There has been a major international debate about the importance of work time change. One key aspect of this debate has been the extent and impact of extended work hours. In this paper we examine the effects of a flexitime system on excessive hours in a Queensland public service department. This study finds that, for some groups of workers, the introduction of the flexitime system directly contributed to the development of a long-hours culture. The long-hours culture developed as part of managerial prerogative and in the absence of adequate regulation. Our research also finds that employees reluctantly working long hours consistently reported negative effects on their working and non-working life.

Microeconomic reform dominated Australian economic policy from the early 1980s until the end of the 20th century. Despite strong claims of success, focusing on the economic expansion since 1992, and rapid productivity growth between 1993–94 and 1998–99, evidence of improvements in the performance of the economy as a whole is weak and inconclusive. For an adequate evaluation of the microeconomic reform period, it is necessary to distinguish several different phases of reform and to evaluate reforms on a case-by-case basis.

Regulatory agencies, the financial community and the investing public need to be aware that more effective investment recommendations and decisions require human capital analysis. It is important to the work of securities analysts, their clients and their industry. Bassi, Lev, Mcmurrer and Sissfield (2001) suggest that non-financial insights, particularly human capital related insights, make up a large proportion of investment decisions. More rigorous qualitative human capital analysis can illuminate the working of an organisation in a way that primary financial data on its own cannot achieve need. A model for outlining the human resource drivers of sustainable human capital is introduced and discussed in response to this need. In essence, an integrated approach is needed for the purpose of making more transparent investment recommendations. In Australia the Regulatory Agency, the Australian Securities and Investment Commission can assist in the adoption of this integrated investment process through the Training of Financial Product Advisors, Licensing Policy Statement 146.

The paper employs George Orwell's notion of doublethink in examining three contemporary industrial relations issues. They are the Cole Royal Commission into the building and construction industry, bargaining fees and employee entitlements. The Cole Royal Commission was an inquisition into the heresy of unionism. The decision of a Full Bench of the Australian Industrial Relations Commission on bargaining fees has found that collective bargaining does not pertain to the employer-employee relationship. This decision encourages free-riding to weaken unions. On the other hand, various employee entitlement schemes, developed by the Australian government, to meet obligations of companies to employees when the former collapse, enable, or encourage, companies to free-ride on the backs of taxpayers. The paper concludes with the observation that a bleak future awaits unions.

This paper analyses recently released ABS data on the distribution of income and examines how inequality has changed since 1994–95 and since the election of the Howard Government in 1995–96. While real disposable incomes increased across the distribution, income inequality has also increased since 1994–95, particularly between 1996–97 and 1999–2000. Over the entire period from 1994–95 to 2000–01, mean income in the top quintile increased by $111 a week, more than eight times the increase of $13 a week in the lowest quintile. Since the Howard government came to office, the estimates indicate that almost half (47.3 per cent) of the total increase in disposable income was received by those in the top quintile — implying that half of the income generated by economic growth has been of no benefit to the bottom four-fifths (in income terms) of the population. Comparison with earlier research also shows that income inequality has, in some respects, increased more rapidly since the mid-1990s than during the 1980s.

Over the past two decades temporary agency work has increased in relation to most sectors and countries. This growth reflects the internationalisation of the agency business which, arguably, has come about due to demands for an ‘on-call just-in-time’ workforce. While temporary agency work possesses several conceptual and empirical challenges for researchers, it also poses challenges for regulators. This paper considers some of those challenges concerning various definitions, classifications and measurement of temporary work while comparing the Australian and Irish experience. It is concluded that while agency work in Australia and Ireland is modest, it is growing, and the conceptual and empirical problems associated with its under-recording pose difficulties for the design and implementation of a regulatory code for this sector.

