Archive for the 'Governance' Category
Governance and Management fails at the ABC
Friday, November 16th, 2018
The turmoil in mid-September 2018 at the ABC, one of the most publicly trusted organisations in Australia, has received huge publicity. Sacking of the Managing Director Michelle Guthrie followed only a few days later by the resignation of the Chair of the Board Justin Milne attracted both criticism and relief. Like the removal of Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull only a few weeks earlier, the reasons for Guthrie’s removal remains unexplained.
What is clear is that there are serious doubts as to whether Guthrie was an appropriate person for the job. There are few doubts about Milne on the other hand. Like other members of the board he was appointed with little regard to the needs of the organisation by a process which sidestepped the protocols developed in previous times and the recommendations of a panel established as part of those.
Margaret Simons of Monash University in numerous media, Amanda Meade in The Guardian and Quentin Dempster (a former ABC staffer) in The New Daily have had important things to say about all this and Kerry O’Brien and Matt Peacock, both distinguished former ABC journalists, have also.
In an article a few weeks after the events of mid-September Simons expressed the view that the behavior of both Guthrie and Milne demonstrated a lack of maturity: “The ABC needs grown-ups in charge”. A Four Corners documentary in early November followed the events and interviewed both Guthrie and Milne. But we are no wiser as to the real reason for Guthrie’s departure though Milne’s argument, aired on the Four Corners program, that her leadership was unsatisfactory and a principal reason for her departure was based on gossip.
Two months after the turmoil, there is evidence that the legacy of Milne and Guthrie continues to have impact: a visit to the Ultimo studios by ACTU Secretary Sally McManus was closely monitored by the administration and readership targets are being set for one unit’s stories.
The ABC has suffered serious reductions in funding and there is a well-founded view that the organisation is unsustainable. More staff reductions will likely be required to add to the almost 1,000 who have already gone in the last several years since Prime Minister Abbott reneged on his promise to make no cuts to the broadcaster (or SBS). (There was a tiny increase in staff numbers in the last year.)
What is at the base of all this is a very serious, indeed critical, lack of process in organizational and leadership terms. Political interference based on no more than strong disagreement by government Ministers and Prime Ministers with some of the ABC’’s statements have had an impact even though they were not the subject of actual instructions. The role of the board is unclear to misunderstood, the importance of independence seems ignored, and the essentials of leadership not appreciated. Similar issues can be found in other organisations in business and government. And sport!
Milne sought the resignation of a senior journalist, Emma Alberici, economics correspondent and former presenter of Lateline on TV. She had written an article criticising the arguments advanced by the Government to justify substantial tax cuts for larger corporations. The government argued they would lead to more jobs and economic growth: Alberici wrote that they would not.
The Government’s position has been contradicted by economists including Nobel Prizewinner Joseph Stiglitz. In remarks at the presentation to him of the City of Sydney Peace Prize on November 15 2018 he referred to a study by economist Andrew Charlton which showed small cuts made in 2015 to small business (with turnover less than $2 million pa) mostly went to increase cash reserves though there was an increase in investment of 27%, a smaller increase in job numbers and a very small increase in wage rates). The general behavior of firms in paying dividends rather than investing has led to one commentator referring to their behavior as a Ponzi scheme. The evidence that firms do not devote the proceeds of tax cuts substantially to increasing wages, jobs or growth is substantial.
The question should be asked as to how the chair of the board of a public broadcaster can justify attacking media for reporting statements for which there is already substantial documented evidence. But of course that would be pointless!
The ABC is a public broadcaster and its funding is from taxpayers. The ABC is not an instrument of government policy like departments such as Home Affairs or Environment. The Government has failed to exercise its duty of care, especially in respect of independence and has contributed to a situation where the board lacks sufficient experience and knowledge and certainly is insufficiently diligent in its exercise of governance. It is more than regrettable that a board doesn’t even front up to defend staff of the organisation when they are unreasonably attacked!
Read more at ABC Turmoil: A crisis in governance and government.
ICOM Australia Award 2016
Wednesday, July 27th, 2016
I thought it would be appropriate to place on the site the details of the ICOM Australia Individual Award “recognising sustained international achievement over a long period” which I received at the dinner at the Auckland War Memorial Museum for the Museums Australasia Conference in Auckland New Zealand 17 May this year, 2016.
