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In this study the authors set out to investigate the nature of administrative control in school districts in general and the control processes and activities employed in instructionally effective school districts in particular. Nine control functions are identified which are assumed to affect student outcomes by influencing the culture and technology (curriculum and instruction) of schools. Data were collected from interviews of superintendents in 12 effective school districts in California. The findings revealed inter alia more district‐level control of principal behavior and site activity than anticipated; control functions that were pervasive and connected; a wide range of control mechanisms; and the key role of the superintendent in connecting schools and district offices.

Internet characteristics — enhanced distribution customer relationships and information access in an information intensive industry — fit the tourism industry. There is little sense having an Internet presence though if visitors cannot find and use the website or receive answers to their e‐mail inquiries. Research lauds online tourism initiatives, yet little research investigates Internet use in wine tourism. Given the competitive nature of wine tourism, an important research area is what website features and e‐mail policies do wine tourism operations use for better site navigation site popularity and relationship marketing? Two online analyses of eight wine tourism operations, within and outside Western Australia, illustrate a methodology and dozens of possible metrics for analysing the competition and marketing electronic wine tourism. The results give wine tourism managers insights into short‐term competitive advantages via website features and e‐mail policies, and add to the academic literature and future research of the Internet's role in wine tourism.

This research replicates and extends Frey et al. (2003), using a typical e‐mail query to investigate e‐mail customer service by 260 Tunisian hotels. Based on the hotel responses, this study found that guests had one chance in ten of receiving a reply within a day and even less chance that hotels answered the inquiry professionally, promptly, politely and personally. Diffusion of innovations failed to explain differences in responsiveness by Tunisian hoteliers but did help explain the quality of e‐mail replies. The results suggest that reply quality differs across hotel size and hotel affiliation. Hotel affiliation as well as hotel category and website presence showed no significant differences in responsiveness. Differences aside, the results highlight that Tunisian hotels can gain an immediate competitive advantage by analysing common e‐mail queries and implementing basic e‐mail procedures.

In seeking to extend rational choice theory from “market” to “political” behaviour, economists have encountered a paradox: namely, that the act of voting itself appears to be inconsistent with the assumption of rationality. This is true not only when self‐interest is assumed, but also when altruistic behaviour (at least in its non‐Kantian form) is allowed for. This article surveys the theoretical and empirical literature on the determinants of the decision to participate in voting, and concludes that this decision is responsive to changes in the expected benefits and costs of voting; even though the expected costs of voting must normally outweigh the expected benefits. Interpretations of this behaviour include the possibility that voters act rationally, but are misinformed about the likely effectiveness of their votes; alternatively, the electorate may include more Kantians than economists have generally been willing to admit.

This study investigates electronic customer service, e‐service, by Australian organisations, replicating and building on Heuchan et al.’s study of relationships among organisational characteristics and e‐service. Compared to one year earlier, the study found more organisations with Web sites, shorter response times to customer e‐mails and higher response quality to customer e‐mails. Response rate and response quality, however, was virtually the same – poor. Australian organisations have e‐service tools such as Web sites and e‐mail, yet they face an assimilation gap delivering e‐service. Organisational diffusion of innovations provides a theoretical base for these results and future research. The paper gives manager insights into existing e‐service and ways to improve e‐service in their organisation.

This paper aims to provide insight into how knowledge resources in R & D organizations can be effectively and separately measured for knowledge sharing and transfer. Knowledge is recognized as a durable strategic resource to obtain sustainable competitive advantage.

The paper proposes a theoretical framework integrating an analytic network process (ANP) with a balanced scorecard (BSC) to measure the performance of knowledge resources under value perspective. Four indicators and three knowledge value (KV) components including labor value, technology value and utilization value are discussed. The model construction, problem structuring and calculation procedure for measuring the performance of knowledge resources based on ANP and BSC are demonstrated.

