Search results

This paper presents base‐line data about the incumbency or length of time spent in office by Australian vice‐chancellors who held appointments in the years 1963 to 1983. Principal findings of the analysis are that the average length of incumbency has declined from 13.6 years for 1963 to 8.0 years for 1983 vice‐chancellors, that the period 1983 to 1987 will witness an unprecedentedly high rate of turnover among vice‐chancellors, and that an increasing proportion of vice‐chancellors no longer regard their incumbency as their final full‐time professional appointment. The conclusions are related to apparent stratification and ranking among Australian universities in an emerging system of higher education which is becoming more complex.

This article aims to propose a three‐stage framework for on‐going professional development of aspirant and incumbent heads that is designed to increase their own self‐efficacy. It is suggested that continuity and progression in self‐efficacy development can be addressed via processes pertaining to acculturation, assimilation and actualisation. The on‐going work of Fletcher augments this conceptual framework with a new approach to action research ensuring an evidence‐based foundation to the growth of self‐efficacy.

The article offers an analysis of existing research evidence in coaching, mentoring, talent management, leadership development and self‐efficacy to propose a framework useful in research and in the development of self‐efficacy that may help secure transition between the potential to lead and high performance in leadership incumbency in schools.

The article points to the importance of coaching and mentoring as potential scaffolds to create an appreciation of self‐efficacy's value at all stages of the headship journey. It is suggested that active development of individual's self‐efficacy through mentoring and coaching relationships may serve to ensure that the loss of human potential of those who could lead but never completed the journey is reduced.

The article identifies new questions pertaining to the practice of high quality coaching and mentoring in the journey to leadership in schools and raises further questions pertaining to the conceptualisation of learning relationships and the interactions and feelings involved in such learning relationships.

This article suggests a phased approach, an integrated vision of mentoring and coaching for headteacher development that can span their professional lifetime. This generative approach is what distinguishes the authors’ proposal from others. An emphasis is placed on self‐study integrated in an Appreciative Inquiry approach, however, the authors’ proposal goes further in that they have realised that aspirant headteachers should be taught how to undertake self study integrated with action research not only for their own benefit as they journey towards incumbency but also so that they can become coach and mentor for others; for their staff, pupils and other aspirant headteachers.

India has acquired global leadership in renewable energy (RE) deployment because of its commitment to achieve 175 GW of installed capacity by 2022. Entrepreneurship driven by innovation and policy push is essential for energy sector transition. Despite policy focus on the diffusion of RE technology, there are several challenges that plague innovation and RE entrepreneurship development in Gujarat, India. Hence, the purpose of this study is to apply an empirical approach to identify major challenges faced by RE entrepreneurs operating in Gujarat.

An empirical correlational analysis has been taken up to explore individual- and firm-level characteristics of 54 RE entrepreneurs in Gujarat across six districts. Moreover, challenges faced by them related to policy and market have been investigated. Gujarat has been selected as the study area, as it has an installed capacity of 11,000 MW and houses around 11% of the total RE potential of the country.

Major challenges faced by RE entrepreneurs in Gujarat comprise of financial risks, market incumbency, low profitability, uncertainty of demand and lack of skilled labour.

This study offers an empirical grounding to policymakers for fostering an ecosystem of entrepreneurship and innovation specific to RE sector in India and other developing nations.

This study is unique, as previous studies on sustainability-driven entrepreneurship are majorly theoretical and lack empirical foundations. Moreover, there are even lesser quantitative studies exploring challenges to RE entrepreneurship specific to India.

The purpose of this study is to test whether the realization rate on audit engagements increases with auditor tenure in competitive markets, suggesting the presence of initial audit lowballing.

Using regression analysis, we test this hypothesis with fee- and cost-related data from a sample of local governments audited by a single audit firm. Based on representations of the firm, we classify the audit market for the 127 cities, counties and school districts in our sample as competitive and the audit market for the 93 special district audits as non-competitive.

