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The application of different models of organization to the study of schools is common in the literature on organizational theory. This literature distinguishes rational models, such as the bureaucratic ideal type, from natural systems models, such as the concept of schools as loose‐coupled systems and the image of schools as political arenas. This article examines the extent to which some specially selected schools in Australia and New Zealand can be viewed as resembling certain organizational models. The article concludes that there is no one model which is suitable for describing schools although many of the different models described by theorists seem to be relevant to the schools studied. The article also seeks to isolate some of the factors that result in schools resembling certain organizational models rather than others.

Investigates the relationship between schools′ administrative styles and the curriculum and teaching practices that occur within them. As part of a wider study conducted into the effects of the decentralization of curriculum decision making in Australia, sampled schools were grouped according to teachers′ perceptions of the extent of autonomy that they were able to exercise. Curricular structures and instructional practices within two discipline areas –science and social science – were then compared across the groupings of schools. The results revealed that the extent of autonomy that teachers perceived they possessed within schools affected both curriculum emphases and instructional practices within the programme in practice although, when asked about curriculum emphases and instructional practices in an ideal programme, there was little difference in the views of the teachers in the different groups of schools.

Computer vision provides many opportunities for novel man‐machine interfaces. Pointing and face gestures can be used as a simple, passive means of interfacing with computers and robots. We describe two novel algorithms to track the position and orientation of the user’s hand or face in video images. This information is used to determine where the hand or face is pointing. This can be used in interactive robotics to allow a user with manipulation disabilities or working in hazardous environments to guide a robot manipulator to pick up a simple object of interest.

This study investigates the impact of socioemotional wealth (SEW) on family firm entrepreneurial orientation (EO) in Saudi Arabia, and the moderating effect of generational involvement on this relationship. Our data set comprises 241 privately, wholly owned family firms. We examine EO as a strategic orientation expressed in terms of both firm behavior and how managers approach risk-taking attitudinally. Our study finds that SEW is positively related to firms’ entrepreneurial behavior, but not managerial attitudes toward risk-taking. However, the positive effects of SEW on firms’ entrepreneurial behavior diminish as the number of generations involved in the family business increases. The broader implications for enabling entrepreneurship within Arab transforming economies adhering to strong cultural tribalistic norms are discussed.

The present study aims to examine the scope and contribution of behavioural investigative advice (BIA) reports from the National Crime Agency (NCA).

The 77 BIA reports reviewed were written between 2016 and 2021. They were evaluated using Toulmin’s (1958) strategy for structuring pertinent arguments, current compliance with professional standards, the grounds and backing provided for the claims made and the potential utility of the recommendations provided.

Consistent with previous research, most of the reports involved murder and sexual offences. The BIA reports met professional standards with extremely high frequency. The 77 reports contained a total of 1,308 claims of which 99% were based on stated grounds. A warrant and/or backing was provided for 73% of the claims. Most of the claims in the BIA reports involved a behavioural evaluation of the crime scene and offender characteristics. The potential utility of the reports was judged to be 95% for informative behavioural crime scene analysis and 40% for potential new lines of enquiry.

The reports should serve as a model for the work of behavioural investigative advisers internationally.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study to systematically evaluate BIA reports commissioned by the NCA; it adds to previous similar studies by evaluating the largest number of BIA reports ever reviewed, and uniquely provides judgement of overall utility.

The paper seeks to apply the theory of the democratic deficit to school‐based management with an emphasis on Australia. This theory was developed to examine managerial restructuring of the Australian Public Service in the 1990s. Given similarities between the use of managerial practices in the public service and government schools, the authors draw on recent literature about school‐based management in Australia and apply the democratic deficit theory to it.

This paper is conceptual in focus. The authors analyse literature in terms of the three components of the democratic deficit – i.e. the weakening of accountability, the denial of the roles and values of public employees, and the emergence of a “hollow state” – and in relation to the application of this theory to the Australian Public Service.

