Professor David Adams has been a senior executive in the Victorian Government for 8 years where he has held various positions including head of strategy in the Premiers Department and Executive Director Strategic Policy & Research in the Department for Victorian Communities where he was instrumental in the development of the ‘A Fairer Victoria’ policy statements – setting the long term social policy directions for the Government.

David regularly publishes on the changing nature of communities; the importance of local knowledge to innovation; measurement of community resilience and; post modernism in public administration.

In 2002 David was awarded the national Sir George Murray Prize for his analysis of poverty debates in Australia ‘Poverty: A Precarious Public Policy Idea’. In 2004 David won the Sam Richardson Award for the most influential publication in the Australian Journal of Public Administration and his most recent article on ‘Useable knowledge in public policy’ was the most accessed Australian public policy article in 2005.

David is also the Professor of Management and Innovation at the University of Tasmania and Visiting Fellow in the Asia Pacific School of Economics and Governance at the Australian National University.

Professor Bruce Wilson is Head of the School of Social Sciences and Planning at RMIT University in Melbourne and Co-director of the PASCAL International Observatory. He teaches in organisational and management studies and research methods, and has research interests in various aspects of organisational life, specifically focused on change and learning. Formerly, he was the founding Director of the Union Research Centre on Organisation and Technology Limited (URCOT), which is an independent research centre, affiliated with RMIT. It was established jointly by the Community and Public Sector Union and the Australian Taxation Office to undertake workplace research which would assist union and management representatives involved in major projects involving organisational and technological change. Over time, the scope of URCOT’s activities expanded, and a significant number of organisational and work redesign, systems redesign and occupational health and safety projects has been undertaken with organisations other than the Australian Taxation Office, in the public sector, the community sector and the labour movement. Bruce's experience has encompassed projects in Strategic Thinking, Strategic Human Resource Management, organisational and work design, workforce planning and performance management, and systems integration. In the last year, he has led a number of research and R&D projects focused on work processes and environments in call centres. Prior to joining URCOT in 1991, he was Senior Lecturer in Education at the University of Melbourne, and was the founding Director of the Youth Research Centre and the Centre for Urban Studies and Programs. He has co-authored or co-edited five books and many refereed articles and monographs. He is an active member of a number of international research networks.