As hypothesized, we find that in the competitive market, the realization rate on audit engagements increases with auditor tenure but does not do so in the non-competitive audit market.

We cannot identify the specific engagements which were subject to a competitive bidding process, so we rely on the auditor’s representation of competitiveness by entity type.

To our knowledge, the central prediction of audit pricing models that the auditor’s realization rate increases with auditor tenure has not been tested in real audit markets because proprietary cost data are rarely available. Testing this prediction is the primary contribution of this paper.

Political parties are continuously interested to gain knowledge about the factors that influence the voter to select political candidate of his/her choice. The purpose of this paper is to examine cumulative impact of sources of associations on voters’ preference of the political party and to investigate the type of causal relationship that exists among those sources.

The authors have proposed five key sources of associations of the overall political party, namely, campaign effectiveness, image of its leaders, intensity of anti-incumbency effect, meaning and trust attached with the party. Here the authors have considered four important political parties relevant to the voters of West Bengal. Those are Congress, Bharatiya Janata Party, Communist Party of India (Marxist) and All India Trinamool Congress. The authors have used SEM method for estimating the model as the same is widely used for estimating a system of equations with latent variables.

Out of the eight path coefficients six are found to be statistically significant. Political campaign impacts brand trust positively and brand trust in turn impacts party preference positively. Again political campaign’s direct impact on political party preference is found to be positive. However, the impact of political campaign on party preference also runs through brand meaning. Both the path coefficients are significantly negative showing that more the voters develop understanding about political parties through different independent sources lesser are the impact of political campaigns as they highlight positive aspects of the party and the candidate only, ignoring facts. Interestingly leadership is impacting party preference negatively. Thus individual leadership traits have negatively impacted party preference in the sample.

In the paper, the authors have identified factors impacting political brand choice in an emerging country like India. This research explores the factors that need to be considered by the political parties to influence preference of voters for political brand. As far as the authors’ knowledge goes no such studies have been carried out in the Indian context and certainly not in the context of a regime change after three decades. Additionally, the theoretical model proposed is firmly grounded in theory and its estimation is based on well-developed scales. The approach is thus unique in this area of enquiry. Finally, application of SEM in political branding context is a significant contribution of this work.

Paid digital campaigning tools play an increasingly pivotal role in individual election campaigns worldwide. Extant literature often juxtaposes the equalization theory, which argues that these tools create a level playing field, and the normalization theory, which contends that strong and resource-rich politicians benefit most from digital tools. This article aims to inform this debate by looking at it from a campaign expenditure perspective beyond the Anglo-American bias of most research on the subject.

The authors use an original dataset on campaign expenditures and resources of 1,798 candidates running for 13 Belgian parties in the 2019 federal parliamentary election. Relying on multilevel statistical models, the authors link the candidates' digital campaign expenses to their incumbency status, which is expected to affect digital campaigning.

While earlier work on majoritarian cases often showed contradicting results, this study on the Belgian flexible-list proportional representation (PR) case provides strong support for the equalization theory by demonstrating that incumbents are not only less inclined to spend on digital tools than challengers, but also spend a smaller part of their budget on these tools.

This paper contributes to the literature by exploring the equalization versus normalization debate from a campaign expenditure perspective using a made to purpose dataset in a non-Anglo-American context.

The peer review history for this article is available at: https://publons.com/publon/10.1108/OIR-12-2021-0679

Early information technology scholarship centered on the internet’s potential to be a democratizing force was often framed using an equalization/normalization lens arguing that either the internet was going to be an equalizing force bringing power to the masses, or it was going to be normalized into the existing power structure. The purpose of this paper is to argue that considered over time the equalization/normalization lens still sheds light on our understanding of how social media (SM) strategy can shape electoral success asking if SM are an equalizing force balancing the resource gap between candidates or are being normalized into the modern campaign.

