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This article aims to review the latest management developments across the globe and pinpoint practical implications from cutting‐edge research and case studies.

The briefing is prepared by an independent writer who adds their own impartial comments, and places the article in context.

The paper finds that the observation that someone is a natural‐born leader can sometimes be taken a face value; at others, it can have a pejorative ring to it.

The article provides strategic insights and practical thinking that have influenced some of the world's leading organizations.

The briefing saves busy executives and researchers hours of reading time by selecting only the very best, most pertinent information and presenting it in a condensed and easy‐to‐digest format.

The plethora of popular and social scientific accounts of the English riots of August 2011 have not only failed to distinguish between the events that “triggered” the initial disturbances and the underlying conditions which gave them impetus, they have also ignored the reality that while rioters may be apolitical, rioting is an inherently political phenomenon. This article endeavours to contextualize the riots by plotting the probabilistic connections between the trigger event and the underlying conditions which brought the riots to fruition.

Throughout, the article utilizes the form of the “essai” (essay) developed originally by Michel de Montaigne from 1580, which endeavours to link ideas in logical and original ways. The article draws upon recent research concerning the relationship between governmental austerity and social disorder and assesses whether, and to what extent, Durkheim's notion of anomie, Habermas's notion of “legitimation crises” and the idea at the heart of the Marxist dialect, of the transformation of quantity into quality have any explanatory power vis‐à‐vis the English riots of August 2011.

The article suggests that the riots should be understood and responded to as illustrations of crises in economic and political relations rather than simple problems of morality, culture, and the efficiency, or otherwise, of the criminal justice apparatus.

This paper could promote a more thoughtful debate.

The purpose of this article is to discuss the concepts confidentiality and transparency in the context of good governance.

After exploring the concepts of confidentiality, good governance and other relevant concepts, they are related to each other.

When it comes to good governance, transparency is overrated and confidentiality is taken for granted. For good governance, there must be a balance between the two to preserve the public sphere.

The paper contributes to the understanding of good governance and the evolution of the public sphere.

This paper aims to identify key learnings around the concept of “grey corruption” by systematically reviewing the extant literature. The concept is addressed in terms of areas of alleged misconduct often considered “minor” or “borderline” in relation to “black corruption”. Common examples include favourable treatment of friends and relatives by public officials, receipt of gifts, excessive expenditures and pork barrelling, influence peddling through donations and lies and false promises. The focus of this study is on definitions, extent, public perspectives, explanations and evidence of promising prevention strategies.

Relevant sources were sought using systematic keyword searches of major criminological and political databases, a media database and relevant government and non-government websites, up to the end of December 2019.

The main findings were that there is no single accepted definition of grey corruption but that the concept remains useful, practice is often extensive, it is generally at odds with public opinion, opportunity is a key factor in its incidence and prevention requires the enactment and enforcement of clear principles.

Media-reported cases were too numerous to analyse in detail for the present study.

Efforts to improve integrity in government need to take account of the concept. Rules require clarification and communication. Enforcement needs improvement. More experiments are needed in prevention.

This paper captures a range of integrity issues of importance to the public but often downgraded or dismissed by politicians.

This paper is unique in reporting the results of a systematic search of the international literature on the topic.

The purpose of this paper is to explore Australian police officers’ perceptions of unethical conduct scenarios with the aim of understanding unwillingness to report infractions.

The responses of 845 officers were compared across 11 scenarios to explore variation in the extent to which they understood the behaviour to violate policy and their hypothetical willingness, or unwillingness, to report the behaviour. Particularly, it was hypothesised that non-reporters may justify their inaction based on the misperception that other officers hold even less ethical beliefs.

Five scenarios emerged as least likely to be reported, with a substantial minority of officers stating their decision was despite their understanding that the behaviour constituted a policy violation. Contrary to predictions, these “non-reporters” were aware they were less likely to report than their colleagues, but believed they held the same views as their colleagues in terms of the seriousness of scenarios. Comparisons between non-reporters and other survey participants, however, found this belief to be false, with non-reporters viewing the scenarios as significantly less serious. A perceived self-other difference, along with a belief that others will report were shown to reduce the likelihood of not reporting.

