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Philosophers and political scientists have a long history of dealing with the difficult puzzle of leadership, and how it is to be distinguished from management and administration. The purpose of this paper is to explore the question of whether the innovative role of elected executive mayor in England can be considered as leader or manager. The paper critically assesses the concept of leadership before using empirical evidence to come to conclusions about the current role of elected mayor, an office with an uncertain history and unclear future in English public sector leadership.

The paper draws from the authors’ qualitative interviews with mayors from the inception of the office to the recent past.

The study finds that elected executive mayors are both leaders and managers, but that the notion of leadership in the local public sector remains contested as the mayor is a part of a bureaucratic structure of administration which limits the exercise of leadership as outlined in the existing literature.

As central government continues to advocate the expansion of the office of mayor, not least as part of English regional devolution, the study relates to future practice and to overall understanding of just what elected mayors do.

The paper provides useful insight into the forthcoming expansion of the mayoral system into the new Combined Authorities.

The paper provides original evidence about the faltering progress of the mayoral system in the English public sector.

How have department stores fared over the last five years? Patrick McAnally suggests that there has been something of a renaissance, that a newer generation of store has developed alongside the old one. Some of the new ones include Fenwicks and John Lewis at Brent Cross, Debenhams in Stirling and Bentalls in Bracknell — stores which by any standards are as much part of the 1970s as the latest hypermarket.

The purpose of this paper was to investigate the embedded process that enables or constrains low-income low-qualified employees’ access to workplace learning in small organizations.

Informed by the sociomaterial approach and cultural historical activity theory, this study adopted a qualitative cross-case study method. Data were collected from three small business owners in Central Texas, USA. Data included interviews and organizational artifacts and were analyzed using a constant comparative and inductive thematic data analysis.

This study extends existing literature for low-income low-qualified employees by elucidating business owners’ motivations to develop supportive employment relationships. Despite incongruent value systems, subordinates were provided equal access to workplace learning based on organizations’ needs and business owners’ value systems.

The organizations’ small size and business owners’ position as the sole decision maker potentially create a different embedded context from supervisors who are subordinates in larger organizations. Further, findings from this qualitative study cannot be generalized without caution.

The findings from this study suggest that workforce professionals should consider the advantages of small organizations for low-qualified clients seeking employment and adult education opportunities. More research is needed to generalize findings that delineate work situations where low-qualified employees can gain equal access to workplace learning and gain access to adult learning opportunities that lead to job mobility.

This study identified an organizational context where business owners support workplace learning for low-income low-qualified employees with incongruent value systems.

This paper aims to shed light on the complex multiplicity of domestic violence interagency work. It proposes a new conceptualisation that reflects the entangled nature of professional practice and learning.

The research on which this paper draws is an ethnographic study of practice in an integrated local domestic violence initiative. Data include focussed workplace observations, semi-structured interviews and key documents. The study draws on practice-based sociomaterial approaches and the conceptual framework, and methodology is informed by actor-network theory, in particular, the work of Annemarie Mol.

Findings suggest that interagency work that starts from the victim and traces threads of connection outwards is able to “hang together” as “practice multiple” in integrated service provision. I argue that the learning that happens in these circumstances is a relational effect and depends on who and what is assembled in the actor-network.

The research has significant implications for framing understandings of domestic violence interagency work, as it firmly anchors “working together” to victims. Findings are expected to be of interest not only to practitioners, educators and researchers but also to policymakers.

The paper addresses a current gap in the literature, applies a novel research approach and proposes a new conceptualisation of domestic violence interagency work.

This paper aims to problematise practice and contribute to new understandings of professional and workplace learning. Practice is a concept which has been largely taken for granted and under-theorised in workplace learning and education research. Practice has usually been co-located with classifiers, such as legal practice, vocational practice, teaching practice and yoga practice, with the theoretical emphasis on the domain – legal, teaching and learning.

This is a theory-driven paper which posits a framework of six prominent threads for theorizing practice. It uses examples of empirical research to illustrate each thread.

A framework of six prominent threads for theorising practice in professional learning is suggested. It understands practices as patterned, embodied, networked and emergent and learning entwined with working, knowing, organizing and innovating. By conceptualising learning as occurring via and in practices, prominent understanding of learning are challenged. The paper discusses each thread with reference to empirical research that illuminates it and indicates the contributions of practice theory perspectives in richer understandings of professional learning and change.

