Ethics as a risk management strategy: the Australian experience

This article addresses the connection of ethics to risk management, and argues that there are compelling reasons to consider good ethical practice to be an essential part of such risk management. That connection has significant commercial outcomes, which include identifying potential problems, preventing fraud, the preservation of corporate reputation, and the mitigation of court penalties should any transgression arise. Information about the legal position, examples of cases, and arguments about the potential benefits of ethics are canvassed. The orientation of this article is essentially Australian. It is hoped that it may provide some insights of value to other countries

Governance and Sustainability in Local Government

According to auditor reports in 2021, local government councils are failing their communities and their voters. Victorian Auditor General’s Office (VAGO) Reports 2021 suggest that the Councils of local governments are rife with conflicts of interest, manipulation of land deals, lacking independence and captured by their CEOs. The Victorian Government has recently introduced a new Local Government Act 2020 (VIC) to address the corruption, poor professional conducts of particular individuals and poor organisational culture exhibited by local government councils. The paper raises questions about what this will mean for local government governance, risk management and accountability, culture and leadership, relationships within councils, and how the inclusion of community governance will impact on the selection of and efficient delivery of programs. A fundamental challenge facing local government is determining the sustainable governance structures and practices that meet the needs of their communities in ways that balance economic, environmental, social and governance concerns. The paper draws on previous research that touch on ESG issues and identifies some areas for further research

Dubai outbound tourism: An exploratory study of Emiratis and expatriates

This research investigates the perceptions of residents of Dubai, United Arab Emirates (UAE) towards the state of Victoria, Australia as a destination and assesses their knowledge of Victoria’s tourism attributes. Focus groups were undertaken with UAE nationals (referred to as Emiratis), expatriate residents and travel agents. In the case of the former group it was found that the previous travel experiences of most respondents involved travelling in family groups with the wife and mother making the key travel-related decisions. The responses appeared to be broadly representative of attitudes prevalent more widely within their relevant families. Of the expatriate respondents, all were experienced travellers who had previously visited Australia. Their tourism interests, in such things as outdoor activities and music, differed from those of the Emiratis. All but one of the respondents in the focus group of travel agents had previously visited Australia. The study fills a gap in researching immature markets. The use of the focus group method illustrates how investigating the perceptions of emerging target markets can provide a useful input to shape future industry development

Relationships of Corporate Governance Mechanisms and Financial Performance in Islamic Banks: a Meta-analysis

Relationships between corporate governance mechanisms and the financial performance of Islamic banks have been researched extensively in prior empirical research. However, the results are mixed, mainly due to the heterogeneity of the samples used for the empirical investigations. This paper reports the results of a meta-analysis of the existing literature on governance mechanisms from which a framework was developed to guide the constructions of governance indices. The results showed that Islamic banks banks tend to have better financial performance if there was (1) a higher proportion of independent directors on the board; (2) the Shari”ah Supervisory Board was large and consisted of top scholars; (3)numerous directors; (4) the CEO was chairman; (5) auditing was enforced and (6) ownership structure was dispersed, reducing shareholding of directors, foreigners and institutional investors, while increasing family and governments’ shareholding. Managers’ shareholding was insignificant.</jats:p

Managing International Development Agencies (IDAs)

Papers presented at the Fourth International Conference on Knowledge, Culture and Change in Organisations, University of Greenwich in London, United Kingdom, 3-6 August 2004.International development agencies (IDAs) operate in a context of diverse stakeholder interests. This requires them to consider the significance of each category of stakeholders to determine the level of interest and power to influence the operations of the IDA. Using interviews and mail questionnaires, fifty-six Australian-based IDAs were examined to determine the extent to which they perceive external stakeholders as influencing their work. The research showed that two categories of stakeholders – donors and governments, were considered the most influential and powerful, hence the need to give priority to their expectations and needs. The “weaker” stakeholders – development clients and partner agencies, had a high level of interest but low power of influence over IDAs. However, they legitimise the existence of IDAs, hence their needs cannot be overlooked. The challenge for the IDA is in balancing the needs of its different categories of stakeholders as ignoring some could result in undermining its credibility.International development agencies (IDAs) operate in a context of diverse stakeholder interests. This requires them to consider the significance of each category of stakeholders to determine the level of interest and power to influence the operations of the IDA. Using interviews and mail questionnaires, fifty-six Australian-based IDAs were examined to determine the extent to which they perceive external stakeholders as influencing their work. The research showed that two categories of stakeholders – donors and governments, were considered the most influential and powerful, hence the need to give priority to their expectations and needs. The “weaker” stakeholders – development clients and partner agencies, had a high level of interest but low power of influence over IDAs. However, they legitimise the existence of IDAs, hence their needs cannot be overlooked. The challenge for the IDA is in balancing the needs of its different categories of stakeholders as ignoring some could result in undermining its credibility

