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Over the past 20 years, many international scholars have noted the relative decline of the advisory influence of conventional “think tanks” and the relative rise of management consultants and “ideological” groups. The paper presents an alternative formulation whereby an Australian Senate Committee concerning space‐launch capabilities operated as a parliamentary “think tank”. In so doing, it led to significant changes in policy processes within government, structure of both policy advice and operational agencies and, in part, informally coordinated the work of ongoing official enquiries into more general space policy matters. The case study provides a rare example of the efficacy of the Senate as an instrument of both ex ante policy making and post hoc governmental accountability.

Discusses the efficiency of disaster management policies and programmes in Australia. Argues that there are long‐standing deficiencies in strategic and operational planning and forecasting approaches. Urges more co‐operation and co‐ordination between the various emergency services. Discusses the development of terrestrial and space technologies which could be used in disaster management.

The purpose of this paper is to overview and critique the over‐reach of highly ideological assumptions of neo‐classical economics into policy and governance terrains. The ontology and epistemology of neo‐classical economics know no bounds in their imperial extension to non‐market applications. The colonization of Public Administration in Australia, and elsewhere, is a vexing epistemological issue, demanding some reckoning.

This deconstructive, critical essay seeks to provide a set of “check‐lists” of issues for those teaching, or proselytizing, governance within highly reduced public domains.

This paper moves an epistemological “audit” of “public choice theory” some steps forward, especially in the face of significant ideological and policy convergence, among putative social‐democratic governance regimes, regarding out‐sourcing, no‐bid contracting, agency “capture”, risk and a renewed urgency for necessary re‐regulation. The paper identifies policy imperatives for a new age of regulation after 35 years of prevailing “market fundamentalism”.

There has been much hubris associated with so‐called policy convergence in a globalized context. Deconstructing such hubris within a divergent world is long overdue for the next generation of scholars/policy apologists/rating agencies/and economists prone to some reflexivity in plying their “dismal” trade.

The purpose of the paper is to justify the research programme and describe the conclusions.

This paper is a summary of the aims and results of the research published in two special issues of Journal of Management Development. It argues that there are three fundamental issues that must be examined in order to resolve the conundrums of business strategy: the semantics; the structures; and the epistemology and ontology of the subject. To achieve this aim, four papers (Part 1) cover the literature that allows for a research aim to be developed. In the subsequent papers (Part 2), strategic thinking is reframed. An inductive frame is created to develop a model to help small business principals understand the need to think strategically about their business. The proposition that better strategy can be generated if answers are found to quality questions, rather than quality solutions found for poorly posed questions, is examined. A deductive frame of fundamental questions is created based on this concept and finally a reflective frame, which is “critically anti‐management”, provides the mechanism for the inductive and deductive frames to be applied to small business. The methodology is presented by French in “Action research for practising managers” in this issue and this paper is the summary of the research.

A research aim is developed: to examine critically the theory of business strategy and reframe strategic thinking in order to develop and test a viable small business strategic process. Thus, strategic thinking is (critically) reframed and emergence explored beyond the (modernist and postmodernist) “box” of traditional strategic management.

Small business principals have access to an integrated system of strategic frames that have been developed and tested using action research. Consequently the small business principal can be confident that the strategic process has both academic and practitioner credibility.

Parker suggests that little work has been done in the field of strategy in any non‐modernist paradigm. The author believes that this may be one of the early comprehensive studies in this field to utilise both critical theory, in the form of critical management studies, and to apply this epistemology to firms that are considered to be complex self‐adapting systems. The consequence is that there is now a theoretical answer to the problems of both Mintzberg, because there is now a mechanism for emergence, and of Hamel, because there is no longer a gap in the strategy discipline, we have a mechanism for strategy creation.

Fundamental “purposes” of Australian police organizations are examined, not with a view to solving the complex and ongoing question of an accountable police mandate, but to consider the difficulty of its reconciliation with the new managerialism sweeping numerous public organizations in Australia – police organizations included. Briefly explores the purposes of policing and a problematic police culture as a lead in to a discussion on the possibly deleterious effects of new managerialism and its associated management faddism. Problems associated with the theory of managerialism, which police managers may not be aware of, are explored: managerialism and economic rationalism; management fads and tool tropism; managerialism as a thinly veiled control agenda; and the potential human costs to police officers arising from managerialist approaches. Suggestions are made for ways forward for police organizations which include a recognition of the down‐side of managerialism and a suggested shift away from a belief in a purely rationalistic organization to one which recognizes and accommodates an actor’s “voice” as a legitimate input to growth, learning and institutional development.

