Managing international trade of food products: A survey of German and Australian companies

The major obstacles encountered in the management of international marketing are higher transaction costs and risks relative to home market business activities. More specifically, for food products there are six main problem areas, which arise from the literature: (1) education and training of export staff (including foreign language skills and knowledge of foreign business partners' mentality); (2) trade fair activities; (3) special food product logistics and marketing problems; (4) trade terms, export documentation and billing, and foreign exchange risk management; (5) provision of foreign market information; and (6) government assistance. Results from a questionnaire-based survey of companies from Germany and Australia engaging in exporting and|or importing of food products suggest that staff education|training and logistics are the most important factors affecting success in international markets. Implications of this study are that agribusinesses must give special attention to staff recruitment and training and to the mastering of food product logistics if they want to compete successfully internationally. [EconLit citations: F140, Q130, Q170]. © 2004 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Agribusiness 20: 61-80, 2004.

Laying Down the Ladder: A typology of public participation in Australian natural resource management

The most influential attempts to classify forms of public participation are based on the ‘ladder’ of public participation (after Arnstein 1969), which orders approaches from those in which government dominates decision-making to ones in which its power is shared equally with the public or communities. Such unidimensional classifications can no longer reflect the realities and complexities of role-sharing between governments, communities and other parties in natural resource management. Initiative may come from nongovernment sources, and other dimensions besides power are relevant in designing participatory processes. This article describes a typology of public participation in Australian natural resource management, commissioned by Land and Water Australia as part of a comprehensive project to enhance the information base on participatory approaches in Australian natural resource management (Buchy, Ross and Proctor 2002). Besides power sharing, it incorporates differences in agency (which parties carry the initiative), tenure (the nature of the parties' control over the resources), the nature of the participants, the nature of the task, and its duration. The typology distinguishes forms of participation based on voluntary action such as stewardship groups, from formal collaborations between stakeholder groups, and other forms of environmental management. The typology is intended as a guide to those designing or participating in such processes. The types should be considered in terms of their suitability for different circumstances, not as a hierarchy of desirability. Further, effective participatory processes should be customised to suit their circumstances, and can combine aspects of different types successfully to achieve greater advantages than single types may offer