RegNet Research Paper No. 2015/96

The Personal Management of Shame and Pride in Workplace Bullying

Valerie Braithwaite & Eliza Ahmed, Regulatory Institutions Network, Australian National University (ANU)

Shame and pride management were used to predict workplace bullying and victimization among a random sample of 1,967 Australians who responded to a national crime survey. Those who identified themselves as having bullied others were pride-focused, not shame focused. They were more likely to express narcissistic pride over their work success, lauding their feats over others, and were less likely to express humble pride, sharing their success with others. In contrast, victims were defined primarily by their shame over failures. They were more likely to both acknowledge and displace shame over failures in work tasks. Victims and bullies revealed impediments to social reintegration. Victims did not trust others, while bullies did not see victims as needing to see offender rehabilitation. The findings raise questions of whether competitive, hierarchical and performance oriented workplaces fail to provide incentives for workers to manage shame and pride in ways that promote collegial workplace relations.

RegNet Research Paper No. 2015/97

ACT Workcover and the Failed 1997 Implosion: A Case Study of the Role of the Inspectorate

Patricia Healy, Regulatory Institutions Network (RegNet), ANU

The failed implosion of the old Canberra Hospital buildings on Sunday 13 July 1997 resulted in an explosion which blasted masonry and steel debris beyond the 200 metre exclusion zone to where thousands of spectators stood watching on the shore of Lake Burley Griffin. A young spectator, Katie Bender, was killed instantly when struck by a fragment of that debris.

At the Bender Inquest the Coroner, Mr Shane Madden, described the implosion project as having failed systemically. He attributed the failure to: the Project Manager’s and contractors’ lack of appropriate competencies; the absence of input from independent engineers and explosives experts; inappropriate action by the ACT Chief Minister’s Office and Department in promoting the implosion as a public event; and failure of the regulatory agencies to properly discharge their functions.

It is clear, in retrospect, that the wholesale underestimation of the risk to public safety was a significant factor in this litany of failures. The public safety risk inherent in the implosion project as it was implemented, was unrecognized, discounted or underestimated by all the parties involved at all stages of the project.

This study, with the great benefit of hindsight, examines why this occurred and how it affected the role of ACT WorkCover and those inspectors directly involved. Specifically it examines how the particular circumstances of the implosion project combined with the situation and practice of WorkCover to influence the inspectors’ assessment of the inherent risks and the exercise of their regulatory enforcement powers.

RegNet Research Paper No. 2015/98

Non-State Governance and Climate Policy: The Fossil Fuel Divestment Movement

Julie Ayling & Neil Gunningham, Regulatory Institutions Network (RegNet), ANU.

This article charts the evolution of the divestment movement, a transnational advocacy network that uses a range of strategies to shame, pressure, facilitate, and encourage investors in general, and large institutional investors in particular, to relinquish their holdings of fossil fuel stocks in favour of climate-friendly alternatives. It describes the movement’s central characteristics and the strategies it employs, it maps its basic architecture and the potential role it plays in the broader climate change regime complex, and shows how it represents a novel form of private investor-targeted climate change governance, operating primarily through symbolic political action and as a norm entrepreneur. Given the potential importance of the movement, the model it may provide for other forms of private governance, and the paucity of analysis of its implications for climate change mitigation, this article addresses an important descriptive and analytical gap in the climate policy literature.

RegNet Research Paper No. 2015/99

Paralegals Changing Lenses

John Braithwaite, Regulatory Institutions Network (RegNet), ANU

This editorial is about how a paralegal program can multiply the effectiveness of restorative justice and reduce the imprisonment rate. That program is in Bangladesh, but it helps answer a question relevant for every country. The paralegals are the equivalent of the old “barefoot doctors” idea, translated into the justice field. They are not law graduates. So this is not a foreign aid program that worsens the problems of a system with insufficient lawyers by foreign donors diverting that key human resource scarcity from the domestic system. Instead, new human resource capabilities are developed by training college graduates (mostly under 25 years of age) as paralegals for weeks rather than years. They are trained to chase the paper trail of an incarcerated person awaiting trial to ascertain the bottleneck in getting their case moved and ultimately resolved.

All previous papers published in the RegNet Research Paper Series are available for download on the RegNet SSRN page.

Cite the publication as

RegNet Research Papers 3(10). Canberra: Regulatory Institutions Network.