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Fashion retailing has evolved in response to opportunities and market pressures. It has been both reactive and proactive. For example, Palmer, in 2001, analyses what might be called a partnership between Canadian department stores and European couture houses in the 1950s. Her work affords a rare overview of retailing's fit with fashion design and commercial delivery systems, and is a point of departure for closely examining an earlier period (1880‐1920) in Australia. The current paper studies the leading role that department stores played in shaping the Australian fashion scene and the marketing techniques they used. A context, period and country, where a set of major retailers formed the predominant influence on fashion trends, and styles and diffusion throughout the community have been identified. Findings suggest that for the 1880‐1920 period the department store retailers were market‐driving rather than simply market‐driven, implying a more proactive and innovative role for the department stores.

This paper aims to explore any potential link between the corporate issue of a Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation (SLAPP) with a changed environmental, social and governance (ESG) reporting focus as part of a complementary communicative legitimation strategy.

A longitudinal content analysis of the annual reports of three sample Australian corporations was undertaken, measuring changes in ESG disclosure levels and disclosure focus around the time a SLAPP was issued by each sample firm.

This paper provides support for the contention that both the number of ESG disclosures and the type of ESG disclosures changed after the sample firms issued SLAPPs.

A number of limitations are identified within the paper, including difficulties identifying when SLAPPs are initiated.

To the authors’ knowledge, this is the first investigation of the relationship between SLAPPs and ESG reporting, and this study helps open up a new area of research into how ESG reporting is used by corporations in a strategic manner.

The purpose of this paper is to present historical research on marketing practices in department stores of the 1880-1930 period using primary source records from Australia.

The paper draws from primary records including retail trade journals, mass circulation newspapers, and other contemporary sources, but mainly from the archives of The Master Retailers' Association (MRA). The MRA was the dominant industry employers' organisation in Australia, and possibly the first retail association of its kind in the Western world. Secondary sources have also been used to supplement the primary records, and to provide context, and cross-cultural comparisons.

The findings demonstrate the antecedents of a range of marketing practices that today we presume are modern, including sales promotion, trade promotion, direct mail, destination retailing, advertising, and consumer segmentation. This supports other scholars' research into marketing's long history.

This paper contributes original knowledge to the neglected field of Australian marketing history and connects the pioneering practices of retailers to the broader field of marketing. While some outstanding retail histories exist for the USA, UK, and France, the Australian story has remained largely uncovered.

Despite the economic transformation that the various countries in Southeast Asia have undergone, serious weaknesses have persisted in the area of public procurement. These include fragmented procurement procedures; the lack of professional procurement expertise; the absence of open, competitive tendering, especially for foreign suppliers; widespread corruption; and the lack of transparency. In recent years, limited progress has been made in reforming public procurement but all too often the reforms have been inadequate and have not had the desired impact so that shortcomings still persist. In light of these failings, the paper will highlight the twin challenges facing most of the states of the region: viz. the need to reinforce the recent procurement reforms and to translate them into actual practices.

In many countries, public procurement of goods, services and works is required to serve wider social purposes apart from the needs of the user agencies (which may be referred to as social responsibility procurement). In recent years, reforms have been implemented in the countries of East Asia to promote social responsibility procurement. They have entailed four main types of social responsibility: (a) supporting small and medium enterprises; (b) creating opportunities for small or start up venture firms; (c) fostering environmental sustainability through green purchasing, and environmentally sustainable construction (in the case of public works); (d) promoting work safety in site management in public works. The paper will examine the reforms in the countries of the region under which various preferential arrangements have been implemented to meet these objectives. It will consider why the reforms were adopted and also the differences between the countries of the region in the priority given to each of the reforms.

The article examines the extent that public procurement in Singapore remains under centralized control and how much has been delegated to the line agencies, which are the recipients of the goods and services purchased. The article shows that Singapore has adopted a mixed hybrid model of public procurement. Procedural rules and evaluation criteria relating to procurement are imposed by centralized authorities, which also undertake bulk purchasing. Operational functions such as interpreting the rules and criteria, making purchasing decisions and awarding contracts are performed by the line agencies. The balance thus achieved between centralization and delegation arises from the desire to meet the divergent requirements that shape the government procurement system.

The purpose of the paper is to examine features and impact of recent reforms introduced by the Philippines government to deal with the longstanding shortcomings in its procurement system.

The research for the paper is based on reports by international organizations, official documents of the Philippines government, surveys by international and domestic organizations, interviews with relevant officials and media reports.

The findings show that the reforms have focused on fostering competition, increasing transparency, standardizing procedures, enhancing end‐product quality and contractor reliability, ensuring proper planning and budgeting, combatting corruption, and strengthening accountability. These reforms were intended to create a procurement system more in line with international best practices. However the paper shows that the impact has been less than promised. This is due to limitations of certain provisions of the reforms and weaknesses in both implementation and in the accountability of the procuring entities. A key factor in undermining the reforms is widespread corruption, which continues to affect many aspects of the procurement system. The article identifies two important and related reasons for such failings: elite capture of the government and bureaucracy by a powerful network of business leaders from well‐established landed families, who have close links with the political establishment; and second, a long‐established culture of informal influence in the Philippine state bureaucracy (what may be termed the informal bureaucracy), which has been used to maximum effect by the elite network of business leaders. As a result, this network has been able to influence the reforms to serve its own interests and ensure its continued dominance of the procurement market.

The value of the paper is to show how administrative reforms, no matter how well formulated they are, may be readily undermined in the process of implementation by elite groups able to influence government bureaucracy through an informal culture.

Singapore is a small, densely populated city-state, which has become a prosperous global trading, investment and communications hub. In light of this, particular challenges have arisen in the development of its infrastructure to meet its needs. These challenges are met by harnessing private capital in the design, building, management and funding of the infrastructure. The purpose of this paper is to examine various arrangements in using private capital within key infrastructure sectors: mass rapid transit, roads, water supply, electricity generation and transmission, maritime ports and airport, ITC services, and industrial infrastructure, and to consider how full privatization, limited privatization (government-linked companies), direct government provision through statutory authorities (relying partly on private borrowing), and a mix of the above arrangements require infrastructure providers, even statutory authorities, to follow business practices.

This paper adopts an empirical, discursive and critical approach.

The Singapore government has continued to see its role as steering the economy into niche sectors where Singapore can acquire a competitive edge, and to overall facilitate economic development through active intervention. This includes, amongst other things, state-sponsored training and education, capital grants to start-ups, trade promotion, various fiscal incentives to businesses, guarantees for bank credit, etc. (Ghesquiere, 2007). This twin-pronged approach has been reflected in the development and management of the infrastructure. In line with the creation of a strong free enterprise economy, privatization and private capital has been a central feature of infrastructure investment and management.

The paper shows how private capital can be used through privatization and borrowing from the private sector to manage the infrastructure. This may be considered an appropriate means to meet the needs of a densely populated small state which is also a global hub for trade, research, investment and communications. It also shows how the harnessing of private capital can be combined with continued government control to ensure that the infrastructure development reflects public policy and adheres to required standards.