Despite a number of models to assess the performance of knowledge resources being proposed, they highlighted a need for separately measuring under value perspective. With the aim of filling this gap, the main finding of the paper is to clarify relevant issues, providing a better framework for assessment of the performance of knowledge resources.

To handle the dynamic nature of knowledge, the research should take into account more advanced methods to measure the performance of knowledge resources. Both qualitative and quantitative methods should be utilized in future research.

The consequences of measuring the performance of knowledge resources under value perspective may help managers to organize and arrange the separate knowledge resources, improving the knowledge resources exchange between different institutions in R & D organizations.

The main contribution of this paper lies in the development of a comprehensive model, which incorporates diversified issues for conducting the performance of knowledge resources under value perspective.

A high technology company formation training intervention undertaken at an Innovation Centre in the Mid‐West of Ireland is described and analysed. The programme aimed to stimulate the formation and growth of high technology venture through a range of learning strategies. The programme focused on: o the development of cohesive founding teams; o initiated encouragement of self‐learning, personal development and change, and o the production of a solid business plan, the identification of a market niche and development of managerial skills. The programme utilised a range of integrated learning strategies and focused considerable attention on team formation and development activities. The results of the programme have been significant with considerable success in creating venture teams, new companies and job creation. Statistical evidence on the success of the programme is presented.

The purpose of this paper is to determine the relevance and reliability of the ten‐item Consultation and Relational Empathy (CARE) Measure as a tool for measuring patients' views of anaesthetists during preoperative assessment consultations.

Self‐completed patient questionnaire containing the ten‐item CARE Measure. Consecutive adult patients were asked to complete the ten‐item CARE questionnaire immediately after their pre‐operative assessment consultation with the anaesthetist and return it to a designated local co‐ordinator. Reliability co‐efficient of the overall measure, and relevance of each item to patients' concerns were measured.

Using the Measure, 31 consultant anaesthetists were assessed by 1,582 patients (559 male, 952 female). The total number of “not applicable” responses was 1,086, (6.8 per cent of the total number of possible “not applicable” responses). The overall number of missing values was 0.6 per cent. The measure effectively discriminated between doctors (reliability co‐efficient of the average score per doctor provided by 40 patients was above 0.8) and had high internal consistency (Cronbach's alpha, 0.93).

The present study presents evidence of a tool which may have utility in anaesthetics and other settings.

This special “Anbar Abstracts” issue of the Marketing Intelligence & Planning is split into nine sections covering abstracts under the following headings: Business Strategy; Marketing Strategy; Customer Service; Sales Management; Promotion; Marketing Research/Customer Behaviour; Product Management; Logistics and Distribution; Sundry.

The article asserts that systems thinking and its concurrent organizational processes are central organizing structures in schools, yet “hide in plain sight” and are therefore underexplored and underutilized in leadership theorizing.

By exploring the theoretical literature concerning school organization and leadership, tensions and contradictions within the literature are surfaced. The article examines and critiques distributed leadership theory and provides new directions for thinking about leadership practice based on school organization literature.

Recent work (Kruse and Johnson, 2017; Murphy, 2015, 2016) suggests that schools are far too complex to be led and managed by a single dedicated leader, yet the practice of leadership remains largely reified within the literature (Bryk et al., 2015), Insofar as leadership theory relies on narratives derived from and about work of “the” leader, it ignores the larger system. A contrasting literature is that of distributed leadership (Gronn, 2000; Spillane, 2006). Yet, even within that literature, the focus remains on interpersonal interactions and conjoint actions concerning school operation. While not dismissing the importance of leadership as a theoretical and practical construct, thinking about leadership as less a property of individuals and more a variable within effective organizational practice holds promise for the study of educational leadership.

This article extends the existing literature by suggesting how systems processes and structures serve school leaders in addressing the leadership demands of fostering continuous (rather than episodic) change, processing information and creating contextual local knowledge with the potential to enhance school outcomes.