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Assumptions are often made that women police officers will respond more sympathetically to rape complainants than their male colleagues. In the research study presented here, 48 women complainants of rape and sexual assault expressed their views of the extent to which they considered the gender of the interviewing officer to be important and commented on the ways in which the men and women involved with their case interacted with them. The results showed that, overall, gender per se was not the determining factor of complainant satisfaction. Professionalism, warmth and sensitivity were the qualities most desired and these were not exclusively associated with gender. This suggests that not only is it possible for some male officers to be sensitive victim interviewers, but also that being female does not automatically denote possession of the key attributes required for victim interviewing. Some rape complainants, however, expressed a strong preference for women officers. This places the onus on the police not simply to provide a woman officer – the “any woman will do” scenario – but to ensure the availability of trained and experienced women and men officers.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate and recommend formal guidelines for the initial design of country-level or sectoral payroll levy systems that are intended to incentivize new firm training. The paper presents and illustrates two necessary conditions for new training to be stimulated, one involving transaction costs and the other the incentive payback. Ultimately, the purpose is to guide more successful designs for such systems in future.

The paper is principally theoretical, but the South African levy-grant system of the late 1990s is used as a case study. The paper illustrates how World Bank data may have been used to guide the design.

The paper demonstrates how during the design phase, policy makers can employ knowledge of pre-incentive training levels of firms, and possibly also estimates of unit transaction costs, to estimate the number of employees that may be positively affected. In the South African case, the actual system used may have been underspecified and unlikely to reach many employees with new training.

Future research may employ these guidelines in empirical studies of the relative success of payroll levies.

The practical value of the paper is formal guidelines for policy makers seeking to implement such payroll levy systems.

Better design for these systems may have positive implications for productivity and social externalities while avoiding unnecessary waste.

While there have been several more general reflections of payroll levy systems, and empirical investigations of their efficacy, this is the first paper formally modeling and testing design guidelines that can be implemented practically in the pre-implementation phase.

Like many of his generation George George, the director of Auckland’s Seddon Memorial Technical College (1902‐22), considered marriage and motherhood as women’s true vocation and believed in separate but equal education for girls that included some domestic training. In this regard, New Zealand historians often cite him as an advocate for the cult of domesticity, a prescriptive ideology that came to be reflected in the government’s education policy during this period. But as Joanne Scott, Catherine Manathunga and Noeline Kyle have demonstrated with regard to technical education in Queensland, rhetoric does not always match institutional practice. Other factors, most notably student demand, but also more pragmatic concerns such as the availability of accommodation, staffing and specialist equipment, can shape the curriculum. Closer scrutiny of surviving institutional records such as prospectuses, enrolment data and the director’s reports to the Department of Education, allow us to explore more fully who was given access to particular kinds of knowledge and resources, how long a particular course might take, the choices students made, what was commonplace and what was unusual, and what students might expect once they completed their studies.

In light of contemporary critiques of New Zealand comprehensive schooling published mainly in the popular press, it is timely to re‐examine the origins of and the rationale for the widespread adoption of this model of education. The comprehensive schooling philosophy, it was recently alleged, has produced a situation in which ‘as many as one in five pupils in the system is failing’ and where ‘there is a large group at the bottom who are not succeeding’. This group was estimated to include some 153,000 students out of the total current New Zealand student population of 765,000. In this context, however, Chris Saunders and Mike Williams, principals of Onehunga High School and Aorere College in Auckland respectively, have noted that having underachieving students in secondary schools in particular is not a recent phenomenon. A large ‘tail’ of poor performing high school students has long been a cause of concern, Williams suggests.

Decision theoretic utility analysis has long been proposed as a method for analyzing the monetary impact of training. Increasing complexity in the training environment requires, however, that additions be made to the basic algebraic assessment formulas. One such addition may include the effect of levy‐grant systems that stem from legislation and are designed to incentivize employer provided training EPT). The impact of such incentive systems on the bottom‐line of a company is a vital consideration in what training to apply and whether to participate in the grant incentive activities. Interest in the range of evaluation techniques is increasing. This article accordingly adjusts the basic decision theoretic utility analysis techniques for the special case of a levy‐grant incentive, using South Africa as a case study. It is hoped that the principles used here can thus be extrapolated to other skills development systems, allowing both organizations and policy makers to make optimal decisions.

This paper aims to investigate desired leadership characteristics of South African managers, and link differences in desired traits to contextually crucial demographic group differences and managerial advancement.

