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The purpose of this paper is to present a metaphor of organizations as discursive gravitational fields.

The metaphor was built based on Einstein's general theory of relativity and Lacan's theory of discourse. The dialogue with organization studies was made possible through the utilization of the communicative theory of organizations as theoretical background.

A number of insights were derived from the metaphor. First, organizations can distort their discursive surroundings up to the point of stopping any flux of independent discourse; second, the boundaries of organizations are to be understood as a gradient of discursive influence which fades away, often much beyond its legal limits; that also creates degrees of “stakeholding”, corresponding to different levels of influence and dependence on a specific organization by their stakeholders; third, the discursive fields of different organizations are often superposed, creating the phenomena of interference and superposition among organizational discursive fields; fourth, speciation among organizations is related to the kind of symbolic element attracted predominantly by their surrounding fields; and fifth, Lacanian theory suggests that no absolute and permanent discursive power is possible to persons or organizations, leaving room to the continuous production of new and potentially emancipating meaning, whose appearance, however, can be very difficult to predict due to its “discursive quantum nature”.

This metaphor can help researchers and managers to interpret the discursive phenomena involving organizations as a whole, as well as organizational relations with stakeholders.

By bringing together organization theory, Einstein's and Lacan's theories, this paper provides a new view on the relation between organizations, discourse and society.

The purpose of this paper is to introduce this special issue on the subject of the rhetoric and narratives in management research.

The paper reviews selected contributions to the 4th Conference on Rhetoric and Narratives in Management Research held on March 24‐26, 2011 at the ESADE campus in Barcelona.

The paper reveals various views of rhetoric and narratives in management research including plagiarism, individual (personal) narratives , material and spiritual narratives and deception in storytelling.

The paper provides a useful introduction to the various papers on rhetoric and narratives in management research.

Job satisfaction and leadership behavior are recognized by the organizational world as fundamental elements that influence the overall effectiveness of a company. However, as the first step for an adequate intervention on any of these variables, it is the evaluation. The purpose of this paper is to develop and validate two brief measures on job satisfaction and leadership behavior.

The sample was made up of 246 workers located in Bogota, Colombia. The study was an instrumental research. To collect validity evidence, the internal structure and the relationship with other variables were used. For the evaluation of equity, the differential item functioning was analyzed according to the sex of the participants. Reliability was estimated through the ordinal omega coefficient.

Both brief measures presented a unifactorial structure, where job satisfaction was measured by five items and leadership behavior by four items. On the other hand, only one item of leadership behavior showed differential item functioning; however, its magnitude was trivial. Also, convergent and discriminant evidence was provided for both measures, and the reliability levels were adequate.

The measures developed represents an effort to briefly measure job satisfaction and leadership behavior. Likewise, it constitutes two of the few instruments to measure job satisfaction and leadership behavior in Latin American, representing a good alternative for the measurement of the referred constructs in an organizational context.

This article aims to provide an overview of Texas State University's Common Experience, an innovative initiative that engaged tens of thousands of people in shared consideration of sustainability as a single topic during academic year 2010‐2011.

The discourse begins with an overview of the Common Experience from a pedagogical perspective based on five principles of effective instructional practice identified by the National Research Council (NRC) in their synthesis of the research from the fields of cognitive, developmental and educational psychology, and brain research on how people learn. Based on a case study research design, the article next provides detailed descriptions of course‐based and non‐course Common Experience activities, including examples from the year‐long initiative. The discourse then focuses on important elements organizers should consider when planning non‐course activities, followed by a description of the planning process needed to replicate the initiative at other institutions.

Based on five principles of instructional practice, the Common Experience is a pedagogical innovation designed to cultivate a common intellectual conversation across the campus, to enhance students' participation in the intellectual life of the campus, and to foster a sense of community across the campus and extended community. In so doing, the Common Experience in sustainability inspired people on campus and in the community to change behavior and social policy, build scientific understanding, connect local environmental issues to global themes, and reshape values – components crucial to sustainability education.

The Common Experience is more likely to yield progress toward finding solutions to sustainability problems because it promotes engagement and input from all stakeholders within the campus and surrounding community through shared vision and face‐to‐face dialogue in a variety of contexts.

Through a survey of 200 employees working in five of the thirty establishments analysed in previous research about the microeconomic effects of reducing the working time (Cahier 25), the consequences on employees of such a reduction can be assessed; and relevant attitudes and aspirations better known.

The paper discusses the influence of instructional leadership on effective teacher teaching practices and learning outcomes. In particular, the paper examines one of the instructional leadership practices, namely teaching evaluation, and seeks to investigate the influence on the effective teacher practices and on the achievement of 6th grade primary school students studying mathematics in the Cyprus educational system.

A quantitative research approach was deemed appropriate and employed for the purpose of the research subject, and in particular for the type of questions studied. Data were collected from 81 principals, 139 6th grade teachers and 1,553 students in the Cyprus educational system. In addition, data analysis was performed using structural equation models (SEM).

The instructional leadership approach assumes that principal evaluations influence high learning outcomes. Findings demonstrated that the principal evaluation has a positive and statistically significant impact on effective teaching practices and student achievement.

It is important to acknowledge that in the Cyprus educational leadership field the corellation among the instructional leadership, the effective teaching practices of teachers and the students achievements were not examined through the above parameters. Furthermore, the survey provided important insights into the principals, teachers, pupils and, more generally, on Cyprus's educational policy.