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This study aims to examine the potentially important effects of academic embeddedness on college of business student retention and performance as well as the mediating effects of self-efficacy on the academic embeddedness student outcomes relationships. Improvements in student retention and performance reduce costs for students and universities and lead to higher incomes for graduates.

Data were gathered from students in an entry-level business course at a public university in a rural western state. Approximately 45% of the students were female, and the average age of participants was 20 years old. A survey was administered midsemester to gather data on academic embeddedness and self-efficacy. Retention was indicated by a student enrolling in a business course in a subsequent semester. Performance was measured using end-of-semester course grades. Logistic and linear regression as well as mediation analysis were used to test the hypotheses.

Academic embeddedness was found to positively predict both retention and performance, while self-efficacy was found to positively mediate the academic embeddedness retention relationship. The direct effect of embeddedness on performance was not found when controlling for self-efficacy.

Student retention and performance are important to both students and academic administrators. The findings of this study suggest that retention and performance can both be improved by focusing on factors that more strongly embed students to their colleges.

Embeddedness has been found to have high predictive validity in the employment context. This is one of the first studies to consider the effects of embeddedness in the academic context.

Purpose – In this chapter, we introduce the Internet-based field experiment (IBFE) that offers numerous advantages for bringing stratification processes “back into” the study of religion. We present preliminary results from a study of class and race discrimination using this approach.

Design/Methodology/Approach – Using names of fictitious characters, we sent e-mails to a nationally representative sample of 4,680 U.S. Christian churches asking about possible membership. The e-mails varied only in the perceived race and class of the senders. We utilize a mixed methods approach to analyze variation in the content of the church responses.

Findings – Our early findings suggest significant variation by race/class manipulation, religious denomination, and region of the country in churches’ responses as well as the length of time they took to reply, the length of the response, the warmth, religious tone, and several other dimensions.

Research limitations/Implications – This study raises new opportunities for Internet-based research on religion in a variety of social settings, but there is not yet a well-established set of “do's” and “don’ts” for how to proceed. We advocate the development of a protocol of best practices as this research method develops.

Originality/Value – This study demonstrates the opportunities and pitfalls of the IBFE and the advantages it provides for studies of stratification and religion. Ours is the first study to apply this emerging method to the study of religion and stratification.

Building on previous work from Frith, McElwee, Smith, Somerville and Fairlie this chapter further explores entrepreneurship as practiced by an entrepreneur (who is also a drug dealer) in a rural, UK, northern, small-town context and how he does ‘strategy’.

This research was conducted in a broadly grounded approach using a conversational research methodology (Feldman, 1999). A series of conversations were conducted with a career drug dealer, guided by a very basic agenda-setting question of ‘how do you earn money?’ Emergent themes were explored through further conversation before being compared with literature and triangulated with third party conversations.

Implications for research design, ethics and the conduct of such research are identified and discussed. As a research project this work is protean and as a case study the generalisations that can be made from this piece are necessarily limited. Access to and ethical approval for research directly with illegal entrepreneurs is fraught with difficulty in the risk-averse environment of academia. This limits the data available directly from illegal entrepreneurs. The credibility of data collected from third parties is limited by their peripheral interest in and awareness of entrepreneurship discourse, entrepreneurial life themes and the entrepreneurial dimension to crime, as well as by the structural bias implicit in the fact that many of these third parties deal only with what might be termed the unsuccessful entrepreneurs (i.e., those that got caught!) Findings represent a tentative indication of potential themes for further research.

Purpose: To describe how an approach to instruction that intentionally considers elements of motivation and engagement, intensity of instruction, and cognitive challenge can accelerate the reading achievement of lower-performing readers by giving them access to and support to meet reading and knowledge building with success.

Design: The authors discuss a set of high-leverage practices squarely under the teacher’s control. Grounded in longstanding and rigorous research, the integrated set of practices have been shown time and time again to accelerate achievement beyond typical growth while also intentionally considering the experiences, cultures, and linguistic knowledge students bring to the classroom. The re-conceptualized approach forefronts student agency and engages students in meaningful interactions with text to build knowledge of the world they live in.

Findings: The authors illustrate the comprehensive approach through a composite vignette drawn from work with teachers and students in school and clinical contexts. The focus of the vignette is on the actions of the classroom teacher who is working to meet the needs of three struggling readers within the broader context of her 5th-grade classroom, while also establishing a coherent instructional approach with fellow teachers.

