Different institutional elements (such as norms, values, policies, regulations and routines) evolve as a product of the unique governance history of each organisation. These internally sourced institutions govern the behaviour of an organisation, its leaders and staff.

Not surprisingly, the governance history of Yarnteen Corporation has both urban and rural influences. Like many other Aboriginal organisations in the Hunter region, Yarnteen had its beginnings in the Awabakal Co-operative. An early internal review by leaders of the co-op led to several of its functional programs being ‘farmed out’ to organisations that were set up to take on the program roles. These organisations were incubated and mentored by the co-op until they became independent service delivery organisations in their own right.

Yarnteen was one such incubated organisation, becoming incorporated in June 1991. The leadership of the Awabakal Co-op stayed closely involved in mentoring the early development of Yarnteen and its emerging leadership. This process of organisational mentoring and incubation has in turn become a signature feature of Yarnteen’s development.

While the corporation’s purpose and objectives evolved over the years in keeping with its growth, there has always been a strong focus on economic development at the heart of its operations. Reflecting back on the organisation’s governance history, Yarnteen leaders identify several ‘key factors that influenced [its] governance structure’ right from the beginning (pers. comm.; see also YATSIC 2005). The two founding leaders (one Aboriginal, the other Torres Strait Islander) say they were particularly keen to make an enduring change for the better in the economic circumstances of their families. They wanted greater economic independence for their own families and, in that way, to act as an economic role model for the wider Indigenous community: ‘From the first, our organisation stressed its desire to become a full agent in our own development’ (YATSIC 2005).

In order to do this, the leadership felt strongly that:

From the beginning, a first-order consideration in designing Yarnteen’s organisational governance was a recognition amongst the founding Awabakal and corporation leaders ‘that the Indigenous community around Newcastle area is made up of many different family and clan groups … who have resettled in the region in search of better employment opportunities’ (YATSIC 2005). They wanted to avoid the problems that other organisations had experienced with open-ended, amorphous community participation leading to unwieldy representative structures, and to focus on a core group of families with whom they had well-established connections. They had also witnessed first hand the debilitating effects of community politics on the governance of earlier NSW co-operatives and Local Aboriginal Land Councils. These organisations were regarded as having ‘lost’ valuable financial assets and economic ventures because of factionalised disputes over membership, representation, and community access to benefits.

The organisation’s leaders also wanted to create ‘a balance between economic and social obligations for greater community capacity building’. However, they also ‘held the view that focusing only on the social aspects of people’s lives may not produce lasting changes to individual families or communities’ (YATSIC 2005). They clearly ‘recognised the importance of business in supporting a healthy community’ (cf. Jonas 1991: 12).

This positive assessment of the potential role of family, in tandem with their reservations about a ‘whole of community’ approach to business, and a desire to secure a strategic balance between cultural, social and economic goals, has set the tenor of Yarnteen’s governance and institutional operations since 1991.