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Reports on and analyses the attitudes towards standards in higher education of a random sample of senior managers, senior administrators and senior academics in a range of different types of higher education institutions. In order to construct an analytical framework for the empirical research, there is a synthesis of the current debate on standards. The research data were collected in two phases; first, by means of 21 in‐depth interviews in seven higher education institutions and, second, through the questionnaire responses of a larger number of senior staff in a greater number of institutions. Generally, the research results indicate that senior academics are more concerned about falling standards than their senior manager and senior administrator colleagues. This concern over standards appears to be more pronounced in older universities.

Discusses the problems associated with the successful organization of business start‐up projects at undergraduate level, including teamwork, the involvement of mentors and assessment methods. Student business projects also involve the development of a highly demanding set of skills. The weaknesses of student projects are identified principally with respect to financial projections and marketing strategy. Concludes that these projects are a valuable means of reinforcing theoretical business studies principles and foster more realistic and mature expectations of enterprise.

Contemporary supply chain exchanges are governed by both contractual and relational governance mechanisms. However, the decision about when to use these mechanisms is likely driven by key relationship characteristics as well as the context in which they are needed. The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the influence of dependence and information sharing on the governance decision within the context of inter-organizational conflict, and assess the degree to which contractual and relational governance approaches lead to more satisfying outcomes.

This research builds on both transaction cost and conflict resolution arguments to build hypotheses. To test the hypotheses, survey data were collected from supply chain professionals regarding specific episodes of conflict and analyzed using an ordinary least squares regression.

The results show a strong reluctance for the use of relational governance mechanisms to resolve conflict when the relationship is characterized by strong joint dependency or information sharing asymmetries. A strong dependence asymmetry and high degree of joint information sharing are associated with greater use of contractual and relational governance approaches, respectively. Finally, the authors find that contractual mechanisms do not necessarily lead to a dissatisfactory outcome for the manager involved.

This research investigates not only the use of contractual and relational governance mechanisms in inter-firm conflict resolution, but also the relationship specific factors that influence a firm’s decision to leverage either type of governance mechanism.

This study aims to explore the combined strategies leading to successful repair of two types of trust in Chinese construction projects and provide an effective guidance and control trust repair in construction projects. During the research period, the author interviewed 150 managers from 50 Chinese construction projects and collected details of 125 violations. The research examines the effect of combined strategy of trust repair in Chinese management scenario.

This study adopted a mixed, quantitative, qualitative and exploratory approach. The author first extracted six strategies, namely, apology, denial, penance, communication, promise and compensation, from the literature review and generalization. Then, the author conducted an interview with 150 managers from 50 China construction projects. And the author analyzed the data through qualitative comparative analysis (QCA).

When competence-based trust is broken, violators should adopt communication and promise, demonstrate their competence and qualification, and change the attributions of competence from the trustor. When integrity-based trust is broken, violators should apologize, actively admit the mistake, show a positive attitude and seek the forgiveness from the trustor. After reconstructing trustors' perceptions of competence or integrity, violators should also make a promise to trustors for the future. The result of this research not only illustrates the sufficiency and necessity of a single strategy for trust repair but also explores the combination of trust repair strategies that rebuild the trust.

This study is limited to 50 construction projects in the Chinese construction context, so conclusions are limited in application. Data used in this research did not provide an in-depth analysis of trust repair failures. Thus, additional research is needed to explore why trust was not repaired. The study is also limited to examining the Chinese construction project organizations only, and future studies should incorporate organizations in other nations and regions.

Compared with using a single strategy, a combined strategy provides a contribution to the future practice of repair broken relationship between construction project organizations. This research helps to organize decisions and benefits managers, from Chinese owners and contractors, in choosing which of these strategies repair trust. The author also provides a specific combination of strategies to repair relationships for international companies that have conflicts with Chinese construction companies.

This research is among the early studies in China that preliminary examines the combined strategy of trust repair between Chinese owners and contractors by using causal attribution theory and QCA. This study makes a valuable contribution toward combined strategy in construction project and the knowledge system of trust repair. Future studies could build on the findings from the current study to develop a cross-cultural research on trust repair.

The purpose of this paper is to reflect back over his career as a management and business historian so far as to consider opportunities for the future of management and business history as a disciplinary area.

The paper consists of two segments – the first half is an auto-ethnographic personal reflection looking at the author’s research journey and how the discipline as experienced by the author has evolved over that time. The second half is a prescriptive look forward to consider how we should leverage the strengths as historians to progress the discipline forward.

The paper demonstrates opportunities for management and business history to encompass new agendas including the expansion of the topic into teaching, the possibility for the advancement of empirical contributions and opportunities for findings in new research areas, including the global south and public and project management history.

The paper demonstrates that historians should be more confident in the disciplinary capabilities, particularly their understandings of historic context, continuity, change and chronologies when making empirical and theoretical contributions.

A great artist creates a mural which, bearing his name, eventually reaches the hands of a purchaser who objects to the nude figures that the creator had seen fit to incorporate into his tableau. The purchaser, therefore, employs another artist to drape the figures. In a now famous decree the German Supreme Court, in 1912, held that the transferee of the mural in a case involving these facts, could not have changed it to suit his individual preferences.

Quality assurance and management is vital for the continuous improvement of the content, delivery and development of teacher education programmes. This paper seeks to explore theoretical issues and ideas in assessing the quality preparation of teachers in the Singapore context.

An academic quality framework provides an architectural approach to optimizing quality processes, transitioning from a disjointed set of quality processes to an integrated workflow based upon established best practices.

The architectural framework provided a systematic focus to develop and sustain the academic quality of the teacher development programmes. Quality change and developments occur through collaboration and learning. The emphasis is on quality management as a process-oriented strategy.

There is a shift in paradigm from traditional models of programme evaluation to a systems approach that incorporate multi-dimensional models to impact administration, teaching and research in a teacher education institution. Thus Singapore's teacher education quality management should be considered beyond a set of measurement tools towards a systematic, scheduled and focused examination as a whole, as a process-oriented strategy.

Sacrifice, integral to gift giving, remains unexplored and undertheorized in marketing. This paper aims to address this shortfall by analyzing the dynamics of sacrifice and theorizing how it serves as an engine of the gift chimney.

The ethnographic investigation of public ceremonial gift giving in sectarian Northern Ireland describes and interprets the complex nature of the gift.

The authors show that sacrifice is a plausible mechanism of the gift chimney and that the co-occurrence of monadic, dyadic and systemic giving in the same ritual acts as an accelerant.

The authors analyze how public ceremonial gift giving induces sectarian communities to risk convocation, enabling them to exorcize trauma sustained at one another’s hands and to build a platform for future cross-community cohesion in a context of ineffective institutional efforts.

Sacrifice propels circulation of the gift, creating a social bond between antagonists whose ethos of mutuality depends upon ritualized reciprocal recognition of entangled loss.

WITH the Pompey doldrum in mind, many misgivings were expressed about the Rothesay conference as the delegated gravy trains raced north to Glasgow. (Incidentally Sir Brian Robertson will find comfort in our belief that rail travel is the most satisfying way to attend conference with corridor exchanges and dining car badinage shortening the long haul).

With the Pompey doldrum in mind, many misgivings were expressed about the Rothesay conference as the delegated gravy trains raced north to Glasgow. (Incidentally Sir Brian Robertson will find comfort in our belief that rail travel is the most satisfying way to attend conference with corridor exchanges and dining car badinage shortening the long haul).