CORRUPTION AND FORMS OF GOVERNMENT

This paper addresses the issue of corruption, and does in the context of different forms of government. Using democracies as a reference point they are compared, using corruption as a measure, with each of the other forms of government. In the case of small states it was not possible to do an analysis as the Transparency website did not record their corruption score. In each case of governmental style: absolute monarchies, theocracies, dynasties, the most populous states, and countries with lesser attention to human rights. The overall results are that is no instance does the correlation between corruption and population reach statistical significance. With respect to corruption each comparison, of the form of government compared to democracies. This is also conservative in that it uses a two-tailed test, and is thus open to the possibility that the reverse could be true. It is concluded that when compared to democracies each of the other forms of government has a lesser corruption score, taking the mean difference and taking variance into account. This approach may commend itself to other researchers

Dubai outbound tourism: An exploratory study of Emiratis and expatriates

This research investigates the perceptions of residents of Dubai, United Arab Emirates (UAE) towards the state of Victoria, Australia as a destination and assesses their knowledge of Victoria\u27s tourism attributes. Focus groups were undertaken with UAE nationals (referred to as Emiratis), expatriate residents and travel agents. In the case of the former group it was found that the previous travel experiences of most respondents involved travelling in family groups with the wife and mother making the key travel-related decisions. The responses appeared to be broadly representative of attitudes prevalent more widely within their relevant families. Of the expatriate respondents, all were experienced travellers who had previously visited Australia. Their tourism interests, in such things as outdoor activities and music, differed from those of the Emiratis. All but one of the respondents in the focus group of travel agents had previously visited Australia. The study fills a gap in researching immature markets. The use of the focus group method illustrates how investigating the perceptions of emerging target markets can provide a useful input to shape future industry development. © The Author(s) 2011

Ethnicity and crime: a statewide analysis by local government areas

There have been two kinds of approaches to looking at crime using local government area analysis: one is to look at particular cases; the other is to consider the entire set of population data derived from local areas studies. This report is of the second kind. While there have been a number of studies looking at crime in local areas they tend to be particular, and include in-depth case studies. This present study is designed to provide information and analysis using parametric data, and is thus is a ‘population’ study rather than a sampling one. Information on police recorded crime rates and selected ethnicity variables were gained from all local government areas in Victoria. The general findings were that high rates of Australian born were related to lower property crime rates and, perhaps more importantly, Australian citizenship is significantly related to lower crime rates across LGAs. A higher rate of Recent Arrivals was strongly related to higher crime rates, and LGAs with rates of people born in Oceana/NZ, non-English speaking countries, other English Speaking Countries and rates of low proficiency in English positively correlates with some forms of crime but to a lesser degree. The difficulty of interpreting official statistics is recognised, as is the value of comprehensive population data on crime and ethnicity. Ill informed comments could have regrettable social implications: indeed there are some well informed comments that may have the same unintended effect. That point is one that a pluralistic democracy may have to tolerate within certain limits. Opportunity structures in host countries have both positive and negative consequences: this article highlights the latter rather than the former. These findings have implications not only for the allocation of resources at local government level but also for immigration policy. Using these data the conclusion is drawn that commitment to the host country, and coping in an alien environment are useful explanations

Ethics and ESG

This paper provides theories, models and practices to assist in understanding ethical decision making in relation to environmental, social and governance issues. It begins by defining sustainability and how it is measured and reported. The most influential is the UN’s definition of sustainability and its measurement by compliance with its 17 Sustainability goals. In his recent report into the finance sector, the Royal Commissioner was scathing in his assessment of the lack of integrity, honesty and ethics and endorsed the importance of reporting non-financial indicators of performance. However, there are few explanations of the links in the literature between ethics and ESG and how ethical decisions could be managed. The purpose of this paper is to address this issue by exploring the questions: What are: ethics? Business ethics? The main ethical theories? What is the relationship between ESG and ethics? What is the difference between ethics and morals? How do we apply ethical reasoning to ESG

Book Review: Managing corporate social responsibility in action: talking, doing and measuring

Book edited by Frank Den hond, Frank GA de Bakker and Peter Neergaard, Corporate Social Responsibility Series, Ashgate, Aldershot, 2007, 265 pp, ISBN: 0754647218