The results are discussed in terms of increasing willingness to report misconduct through organisational efforts to communicate values and support officers to make ethical decisions.

The paper contributes to understanding the “code of silence” in perpetuating police misconduct and how it may be reduced.

Labour came to power in 1997 and immediately transferred many features of its party political news management style into government, overseeing the departure of most of the civil service communications leadership within two years, and developing the media management role of politically appointed special advisers. The purpose of this paper is to empirically examine the changes in custom and practice that operated behind the scenes in government communications between 1997 and 2015, asking to what extent such changes challenge public trust in government in a liberal democracy.

This study takes a longitudinal, qualitative approach through in-depth interviews with former civil servants, journalists and special advisers, together with documentary and archival evidence. The data were analysed thematically through the text-processing software, NVivo.

The paper finds that although the controversy over the 2002 dossier on Iraq’s Weapons of Mass Destruction was an extraordinary episode, the creative approach to news management that characterised this case still operates within UK Government communications: the bypassing of civil servants, a partial approach to the facts, selective briefing of favoured journalists, a lack of due process in the management of information and a disregard for the letter and spirit of propriety codes. This has implications for public trust and confidence in the workings of liberal democracy.

The study adopts a mediatisation approach to the study of public relations, using the concept of the “cross field” to demonstrate how PR professionals share media management responsibilities with a number of different promotional actors. PR professionals in government must therefore navigate between the hidden, competitive and demanding worlds of politics, the media and bureaucracy, working with journalists, politicians and political operatives to craft the narratives that seek to drive public opinion.

Arguing that the print media act as a claims-making forum for the social construction and contestation of crises, the aim of this paper is to explore how the print media mediated two audits commissioned following a high-profile salary cap breach in the National Rugby League (NRL) in Australia.

This paper draws upon critical discourse analysis to examine the media coverage of the two audits by the two major Australian media organisations, News Limited and Fairfax Media Limited. The analysis is based on a qualitative study complemented by quantitative techniques that explore critical incidents and representations in the daily press.

The paper illustrates the way in which News Limited, the owner of the infringing club, mobilised its media platform to promote favourable viewpoints and interpretations and how these were challenged in the Fairfax press. Evidence of both coverage bias and statement bias in the treatment of the two audits is produced.

This paper provides evidence that commercial interests of owner/publishers coloured media coverage of the two audits, which were central pillars of the crisis management strategy of News Limited and the NRL. Implications for the media's contribution to public accountability, accounting outputs and impression management, and the growing commercial diversification and reach of media outlets are considered.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate who rules the world. The hypothesis is that it is the 0.1 per cent of owners and controllers of capital.

This study used secondary sources including the Bureau Van Dyk and The World Top Incomes database to look at distributions of income and wealth (stock ownership). This is supplemented with a secondary source analysis and with some interviews.

The top point one per centers, the wealthy, those on the top incomes and transnational capitalist class are all distinct but overlapping categories that describe the (white) men and (few) women who hold power through their ownership and/or control of capital and who are thereby directly or indirectly able to act hegemonically on an emerging global basis.

Theorists of the global school of capitalism Alveredo et al., 2013 argue that there has been a qualitatively new twenty-first century transnational capitalism in the process of emerging (see Robinson, 2012a). This paper tests this assumption and relates it to the work by Hamm 2010.

The flip side of this progressively widening concentration of income and wealth into fewer (0.1 per cent) hands brings new lows to the polarisation of class, exploitation and domination. All of these have intensified since the 1980s with the end of the Keynesian Compromise. This north/south accentuated division has implications for social justice.

This seeks to identify empirical evidence to support the theory of an emerging transnational capitalist class.