Details have been published in the the ICOM Australia newsletter, Museums Australia Magazine 24(4), Winter 2016 (“ICOM Australia’s International Awards 2016” by Nancy Ladas) and Museum Matters for July 2016 published by Museums Australia New South Wales.
It was a great honour to receive the Award, presented by Dr Robin Hirst, Museum Victoria and past Chair of ICOM Australia
I was especially pleased that following the award to me, the National Museum of Australia was presented with the ICOM Australia Institutional Award for the exhibitions, Indigenous Australia: Enduring Civilisation, shown at the British Museum in 2015 and Encounters: Revealing Stories of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Objects from the British Museum, shown at the NMA in Canberra over the Summer of 2015-2016. That award was accepted by Museum Director Mathew Trinca and colleagues.
The link is to the citation and my response.
My response draws on the ideas already presented on this website, not least in the paper presented to the conference for the late Stephen Weil.
The Myth of School Choice and the Distortion of Education Policy
Sunday, April 24th, 2016
At the Global Education and Skills Forum in Dubai in March Education Director for the OECD Andreas Schleicher criticised the Australian education system for falling behind global standards. He pointed to the very significant drop in the results of students at the top of the PISA test rankings in the past year. He said “[Australia] more or less defines teachers by the number of hours that [they] teach in front of students. That is part of the problem. We treat teachers as interchangeable widgets on the frontline – they are just there to implement prefabricated knowledge.” Schleicher said many countries were struggling to keep the best teachers in the profession because of curriculums that restrict creativity.
The OECD through its PISA program which explores literacy in 15 year olds in writing, math and science every three years has been criticised very heavily in some countries as driving the education agenda. Countries determine their own policies but unfortunately the ideology which underlies PISA – standardised testing, along with performance pay and independent schooling – has been adopted too vigorously by some countries. The important findings about effective school education policies and practices brought out in the comprehensive reports of PISA and Education at a Glance are ignored or even deliberately misinterpreted.
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In Australia parents are moving their kids in ever larger numbers to schools they perceive to be better based mainly on scores in standardised tests – NAPLAN – published on the MySchool website. What is happening is a drift of students from advantaged backgrounds away from public schools, which generally have large numbers of students from disadvantaged backgrounds, to independent schools. As a result learning gaps between children from different backgrounds are widening. Parents are responding to test scores and to other factors. That should have been anticipated by those deciding to privilege standardised testing and support extra funding for independent schools.
The Myth of School Choice: Government support for Independent Schools and Standardised Tests traverses the recent report from the Grattan Institute which illuminates important outcomes of the Howard Government’s support of independent schools and the reactions of parents to that. The focus on NAPLAN has problems drawn out in a report by Chris Bonner and Bernie Shepherd for the Centre for Policy Development and a study by David Zyngier of Monash University. That independent schools do not contribute to better educational achievement when socioeconomic background is taken into account is shown by a sophisticated report by researchers from the University of Queensland and colleagues. As it has been by many previous analyses!
Study after study has shown no significant educational gain by the much better resourced independent schools. The extra funds would have been better spent supporting those children with greatest needs, those from disadvantaged backgrounds having trouble with the learning program.
The Turnbull Coalition Government, like the Abbott Government before it, has refused to fund the last two years of the National Plan for School Improvement framed in response to the Gonski Panel’s recommendations: it maintains there are insufficient funds. However, there is substantial evidence to the effect that funds are available by addressing the substantial tax expenditures – tax concessions – introduced in recent years; Australia is a relatively low tax country and a major contribution to debt is private debt funding purchase of houses and apartments.
The response by the Turnbull Government to the States’ refusal to consider operating their own income tax systems has left unresolved the funding of schools (and hospitals) through agreements between the former government and the states, with the Prime Minister maintaining that the states have no grounds on which to ask the Commonwealth to raise taxes and claiming the previous agreements were made in “barely credible circumstances”. The Myth of School Choice: the Economics of Independent Schools and Australian Government Policy shows just how wrong this is and how billions of taxpayer funds have been wasted. A report by Lyndsay Connors and Jim McMorrow and detailed analysis by Trevor Cobbold illuminate the situation.
Proposals to have the Commonwealth fund independent schools and the States fund public schools were strongly criticised and are not supported by the Government’s own Green Paper on the Future of the Federation. In Victoria a review by former Premier Steve Bracks recommends policies reinforcing the Gonski reforms.
