The lives of all Australians are profoundly affected by the quality of social services available, but a long list of royal commissions and public inquiries have revealed them to be failing. In The Careless State Mark Considine shows that the preferred model of reform has failed to adapt and improve. In the 1980s Australian governments faced rapidly increasing demand for services in areas like employment assistance, aged care, childcare and vocational education and training; to res...

Scholars and policymakers have long known that there is a strong link between human development and spending on key areas such as education and health. However, many states still neglect these considerations in favour of competing priorities, such as expanding their armies. This book examines how states arrive at these decisions, analysing how democratic accountability influences public spending and impacts on human development.The book shows how the broader paradigm of democratic ...

Contracting-out Welfare Services focuses on the design and overhaul of welfare-to-work systems around the world in the light of the radical re-design of the welfare system; internationally based authors utilise a national/program case study, considering employment services policy and activation practices.International contributors bring a global comparative perspective to the subjectContributors are all experts in their field, who also draw on a much longer...

Buying and Selling the Poor ventures behind the scenes of the multibillion-dollar welfare-to-work system, offering new insights into how Australia responds to unemployment and disadvantage. As the authors tell the story of four local employment offices, they paint a vivid picture of a critically important social service which many people are aware of but which few properly understand. They also reveal the wider impacts that processes of marketisation and welfare reform have had on...

Offering a concise and critical comparison of EU competition law and US antitrust law from an economic perspective, this is the ideal textbook for international and interdisciplinary courses combining law and economic approaches.The book provides thorough coverage including the definition of market power, the use of horizontal and vertical restrictions, mergers and the unilateral conduct of dominant firms. It also includes discussion of problems relating to the enforcement of legal...

In this Element the origins of corporate governance are reviewed, recognising that corporate entities have always been governed, that important developments took place in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and the huge significance of the invention of the joint-stock limited liability company. The development of corporate governance in the twentieth century around the world is explored, with complex groups, private companies, and top management dominating shareholder power appearing...

Commerce is inherently complex and the sums of money involved can be astronomical, so it is no surprise that conflicts and disputes are all too common. There are numerous techniques designed to resolve these problems, and this book summarizes the most important of these, as well as alternative dispute resolution methods. The reader seeking a deeper understanding of these procedures will also find clear explanations of the principles and methods for conflict management, such as negotiation,...

The behavior of managers-such as the rewards they obtain for poor performance, the role of boards of directors in monitoring managers, and the regulatory framework covering the corporate governance mechanisms that are put in place to ensure managers' accountability to shareholder and other stakeholders-has been the subject of extensive media and policy scrutiny in light of the financial crisis of the early 2000s. However, corporate governance covers a much broader set of issues, which requ...

The rise of corporate social responsibility (CSR) is creating a paradigm shift in contemporary corporate culture and organizational behaviour with shareholder and stakeholder activism on the rise as international banking crises and global corporate scandals dominate the headlines.Through accountability and transparency, fiduciary capitalism is being challenged to tie sustainability and corporate conscience to the bottom line. With the emergence of impact investing, social responsibi...

The seventh edition of the bestselling Public Sector Management is a rich and insightful description, analysis and critique of the management of the public sector by the UK government.NEW to the seventh edition:Now set in an international context with comparative global examples throughoutThree new chapters covering: strategy and planning in the public sector; transparency, accountability and ethics; and non-profit management, including the role of social en...

‘A new and compelling argument for why so many institutions continue to be spellbound by rankings and metrics – despite the cultural carnage they cause. How can we halt this “death by audit”? The authors develop a radical agenda that will strike fear into number-loving technocrats around the world’ Peter Fleming, author of Dark Academia: How Universities Die‘A powerful and definitive critical diagnosis of the effects of audit culture on individuals...

How can we ensure high-quality public services such as health care and education? Governments spend huge amounts of public money on public services such as health, education, and social care, and yet the services that are actually delivered are often low quality, inefficiently run, unresponsive to their users, and inequitable in their distribution. In this book, Julian Le Grand argues that the best solution is to offer choice to users and to encourage competition among providers. Le Grand ...