This article examines the development and usage of e-government in Malaysia. The history of public administration reform in Malaysia demonstrates the government’s willingness to experiment with innovations seen as improving the efficiency, effectiveness and responsiveness of public services. Thus, e-government has been enthusiastically promoted by the Malaysian government and has spread across most government organisations at central and subnational levels. The article provides details of a range of services both within government and for society that are available in e-government modes. However, there are challenges to the development of e-government including adherence to traditional models of service delivery, resistance to organisational culture change by officials, preference for counter services by clients and constraints on the availability of information technology training. Mobile phones are now seen as a new way to encourage citizens to use e-government on a regular basis.

Financialisation is now an emerging field of research. Recently, the field has attracted criticism for its focus on large-scale economic processes, such as profit accumulation based not on production, but on a diversification of financial risk management tools – a focus which ignores the way in which individuals and households experience financialisation in everyday life. In addressing this gap, theorists have sought to understand financialisation as it relates to individuals as consumers and investors, increasing their need to integrate financial calculation into daily life. This article takes the analysis two steps further. First, it argues that precarious work is actually an aspect of financialisation, based on risk-shifting by employing organisations – a process of structural change in the labour market that actually undermines individual workers’ capacity to manage financial risk successfully. Second, it argues that financialisation is an ideology or narrative of individual responsibility, which seeks to legitimate structural change by promising emancipation through individual calculation. It draws on interviews with precarious workers to explore the gap between such norms of financial self-determination and the lived experience of insecure employment. It identifies this paradox of precariousness by focusing on people in professional occupations, who in theory are best placed to successfully negotiate economic change.

As governments move from being both a funder and provider of human services to a purchaser of services in private sector markets or quasi-markets, ensuring that providers do what they are supposed to do becomes more difficult. Agency theory and stewardship theory have been suggested as ways of overcoming this problem. This article argues that both are inadequate, particularly because they conceptualise the relationship as bilateral (government funding department and service provider), ignoring the role of clients in achieving organisational objectives. Co-production that recognises the role played by clients in the production of employment outcomes can provide a more useful way of thinking about relationships among key actors involved in the provision of employment services.

This article draws on evidence generated in recent deprivation studies conducted by the author and colleagues at the Social Policy Research Centre. After outlining some of the main limitations of poverty line studies, the paper explains how the deprivation approach addresses these weaknesses and illustrates the insights that deprivation studies can provide into the nature of poverty in contemporary Australia. It then compares the results produced by a deprivation approach with those produced using a poverty line – both in terms of what they imply about the extent of the problem and who they suggest is most affected by it. The comparisons demonstrate that the reservations that many hold about poverty research can be overcome and that when this is done, the results become more compelling and thus have the potential to have a greater impact on anti-poverty policy.

Very few would dispute the proposition that evidence about the effects of different policy options should inform policy decisions. However, there is less agreement on the nature of the evidence needed. In addition, there may be problems in evaluating that evidence. This is particularly the case when experts offer conflicting advice. This article presents the position held by Professor Nevile that in giving policy advice to the government, it is almost always desirable to draw on a range of different policy instruments. While theoretical input is usually important, it is even more important that theory does not lose contact with the real world. Factual descriptions of the real world and the use of a theoretical toolkit containing more than one theory are essential in achieving this goal. These principles are illustrated by a discussion of a particular category of policy advice – the evaluation of government programmes.

Understanding young people’s employment experiences and transitions gives a greater appreciation of the nature of precarious work. Drawing on interview data with 30 participants from research conducted in 2011–2012, this article examines young people’s experiences of employment in the Illawarra region of New South Wales, Australia. Levels of unemployment and under-employment above the national average reflect two decades of globalised restructuring of the steel, coal and manufacturing industries which, together with agriculture, have historically been the region’s economic base. The growth of service and knowledge industries has been accompanied by new, ‘atypical’ or insecure work patterns. The interview data indicate that young people’s diverse experiences of transition and choice in leaving school, commencing training or further education, and entering the labour market are accompanied by a range of understandings of employment and precarious work. These experiences highlight the difficulties, divisions and contradictions in a changing regional labour market and suggest how the ideologies and practices of neo-liberalism shape and are embedded in regional labour markets and precarious work more generally.

The decision in the early 1990s to cut back on the building of public housing intensified the already dire shortage of affordable housing and increased the marginalisation of the sector. To be eligible for public housing, new entrants usually have to be in ‘greatest need’. This study argues that the shift in the eligibility criteria for accessing public housing means that public housing estates increasingly reflect what Loïc Wacquant calls ‘advanced urban marginality’. The article assesses whether the features of advanced urban marginality that are identified by Wacquant capture and can be usefully used to analyse the shifts and contemporary characteristics of public housing. The article draws on existing data and in-depth interviews with 33 older (aged more than 65 years) public housing tenants in Sydney, Australia, to analyse the residualisation of public housing using the features of advanced marginality identified by Wacquant – ‘wage labour as a vector of social instability and life insecurity’, ‘functional disconnection from macroeconomic trends’, ‘territorial fixation and stigmatisation’, ‘spatial alienation and the dissolution of place’, ‘loss of hinterland’ and ‘social fragmentation and symbolic splintering’. The study concludes that although Wacquant’s analysis is useful and captures much of what has occurred in public housing estates in Sydney, in many instances, public housing remains a source of pride for its tenants and provides them with the basis for a good life.