Despite adoption of policies in the US and UK based mainly on neoclassical economics which privilege private sector participation in generating public goods like education, favour competition and choice and deploy financial incentives to drive change, there are examples in those countries, as in Australia, of exciting outcomes from schools which do address the main features of effective learning in schools.
The Myth of School Choice: Genuine improvement happens when everyone collaborates for the benefit of the children summarises an important review by education historian Diane Ravitch of two very interesting books on schools in the United States. It isn’t simply quality teachers or the administrative independence of school principals and it certainly isn’t standardised testing which make the difference! Kristina Rizga, author of Mission High: One School, How Experts Tried to Fail It, and the Students and Teachers Who Made It Triumph, about a high school in San Francisco with an enrolment of students from a wide cultural diversity, many from disadvantaged backgrounds, points out, “too many politicians, powerful bureaucrats, management and business experts, economists, and philanthropists are making decisions about the best solutions for schools. In short, the people in charge don’t know nearly as much about schooling as the students and teachers they are trying to “fix.””
Despite everything, at Mission High in San Francisco great gains were made by students through the intense enthusiasm of their teachers.
Rizga says, “What matters in quality education – critical thinking, intrinsic motivation, resilience, self-management, resourcefulness, and relationship skills – exist in realms that can’t be easily measured by statistical measures and computer algorithms, but can be detected by teachers using human judgment. America’s business-inspired obsession with prioritizing “metrics” in a complex world that deals with the development of individual minds has become the primary cause of mediocrity in American schools.”
Diane Ravitch points out “grand ideas cannot be imposed on people without their assent. Money and power are not sufficient to improve schools. Genuine improvement happens when students, teachers, principals, parents, and the local community collaborate for the benefit of the children.”
And education does not by itself fix poverty.
Society and Community: Governments and Corporations
Tuesday, December 1st, 2015
A year ago, I posted a long piece addressing the proposition that 2014 had been one of the most difficult years Australians had faced in peacetime, a year in which a government showed itself incapable of governing. I observed that the citizenry by and large made clear they were not prepared to be a party to an attack on the economy of those less advantaged, especially when they were told the policies would be fair.
In particular the anger by many in the community was triggered by the first Abbott/Hockey budget which clearly sought to withdraw funding from a wide range of programs critical to the less advantaged in the community. The commentary on that is substantial and does not need further elaboration here.
The consequence was continued low ratings for the Abbott government and eventually in the second half of 2015 a successful challenge for leadership of the Liberal Party and therefore the Prime Ministership by Malcolm Turnbull. Elaboration of that likewise does not need revisiting here. Except to say that it is yet to be seen as to whether critical elements of the Abbott government’s program – in health, education, climate change and in social programs generally as well as various areas of taxation – will in fact be overturned. One can say that the government is at least showing a more reserved and intelligent approach to many issues.
In this follow up post I address significant developments in the more important policy areas to which this previous essay was directed.
Continue to “Governments and Corporations – An Update”
Clearly the two most important events of the year 2015 have been the replacement of Tony Abbott as Prime Minister and (Joe Hockey as Treasurer) by Malcolm Turnbull (as I have said above) and the agreements reached at the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Paris (COP (Conference of the Parties) 21) in December. The continuing horror of conflict in Syria and the consequent exodus of millions from the horror as refugees and asylum seekers to Europe has consequences for Australia as an event of enormous significance for humanity and reactions to it and various terrorist attacks, especially in Paris, continued to fuel anti Islamic sentiment by those who cannot look beyond their petty prejudice and ignorance. The other major issue is the continued slow progress in recognising Indigenous Australians and according them the rights to which they are entitled, not least the right to self-determination.
OWL’S HOOTS No. 14: ADVOCACY: GRASP THE POLITICAL
Thursday, February 18th, 2010
Hoots No. 14 – 18 February 2010: Advocacy: Grasp the Political
Downsizing: another silly idea promoted by advocates for small government and “New Public Management” and should be resisted.
(The next hoot will deal with global climate change and the fact that evidence for change includes evidence for increasing instability, not only warming: museum scientists should be actively promoting the evidence and not leave it to others.)
