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The paper aims to argue that there has been a privileging of the private (social mobility) and economic (social efficiency) purposes of schooling at the expense of the public (democratic equality) purposes of schooling.

The paper employs a literature review, policy and document analysis.

Since the late 1980s, the schooling agenda in Australia has been narrowed to one that gives primacy to purposes of schooling that highlight economic orientations (social efficiency) and private purposes (social mobility).

The findings have wider relevance beyond Australia, as similar policy agendas are evident in many other countries raising the question as to how the shift in purposes of education in those countries might mirror those in Australia.

While earlier writers have examined schooling policies in Australia and noted the implications of managerialism in relation to these policies, no study has analysed these policies from the perspective of the purposes of schooling. Conceptualising schooling, and its purposes in particular, in this way refocuses attention on how societies use their educational systems to promote (or otherwise) the public good.

The purpose of this paper is to report the results of a national survey of government primary school principals in Australia, investigating the purposes of education, in terms of the importance and level of enactment of those purposes in schools.

In 2009, an electronic survey was distributed to government primary school principals in Australia seeking their views on the purposes of education. The survey comprised 71 items of a closed format and three items of an open‐ended format. Respondents rated first the importance they ascribed to particular purposes of education, then second the degree to which they believed these purposes were actually enacted in their particular school. Factor analyses were conducted on the item responses. Differences between importance and enactment of purposes are discussed together with reasons for these differences.

The findings overwhelmingly point to tensions between what they, the principals, believe ought to be the purposes of education and what the strategies to achieve those purposes might be, and the realities of what is actually happening. It could be argued that the results indicate a major shift away from public purposes of education to those more aligned with private purposes. Many of the barriers to achieving a greater focus in schools on public purposes are seen to be related to external (to the school) issues, such as government policy decisions, differential funding and resourcing across school sectors and emerging community and societal factors.

This research complements other aspects of this project into the purposes of education in Australia. There are some limitations to the reported findings in so far as only government principals participated in the survey. Non‐government school principals were invited but declined to participate.

This is the only piece of research of its kind in Australia and provides unique insights – those of principals – into what schools are focusing on and what the leaders think they ought to be focusing on. There are clearly policy and practice implications of the research.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the application of social theory as conceptual methodology in the design of case study research.

The authors examine how social theory can be used to design case study research when the choice of theory is made before or during the empirical enquiry. Rather than simply presenting the elements of design, the focus is on the ways the elements relate and connect to each other, i.e. how a researcher can design each step to facilitate the work that needs to be done in the others.

A circular research design starts and finishes with the theory. The conceptual tools that social theories offer can be used to guide researchers into the empirical field and out of it. A conceptually driven design facilitates the interconnection between the various steps of a research project and can keep theory, research problem and data closely connected.

There is a role for systematic research design in interpretative case studies in management accounting and control. Although this paper uses strong structuration theory, the circular design proposed can be applied for other social theories and methodologies where an abductive approach is appropriate.

There are very few papers that explicitly demonstrate the implications of research design choices in case study research. In particular, the authors contribute to discussions on the conduct of interpretative research in management control and demonstrate that, especially for structuration theory, a conceptual methodology approach to research design, data collection and analysis can lead to theoretical insight.

Most publications on the management of diversity in Western countries pay homage to history by referring back to the way regulatory frameworks developed to promote equal treatment and to oppose discrimination. In work on English speaking countries, particular attention has been given to the struggles waged in the USA for civil rights and for gender equality in the 1960s and their impact on the emergence of equal employment opportunity and affirmative action laws and policies. Generally, these developments are depicted as the antecedents to the emergence of diversity management in the USA. This genealogical orientation is usually designed to establish historical foundations. However, as we see it, this approach to history has promoted an impression of linear evolution. Our general aim in this chapter is to show how an historical perspective can help uncover continuities in regard to equal employment opportunity, affirmative action and diversity management policies and strategies in Australia, particularly in relation to the management of cultural diversity in Australian workplaces. Rather than seeing development in linear terms, our aim is to highlight connections and the implications of such connections. Accordingly, this chapter relates each of these policies/strategies to analogous political and legal developments that emerged concurrently, in particular such initiatives as multiculturalism, anti-discrimination laws and what became known in Australia as ‘productive diversity’ policies.