SM metrics and electoral data were collected for US congressional candidates in 2012 and 2016. A series of additive and interactive models are employed to test whether the effects of SM reach on electoral success are conditional on levels of campaign spending.

The results suggest that those candidates who spend more actually get more utility for their SM campaign than those who spend less in 2012. However, by 2016, spending inversely correlates with SM campaign utility.

The findings indicate that SM appeared to be normalizing into the modern congressional campaign in 2012. However, with higher rates of penetration and greater levels of usage in 2016, the SM campaign utility was not a result of higher spending. SM may be a greater equalizing force now.

Campaigns that initially integrate digital and traditional strategies increase the effectiveness of the SM campaign because the non-digital strategy both complements and draws attention to the SM campaign. However, by 2016 the SM campaign was not driven by its relation to traditional campaign spending.

This is the first large N study to examine the interactive effects of SM reach and campaign spending on electoral success.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate whether constituents respond to local government accounting data. Since 2006, New Zealand local authorities (councils) have been required to disclose long-term accounting data relating to forecast operating revenue and expenses.

The authors test whether the difference between the actual operating expenditure as reported in the annual report and as forecasted is associated with electoral outcomes.

The authors find that accounting performance and the sign of accounting performance (i.e. expenditure over-runs) are associated with greater councilor re-election. Furthermore, accounting performance is also associated with greater voter turnout.

The production and disclosure of council planning data is based on the perceived accountability of the council to its constituents. The authors find that accounting, in an electoral context, has both information content and conveys good/bad news about accounting performance to voters.

The purpose of this paper is to view political candidates as products in a market competing over quality via advertising. Consequently, the Austrian argument against restrictions on product advertising can be applied to political markets as well. The foremost conclusion is a disproportionately negative effect of campaign finance restrictions on lesser-known incumbents and third-party candidates. A counterargument is also presented that campaign finance restrictions may solve a prisoner’s dilemma.

The author provides an initial test of these hypotheses with data from US Senate races occurring before and after the passage of the McCain-Feingold Act of 2002.

Empirical results show a strong incumbency advantage, but no disproportionate harm to lesser-known candidates or third parties from the passage of the act.

The paper provides a new perspective on the role of the political candidate and purpose of campaign advertising. The first pass empirics suggest, however, that only a major revision in campaign advertising rules could significantly alter the predictors of challenger vote shares.

The purpose of this paper is to find how the changing relationship between labour and political parties influenced the growth of reasonably independent labour unions in Taiwan.

The authors have drawn on data collected through in-depth interviews of union officials, labour activists and members of legislature from two major political parties in Taiwan.

The authors found that the breach between labour and political parties was affected by the eventualities contemplated in democratisation. Though the DPP (Minchin-tang/Democratic Progressive Party) provided the initial “shot in arm”, autonomous unions have not necessarily grown underneath DPP’s dominion. Political liberalisation of Taiwan’s industrial relations systems has gained more momentum when the DPP was in opposition than in power. Anti-incumbency pushed independent unions to sway the opposition’s backing when Kuomintang (KMT/the Chinese Nationalists) was in power and not to that extent when the KMT stepped down. The autonomous labour movement in Taiwan was initially influenced by the changing relationship between labour and ruling parties. However, the movement was subsequently shaped by the ethnic and political characteristics based on the historical divide between the mainlanders and Taiwanese and Taiwan’s changing economic landscape.

Specific limitations include the subjectivity of the inference and lack of generalisability of the findings that are based on interviews with two out of three players of industrial relations system.

Because of globalisation and global financial crisis that brought together a new generation of workforce who hold individualistic values, have lesser faith in collectivism and perform new forms of work where unionisation is no more relevant, the autonomous labour movement in Taiwan was hugely impacted.

Growth of independent unions is not being shaped by democratisation alone. If we refocus the debate about democracy’s implied relationship with the rhetoric of national identity, one can see the crucial role played by the changing economic landscape and ethnic divisions ingrained in political origins.