Patterns of power : control strategies for statutory authorities : the case of the Hunter District Water Board 1892-1990

The statutory authority is a little understood administrative device which has been widely used in Australia by both State and Commonwealth to discharge a variety of responsibilities. By briefly charting the administrative history of the Hunter District Water Board, this paper presents a case study of the debates over management reform and political control of the statutory authority. At a more specific level, it suggests: that the Hunter District Water Board historically showed a reluctance to accept full responsibility for the costs of the services ostensibly under its control; that the so called political independence of statutory authorities is little more than an expedient indictment for politicians' use when the heat is on and; that the tensions which existed for many years between the engineers and the clerks of the Hunter Water Board, may be best seen as the result of clashes between cultures . Although for a considerable time , the Hunter District Water Board suffered from many of the failings for which bureaucracies are commonly criticised, the paper concludes that recently the Hunter District Water Board has greatly improved in terms of organizational strategies, efficiency, responsiveness and responsibility

Simply washed out by a woman : social control, status and discrimination in a statutory authority

This paper is part of a continuing program of work by the authors on the administrative history and practices of the Hunter District Water Board which is one of the principal statutory authorities in New South Wales. The program has been generously assisted by the Board. The centre piece of this series is a comprehensive administrative history of the Board since its establishment in 1892, scheduled for publication in 1989. An associated series of papers will cover a range of issues related to this core study. This paper deals with questions of discrimination in the organisation and administration of the Board. Companion papers will cover the statutory basis of the Board, its internal work practices and rituals, the Board's relationship with trade unions, its pricing policies, and its attitudes to major industrial customers such as BHP. 'Simply Washed Out by a Woman' analyses questions of social control, status and discrimination in the day-to-day administration of the Board. It concludes that the most common forms of discrimination have been directed to religion, politics and gender. After briefly considering the limited evidence of religious and political discrimination, the bulk of the paper examines historical evidence of gender discrimination. It looks at occupational discrimination directed against women; discrimination in comparative career structures between men and women; discriminatory practices levelled at married women; discrimination in the incidence of career-related benefits such as superannuation; dress constraints imposed on both women and men; the used of nomenclature which applies a discrimination against women and men; idiosyncratic working practices designed to imply an inferior status for women employees; gender discrimination based on pay differentials; and discriminatory allocation of high-status jobs between men and women. The paper concludes that the Board's attitude to its female employees has been generally conservative until recent years. A supplementary conclusion is that the Board's Salaried Officers' Association, which covers all salaried workers for the Board, in earlier years favoured the interests of its male members to the detriment of women. In total, the paper suggests that the Board's administrative practice has shown discrimination against women until relatively recent years when genuine efforts have been made to redress a traditional imbalance and eliminate discriminatory practice

Industrial organisation : work practices & rituals in the Hunter District Water Board

This paper is part of a continuing program of work by the authors on the administrative history and practices of the Hunter District Water Board which is one of the principal statutory authorities in New South Wales. The program has been generously assisted by the Board. The centre piece of this series is a comprehensive administrative history of the Board since its establishment in 1892, scheduled for publication in 1989. An associated series of papers will cover a range of issues related to this core study. This paper deals with questions of industrial organisation and work practices. Companion papers will cover the Board's relationship with trade, unions, its pricing policies, and its attitudes to major industrial consumers such as BHP. 'Industrial Organisation' analyses questions of work practice and rituals in the day-to-day administration of the Board. It argues that patronage has been a major distorting influence in the organisation of the Board and that the structure created to justify patronage appointments has had a lasting negative impact. After briefly reviewing the history of the Board's creation, the paper examines the divisional structure, the use of temporary staff, the seniority system, the tensions between engineers and clerks, work practice infringements, efficiency and organisational culture. The paper concludes that statutory independence is a fiction useful for Ministers to be able to claim the credits and dodge the brickbats. The paper serves to illustrate how and why industrial relations within public sector authorities differ from, yet are similar to, those in the larger private sector

Similarities in the Metabolic Reprogramming of Immune System and Endothelium

British Heart Foundation (Fellowship FS/12/38/29640 and Project Grant PG/15/105/31906) and the Fondazione Cariplo (PG 2015-0552), and forms part of the research themes contributing to the translational research portfolio of Barts and the London Cardiovascular Biomedical Research Unit, which is supported and funded by the National Institutes of Health Research