Migration Intermediaries and Codes of Conduct: Temporary Migrant Workers in Australian Horticulture

Over recent decades, developments in network governance have seen governments around the world cede considerable authority and responsibility to commercial migration intermediaries for recruiting and managing temporary migrant labour. Correspondingly, a by-product of network governance has been the emergence of soft employment regulation in which voluntary codes of conduct supplement hard (enforceable) legal employment standards. This paper explores these developments in the context of temporary migrant workers employed in Australian horticulture. First the paper analyses the growing use of temporary migrant labour in this industry. It then describes how different types of intermediaries interact with this workforce. The paper then outlines both hard and soft employment regulations, and contrasts them with actual employment conditions, questioning how a network governance approach has affected this vulnerable workforce. The paper concludes that changes in network governance of migration and employment relations have emasculated formal legal regulation, leaving market forces to operate without effective or ethical constraints at the expense of the public good.     

The Motivation and Effectiveness of Gas Industry Economic Regulation in New South Wales, 1912–39

The oldest industry in Australia subjected to economic regulation is the gas supply industry in the state of New South Wales. In this paper the aims and motivation of the New South Wales Government in establishing the regulatory regime in 1912 and the subsequent effectiveness in achieving them are determined. Initially the regulatory regime was based on ad hoc arrangements, but eventually a more permanent structure was devised that effectively defused political controversy over gas market pricing and stabilised prices rather than substantially lowered them.     

The ‘Myth’ of Human Resource Management in Chinese Enterprises

This study examines changing labour-management practices in China's state-owned enterprises (SOEs) in comparison with those in joint ventures (JVs). Based on a sample of 62 firms in seven Chinese major cities, it explores the degree to which HRM practices are a ‘myth’. The researchers carried out semi-structured interviews with managers and other employees at all levels. The role of trade unions and workers' congresses are also examined. The results show that the ownership type, size of the firm, and its location are important factors affecting the extent to which these enterprises have adapted to market-orientated HRM practices. The study concludes that most firms have not fully made this adaptation, and that even where it has been taken up, it has in many cases only been done so partially due to organizational inertia, amongst other factors.     

Do Court Decisions Drive the Federal Trade Commission’s Enforcement Policy on Merger Settlements?

Mergers are generally conglomerate in nature with only minor (if any) horizontal overlaps. Under U.S. law, an enforcement agency may challenge any anticompetitive aspect of the merger and the consequent delay associated with litigation would impose costs on the firm. These costs may give the enforcement agency “leverage” to extract a settlement even when the firm would prevail in court. This paper explores whether the FTC’s decisions to challenge transactions approximate the case law. We find that the representative enforcement regimes of the FTC and the courts are remarkably similar, although the FTC credits efficiencies, while courts consider buyer sophistication as a mitigating factor.     

American institutionalism and its British connections

Abstract

This paper examines the connections between American institutionalists and a number of ‘non-Marshallian’ British economists and social scientists, several of whom were associated with the Fabian Society or the London School of Economics or both. Specifically, the links between institutionalists such as Walton Hamilton and Wesley Mitchell and British social scientists such as John A. Hobson, Henry Clay, R.A. Tawney, William Beveridge and Graham Wallas. It is argued that these connections were related to common views on the importance of institutions, compatible methodological views, common interest in questions of social value, shared policy concerns (particularly unemployment and the coal industry), shared interests in the development of new institutions for education and research in economics and shared connections with the funding activities of the Rockefeller Foundation. These connections were much more extensive than has usually been realized. Some reasons for this British group not to form into a movement similar to American institutionalism are explored.