South African managers (n=205) ranked ten items of the characteristics of admired leadership scale. Aggregate rank analysis and nonparametric ANOVAs reveal significant preference differences in the sample and demographic sub‐groups. The research compares traits across managerial advancement and age, providing an implicit success test.

Managers most highly ranked the three “credibility” characteristics (competence, honesty and inspiration) prevalent in comparative worldwide studies. Key differences exist between managers and employees, many contextually crucial demographic sub‐groups, and higher and lower‐level managers of younger and older ages.

This research provides potentially important information for leadership identification, selection and development, in that it may identify characteristics that current leaders associate with contextual success. The research also identifies discrepancies between employees and managers and demographic groups, which may be sources of dissatisfaction or misunderstanding, and which organizations should address to better align expectations of subordinates and actions of leaders. Individuals might also use the information in self‐development, comparing their own views to successful leaders.

Significant informational and statistical advantages exist over prior studies. This research provides individual‐level analyses, and an explicit test of association with objective success that previous studies have not provided. It includes top management, whereas prior studies have limited samples to subordinates or middle managers. Greater demographic differentiation is provided, allowing for more contextually relevant understanding.

This paper aims to address the question of whether acquiring firm directors trading, prior to a merger or acquisition (M&A) announcement, predicts the share market reaction on M&A announcement.

Event studies and cross-section regression were used in this analysis.

This paper finds that acquiring firms with no director trading and firms with net director purchases in the 12 months prior to the M&A announcement earn positive abnormal returns. It is also found that share market reaction to M&A announcements is considerably larger for acquiring firms whose directors do not trade relative to those companies with directors who do trade over the prior 12 months. This director non-trading result is further born out in regression analysis.

The absence of pre-M&A announcement director trading could reflect lower agency costs for the acquiring firm and this might explain to stronger announcement day effect for this group of firms.

The fact that directors choose not to trade in their shares prior to a M&A transaction appears to be viewed as good news by the market.

Director trading is value relevant for the acquiring firm and so it is critical that director trading is transparent.

To the best of the authors' knowledge, this question has not been addressed in the literature before, particularly the finding for firms with no director trading in the period prior to the M&A announcement.

The purpose of this study is to examine student sentiments regarding high-quality vs low-quality teaching.

This study uses a text mining technique to identify the positive and negative patterns of student sentiments from student evaluations of teaching (SET) provided on Ratemyprofessors.com. After identifying the key positive and negative sentiments, this study performs generalized linear regressions and calculates cumulative logits to analyze the impact of key sentiments on high- and low-quality teaching.

Results from 6,705 SET provided on Ratemyprofessors.com indicated that students express different sets of sentiments regarding high- vs low-quality teaching. In particular, the authors found positive sentiments such as passionate, straightforward, accessible, hilarious, sweet, inspiring and clear to be predictive of high-quality teaching. Additionally, negative sentiments such as disorganized, rude, difficult, confusing and boring were significantly related to low-quality teaching.

This study is one of the first few studies confirming that high- and low-quality teaching are not completely opposite to each other from the student’s perspective. That is, the presence of high-quality teaching does not necessarily mean the absence of low-quality teaching. As such, this study provides an important theoretical base for future researchers who wish to explore approaches for improving faculty teaching in the higher education setting. Additionally, this study offers educators some recommendations that may help students experience positive sentiments while minimizing negative sentiments.

The purpose of this paper is to evaluate a long-term programme within a police service that sought to transform the policing of adult sexual assault cases through reforming case management and investigation practices, as well as cultural perspectives among staff.

The study is based on a case-study approach of change and reform within a single police service. Fieldwork consisted of more than 240 semi-structured interviews and focus groups with police officers, civilian staff, victim advocates, crown prosecutors, defence lawyers, doctors and staff from victim specialist support agencies. Extensive documentary analysis supplemented the primary findings.

Changes to investigations of sexual assault were perceived to be wide-ranging and deeply embedded, and were regarded positively by police officers, staff and external agencies. These are identified in terms of improvements to initial reporting of offences, the development of more rigorous case management and investigations, and enhanced relations with external support agencies.

The study is necessarily limited to one case study and the analysis would be usefully developed through further application to other police services.

The findings have considerable implications for police leaders and managers and wider society. Victim support and recovery agencies benefit from the reforms outlined, and there are considerable consequences for wider criminal justice that continues to disadvantage victims.

The paper has considerable originality since it offers a “deep” and “thick” understanding of reform within a particular context. The programme of reform was highly unusual since it was designed and delivered over a ten-year period and addressed many aspects of police organisation.