Factors Impacting the Adoption and Operation of Corporate Governance Reform in Australian State Government Departments

Governments have progressively sought to ground public management, organisational structures and culture within the corporate governance framework of the private sector. These reforms have essentially involved changes to the structures and processes for decision-making, accountability, control and behaviour at the top of organisations. Much research has been conducted into identifying what governance changes have occurred in public sector organisations over the past 10-20 years. Little attention has, however, been given to the way reform decisions have been taken, or how these decisions have been implemented and operated. Consequently, little is known about how corporate governance change is affected by environmental, organisational or other issues. This paper details the results of research into identifying and describing variables associated with corporate governance reform in Australian state government departments. In particular it presents findings about the particular arrangements and processes used to adopt and operate corporate governance reform in Australian state government departments and explore the impact internal and external organisational influences had on these reforms