Global financial crises and potential sovereign defaults provide an opportunity for financial regulators and analysts to revise assumptions in their risk models. These conditions are also an opportunity for regulators and analysts to distinguish the ‘hyper-real’ economy, represented by derivatives, from the real economy, which requires assessment through an analysis of human as well as financial capital. Regulators are required to demonstrate that they are skilled in conducting the most thorough analysis of all elements of the finance system in order to help the investing public to manage risk as much as possible. The contribution of this article is to overview the limitations inherent in regulators’ traditional focus on financial analysis, as well as in financial analysts’ failure to consider the relevance of people management data when evaluating the potential performance of knowledge-intensive, service-based organisations. The article argues for a stronger focus on analysis of non-financial capital, including human capital, to provide a more effective ‘early warning’ of potential financial distress.

In this article, we consider the mainsprings of John Nevile’s many contributions to economics. John has repeatedly argued that because ‘economic actions, institutions and policies affect people’, they have an ethical dimension (Hawtrey and Nevile, 1986: 1), and he has stressed the importance of understanding the value judgements on which economics rests. His policy suggestions are aimed at improving social justice and the well-being of the most vulnerable. Apart from his deep knowledge of economic theory, his Christian faith provides an important foundation for his analysis, particularly of policy.

The gender pay gap, the difference in earnings of men and women, has remained remarkably resilient over the past two decades in Australia and a number of other countries, despite a range of legislative and policy initiatives aimed at narrowing this difference. Drawing upon industry-wide data and an organisational case, this analysis of professional business services examines the nature of pay equity within and beyond organisational boundaries. We conclude that ‘success’ in gender and pay equity terms has been constrained by minimum government compliance requirements and limited attention to the role labour markets play in contributing to gendered patterns of pay.

The subjective experience of employment insecurity may be more contradictory than discourses of ‘fragmentation’ and ‘flexploitation’ suggest. For young people seeking careers in creative occupations, the expectation of insecure employment conditions has become normalised. This may be the combined effect of intergenerational changes in the youth labour market generally, and the nature of employment in creative industries at all career stages. The article draws from 80 life history interviews conducted in Western Sydney, Australia, a region with high concentrations of unemployment and low socio-economic status. Their perspectives problematise the common assumption that young creative workers seek to resist insecure patterns of work or long for the stable jobs of the past. Partly, they have accepted the injunction for ‘vocational restlessness’ in their industries. Both in their ‘day jobs’ and in their attempts to get into their chosen part of the creative industry, they feel that not staying in one position too long can be both liberating and adaptive. Union campaigns highlighting the perils of insecurity are unlikely to resonate with them.

Non-standard patterns of paid work are increasing in Australia, and young people are among the most affected. To investigate the impact of non-standard work schedules on young people’s relationships, this article draws on data from 50 interviews conducted in 2008 and 4 surveys conducted between 2007 and 2012 with 636 young people (aged 18–24 years), all participating in the Life Patterns Project longitudinal study of youth in Australia. Over the 6 years, a majority of participants were engaged in non-standard work, working weekends, evenings or public holidays. A significant minority also faced weekly variability in their work schedules. The interview data suggest that these patterns of employment can be considered unsocial, making it more difficult to find regular periods of time together with a group of friends. Interview discussion also suggests that as a substitute for a greater quantity of shared time, some young people seek out shared experiences felt to be intense or out of the ordinary, such as that facilitated by alcohol consumption, to make the most of limited opportunities to bond with a group of close friends.

Defence procurement is a notoriously difficult and often controversial field of public management. In Australia, problems with schedule and budget overruns have been addressed through business process reforms aimed at tightening control and improving professionalism. However, studies of complex contracting in other contexts show the importance of relational factors of trust, collaboration and risk-sharing. These factors are not encouraged by the predominantly transactionally based contractual environment of Defence. Based on a detailed examination of three case studies, we suggest that there is a disjunct between the types of controls that are applied by Defence and the requirements of delivering complex, long-term projects involving multiple stakeholders. The need for both improved flexibility as well as heightened accountability is evident. We argue that balancing these values involves processes that encourage, rather than discourage, communication, risk-sharing and trust.

Major transformations in the organisation of labour are having a profound effect on the moral character of the labour-capital contract. Using two small case studies undertaken in Singapore as a starting point, this article reflects on the moral economies of supply chain capitalism. Detailing examples of the human impacts of down-sourcing risk through ‘flexible’ modes of transnational employment, it analyses the strategies whereby firms and governments distance themselves from these consequences. Precarious forms of employment based on pyramid subcontracting arrangements allow a disruption of the moral relation (however tenuous) that is present in traditional face-to-face employment arrangements. The article explores four strategies of moral detachment on the part of the employers, contractors and brokers in the supply chain.