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The authors argue that middle leaders are the key educators in school-based educational development. Schools often secure small-scale funding to engage in government or systemic initiatives, and these projects require a leadership “close to the classroom” if they are to realise sustainable educational gains. This leadership often comes from the middle leaders – those who practice their leading in and around classrooms. The paper aims to discuss this issue.

A single case study methodology is used to investigate two middle leaders, leading a small-scale project. Their leading practices are examined using the “theory of practice architectures”, to identify how these practices were enacted within their educational context.

While principals play a crucial role in enacting change, it is the middle leaders who are closer to the classroom than most principals, and whose practices more directly impact teaching and learning as they are best placed to ensure that meagre resources are well used to improve student learning. They do this by ensuring that development is collegial and a response to evidence-based needs.

First, middle leaders need support in facilitating educational development. Second, their leading practice is crucial for sustainable school-based development. Third, site-based educational development occurs most effectively when it is evidence-based. Finally, this form of educational development requires high-level collegiality.

This paper is original in two key ways: first, it addresses the under-researched practices of middle leaders; and, second it employs the practice theory to understand school leadership and development.

As information and communication technologies become a critical component of firms’ infrastructures and information establishes itself as a key business resource as well as driver, people start to realise that there is more than the functionality of the new information systems that is significant. Business or organisational transactions over new media require stability, one factor of which is information security. Information systems development practices have changed in line with the evolution of technology offerings as well as the nature of systems developed. Nevertheless, as this paper establishes, most contemporary development practices do not accommodate sufficiently security concerns. Beyond the literature evidence, reports on empirical study results indicating that practitioners deal with security issues by applying conventional risk analysis practices after the system is developed. Addresses the lack of a defined discipline for security concerns integration in systems development by using field study results recording development practices that are currently in use to illustrate their deficiencies, to point to required enhancements of practice and to propose a list of desired features that contemporary development practices should incorporate to address security concerns.

The paper explores coordination practices in digital–physical product development and their consequences for companies traditionally relying on physical product development.

Using an embedded case study design, the paper reports four action research initiatives addressing the digital–physical coordination challenges encountered by a leading B2C company.

Effective coordination of digital–physical product development, firstly, involves standardization of process, output and skills to accommodate the stability needed for efficient physical product development and manufacturing. Secondly, it involves agile coordination events, such as Scrum ceremonies and PI planning, to facilitate the mutual adjustment needed to allow agility and the differences between digital and physical product development to be continuously and successfully negotiated.

The paper illustrates a research model with case evidence and suggests tentative theory in the form of propositions. Future research should explore coordination problems and solutions in different digital–physical project types and contexts.

Coordination practices for digital–physical product development are presented and analyzed, providing inspiration for companies.

The paper is the first to explore coordination practices within the emerging field of digital–physical product development.

This paper aims to examine the J-shaped relationship between age and job-specific skill obsolescence (JSSO), and the differential moderating effects of development and maintenance HR practices on this relationship.

Regression models of survey data obtained from a sample of 722 Chinese knowledge workers were used to test the hypotheses.

The results show that among women age and JSSO are J-shaped related and the relationship weakens under high development HR practices; while among men the J-shaped age-JSSO relation is significant only under low maintenance HR practices.

This research is subject to the cross-sectional design, and the sample is restricted to knowledge workers.

This study advances previous studies that hold a linear (positive or negative) age-JSSO relationship by theorizing and testing a J-shaped one. The differentiated moderating effects of two bundles of HR practices proved improves our knowledge about how to use HR practices appropriately to sustain employee work competency in the context of workforce aging.

The purpose of this study is to shed more light on the role of employee proactivity (self‐starting, action‐orientated behaviours aimed at greater organisational effectiveness) in relation to aging and career development. It aims to do this in two ways. First, by investigating how age and HR practices for development initiated by the organisation influence proactivity. Here, proactivity it seeks to study as a career‐relevant outcome. Second, by examining how age, proactivity and HR practices for development influence employee experiences of career opportunities. Here, it aims to use proactivity as career‐relevant predictor.

A total of 619 employees from 47 departments completed a questionnaire, including two scales on proactivity (on‐the‐job and developmental proactivity) as well as a scale on career opportunities. HR and line managers in these departments were interviewed about HR practices directed at career development of the employees. The data combine information from two levels (employee, department) as well as three different sources (employee, line manager, HR manager), and are analysed using multi‐level analysis.

First, the paper presents the results on proactivity as an outcome: age is positively related to proactivity on‐the‐job but has no association with proactivity towards development. HR practices targeted at career development are positively associated with both types of proactivity. Second, the results on proactivity as a predictor show that career opportunities have a negative association with age, a positive association with proactivity, and a positive association with career development‐orientated HR practices. An additional negative effect on career opportunities is found for the cross‐level interaction between HR practices and age.

This study is original as it combines individual, psychological, and HR perspectives in researching age‐related career issues. It contributes to the literature by showing that age has no negative, but rather a positive impact on proactivity. Proactivity furthermore is sensitive to HR practices for development, implying that organisations can influence the proactivity of their employees. For older employees the study implies that, although organisations tend to offer them fewer HR practices for development, they can offset this disadvantage to some extent by increased proactivity, and thus retain career opportunities.

The purpose of this paper is twofold. First is to investigate the impact of social supplier development practices on the suppliers’ social performance. Second is to analyze if the implementation of supplier development practices by Western buying firms pays off in terms of operational and economic results.

Hypotheses are tested in a sample of 120 Spanish manufacturing firms using Path Analysis.

The results suggest that while supplier development practices help to improve the suppliers’ social performance and the buying firm’s operational performance, they do not pay off in terms of economic performance.

