations

Not-for-profit (NFP) financial ratio research has focused primarily on organisational efficiency measurements for external stakeholders. Ratios that also capture information about stability, capacity (liquidity), gearing and sustainability, enable an assessment of financial resilience. They are thus valuable tools that can provide a framework of internal accountability between boards and management. The establishment of an Australian NFP regulator highlights the importance of NFP sustainability, and affirms the timeliness of this paper. We propose a suite of key financial ratios for use by NFP boards and management, and demonstrate its practical usefulness by applying the ratios to financial data from the 2009 reports of ACFID (Australian Council for International Development)-affiliated international aid organisations.

Strategic planning in a non profit organistion : valuing the process

Non-profit organisations by their very nature are staffed by a variety of different people with a range of backgrounds, experiences and reasons for participation. These differences can lead to “distancing” of certain groups and with little time or money for boundary spanning the organisation can find itself in a fractured state that hampers not just its goal realisation, but its goal determination. Strategic planning is often seen as an expensive, time consuming process that many smaller non-profit organisations can little afford to indulge in. In addition, the ruling elite, whether historical or professional may view the process as unnecessary or threatening. However, strategic planning can offer processes and potential outcomes that non profit organisations can not afford to ignore. This paper provides an analysis through one case study involving a non-profit, health related organisation that moved through a process of strategic planning that ultimately encouraged development and group cohesion through goal identification and determination as well as strategy formulation. The results indicate the importance of valuing the strategic planning process itself rather than the form it takes. Challenging the rulership of the historical or professional elite can be difficult in a non-profit organisation, but diversity of involvement rather than uniformity proved to be a successful strategy. Organisational cohesion through consensus building was the ultimate outcome.