A trend towards the three components of the democratic deficit is evident in Australia although, to date, its emergence has not been as extensive as in the UK. The authors argue that the democratic principles on which public schooling in Australia was founded are being eroded by managerial and market practices.

These findings provide policy makers and practitioners with another way of examining managerial and market understandings of school‐based management and its impact on teachers and on students. It offers suggestions to reorient practices away from those that are exclusively managerial‐based towards those that are public‐sector based.

The value of this paper is that it applies the theory of the democratic deficit to current understandings of school‐based management.

This study examines the relationship between the use of management controls and the perception of meaningful work. Meaningful work is an important driver of individual performance of managers, and employees and can be enabled by sufficient use of management controls. The purpose of this paper is to address this issue.

Based on bibliometric analyses and a structured literature review of academic research studies from the organizational, management and accounting literature, the authors develop a conceptual model of the relationship between the use of management controls and the perception of meaningful work.

First, the authors propose that the use of formal management controls in a system (i.e. the levers of the control framework) is more powerful than using unrelated formal controls only. Second, they suggest that the interaction of a formal control system together with informal controls working as a control package can even stretch the perception of meaningful work. Third, they argue that the intensity of the control use matters to enhance the perception of meaningful work (inverted u-shaped relationship).

This study presents the first conceptual model of the relationship between the use of management controls and the perception of meaningful work. It provides valuable implications for practice and future research in the field of performance management.

This paper explores the nuanced relationship between individual and firm performance through the lens of market information use, in the specific context of small businesses, shedding light on the specificity of information use and impact of information use on both types of performance.

A mixture of subjective and objective data from a sample of small food producers engaged in an action research project with a major UK supermarket was used to test hypotheses developed from the information management, marketing and small business literature.

The results suggest that the effective use of market information has a significant impact on the performance of both the individual and the organization but independently of each other. The result provides evidence of the potential “disconnection” between individual and organizational levels of performance and the tension that exists in small businesses between operational and strategic decision-making and the use of market information therein.

While the author's study benefits from access to individual decision-makers and objective organizational performance data, the study is not without its limitations. Chief among these is the small sample size. Moreover, while there are clear benefits to working with a homogeneous sample of small food producers supplying the same key customer in the same market, generalizing to small food businesses operating in other distributions channels and small businesses in other sectors is also difficult.

When analyzing the performance of marketing managers, owner-managers should pay attention to the incentives for them to invest time and effort in the effective use of market information as the disconnection between individual and firm performance can have negative implications for their personal development and the overall firm performance.

This study explores a missing link in the extant body of small business literature, i.e., the role played by key individuals with responsibility for the marketing function within small businesses and the relationship between small businesses' approach to the use of market information and performance at a functional level and the overall firm performance.

Varied accounts exist regarding the role of trust and satisfaction in online continuance intention and contexts within which this occurs. The purpose of this paper is to consider the moderating effect of structural assurance (SA) on satisfaction and trust and trust and continuance intention in a pure e-service context (online betting).

UK online bettors were surveyed with an instrument developed using validated variables and measurements, including continuance intention, satisfaction, trust (in vendor) and SA. Structural equation modeling with partial least squares was used to evaluate the measurement and structural model simultaneously.

SA positively moderates the trust–continuance intention relationship but not the satisfaction–trust relationship. SA is positively associated with trust.

The study contributes to research focused on exploring the moderating effects of trust and satisfaction on continuance intention where institution-based mechanisms are perceived to be effective and framed to assure success.

An over-reliance on context-specific mechanisms is inadequate; strategic approaches to trust must consider contextual and institutional mechanisms interdependently.

The paper addresses the need for research relating to the institutional context within which trust mechanisms operate. This research provides a novel contribution through an exploration of the moderating effects of SA on: trust and continuance intention; and satisfaction and trust (the authors also measure the direct effect of SA on trust). This paper is one of the first studies to examine these important concepts in this context. The online betting case allows for the exploration of risk where vendor-specific and contextual risk are both high.