Governance Project
Governance has emerged very quickly into the foreground of international business since the Asian crisis and ENRON. Recently Australia has also experienced some bad corporate collapses, notably HIH, One.Tel and Ansett.
The Centre brings together several strands of research expertise in both business-government relations and business management. Our focus is not upon the issues of formal compliance or executive remuneration that have dominated public debate but upon the underlying determinants of the quality of management and the monitoring of performance.
Australia's economic geography requires firms to position themselves between American, European and Asian styles of management. This is necessary both to attract inwards FDI and to achieve competitive advantage in outwards FDI. Without explicit awareness of how Australia's rather cocooned business environment differs from various international contexts, Australian firms will continue to struggle in acquiring the necessary cross-cultural skills.
The particular strengths of the Centre lie in foreign direct investment, Asian business, cross-cultural management and diversity management, namely:
- Corruption and governance in Asia (Howard Dick)
- Evolution of governance in Australian corporations (David Merrett, Tatiana Zalan)
- Leading issues in cross-cultural management (Anne-Wil Harzing)
- Management and Diversity (André Sammartino)
1. Corruption and governance in Asia (Howard Dick)
This is an ongoing project in conjunction with Dr Elizabeth Maitland (School of International Business, University of New South Wales) and Associate Professor Tim Lindsey and Dr Pip Nicholson of the Faculty of Law (University of Melbourne).
Lindsey & Dick (eds), Corruption in Asia: Challenging the Governance Paradigm, Sydney: Federation Press (2002) is already available.
2. Evolution of governance in Australian corporations (David Merrett)
Corporate governance has become a major issue of policy in Australia as it is in many other countries. Traditionally, the situation was best described by the title of Mark Roe's influential book on the USA, Strong Managers, Weak Owners (1994). However, the balance of power between owners, directors and managers has shifted towards owners in the past 10 to 15 years as a result of many mutually reinforcing factors. These include reforms in financial markets prompting hostile take overs, compulsory superannuation contributions to fund retirement, the rise of a more activist role by institutional shareholders, the use of performance related executive remuneration and tougher laws and regulations by both the federal government and Australian Stock Exchange. These developments notwithstanding, shareowners in many firms have found to their cost that the directors and executives have pursued their own interests at the expense of those of the owners. The link between corporate governance and firm performance is not well understood. Research on that question has been conducted as part of a wider study of the growth and performance of big business in Australia in the twentieth century. The issues are canvassed in more detail in the publications listed below.
D.T. Merrett and K. A. Houghton, 'Corporate takeovers and corporate governance: whose interests do directors serve?', Abacus, 35, 2 (1999), 223-40.
D. T. Merrett, 'Corporate governance, incentives and the internationalization of Australian business', paper presented to the Business History Conference at the Hagley Museum and Library, Wilmington, Delaware, 19-20 April (2002).
Grant Fleming, David Merrett and Simon Ville, 'The Big End of Town': Big Business and Corporate Leadership in Twentieth-Australia, Cambridge University Press, forthcoming 2004.
3. Leading issues in cross-cultural management (Anne-Wil Harzing)
A fundamental governance issue in IB is to adapt the organisation to crossing boundaries, which leads to the need for broad cultural adaptations. Research projects in this area focus on the relationship between headquarters and subsidiaries, the transfer of (HRM) policies across borders and the role of expatriates as interfaces between countries. For more details see www.harzing.com.
4. Management and Diversity (André Sammartino, Janine O'Flynn)
This was a project funded by the Department of Immigration and Multicultural and Indigenous Affairs, and focused on making "bottom line" arguments to senior executives for more responsible and effective management of Australia's diverse human resources. The major output from the project is available on this site.
See also:
'Corporate Australia's Attitude Toward Indigenous Employment' (with Janine O'Flynn, Karen Lau, and Stephen Nicholas), HRMonthly, June 2002, pp.26-8
'Diversity Management - Capturing the Diversity Dividend', (with Janine O'Flynn, Karen Lau, Lisa Selalmatzidis and Stephen Nicholas), CEDA Bulletin, October 2001, pp.45-6
For more information: Contact us