A corporate conundrum : the reform of Australian rural research and development

This thesis examines the revolution that occurred during the 1980s in the organisation, resourcing and management of Australian rural research and development. This revolution was based upon philosophies that advocated the need for research and development to move from being conducted in disparate and isolated organisations to being market-driven and industryrelevant. The implications of this change, the people responsible for its implementation and the processes used to implement such far-reaching reforms provide the basis for a case study that is rich in controversy and debate. Corporatisation provided the focal point for the reforms experienced in Australian ·rural research and development. As such, the thesis has as its central concern four key questions: what is corporatisation?, why did corporatisation occur? who was involved in the corporatisation process? and, has corporatisation achieved the goals it was designed to attain? An examination of the historical, social, political and economic contexts within which these reforms took place has been undertaken in order to answer these questions. This work is broadened to consider international trends in the management of rural research and development, with New Zealand providing an in-depth comparison. This approach reveals that, contrary to some accounts of the Australian rural research and development reforms as being a seamless and evolutionary process of change, the reforms experienced were ad hoc, sporadic and dependent upon the actions of a few key individuals. This challenges accounts of the past and analyses the impact of government decisionmaking upon organisations and individuals, the nature and extent of reform processes and the problems associated with organisations that must attempt to reconcile both public good and private sector demands

Beyond a ‘just add water’ perspective:environmental water management for vegetation outcomes

Practitioners of environmental water management (EWM) operate within complex social-ecological systems. We sought to better understand this complexity by investigating the management of environmental water for vegetation outcomes. We conducted an online survey to determine practitioners’ perspectives on EWM for non-woody vegetation (NWV) in the Murray-Darling Basin, Australia with regards to: i) desirable outcomes and benefits; ii) influencing factors and risks; iii) challenges of monitoring and evaluation, and iv) improving outcomes. Survey participants indicated that EWM aims to achieve outcomes by improving or maintaining vegetation attributes and the functions and values these provide. Our study reveals that EWM practitioners perceive NWV management in a holistic and highly interconnected way. Numerous influencing factors as well as risks and challenges to achieving outcomes were identified by participants, including many unrelated to water. Survey responses highlighted six areas to improve EWM for NWV outcomes: (1) flow regimes, (2) vegetation attributes, (3) non-flow drivers, (4) management-governance considerations, (5) functions and values, and (6) monitoring, evaluation and research. These suggest a need for more than ‘just water’ when it comes to the restoration and management of NWV. Our findings indicate more integrated land-water governance and management is urgently required to address the impacts of non-flow drivers such as pest species, land-use change and climate change. The results also indicate that inherent complexity in EWM for ecological outcomes has been poorly addressed, with a need to tackle social-ecological constraints to improve EWM outcomes.</p