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During the last 20 years, there has been an explosion in the production and dissemination of a number of highly popular managerial concepts. These initiatives, such as TQM and BPR, highlight a number of themes. Refers to these new movements as “new managerialism”, supported by new institutional frameworks which all act as sources and bearers of management knowledge upon which, in part, professional managers draw for practical guidance. Uses Foucault’s archaeological and genealogical methods to argue that new managerialism is a discourse on a grand scale as well as emerging and dispersing locally, occurring in everyday talk and text, or “discourse”. According to Foucault, one of the effects of grand scale new managerialism is that it exerts a disciplinary gaze over managers who are immersed in its knowledges, and who seek to follow its guidelines to achieve “best practice”. As leaders, this best practice relies on the utilisation of “charisma”. Using interpretive repertoires, a method that is sympathetic to this approach, analyses the talk of two everyday managers who describe their roles as leaders, as well as a group of employees, or “followers”, and notes the importance of “charisma” in their accounts. Shows how the projection of a charismatic identity is central both accounts, and suggests that the individuals studied are subject to a charismatic gaze.

This article explores the processes and practices of doing participatory research with children. It explores how this process can be represented in writing. The article comes out of a project funded by Creative Partnerships UK, in which a creative agent, three artists and a researcher all worked within an elementary school in South Yorkshire, UK, for two years, to focus on the children’s Reasons to Write. It considers whether it is truly possible for children to enter the academic domain. Using a number of different voices, the article interrogates this. It particularly focuses on children’s role in analysing and selecting important bits of data. It engages with the lived realities of children as researchers. It considers ways in which children’s voices can be represented, and also acknowledges the limitations of this approach for adults who want to write academic peer reviewed articles. Ideas the adults thought were clever were found to be redundant in relation to children’s epistemologies. The article considers the process that is involved in taking children’s epistemologies seriously.

Following the rapid shift to online learning due to COVID-19, this paper aims to compare the relative efficacy of face-to-face and online university teaching methods.

A scoping review was conducted to examine the learning outcomes within and between online and face-to-face (F2F) university teaching programmes.

Although previous research has supported a “no significant difference” position, the review of 91 comparative studies during 2000–2020 identified 37 (41%) which found online teaching was associated with better learning outcomes, 17 (18%) which favoured F2F and 37 (41%) reporting no significant difference. Purpose-developed online content which supports “student-led” enquiry and cognitive challenge were cited as factors supporting better learning outcomes.

This study adopts a pre-defined methodology in reviewing literature which ensures rigour in identifying relevant studies. The large sample of studies (n = 91) supported the comparison of discrete learning modes although high variability in key concepts and outcome variables made it difficult to directly compare some studies. A lack of methodological rigour was observed in some studies.

As a result of COVID-19, online university teaching has become the “new normal” but also re-focussed questions regarding its efficacy. The weight of evidence from this review is that online learning is at least as effective and often better than, F2F modalities in supporting learning outcomes, albeit these differences are often modest. The findings raise questions about the presumed benefits of F2F learning and complicate the case for a return to physical classrooms during the pandemic and beyond.

South Bay Water Recycling (SBWR) is a regional recycled water distribution system serving industrial and commercial customers in the area of northern California (USA) known as "Silicon Valley." In early 2008 the City of San José, as administering agency of the San José/Santa Clara Water Pollution Control Plant, implemented a Cooling Tower Initiative to encourage recycled water use by commercial and industrial facilities. In 2009, Sustainable Silicon Valley, a non-profit organization dedicated to a sustainable future, convened a meeting of utilities, high-tech and academics to discuss how local stakeholders might collaborate to improve the sustainable use of water in Silicon Valley. Out of these discussions emerged the concept of the EcoCloud™, a coalition of private companies, public utilities, environmental organizations and academic researchers who encourage each other to adopt sustainable practices, supported by the latest social networking and data analysis tools. While the initial focus of the EcoCloud™ is to help industrial facilities use water sustainably—especially by using recycled water for cooling—its long-term goal is to support all aspects of sustainability, including energy reduction, materials management and land use. The EcoCloud™ allowed the City of San José to move from a serial marketing to a group marketing model, reaching more potential customers and connecting more facilities to the recycled water system.

Inspired by the concept of industrial ecology, the EcoCloud™ is designed to be a "virtual" industrial ecosystem where industry, government and educational institutions can work together to share information about all aspects of sustainability. Although industries in the EcoCloud™ are not located next to each other, they share a common interest in reducing energy usage, conserving resources, eliminating waste, and cutting costs to improve their bottom line. Just as "cloud computing" uses the distributed power of the internet for more efficient data processing, the EcoCloud™ harnesses the power of web-based social networking tools so local business leaders and facility managers can work with industry experts, technology innovators, university researchers and government agencies to make their enterprises more sustainable and more profitable.

