Research Projects

• ARC Linkage Grant: Evaluating the Community Governance of Crime Prevention and Community Safety
• ARC Discovery Grant: Directing China’s Top 100 Companies: Corporate governance
  and corporate law in the top 100 companies in China
• DEST China Grant: Corporate Governance in Post-WTO Entry China

ARC Linkage Grant
Title: Evaluating the Community Governance of Crime Prevention and Community Safety
Researchers: Professor Anona Armstrong and Professor Ronald Francis

This three-year project with the Victorian Department of Justice began in 2002. The project is evaluating community governance of crime prevention and community safety using data analysis and focus groups. It questions the theoretical assumptions underlying the program and evaluates its impact on the incidence of crime and perceptions of safety and security. It also identifies effective and cost-effective community governance structures and factors that affect a community’s participation in, and response to, community safety initiatives. The outcomes will advance knowledge in community psychology and inform future policy and allocation of resources to community-based crime prevention programs.

ARC Discovery Grant
Title: Directing China’s Top 100 Companies: Corporate Governance and Corporate Law in
the Top 100 Companies in China
Researchers: Professor Roman Tomasic, Professor Neil Andrews, Ms Jane Fu and Dr Yuwa Wei

China is an increasingly important market for Australia and as such, the governance practices of Chinese-listed companies will be of increasing interest to Australian traders, joint-venture partners and investors in China. China's 2001 entry into the World Trade Organisation also means there will be increasing pressure to apply international corporate governance and accountability standards to China's public companies.

China has sought to modernise its corporate laws following the enactment of a new Company Law in 1993 and the Securities Law in 1998. This project examines corporate governance practices, and the impact of laws and regulations regarding corporate governance on China's top 100 companies.

This top 100 is taken from the 1088 Chinese companies listed on five stock exchanges: three in China (Shanghai, Shenzhen and Hong Kong) and one each in London and New York. The study extends analyses undertaken in an earlier ARC-funded study of the top 500 Australian companies. Refer to Directing the top 500: corporate governance and accountability in Australian companies (Tomasic and Bottomley, Sydney, Allen & Unwin, 1993).

Department of Education, Science and Training, China Grant
Title: Corporate Governance in Post-WTO Entry China
Project co-ordinators: Professor Roman Tomasic and Professor Neil Andrews

Business education has become increasingly important in China as the country embraces the global market economy. At the same time, China has also sought to retool its market-related legal structures, especially in the wake of its entry into the World Trade Organisation at the end of 2001. In this context, China has sought to restructure an economy dominated by flagging state-owned enterprises and to create more room for private-sector enterprises to operate and prosper.

This has given a new urgency to modernising China’s corporate governance structures and introducing rules and practices that are regarded as essential to any market-based society. This project gathers academic staff and research students from three of the most innovative Chinese universities in Beijing to examine the implications for Chinese corporate governance of the country's entrance to the WTO.

The three universities are:

• China University of Political Science and Law;
• International University of Business and Economics; and
• Northern Jiaotong University.

Victoria University already has memoranda of understanding with these universities and in some cases, operates joint teaching and research programs such as the Victoria University MBA program at Northern Jiaotong University. Similar teaching programs are being developed at the China University of Political Science and Law. But little of this activity has a strong research focus.

This project seeks to bring together leading Chinese and Australian academic researchers and writers in the areas of law, accounting and applied economics. Some Victoria University staff already take part in policy-making debates in Beijing. Victoria University has also developed links with the highest levels of the PRC Ministry of Justice and the National Judges College. We are keen to extend this level of activity by further engaging a number of leading Beijing-based universities in a research project with significant national implications.

Ultimately, this project will provide the foundations for other research projects to further enhance the profile of Australian universities in China.