Employee representation and pension fund governance in Australia

Abstract

Representative arrangements are widely employed in the governance of occupational pension funds, particularly in Australia where a sector of jointly employer/employee-sponsored ‘industry funds’ was established during the 1980s. The jointly governed industry funds are privately owned wealth-management businesses and have routinely outperformed the retirement-savings schemes run by the large listed for-profit providers. Seeking to understand why these examples of labourist ‘alternative organisations’ have outperformed more traditionally governed Australian wealth-management firms is the main purpose of this article.