This paper engages with the practice turn in social sciences to reconceptualise professional and workplace learning. It contributes to research on learning at work by supplementing current thinking about learning, particularly the socio-cultural conceptions of learning, with the resources of practice theories that attend to the regularities of practice.

This conceptual paper aims to argue that times, spaces, bodies and things constitute four essential dimensions of workplace learning. It examines how practices relate or hang together, taking Gherardi’s texture of practices or connectedness in action as the foundation for making visible essential but often overlooked dimensions of workplace learning.

This framework is located within and adds to contemporary sociomaterial- or practice-based approaches, in which learning is understood as an emergent requirement and product of ongoing practice that cannot be specified in advance.

The four dimensions are essential in two senses: they are the constitutive essence of textures of practices: what they are made of and they are non-optional; it is not possible to conceive a texture of practices without all of these dimensions present. Although the conceptual terrains to which they point overlap considerably, they remain useful as analytic points of departure. Each reveals something that is less clear in the others.

This innovative framework responds to calls to better understand how practices hang together, and offers a toolkit that reflects the multifaceted nature of practice. It presents a distinctive basis for making sense of connectedness in action, and thus for understanding learning in work.

The paper offers a novel conceptual framework, expanding the texture of practices through dimensions of times, spaces, bodies and things, rendering visible aspects that might otherwise be ignored.

The paper aims to compare the office of directly elected mayor in England, Germany and the USA. Proposing and applying a conceptual model of government, governance and allegiance, it assesses the leadership role of the elected mayor in the three countries.

Qualitative interviews were conducted with a sample of mayors in each country over a period of 11 years. These formed part of the authors' continuing research into local leadership and political management, which has also included interviews with ex‐mayors, elected representatives and senior officials.

The operation and success of the elected mayor in specific countries is influenced by formal variables (e.g. state constitutions, formal requirements) and informal relationships (e.g. with officials), represented in the distinction between structure and agency. The role of the individual mayor also varied in the light of local party affiliations. The paper considers the impact of these variables on the government, governance and allegiance functions of the elected mayor.

In providing an analytical framework and in the discussion of original research, a basis is provided for the further study of the office of elected mayor in different national contexts. This is likely to prove valuable as the future of sub‐national government is subject to continuity scrutiny.

The adoption and growth of the elected mayoral system may be considered as an example of lesson drawing. This has both positive and negative implications. Positively, much can be learned from comparative experience. Mayoral systems have resulted in quicker decision making. The mayor provides a very visible form of local leadership and accountability. However, dangers lie in the over‐concentration of powers in the office of mayor and, in England especially, the failure of the mayoral system to enhance public engagement in local government.

The discussion will be of value to practitioners, policy‐makers and academic researchers who are concerned with the future of the elected local state and its office holders.

Reform of local political management continues to be part of the international agenda for change as governments seek to create the conditions for better performance in local government. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the impact of changes in political management upon the performance of local government, with England as a case study, and the implications for local government reform elsewhere.

Using statistical data derived from the system of comprehensive performance assessment (CPA), the analysis uses Kendall's tau to correlate CPA score per local authority against the respective political governance arrangement of each local authority in England.

As the correlation coefficient did not reach the level of statistical significance, the principal finding is that the relationship between different political governance arrangements and local authorities' performance is not demonstrated. The implications of this for governments' reforms of political management are discussed.

The data are based upon English sources and point to the importance of conducting comparable analysis in other societies that have undergone similar changes in local political management.

In instituting reforms of local governance, governments rarely pay serious attention to measurable outcomes and the paper suggests the value in so doing.

The specific relationship between local political management and performance has not previously been measured in precisely this way.

A number of internal and external pressures in UK local government have led to the examination of different options for internal organisation and management. A particular pressure has recently been the reorganisation of local government towards the creation of new unitary local councils. The review of non‐metropolitan local government from 1992 to 1996, and the creation of unitary authorities in a number of areas from 1995 to 1998, forced local authorities to examine their own organisation. This article considers the impact of local government reorganisation on the structures and management of the organisations concerned. The discussion concentrates upon pressures towards centralisation and decentralisation. The extent to which structural reorganisation has led local government to “decentralise” is considered in a number of senses: the expansion of the parish and community council level, changes to internal management, and area‐based initiatives. Drawing directly from current research, the authors examine competing trends towards decentralisation and centralisation and, specifically, identify a renewed focus upon corporate management as a whole. The importance of this new corporatism is then assessed.