David J. Gilchrist

• Doctor of Philosophy
• Director Centre for Public Value at The University of Western Australia

The Australian accounting standard setter, funders and the sector itself express concern about reporting obligations established via regulatory requirements that are arbitrarily allocated using a tiered system based on income levels. This study investigates the utility of the current financial reporting framework by interviewing experienced prepare...

Market mechanisms have emerged as a dominant approach in the provision of public welfare services, most notably in sectors such as disability care, aged care, and health care. While this shift promises potential benefits such as improved efficiency, enhanced service quality, and increased consumer support, it also presents significant challenges ar...

The use of markets has a long history in the delivery of social services. Market‐based arrangements are used worldwide with the goal of increasing choice, efficiency, and cost effectiveness in public service delivery. However, government‐run markets or ‘quasi‐markets’ do not behave as regular markets and therefore require interventions and stewards...

Purpose The purpose of this study is to investigate the prevalence of earnings management in the Australian not-for-profit (NFP) disability service providers sector, as well as to understand the motivations for and implications of such practices. This research is important for stakeholders, such as members and funders, as well as the broader Austra...

The National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) represents a social reform of a magnitude unseen in Australia. The Scheme's significant scope for impact warrants that proper performance evaluation is undertaken, that stakeholder interactions are collaborative and that the scheme is outcome driven. This article reviews a selection of grey literature...

The extent to which financial reports are useful is of central importance in relation to the accounting standards that underpin them. This is as true of non‐profit financial reporting as it is of financial reporting in the commercial and public sectors. In this paper we report on our findings related to a research project focused on examining the u...

Using the lens of relational contracting, we examine internal auditors' efforts in building a relationship of trust with management within the context of operational audits. We gain insights into the day‐to‐day practices of internal auditors by interviewing 28 chief audit executives of internal audit departments across Australia and find that inter...

The financial crime compliance landscape is evolving, driven by a number of complementary factors: the move towards a more intelligence-led allocation of resources and advances in machine learning and artificial intelligence, both combined with the increasing availability of structured and unstructured data. This paper argues that the best way to t...

The Synthetic Control Method (SCM) has become a widely used tool in both identifying and estimating the causal impact of policies, shocks, and interventions of interest on economic and social outcomes. The technique has become particularly popular in estimating the effect of these shocks on a single treated unit. As a transparent and data‐driven st...

As the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) moves towards full rollout, it is timely to describe the nature of the policy framework and environment driving outcomes in order to better respond to commentary and learnings. To do this, this paper assesses Kingdon's Multiple Streams Approach as an explanatory model which will allow us to untangl...

The extent to which financial reports are decision useful is of central importance in relation to the accounting standards that underpin them. This is as true of nonprofit financial reporting as it is of financial reporting in the commercial and public sectors. In this paper we report on our findings related to a research project focused on examini...

Markets are increasingly used by governments to deliver social services, underpinned by the belief that they can drive efficiency and quality. These ‘quasi-markets' require on-going management to ensure they meet policy goals, and address issues of market inequity. This has seen debates emerge around ‘market stewardship' and ‘market shaping’ that c...

In response to the rapid development of green finance, this study evaluates a systematic literature survey with a focus on the determinants and the potential benefits of corporate engagement in environmentally responsible practices in the context of green bonds and green loans. We show that research has discovered that environmentally responsible p...

Major government emergency interventions demand, and generally receive, independent scrutiny. This article looks back at reviews of the Australian government's economic stimulus measures introduced in the aftermath of the 2008 Global Financial Crisis (GFC), in anticipation of reviews of responses to the COVID‐19 emergency, noting similarities and d...

We discuss the contribution of autocratic tendencies in democratically elected political leaders to the economic growth of developed economies. To this end, we exploit the unique election of Sir Charles Court as state premier of Western Australia in 1975 to estimate the contribution of autocratic state premiers to economic growth within a federal s...

Developing and implementing social policy aimed at resolving wicked problems has occupied governments and not-for-profit organizations for decades. Such problems are enduring due to their complexity, resulting in a need to harness multiple skills and significant resources to the effort to solve them. Collaboration is one response to this need and i...