The latest Internet World International Conference, and the first to be organised by Learned Information since the company acquired the event off the previous organisers, Meckler, took place at Wembley Conference Centre, London from 16–18 May. Clearly, the clue to the theme of the conference is in its title — the Internet — and if we wanted to heap acclaim on the event, its organisers, its exhibitors and its attendees, we could go on for ever. It was generally agreed that there has never been anything like the Internet for information distribution, which hopefully is not telling readers of The Electronic Library anything new. So what came out of it that is actually of interest to TEL? Most of the discussion mentioned below centred around electronic publishing. However, what follows is really applicable to any sort of activity interested in providing a service and staying in business, including electronic librarians.

This paper aims to present an interpretation of freehand drawings produced by a sample of final year degree level learners in response to the question: “What is civic engagement”? The aim in using this approach, with final year degree learners from different countries, but pursuing the same degree, was to compare and contrast their understanding of civic engagement.

Learners completed their drawings and then discussed their drawings in small groups. All of their drawings were initially examined quantitatively before a sample of six drawings were selected for in-depth qualitative examination.

Using learner-generated drawings enables learners convey visually what can be challenging to verbalise. After the exercise, some learners discovered that they had a good basic appreciation of civic engagement.

Describing civic engagement pictorially forced participants to think about what the essence of civic engagement was for them.

This study shows how a collaborative learning experience, rather than a competitive comparison of performance, facilitates learners readily demonstrating their level of understanding and appreciation for civic engagement.

The Strategic Management Society attracted 450 participants to its annual conference in October in exotic, bustling Singapore to explore the theme, “Cultures and Competitive Strategies.”

The purpose of this paper is to understand if accounting is an un‐Australian activity, contrasting the notion of the bush and bushman present in popular Australian poetry and cultural myth with the notion expressed by Maltby of the link between the soul of the middle class and the practice of bookkeeping. The paper aims to explore the notion of a tension between what might be seen as indigenous values and the values of Western capitalism.

The paper presents an analysis of Australian poetry to identify in this culturally significant media how the city and the technologies of accounting are negatively contrasted with the bush and the bushman. Since many Australians migrated from European countries, we might expect bookkeeping to claim a foundational place in the Australian soul.

This literature shows bush dwellers as being exploited by those from the city, and city professionals such as the accountant and the lawyer as having lost their sense of self and soul. The sense of “other” reflected by the concept of the bush in Australian literature represents a tension between a structured and ordered European sense of self expressed by Maltby and an archetypical sense of self implied by the character of the bushman and connected to the Australian landscape, with its inherent but little acknowledged debt to the Aboriginal. In this landscape the absence of both accounting and the associated rhetoric of economic rationality allow other forms of rationality to emerge.

This is the first time that poetry has been examined in relation to accounting. It shows a deep insight into the place of archetype of the accountant in Australian cultural identity. In addition it argues that responses to accounting can reflect underlying rhetorics of rationality.

The purpose of this paper is to explore what female business owners hide to better understand social norms and discourses that influence the decisions women make about how they structure their home and work lives.

The author used qualitative interviews to access the narratives of female business owners in public relations within the USA. This industry segment attracts primarily women and, unlike a retail store, offers women a variety of ways to structure their business hours and locations.

Women use hiding as a way to manage others’ impressions and as a way to gain legitimacy for themselves and their organizations. Specifically, the findings fall into three categories: hiding childcare obligations, obscuring their work locations and “fake it until you make it”. Hiding is used a strategy to deal with tensions that arise based on women’s interpretations of social norms and discourses.

Based on the finite nature of any study, it is difficult to assess the long-term impact of hiding. Further, as with many studies, the geographic location, gender and industry segment provide a context for this research, which means the reader must determine the transferability.

Few studies explore hiding as a means to gain access to gendered discourses that can undermine identity construction and business growth. By uncovering what female business owners hide, it provides opportunities for self-awareness and agency.

Wicked problems, cross-sectoral and transregional collaborations, emerging technologies and calls for innovation generate exciting but unpredictable transformations in governance. Emerging research suggests humility, rather than certitude, represents a promising ethos for public leaders working to solve problems in tumultuous times. This study examines the nature, value and practice of humility in public administration (PA) leadership.

This study reviews cross-disciplinary research on the nature and value of humility and emerging findings and debates on humility assessment measures. It analyzes discourse among graduate students in US PA classes and uses ethnographic analysis from workshops with local government leaders to identify institutional dynamics that may influence leaders' willingness to act with humility.

Findings suggest that although PA students and leaders may value humility, they encounter institutional constraints related to public sector legitimacy and narratives about expertise and risk. The author proposes a framework to guide future research and practice in humility and public leadership.

Potential constraints emerged from a modest study of courses and workshops; further research is required to test the prevalence of themes across public leadership environments.

Public leaders, teachers and coaches may apply these practices and assessment measures to cultivate humility in PA classes and organizations.

This study is among the first to explore leadership humility with attention to how PA context may influence practice.