Twenty years ago Daniel Thomas, then Director of the Art Gallery of South Australia and President of the Art Museums Association of Australia, wrote an article entitled “Grasp the Political” (Adelaide Review March 1990)
He wrote, “What art museums most need in the 1990s is to become politically and economically conscious. They must not only equip themselves with arguments as to why they should exist, but also with hard statistical data about their costs and their benefits.
“At the same time they must be very cautious about positioning themselves within the entertainment industry. There the user-pay principal reigns; the showbiz needs of popular exhibitions can displace special-interest exhibitions, such as scholarly art-history exhibitions or difficult, adventurous contemporary art exhibitions.”
I just wonder how many people took any notice of these important statements.
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This hoot comes from sunny San Francisco – well it was when I started to write this – with its many museums including the wonderfully redeveloped green California Academy of Sciences and De Young Museum of Art, currently showing the truly astounding exhibition of Tutankhamun (see recent articles on the ABC Science site on this Egyptian Pharaoh who died mysteriously when 19 – younger even than John Keats and Giovanni Battista Pergolesi who both died aged 25) and the always marvellous San Francisco Museum of Contemporary Art.
It is also time to again recommend the Global Museum site managed by Roger Smith, now Director – Online Operations (East Asia) at the British Council. Like the Arts Journal Global Museum gathers together interesting articles focusing on museums all over the world; the site also has sections on travel, jobs, resources and links to various documents as well as links to podcasts, which can be downloaded, from many museums.
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I have argued for years if not decades that museum people need to do a number of things to advance the goals of their museum:
- find how the benefits of their activities link with the benefits of other similar organisations and enterprises and seek to make common cause with them: it is relatively easy for the enemy to undermine the strategies of people or organisation acting alone, it is quite a different matter with many people pursuing a common goal;
- recognise that there are many lessons to be learned from other organisations, indeed from some which do not immediately seem relevant: leadership in a museum can benefit from understanding leadership practice in a hospital or even an airline; and
- understand that the goals of museums are not simply to put knowledge out “in the ether” but to have that knowledge make a difference for the common good; as Steve Weil said, museums are for somebody, not about something.
There are a few museums where staff have taken the argument up to the frontlines and tried to convince those in government and the community that a certain approach to a situation is appropriate and that some others are not.
“Layoff the Layoffs” is the title of an article in Newsweek for Februrary 5, 2010
Pfeffer’s recent article is a good summary of why the downsizing of organisations, which has been quite a fad for some decades and has been popular in the last couple of years as a device for coping with the GFC, is anything but economically positive quite apart from its often devastating effects on the people involved. Museum executives faced with the demands of downsizing, especially when it is part of “encouraging organisations to be more entrepreneurial” have a responsibility to their museum and their staff to make it clear to those who are promoting the “solution” that they do not agree with it. Unless there are the most convincing and carefully thought through justifications!
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Jeffrey Pfeffer is the Thomas D. Dee II Professor of Organizational Behavior at the Graduate School of Business, Stanford University where he has taught since 1979. He is the author or co-author of thirteen books including The Human Equation: Building Profits by Putting People First, Managing with Power: Politics and Influence in Organizations, and Unconventional Wisdom About Management, a collection of 27 essays about management topics, as well as more than 120 articles and book chapters. Pfeffer’s latest book, tentatively entitled Power: An Organizational Survival Guide is to be published early 2010 by HarperCollins.
These quotes give a sense of where Pfeffer is coming from:
Power centres around scarce and critical resources and in times of uncertainty those with established credibility tend to be favoured as the enlightened. Those in power tend to define problems in ways which institutionalise their power. The more institutionalised the power is the more likely it is that the organization will be out of phase with its environment (from a 1977 paper with Gerald R. Salancik)
Organizational success comes more from managing people effectively than from attaining large size, operating in a high-growth industry, or becoming lean and mean through downsizing – which, after all, puts many of your most important assets on the street for the competition to employ.
Pfeffer opens his Newsweek article by pointing out that when the tragedy of September 12 2001 struck there was vast uncertainty about the future of airline flights. Almost all US airlines, and many other corporations, immediately laid off staff. Southwest Airlines did not. (I have written about this company before in “Lessons from Southwest Airlines” and “A chat with Herb Kelleher“) Southwest, which in fact has never laid off staff in its entire history, is now the biggest domestic carrier with a market capitalisation bigger than all other domestic carriers combined. Southwest’s former head of human resources once told Pfeffer: “If people are your most important assets, why would you get rid of them?”