This paper presents the key findings from a small qualitative survey of the main factors associated with the creation and usage of five industrial capabilities in leading Victorian sectors. The capabilities included advanced manufacturing technologies (AMT), design, information and communications technology (ICT), biotechnology and environment technologies. Eighty-eight companies and organisations were interviewed for the study. It was found that the main requirements for the successful creation of a capability was the ability of the company to recruit and retain the best graduates from universities and technical schools, the ability to offer training to these graduates and the ability to financially support high and consistent levels of R&D over time. The main requirement for the successful use of a capability was effective company networking, work cultures conducive to excellence, supportive government regulations and the provision of complementary specialised training.

New Zealand has a unique approach to retirement income provision. The state pension arrangements have the advantage of being very simple and easy to understand and administer. While there are numerous issues associated with the ageing of the population that may require modification to the parameters of state provision in the future, there is little political disagreement about the basic design of the state pension. In ensuring universal coverage with a flat rate taxable pension for everyone without the need for a contributions record, New Zealand has prevented elderly poverty to date. Supplementary private provision has been unsubsidised and recent debate has focused on the need to encourage more private saving particularly through work-based schemes. Nevertheless there are numerous advantages to New Zealand's tax neutral approach, which may offer lessons to reformers in other countries. With some caveats, New Zealand appears well placed to weather the increased expenditures associated with the retirement of the baby boomers.

This article compares the productivity and employment performance of the Australian and Irish economies over the 1990s, with particular emphasis on the different approaches to the role of information and communications technologies (ICT). Whereas Australia’s performance is characterised by the application and diffusion of ICT across a number of sectors, with indirect productivity and employment effects, Ireland has become a major producer of ICT products and services in its own right. The article traces the implications of these approaches for the pattern of growth and employment in both economies and also indicates their limitations. Ireland’s approach is limited by dependence on foreign investment, embodying externally generated technologies, though this is now being addressed by a policy interest in R&D support and the development of industry clusters and networks. On the other hand, Australia faces growing and possibly unsustainable deficits in its current account, driven by imports of knowledge-intensive goods and services, notwithstanding recent improvements in the terms of trade associated with higher prices for primary commodity exports.

Decentralisation of bargaining poses particular challenges for employer associations. It reduces the sense of collective identity among members, decreases the attraction of associations’ traditional collective goods and increases the urgency and array of individual member needs while increasing the costs of servicing them. Decentralisation also threatens revenue as large companies, the financial backbone of associations, shift employment relations activities in-house. This weakens the attractions of membership with the risk that employer associations will retain only smaller, heavily dependent members. We discuss employer association attempts to meet these challenges while competing with commercial service businesses. Their strategic choices lie on a continuum between traditional membership-based organisational identity, with its roots in movement as well as organisation, and one that more closely approximates a business services firm. Associations experiment along this continuum as they develop strategy iteratively and the article identifies factors that help determine their choices.

The Korean old-age income support system is at a crossroads. The population is ageing rapidly and the public pension schemes are facing bankruptcy. Proposals to downsize the National Pension Scheme have been held up in the National Assembly by political parties who have argued for multi pillar arrangements as advocated by the OECD and the World Bank. However, with the recent passing of legislation to allow the conversion of retirement allowances to private pensions, many commentators believe that a better approach would be to covert the current National Pension Scheme from a ‘low contribution-high benefit’ scheme to an adequate contribution-adequate benefit scheme. For the future of the nation, reform of the pension system is urgent and inevitable.

Japan is experiencing a rapid ageing of its population with a subsequent strain on its social security pensions. Despite periodic reforms over recent decades and comprehensive reforms in 2004, many outstanding issues remain. Using the balance sheet approach we show that despite its recent reforms, Japan's social security pensions face substantial excess liabilities. As well, the reforms themselves may have exacerbated the incentive-compatibility problem.

Over the past 100 years, retirement income provision in Australia has evolved into a multi-pillar arrangement comprising the Age Pension, the Superannuation Guarantee and voluntary retirement saving. With fully funded superannuation and a public pension that is both less generous than many other countries and means tested, Australia's retirement income arrangements are well placed to cope with population ageing. However concerns remain in relation to adequacy, efficiency and the vulnerability of private provision to trends in labour, economic and financial markets.