ABSTRACT

This chapter examines the relationships between three sets of factors: corporate ownership structure, corporate governance and the management of labour, with a view to understanding how they interact within the Australian economic system generally and produce certain types of relations between companies, shareholders and employees. Australian colonial corporate activity was dominated by deed of settlement companies or companies incorporated by act of the British parliament. Australian corporate law has tended to adhere closely to the British pattern of legal development in respect of core legislation and concepts. The first Company Acts, in both Britain and the Australian colonies, represented at one level a dramatic statutory intervention, especially by way of a grant of general limited liability, but they did little by way of setting rules as regards the governance structure of companies. The modern Australian labour law system thus makes it possible for managers to pursue almost any strategy along the 'high road/low road' continuum.