The paper shows that supplier development practices help to improve the suppliers’ social performance while improving the operational performance of the buying firm. The study has two main limitations. First, because cross-sectional data are used, possible recursive relationships could not be accounted for. Second, the study is limited to the Spanish scope and, as such, results need to be interpreted in that context.

The results of this study provide insights to managers with respect to the implementation of supplier development practices to make their suppliers more socially responsible. Furthermore, managers are shown the implications of implementing such practices in terms of operational and economic outcomes.

This paper contributes to the existing literature on the effectiveness of sustainable supplier development practices by including the suppliers’ performance, which has been generally neglected. Objective measures for economic performance are also included.

Organizations often fail to utilize managerial personnel effectively for leadership development and succession planning systems, and many execute these critical practices through separate human resource functions that shift the responsibility for leadership development away from line managers. The purpose of this article is to present a best practices model for optimal development of the leadership pipeline and a series of practical recommendations for organizations.

A group of 30 CEOs and human resource executives across 15 best practice organizations were asked via semi‐structured interviews to describe the content and delivery of their respective organizations' leadership development and succession planning practices.

Analysis of interview data indicated that best practice organizations effectively integrate leadership development and succession planning systems by fully utilizing managerial personnel in developing the organization's mentor network, identifying and codifying high potential employees, developing high potentials via project‐based learning experiences and manager‐facilitated workshops, establishing a flexible and fluid succession planning process, creating organization‐wide forums for exposing high potential employees to multiple stakeholders, and establishing a supportive organizational culture.

The interview data are drawn from a relatively small number of executives and from a single industry, which may limit the overall utility of the findings.

This study offers needed empirical support for the value of integrating leadership development and succession planning practices through utilization of managerial personnel. Management development practitioners will benefit from assessing their respective organizations' current practices vis‐à‐vis those discussed here, while scholars may utilize the best practices model for generating further research on the role of managerial personnel in talent management systems.

Supply chain management is an increasingly important organizational concern, and proper management of supplier relationships constitutes one essential element of supply chain success. However, there is little empirical research that has tested the effect of supplier development on performance. The main objective is to analyze the effect of supplier development practices with different levels of implementation complexity on the firm's purchasing performance.

Three supplier development constructs were defined: basic supplier development, moderate supplier development, and advanced supplier development. Three structural models were hypothesized and tested using structural equation modeling through field research on a sample of 306 manufacturing companies in Spain.

Identified important interrelationships among the various supplier development practices, basic, moderate, and advanced. Also indicated that the implementation of supplier development practices significantly contributes to the prediction of purchasing performance.

The use of a single key informant could be seen as a potential limitation of the study. The study was a cross‐sectional and descriptive sample of the manufacturing industry at a given point in time. A more stringent test of the relationships between the different levels of supplier development and performance requires a longitudinal study, or field experiment.

This study focused on supplier development practices and revealed how involving suppliers in supplier development activities is important and may help buyers to increase their purchasing performance. The findings from the structural analysis should provide practicing managers with insights on how these practices and their benefits are related in terms of purchasing performance, thus affecting their ability to make better sourcing decisions.

Fills an important gap in the purchasing literature with respect to the area of supplier development. While there is much written about supplier development based on conceptual and case study research, this study is unique in that it is the first attempt to empirically model the relationships between different levels of supplier development and their impact on purchasing performance using a comprehensive set of practices.

This paper presents a conceptual model of effective subcontractor development practices to guide general contractors' development of a network of high-performing subcontractors (SCs) for Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) projects.

Drawing from supplier development theories and practices in the manufacturing sector, a mixed interpretivist and empirical methodology is adopted to examine the body of knowledge within literature for conceptual model development. A self-reporting survey questionnaire with a five-point Likert scale is used to assess 30 construction professionals' perceptions of the effectiveness of 37 SC development practices classified into five categories. Descriptive statistics, weighted means, and t-tests are used for data analysis.

SC prequalification, commitment, incentives, evaluation and feedback practices can be effective in generating high-performing SCs. Practices that require more direct involvement and linkages between GC and SC are perceived to be less effective.

Theoretical contributions include a framework to foster future research to advance knowledge and understanding to enhance the adoption of SC development practices in the construction sector.

Implementation of ranked SC development practices can equip GCs with a network of high-performing SCs for improved competitive advantage and revenues.

The proposed conceptual model expands discussions on the modification of supplier development theories and practices currently utilized in the manufacturing sector toward their application in the construction sector. This research differs from previous research, which primarily focused on the manufacturing sector.

The purpose of this paper is to report on a qualitative study of the learning and development of 70 external mentors during the first year of their deployment to support early career teachers’ professional learning as part of a national initiative aimed at school improvement in Wales.

The study adopted a narrative methodology that elicited accounts of external mentors’ learning experiences that were captured as textual data and analysed using an inductive approach to identify: first, the manifest themes that appeared at declarative level, and second, the latent (sub-textual) themes of external mentor learning and development.

Four key themes emerged that indicate the complexity of transition to the role of external mentor in high-stakes contexts. From these, eight theoretically-informed principles were derived which support mentors to embrace uncertainty as essential to their learning and development, and to harness the potential they bring as boundary-crossers to support the development of new teachers.

The study investigated the first year of a three-year programme and worked with one form of qualitative data collection. The research results may lack generalisability and a longitudinal study is necessary to further explore the validity of the findings.

The eight principles provide a foundation for mentor development programmes that can support ambitious goals for mentoring early career teachers.

The study addresses the under-researched area of the learning and development of external mentors at a national scale.