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The US fertility transition in the nineteenth century is unusual. Not only did it start from a very high fertility level and very early in the nation’s development, but it also took place long before the nation’s mortality transition, industrialization, and urbanization. This paper assembles new county-level, household-level, and individual-level data, including new complete-count IPUMS microdata databases of the 1830–1880 censuses, to evaluate different theories for the nineteenth-century American fertility transition. We construct cross-sectional models of net fertility for currently-married white couples in census years 1830–1880 and test the results with a subset of couples linked between the 1850–1860, 1860–1870, and 1870–1880 censuses. We find evidence of marital fertility control consistent with hypotheses as early as 1830. The results indicate support for several different but complementary theories of the early US fertility decline, including the land availability, conventional structuralist, ideational, child demand/quality-quantity tradeoff, and life cycle savings theories.

Emerging discourses focusing on the social, emotional, educational, and economic disadvantages identified for Australia’s First Peoples (when compared to their non-Indigenous counterparts) are becoming increasingly dissociated with an understanding of the interplay between historical and current trends in racism. In addition, it may be argued that the very construction of Western perspectives of Indigenous identity (as opposed to identities) may be deeply entwined within the undertones of the interplay between epistemological racism, and the emergence of new racism today.

This chapter shall review a substantial portion of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander educational research, with a particular emphasis on the acknowledgment of the impact of racism on the educational outcomes (and other life outcomes) of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples with a focus on higher education.

This review has found that while there is evidence emerging toward the engagement of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students in all forms of education, there is also considerable resistance to targeted efforts to reduce the inequities between Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students and all Australians (especially within the university sector). It is argued this resistance, both at the student and curriculum level, is clear evidence of preexisting epistemological mentalities and racism.

The implications of this review suggest that greater effort needs to be placed in recognizing unique Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander experiences and perspectives, not only at the student level, but such perspectives need to be imbedded throughout the whole university environment.

Generally, theory and research investigating the effectiveness of mentoring has offered little resounding evidence to attest to mentoring programmes being a strategic initiative that make a real difference in reducing the educational inequities many minority students endure. In contrast to this existing research base, the Australian Indigenous Mentoring Experience (AIME) has often been cited as one of the most successful mentoring initiatives within Australia. It is the purpose of this chapter to examine how AIME may impact on the educational aspirations and school self-concept of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students.

A series of multi-group analyses were centred around Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) and structural equation modelling techniques that sought not only to explore the psychometric validity of the measures utilized within this study, but also to identify how the measures may be related after accounting for background variables (e.g. gender, parental education).

The results found that the measures utilized held strong psychometric properties allowing an increased level of confidence in the measures used and the conclusion that may be drawn from their use in analyses. Overall, the results suggested that AIME is an effective tool for increasing not only the educational aspirations of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students but also their levels (and utility) of School Self-concept and School Enjoyment.

The implications suggest that not only is AIME an essential tool for closing the educational gap between Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander and non-Aboriginal students, but also our understanding of mentoring must be extended well beyond simplistic notions of role-modelling.

Aboriginal students experience disproportionate academic disadvantage at school. It may be that a capacity to effectively deal with academic setback and challenge (academic buoyancy) can reduce the incidence of academic adversity. To the extent that this is the case, academic buoyancy may also be associated with positive educational intentions. This study explores the role of academic buoyancy in Aboriginal students’ post-school educational intentions.

The survey-based study comprises Aboriginal (N = 350) and non-Aboriginal (N = 592) high school students in Australia.

Academic buoyancy yielded larger effect sizes for Aboriginal than non-Aboriginal students’ educational intentions – particularly in senior high school when educational intentions are most likely to translate into post-school educational behaviour.

Post-school education is one pathway providing access to social opportunity. Any thorough consideration of students’ passage into and through post-school education must first consider the bases of students’ academic plans and, by implication, their decision to pursue further study. Identifying factors such as academic buoyancy in this process provides some specific direction for practice and policy aimed at optimizing Aboriginal students’ academic and non-academic development.

Academic buoyancy is a recently proposed construct in the psycho-educational literature and has not been investigated among Aboriginal student populations. Its role in relation to post-school educational intentions is also a novel empirical contribution for both Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal students alike.

As I have reflected upon the last thirty years, since it was precisely thirty years ago that I started as a student at Stanford, I have wondered if there is an overall theme to how my professional career has unfolded and the role Stanford played in it. I believe Albert Bandura's (1982) paper, The Psychology of Chance Encounters and Life Paths, provides a good descriptive framework to work with. I am persuaded that at various points of time as I stood at the proverbial fork in the road, due to one chance factor or another, my decision was tipped one way. This is not to suggest that my career has been a sequence of random events; quite the contrary. While the specific fortuitous events occurred largely outside my control, my responses to them were quite systematic; some fortuitous events had lasting influence, and some even changed my life trajectory. But, what I am struck by, ex post, is that in 1973, as I was just finishing my undergraduate education in India, the ex ante probability of my ending up some years later as a professor at an Ivy League university was essentially zero. Yet, this did eventually happen.

This chapter reviews empirical studies into the relationship between management control, strategy and sustainability.

The review explores the theoretical frameworks and models used in previous empirical research as well as the research questions and methods applied to empirically explore this emerging research area.

Even if a growing body of empirical research has emerged over the last decade, our knowledge of how companies design or use management control to support sustainability strategy appears to be limited, providing considerable scope for further research.

This review structures the state of our empirical knowledge in the area of management control, strategy and sustainability and makes suggestions for future research paths.

Purpose: The current study aims to cast light on the divide between academic research in management accounting and its applicability to practice by examining, from the standpoint of nursing, how this gap is perceived and what challenges may be involved in bridging it.

Design/Methodology/Approach: The current study compares the findings of Tucker and Parker (2014) with both quantitative as well as qualitative evidence from an international sample of nursing academics.

Findings: The findings of this study point to the differing tradition and historical development in framing and addressing the research–practice gap between management accounting and nursing contexts and the rationale for practice engagement as instrumental in explaining disciplinary differences in addressing the research–practice gap.

Research Implications Despite disciplinary differences, we suggest that a closer engagement of academic research in management accounting with practice “can work,” “will work,” and “is worth it.” Central to a closer relationship with practice, however, is the need for management accounting academics to follow their nursing counterparts and understand the incentives that exist in undertaking research of relevance.

Originality/value: The current study is one of the few that has sought to look to the experience of other disciplines in bridging the gap. Moreover, to our knowledge, it is the first study in management accounting to attempt this comparison. In so doing, our findings provide a platform for further considering how management accounting researchers, and management accounting as a discipline might, in the spirit of this study’s title, “Learn from the Experience of Others.”

In the context of organizational change, identifying, and organizing the various roles of change agents remains a challenge for practitioners and scholars alike. This chapter examines how different agents can enable an effective change process. Empirical evidence from three hospitals illustrates the process of transformation and its underlying arrangements to identify agents and their roles. The findings underline the importance of designing a coherent system of agents, determining where they come from, their role during the process, and how this may change throughout the change process. Managerial choices in the cases are discussed, leading to implications for theory and practice.