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In this chapter, we report findings from a three-year, survey- and interview-based study involving 538 families bringing up children with disabilities in Alberta, Canada. The focus of the study was on the everyday challenge and accomplishment of sustaining a routine of daily life. The families who participated in this study were diverse, yet they struggled with many of the same questions and challenges. Four over-arching and inter-related challenges emerged from our analysis of the interview data. These are difficulty balancing the competing needs and wants of their children; tension between wanting to protect and wanting to integrate their child and family into the community; conflict between earning and care giving activities; and, trouble accessing and navigating supports and services. This chapter includes a small sample of illustrative family stories. The study findings suggest that parents are striving but struggle to meet normative expectations, that is, to simultaneously do all they can to help their disabled child and create a routine that balances the needs and interests of all their children. One conclusion is that service systems and professionals can help and or hinder families as they strive to create and maintain a daily routine that is fitted to the local ecology and family resource-base, and congruent with their values and goals, and with the needs, interests, and competencies of family members.

This study explores the association between institutional investors’ stewardship activity, disclosed under Japan’s Stewardship Code, and the R&D investments of their investee companies.

Recognizing the pivotal role of R&D investment in long-term value creation, this study uses comprehensive data from institutional investor disclosures to assess the impact of stewardship activity on their investee companies.

The findings show that investor stewardship activity is a factor that influences strategic R&D investment. Specifically, a positive association is found between code-compliant institutional investor shareholding and R&D investment, contingent on high levels of stewardship activity.

By using stewardship disclosures to measure stewardship activity, this study sheds new light on institutional investors’ role in promoting R&D investment. The findings suggest that stewardship regulation is a valid governance policy mechanism to the extent that it promotes stewardship activity. Moreover, the findings show that stewardship disclosures provide valuable information about the potential value enhancement associated with institutional shareholding.

This paper aims to first, examine teachers' conception of e‐learning and second, is to reveal how e‐learning is applied in teaching and learning in the field of Chinese higher education.

Various issues are reviewed in the instruction part, i.e. e‐learning applications in China, research and practices of e‐learning. The methodology applied in this study is phenomenography. Twenty‐four Chinese participants were interviewed in‐depth based on a protocol developed in the planning stage. The interviews are analysed from a grounded theory perspective and a set of conceptual categories are proposed.

Five categories, i.e. the centrality of the lecture, online cooperation learning, network learning, student learning, and infrastructure and access are identified in terms of the phenomenographic study. The findings demonstrate that the traditional teaching methods that dominate in China are unlikely to present conditions for mainstreaming e‐learning in the near future.

Traditional Chinese teaching culture still dominates in higher education, and teachers' conceptions do influence their teaching behaviours. Therefore, a training programme could be developed based on the categories of teachers' conceptions of e‐learning.

This study helps us to understand how Chinese teachers understand e‐learning and how they utilise e‐learning in their teaching and learning.

Revelation of controversial fundraising practices by the Clinton‐Gore reelection campaign in 1996 and continuing controversy over proposed campaign finance reform legislation has brought this subject into public focus and discussion. This article provides an overview of key recent developments in campaign finance accompanied by coverage of literature and Web sites produced by scholars, government agencies, and participants in the ongoing debate over campaign finance and its role in the American political process.

The purpose of this paper is to provide an in‐depth examination of the outsourcing of food services on a university campus.

The paper uses a detailed case study including interviews with university administrators, contractor administrators, and students and background information taken from student satisfaction surveys and local newspapers.

A new set of challenges has arisen – both for the university and the corporate partners providing the outsourced services. On the one hand, universities need to ensure the delivery of high‐quality services while operating under increasing fiscal pressures. And, on the other, corporate partners are dealing with unique issues at every different institution they serve, ranging from local competition to labor availability and serviceability and low margins, among others.

This case study examines the events at one private university located in the mid‐Atlantic region in the USA. While many of the findings may be applicable in a variety of settings, it is not possible to draw direct inferences from a case study.

As outsourcing increases at universities, administrators need to consider the unique aspects of the local environment – with respect to labor availability and wage structure, the student population and their relationship with the contracted employees, the surrounding community and the interplay among the local residents, the contractor, and its employees – as they develop the contract and structure long‐term agreements.

Empirical studies have examined broad trends in outsourcing at universities; this research provides valuable insight into specifics – and the insights are instructive to administrators who are in charge of managing the outsourcing.

This paper aims to identify the ethical foundations and principles underpinning the learning organization (LO) concept.

By interviewing one thought leader in the field, Professor Robin Snell, this paper traces how his early days in academia shaped the development of an ethics-driven research agenda on LO.

An ethical perspective advocates the importance of establishing a covenant or constitutional foundation of rights that would enable and empower organizational members at all levels to enact the processes of LOs, thus signifying the importance of employee development and a more sustainable approach for developing LO.

A personal reflection of Robin Snell on his own academic career development and research trajectory offers some insights into how an ethical perspective of LO evolved and flourished as a field of study.