Practical Implications: By re-conceptualizing their approaches to working with struggling readers, teachers increase the likelihood that students will not only develop component skills related to reading but also integrate these components and develop the conceptual expertise that anchors future reading and learning.

Codes of ethics have become the mainstay of the ethics programs of corporations. Many studies have explored their contents, but few have examined what makes them effective. This international study aims to identify the measures viewed as being important by top executives in determining the worth to their organizations of corporate codes of ethics.

Data were collected by questionnaires sent to the top 500 companies ranked by revenue operating in the private sectors in Australia, Canada and Sweden. By analyzing the survey results from the top corporate executives in these countries, the research team was able to test for a number of determinants of effectiveness for codes of ethics.

In a statistically significant model, it was found that four factors related to the internal management of the corporation are positively correlated to executives’ perceptions of the value of their corporate codes of ethics.

Future research may seek to address features of this study that limit its generalizability, as it was conducted on the largest of companies in each country and thus this sample may not reflect the way that business ethics are managed in smaller organizations in those countries.

If executives see particular items as important to their business ethics success, one could postulate that this has arisen from a perception that implementing these measures has been effective for their organizations. This provides guidance to other organizations on what items could enhance the effectiveness of their codes of ethics.

This study aims to examine and describe ways that organisations in corporate South Africa try to embed ethos of corporate codes of ethics in their organisations.

The study followed a quantitative research approach. The target population was the top 500 companies operating in the corporate sector by revenue. Data were collected using a structured questionnaire from 222 company secretaries and heads/managers responsible for ethics in the companies.

The findings show that the majority of companies have regulations that can help promote ethics ethos. The most prevalent artefact in the area of regulation was found to be conduct of ethical audits. Training was found to be the most prevalent artefact under staff support.

The study was limited to large organisations in South Africa. The findings can thus not be generalised to include small- and medium- sized businesses which make up the largest segment of all businesses in South Africa.

The research provides information that can be used to compare companies operating in different contexts on practices that help promote corporate ethics quality. It provides business managers with information that they can use to evaluate and benchmark their companies on practices that help promote the ethos of corporate codes of ethics.

The study is the first of its kind to examine how organisations go about institutionalising codes of ethics in South Africa. The findings can be used by all sectors of South African business as a point of reference in their efforts aimed at embedding the ethos of ethics in their respective organisations.

The purpose of this paper is to address calls from within the existing literature for a planning model that can provide both control and flexibility in dynamic environments.

This research adopts a two-phase grounded theory methodology. Phase I tests a hypothesis through a structured online survey. Phase II tests a new planning model through a focus group and an online survey.

This research finds that client-side project managers misapply rational planning tools when managing construction projects. It also finds that the planning artefacts created in the initial stages of a project are used as a communication tool, rather than a controlling or monitoring tool. These findings provide an opportunity for new planning models, such as the (next decision node) NDN model, to be adopted. These planning tools can create new levels of transparency and accountability within the planning process – as well as provide a model which is more closely aligned with the practitioners “lived experience”.

The NDN model provides a foundation for further research into the micro-mechanisms of organisational ambidexterity in projects and refinement of the NDN model.

This research presents a new planning model which practitioners can adopt when delivering construction projects.

This paper presents a new, ambidextrous planning model grounded on the “lived experience” of client-side project managers.

The purpose of this paper is to test the measurement and structural properties in a model of organizational codes of ethics (OCE) in Sweden.

The measurement and structural properties of four OCE constructs (i.e. surveillance/training, internal communication, external communication, and guidance) were described and tested in a dual sample based upon private and public sectors of Sweden.

Results show that the measurement and structural models of OCE in part have a satisfactory fit, validity, and reliability.

The paper makes a contribution to theory as it outlines a set of OCE constructs and it presents an empirical test of and OCE model in respect to measurement and structural properties. A number of research limitations are provided.

It provides a model to be considered in the implementation and monitoring of OCE. The present research provides opportunities for further research in refining, extending, and testing the proposed OCE model in other cultural and organizational settings.

The OCE model extends previous studies that have been predominately descriptive, by using confirmatory factor analysis and structural equation modeling.