Previous studies have confirmed the potential benefits of participating in theatrical improvisation, including improved mental health, well-being, skills and strategy development. This study aims to explore the experiences of improv (a subset of theatrical improvisation) for autistic, non-autistic, yet neurodivergent and neurotypical people. In particular, it explores whether participants believe that there have been any benefits from participating in improv.

Twenty adult participants were recruited using snowball sampling. Semi-structured interviews were conducted and analysed using interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA) and qualitative content analysis (QCA). IPA explored the autistic lived experience during improv participation, while QCA sought to identify the benefits gained.

Implementing IPA allowed for the benefits of improv to be embedded into autistic lived experience. This was aggregated into two themes: “life beyond improv” and “social worlds negative impact”. Findings from QCA found five themes: “creativity and opportunities: the arts and workplace”; “acceptance, cognitive flexibility and rolling with it”; “interpersonal, social and communication skills and human connection”; “gains in mental health, quality of life and wellbeing”; and for just autistic participants, “‘I've gone full autistic’ (and can learn why neurotypicals are like they are)”.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is a novel study area that has not been investigated previously.

The management of children′s literature is a search for value and suitability. Effective policies in library and educational work are based firmly on knowledge of materials, and on the bibliographical and critical frame within which the materials appear and might best be selected. Boundaries, like those between quality and popular books, and between children′s and adult materials, present important challenges for selection, and implicit in this process are professional acumen and judgement. Yet also there are attitudes and systems of values, which can powerfully influence selection on grounds of morality and good taste. To guard against undue subjectivity, the knowledge frame should acknowledge the relevance of social and experiential context for all reading materials, how readers think as well as how they read, and what explicit and implicit agendas the authors have. The good professional takes all these factors on board.

The research uncovers an increase in the disapproval of Congress and a drop in public trust in government associated with exposed congressional corruption in the post-Watergate era. The tools Congress holds to punish members caught up in scandal are discussed and the chapter considers five major scandals to rock Congress since the 1970s. Importantly, we uncover evidence that government institutions and actors are somewhat resilient and can bounce back after experiencing negative public sentiment for a period of time. Yet, it seems in the aftermath of exposed corruption, the corresponding drop in public support has policy implications. We determine that movement in public disapproval of Congress and overall trust in government help explain public law output and the ability of Congress to pass its contemporary legislative agenda.

The article's aim is to refine prospects for theorising in public sector accounting (PSA) research in order to capture the methodological benefits promised by its multi-disciplinarity.

The study primarily employs a bibliometric analysis of research outputs invoking New Public Management (NPM). Applying a content analysis to Hood (1991), as the most cited NPM source, bibliographic methods and citation/co-citation analysis for the period 1991 to 2018 are mobilised to identify the disciplinary evolution of the NPM knowledge base from a structural and longitudinal perspective.

The analysis exhibits disciplinary branching of NPM over time and its imprints on post-1990 PSA research. Given the discourse about origins of NPM-based accounting research, there are research domains behind the obvious that indicate disciplinary fragmentations. For instance, novelty of PSA research is found in public value accounting, continuity is evidenced by transcending contextual antecedents. Interestingly, these domains are loosely coupled. Exploring the role of disciplinary imprints designates prospects for post-NPM PSA research that acknowledges multi-disciplinarity and branching in order to deploy insularity as a building block for its inquiries.

Criteria for assessing the limitations and credibility of an explorative inquiry are used, especially on how the proposal to develop cumulative knowledge from post-1990 PSA research can be further developed.

A matrix suggesting a method of ordering disciplinary references enables positioning of research inquiries within PSA research.

By extending common taxonomies of PSA intellectual heritages, the study proposes the ‘inquiry-heritage’ matrix as a typology that displays patterns of theorisation for positioning an inquiry within PSA disciplinary groundings.