The examination of public and private not‐for‐profit sector financial reporting has been a topic of interest on a cyclical basis in Australia over the last 30 years. Traditional topics have included examinations of the intended and unintended consequences of specific standards, the accountability value of financial reports, transaction neutrality,...

Beginning with accounting, this book indulges the reader by taking a journey back to the beginning and providing a brief sojurn into the world at the time of the Domesday book, Pacioli, Cotrugli and double-entry accounting. Current practices associated with the adoption of international financial reporting standards by countries around the world ar...

The introduction of an independent public sector audit function was a critical element in the nineteenth century constitutional reforms of parliamentary and government accountability and created an essential precedent for current practice. By examining the extent of scholarly research on public sector audit history, findings reveal considerable res...

The four British co-operative traditions considered in Chap. 2 combined with the international experience of settlement and land alienation discussed in Chap. 3 to indirectly shape the development of agricultural co-operation in Western Australia. The arguments and counter-arguments associated with co-operation were well known in the Antipodes by t...

The state played a central role in Harper’s co-operative vision because he believed that neither the state nor the co-operators could achieve the desired rapid economic development of Western Australia if each acted alone. Specifically, the amount of capital formation that was required to settle a large number of agriculturalists on an expansive la...

C.T. Stannage (1979, pp. 190–191) described Charles Harper as “a deeply conservative, Anglican farmer, pastoralist and company director”, and argued that he was an anti-democrat who bought The West Australian merely to use it as an instrument for “country and conservative opinion”. This is a somewhat unbalanced synopsis of Harper’s political philos...

Charles Harper (1842–1912) was a Western Australian pastoralist, newspaper proprietor and influential politician. He was a frontiersman, a businessman and a powerbroker. The central argument advanced in this volume is that Harper established co-operatives in Western Australia, prior to the Great War, as a means to overcome the economic problems fac...

The intellectual baggage that accompanied settlers as they populated the growing British Empire over the nineteenth century was tempered by the pragmatic dictates of survival and economic development. Examining the colonisation of the United States, Frederick Jackson Turner (1893, 1921) argued that settlers in frontier environments dispense with th...

In this chapter, I contrast Harper’s pragmatic co-operative vision with the British co-operative traditions that accompanied migrants to Western Australia as intellectual baggage. It is argued that the British co-operative traditions were predominantly developed to overcome the inequities of the industrial age in the Old World, whereas Harper’s co-...

Charles Harper’s contribution to economic development in Western Australia was felt long after he died in 1912. One of his most important legacies was his first born son, Charles Walter Harper (1880–1956), who was more commonly known as Walter Harper. He inherited his father’s passion for co-operatives, was well known in agricultural co-operation c...

This mixed-method study explores the symptoms and potential causes of non-profit vulnerability within the Australian context. Following two focus groups with CEOs and Chairs of non-profit organizations, an online survey was developed, pilot tested and distributed to non-profit CEOs. Our findings suggest three symptoms that might be particularly use...

Drawing on an analysis of 112 watchdog reports that addressed collaboration, this paper concludes that governance issues make up a large proportion of all issues identified. Less commonly found were specific references to capacity and information management as important elements for effective collaboration. The evidence from watchdog reports confir...

Major Australian overseas aid not-for-profit organizations (NFPOs) were found lacking in their disclosures of anti-corruption measures. The authors conclude that this is due to a break down in regulatory oversight as a result of a lack of mandatory reporting standards. The key lesson from this paper is that there is a need for significant improveme...

There has been little discussion or analysis regarding how integrity agencies work together. This paper looks at Western Australian watchdog collaboration activities in the context of concerns raised by senior judicial and political figures. Issues addressed include whether such collaborative activities impinge on the independence of watchdogs, imp...

This book considers the role played by co-operative agriculture as a critical economic model which, in Australia, helped build public capital, drive economic development and impact political arrangements. In the case of colonial Western Australia, the story of agricultural co-operation is inseparable from that of the story of Charles Harper. Harper...