Layoffs, Pfeffer observes, have become an increasingly common part of corporate life, some firms seemingly in permanent downsizing mode. If an industry is declining downsizing would seem inevitable. But in industries where demand is fluctuating? When a company lays off staff in a downturn, staff  have to be when the upturn comes and demand increases. In the process considerable costs have been incurred!
Here is a quote that will surprise some and anger others even more: “A recent study of 20 Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development economies over a 20-year period by two Dutch economists found that labor-productivity growth was higher in economies having more highly regulated industrial-relations systems – meaning they had more formal prohibitions against the letting go of workers.” So much for the notion of employment flexibility leading to economic growth!
Here are myths dispelled by studies of the effects of downsizing:
- Companies that announce layoffs enjoy higher stock prices than peers
- Layoffs increase individual company productivity
- Layoffs cut costs
The negative consequences of downsizing are particularly evident in R&D-intensive industries and in companies that experienced growth in sales.
Layoffs lead to lower morale leading to employees looking for another job at the first sign of better times, greater distrust of management and greater likelihood of stealing from the firm.
Layoffs also have a significant negative effect on the economy since laid off workers spend less, may demand social services payments from government, their houses may end up having to sold because of mortgage default and so on. The consequences to employees themselves can be devastating! Pfeffer says, “Layoffs literally kill people”.
(In the US those who lose their jobs also often lose their medical insurance which, as well as expected outcomes, can also lead to violent behaviour. Reviewing Michael Moore’s latest film “Capitalism: A Love Story ” Chris McGreal (The Guardian, 30 January 2010) writes, “Early on, Moore sets out the meaning of “Dead Peasants” insurance. It turns out that Wal-Mart, a company with revenue larger than any other in the world, bets on its workers dying, taking out life insurance policies on its 350,000 shop-floor workers without their knowledge or approval. When one of them dies, Wal-Mart claims on the policy. Not a cent of the payout, which sometimes runs to a $1m (£620,000) or more, goes to the family of the dead worker, often struggling with expensive funeral bills. Wal-Mart keeps the lot. If a worker dies, the company profits.)
Governments around the world have adopted the strategy of downsizing claiming this will lead to working smarter. The consequences of such downsizing have often led, as in business, to poorer service. At the same time as downsizing, outsourcing has also been promoted as allowing the organisation to fous on its core business. But as with downsizing it is now realised this seldom works to benefit the organisation as tasks and skills critical to the enterprise are realised as having to be in-house where they can be influenced appropriately by the culture and the staff involved interact with staff in the “business core”. One of the problems is that the downsized organisation seldom has the skills to develop an appropriate brief and project management regime for the outsourced contractor.
Most importantly, a downsizing operation seldom is accompanied by a clearly explained strategy for the future which will lead to a better company which is clearly explained to employees, those affected and those who are to remain. One of the critical jobs of leadership is not done!
These outcomes have been evident for some time and the failures in museums are the failures in business.
For instance, Right Associates (“Lessons Learned: Dispelling the Myth of Downsizing”, Philadelphia, 1992) found that in 66% to 75% of companies which had downsized neither profitability or [productivity] had increased. They argued that companies must investigate alternatives, define the new organisation, plan the downsizing, develop a communication plan and nurture the survivors. Observing that outplacement assistance fosters positive career growth they emphasised that change has to be embraced: no person or organisation can escape the consequences of downsizing.
In the study of museums around the world it was found that the museum organisations that were perceived by staff to have achieved successful change outcomes, were also perceived to have managed the change process through a strategically linked vision of the future state and communicated in ways which enabled participants to know what would happen and how they would be affected by the change, provided appropriate financial, human resource and training in support of the change the change; executives were prepared to devote the time to meeting with people and created the energy to get the change initiated and sustained by leadership action which emphasised patience and support and leading by example through modelling the appropriate change behaviours. (See Morris Abraham, Des Griffin & John Crawford, “Organisation change and management decision in museums”, Management Decision 37/10, 736-751, 1999.)
Museum executives faced with the demands of downsizing, especially when it is part of “encouraging organisations to be more entrepreneurial” have a responsibility to their museum and their staff to make it clear to those who are promoting the “solution” that they do not agree with it. Unless there are the most convincing and carefully thought through justifications! (Note that the responsibility of boards and executives is in the first place to the future of the organisation.)