Justine Ferrer

Bureaucratic Readiness in Managing Local Level Participatory Governance: A Developing Country Context

Participatory governance in developing countries is broadly viewed as an essential prerequisite for successful implementation of public projects. However, it poses many challenges for public bureaucrats in terms of their skills and willingness to engage citizens. Despite the growing evidence of the pervasiveness of participatory governance, research to date has not explored bureaucratic readiness to adopt participatory practices. This research presents findings of a bureaucratic readiness assessment for participatory governance in Bangladesh by exploring how public bureaucrats perceive the value of participation; how they are educated to collaborate with stakeholders; and the extent to which their attitudes are amenable to enhancing participatory governance. Our findings suggest that we can classify readiness in terms of both motivational and educational factors. The study has implications for how readiness can be developed in public officials that may assist in fostering participatory governance in Bangladesh and be informative to other countries experiencing similar issues.

Indigenous player inclusion in the Australian Football League

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to audit the efforts made around the support of indigenous players within the Australian Football League (AFL). Design/methodology/approach Content analysis of the publicly available information on websites of organizations associated with the AFL was undertaken to identify the extent of programs and policies around indigenous representation, inclusion, and development. Findings The AFL, as an organization, has a high percentage of indigenous players (employees) in comparison to the wider Australian workforce representation. Largely, indigenous representation within the AFL is merit based, prioritized on an individual’s ability to play football at an elite level. The website audit identified a number of inconsistencies in the public personas portrayed by the AFL and organizations aligned to it such as the AFL Players Association and clubs. The findings raise a number of questions for future research. Research limitations/implications The main limitation is that the website audit represents a very small insight into the current situation and does not provide a depth of analysis into the circumstances around indigenous inclusion within the AFL. The audit also is very focused on one sporting organization which may or may not be representative of the sport industry. Originality/value The research introduces a number of questions for future discovery.