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Investigates the ways in which the performance of academic research can be measured. In particular, it considers the role of quality as one aspect of performance. Focuses specifically on the case of the Research Assessment Exercise (RAE) carried out in all UK universities and highlights the need for clearer definition and measurement frameworks. Considers the extent to which research can be considered as a product or a service. The literature is reviewed and a performance measurement framework for research is suggested, with a set of quantitative performance measures. The extent to which these measures include the RAE measures is then discussed and it is shown that the RAE measures focus primarily on one aspect of performance. Recommendations are made concerning the utilisation of a wider framework than that suggested by the RAE to enable research performance to be assessed in overall terms, improvements to be identified and benchmarking carried out.

The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the extent to which forum theatre interventions can support non-hierarchical approaches to learning, development and change management initiatives in organisations.

Semi-structured interviews were carried out with theatre consultancies, actors/facilitators, commissioners and participants in two forum theatre events. The data were analysed through thematic coding using template analysis.

The findings show that the impact of forum theatre interventions was constrained by the need for practitioners to meet the requirements of their organizational clients. There was a lack of clarity by the facilitators about how they can carry out the role effectively and meet the expectations of their own managers, organizational clients and participants. The paper concludes that without explicit acknowledgement of these competing expectations or the facilitators ' beliefs and attitudes, the impact of such interventions may be reduced or diminished.

The study is relatively small-scale and there is a need for research across a wider range of theatre-based interventions to develop understanding of the ways in which such events can enable the development of non-hierarchical learning spaces.

The paper highlights the need for consultancies offering forum theatre interventions to understand the dilemmas of facilitators and provide a more pro-active approach to their learning and development needs.

There has been limited exploration of the facilitator ' s role in managing learning and development events in general and forum theatre in particular. This paper highlights the challenges to consultancies and HRD practitioners in implementing more democratic approaches to learning, development and change management initiatives.

INCREASINGLY high levels of technology and modern methods of interfacing with the aircraft as well as the human factors involved with discussed at a recent Seminar jointly sponsored by the Institution of Mechanical Engineers, the Institution of Electrical Engineers and the Royal Aeronautical Society. In the chair was AVM Peter Howard and the delegates included human factors specialists and engineers from a variety of companies and research bodies, the Royal Air Force and Government establishments.

EVERY day, in every way, aeronautics becomes more and more abstruse. We imagine that very few of our readers but shared our own ignorance of the extreme complication of the new regulations introduced by the Federation Aéronautique Internationale covering attempts on altitude records. There are even, doubtless, many who, like ourselves, were not even aware that new regulations had been introduced. This is only one of the many examples that could be quoted of the increasing specialization that is gradually encompassing, we had almost written “smothering,” aviation. The day of the individual with encyclopaedic knowledge is long since departed. It seems strange now to recall the days when it was possible to visit, say, Brooklands and watch some pilot, such as Hawker, climb into the cockpit of his machine with a recording barograph on his knee, or suspended by a cord round his neck, and gradually disappear into the blue until his machine became a speck just visible through binoculars. To watch the aeroplane gradually get larger and larger as it circled round and slowly came down to land on the precise spot from which it had taken off a few minutes earlier. To rush up to the pilot and almost snatch the barograph from his hands in order to read the height attained, which was duly announced as the new record.

DRUCK LTD, have been involved in the design and production of pressure transducers, transmitters and instrumentation for a variety of applications since the 1970s and were innovators in solid‐state silicon diaphragm sensor technology. At an early stage in their inception the Company became involved in the development of precision digital pressure indicators for the Royal Air Force, for the replacement of mercury column sensors then in service and it was only a matter of time before their technological advances attracted the attention of the civil aviation industry.

For almost half a decade, after World War II, capitalism and socialism coexisted on the European continent. Some believed that these systems would converge, with state intervention stabilising capitalism in the west and socialism became more democratic in the east. Michał Kalecki, in his last published article, co-written with Tadeusz Kowalik, wrote about how governments had implemented a crucial reform in the developed capitalist economies. State investment had filled the demand gap, which could potentially result in the long-term mitigation of capitalism's slumps and crises. Tadeusz Kowalik later extended this notion of the crucial reform, to the troubled socialist systems in Eastern Europe during the 1980s. He argued that previous economic reforms had failed in the socialist countries as they had not been accompanied by sufficient democratic political reforms, which needed to be extended in order to fully revitalise the socialist economies. Ultimately the proposals for a crucial reform of capitalism and socialism were not realised and these systems did not converge economically or politically. This chapter examines the theses of Kalecki and Kowalik within the historical and intellectual tradition of Polish socialist and Marxist thought.

Resurgent interest in the life and work of the Italian Cambridge economist Piero Sraffa is leading to New Directions in Sraffa Scholarship. This chapter introduces readers to some of these developments. First and perhaps foremost is the fact that as of September 2016 Sraffa’s archival material has been uploaded onto the website of the Wren Library, Trinity College, Cambridge University, as digital colour images; this chapter introduces readers to the history of these events. This history provides sharp relief on the extant debates over the role of the archival material in leading to the final publication of Production of Commodities by Means of Commodities, and readers are provided a brief sketch of these matters. The varied nature of Sraffa scholarship is demonstrated by the different aspects of Sraffa’s intellectual legacy which are developed and discussed in the various entries of our Symposium. The conclusion is reached that we are on the cusp of an exciting phase change of tremendous potential in Sraffa scholarship.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the social construction of gendered subjects in entrepreneurship education (EEd), through the analysis of course descriptions. For this purpose, the analytical constructs of the Fictive Student and the Fictive Entrepreneur are developed.

Through analysis of 86 course descriptions from 81 universities in 21 countries, this study examines the degree to which course descriptions use gendered language, how such language constructs gendered subjects, and the resultant implications.

This paper finds that course descriptions are predominantly, but not exclusively, masculine in their language. More importantly, the distribution of feminine and masculine language is uneven across course descriptions. Context variables such as regional or national culture differences do not explain this distribution. Instead, the phenomenon is explained by course content/type; whereby practice-based entrepreneurship courses are highly masculine, compared to traditional academic courses, where students learn about entrepreneurship as a social phenomenon.

Universities and educators have not taken into account recent research about the real and possible negative consequences of positioning entrepreneurship in a stereotypical, masculinized fashion. This may offer an inexpensive opportunity to improve recruitment and description accuracy.

The paper’s contribution is fourfold. First, it contributes to debates on the gendering of entrepreneurship by extending these into EEd. Second, it extends Sarasvathy’s (2004) concern with barriers to, rather than incentives for, entrepreneurship to include EEd. Third, it contributes to the emerging literature on entrepreneurship as practice, by highlighting the masculization of EEd, as it gets closer to practice and the role of language in this. Finally, it highlights the gendered implications of English medium courses.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate those factors that are associated with the adoption of social networking sites from the perspective of Muslim users residing in Malaysia.

A complete self-administered questionnaire was collected from 223 Muslim users of social networking sites in Malaysia. Both exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses were used to sort the significant items for the constructs and to check the validity. Structural equation modelling was applied in testing the hypotheses and the fitness of the proposed model.

The results of full structural model attest that technological and social factors are the most significant factors behind the adoption of social networking sites. However, this is followed by an educational factor. Among Muslim users in Malaysia, the study does not find significant influence of brand or product communication behind this adoption.

The paper investigates those factors that are considered inevitable in the adoption of social networking sites. Invaluable findings were offered in the form of a structural model for the stakeholders of social networking sties. These findings can be used in planning and making decisions that may benefit all parties associated with it.