Although the current wave of globalization is the result of unprecedented scientific and technological advances, through history, movements of an international nature have been, to a large extent, about the spread of political and economic ideas across borders. “Geopolitical realism is based on the interests of the state”. Scientific and technological advances, together with the opening of markets to the free passage of goods, services and finance, has led to a huge growth in world trade. However, such positive developments have also their downside. The findings of the United Nations Human Development Programme Report highlight that global inequalities in income and living standards have reached grotesque proportions. Further, such disparities are linked to ever‐intensified environmental degradation and the extinction of some 11,046 species. Such circumstances have witnessed the growth of community‐based local currencies, the emergence of a social movement advocating corporate social reasonability (CSR) and a growing literature critical of the Anglo‐American corporate governance model, where shareholder wealth maximization is the driving force. Yet, the philosophy and practice of shareholder wealth maximization persists. This paper explores the effects of free‐market economics, globalization and western capitalist practices in terms of their consequences for the planet, people, profit and posterity (the four Ps). A case is made outlining the need for an advanced corporate governance model that integrates the four Ps. In so doing, the paper seeks inspiration from the ancient philosophy of Buddhism and, in conclusion, examines the role of the Business School in developing future, reflexive practitioners, equipped to effectively provide the necessary balance between shareholder expectations and stakeholder needs within a new paradigm of a balanced society.

The purpose of this paper is to review the semantics of the language of management in order to seek clarification of the terminology and how it is used and misused in the strategy literature.

An extensive review of the literature was undertaken.

Managerial language has been used to obfuscate and politicise the managerial process, especially the strategic process. In order to develop the ideas of the strategy specialty the use and misuse of the words in the strategy lexicon must be understood. The problem that the lack of consistency creates is, that in trying to assess the strategic process in the literature and in practice, it is often impossible to know exactly what strategic methodology is being expressed.

Rather than concentrate on definitions of strategy it is necessary to seek to understand how the terminology is applied and then allocate the meaning of the terms to the school of strategic ideas that the writer/scholar espouses in each relevant paper that is published.

It is necessary to recognise how the words in the strategy literature have subtle, different meanings and the way to understand the usage is to apply the terminology to a school of thought.

The purpose of this paper is to argue that the epistemology of the strategic literature is dominated by a Modernist (scientific) and Cybernetic system approach and that other epistemological options especially critical management studies and complex self‐adapting systems, might provide greater insight for strategic thinking.

An extensive review of the literature was undertaken.

The current dominant way of thinking about management is based on closed system notions of causality in which good enough long‐term prediction is possible. The process PLOC depends totally on this foundation. If a system's long‐term behaviour is unpredictable, then using the PLOC model is questionable. In the current turbulent business environment long‐term prediction may not be possible.

The life expectancy of a firm is only 40 years. Using closed system concepts to drive businesses to the equilibrium of a business plan may be killing the business, because a complex self‐adapting system in equilibrium is dead.

Very little work, especially in strategy has been done outside the Modernist paradigm. This paper explores the possibility of incorporating open system ideas into a strategic methodology.

Social institutions are experiencing change in their patterns of power as they are re‐aligned to an increasingly complex world and the onset of the new information economy. Attention has been drawn particularly to the need to improve corporate governance as a means to enhance corporate accountability and improve corporate performance. This paper consequently explores the distribution of corporate power and the processes that can foster higher quality decision making and actions by boards. The paper investigates the fundamental difference between the exercise of leadership, management and political power within an organization and, particularly, the responsibility and power relationships between an organization and its board. The authors assert that if the patterns of power are well understood then some things can be said about the patterns that are likely to emerge and what structures might be more effective than others. The paper concludes by arguing that the manner and style of corporate governance could benefit from some further refinement.

Of many managerialist panaceas, the most prevalent one today is the assertion that private sector practices will solve the public sector’s “self‐evident” inadequate performance. This managerialist view assumes hegemonic proportions in Anglo‐Saxon public sectors and largely goes unchallenged, notwithstanding serious reservations about the superiority of private managerial prerogatives one would draw from organization theory or, even, mainstream liberal economics, which is largely silent about the role of management and control in economic behaviour. It is a particular brand of economics that underscores the linking of public agency efficiency to managerial ability and performance. In neo‐institutional economics, “rent‐seeking” behaviour is attributed to civil servants, rather than corporate entrepreneurs, and from that ideological perspective of bureaucratic pathology flows a whole series of untested propositions culminating in the commercializing, corporatizing and privatizing rationales, now uncritically accepted by most bureaucrats themselves to be axiomatically true. The economistic underpinning of managerialism and its “New Functionalism” in organizational design hardly addresses the significant structural, cultural and behavioural changes necessary to bring about the rhetorical benefits said to flow from the application of managerialist solutions. Managerialism expects public managers to improve efficiency, reduce burdensome costs and enhance organizational performance in a competitive stakeholding situation. Managerialism largely ignores the administrative‐political environment which rewards risk‐averse behaviour which, in turn, militates against the very behavioural and organizational reforms managerialists putatively seek for the public sector.