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The generally held belief that the extension of participative administrative arrangements within education systems has necessarily led to democratic educational reform is critically examined. Although restructured systems may afford greater community involvement in educational governance, such involvement is generally bureaucratically mandated and occurs within a social and political context in which power relationships, including the relationship of education to other social spheres, are largely unexamined and remain unaltered. Using the case of Victoria, Australia, as an example it is demonstrated that versions of participation in education need not disturb patterns of managerial control.

This paper describes an ethnographic study of the electronic community formed during an intensive summer school seminar on networking. The seminar, conducted in a mostly electronic environment, was comprised of master′s and doctoral students involved in various fields of study. Ethnographic research techniques facilitated the observation and description of the actions and events of this networked learning community, where events reflect both individual personalities and shared knowledge. This exploration of the cultural meanings of class pedagogical events led to an enhanced understanding of both the nature of the online educational environment and the applicability of ethnographic research techniques to networked communities.

The collective interaction of disaffected pupils is often described as a counter‐school subculture or as an informal organization within the school. This paper reports the findings of an Australian ethnography which indicate that such pupils are able not only to assert their own autonomy and to circumvent the institutional axis in which they operate, but are also able to influence what is perceived to be the formal structure of the school.

This issue is a selected bibliography covering the subject of leadership.

The purpose of this paper is to review research about China’s individual tax compliance. While empirical research in this jurisdiction is still in its infancy, the scale of the problem might be under estimated, or at least over looked. Comparatively, tax compliance as a subject matter has received considerable attention in developed Western economies, where the data had revealed an increasing trend of taxpayers not complying with their tax obligations. Although, this issue had not received as much attention by the Chinese government, as the world’s second largest economy and one of the most populous nations in the world, tax compliance is of critical importance to the Chinese economy and welfare of its citizens. Therefore, it is crucial that a review about China’s tax compliance research should be conducted to identify gaps in the literature.

This paper focuses specifically on a review of empirical research about China’s individual tax compliance. While, this work is primarily descriptive, it builds on existing research to make normative recommendations aimed at improving tax compliance in China.

This paper reaffirmed earlier findings in the literature that Confucianism influences both Chinese social and individual ethical values, any attempt to foster greater tax compliance in China should appeal to the importance of taxes as contributions to the public funding of family and community welfare. However, what was missing from previous research is that the assumption about Chinese ethical values was overly narrow. Apart from Confucianism, another Chinese philosophy known as Legalism is also influential in prompting ethical behaviour, in particular on regulatory issues. Therefore, tax compliance in China drawing on Chinese ethical values should include both incentives and disincentives to prompt individuals to comply with their tax obligations.

The observations and recommendations put forward in the paper are principle-based solutions drawn from Chinese ethical values. Furthermore, no detailed discussions on enforcement are included, as it is beyond the scope of the paper. Hence, the recommendations will require further empirical testing and should be examined in future research.

This review draws attention to a subject matter in China that has been overlooked. Apart from revisiting the key and related literature on China, this paper identified a gap that had been neglected in earlier research. Legalism, a less known Chinese ethical school of thoughts, is an important to the design of tax regulations prompting individuals to comply with their tax obligations.

Business relationships are considered long-term and stable. Furthermore, over time, business relationships are expected to become and remain “institutionalized”. The undertone is that this process is deterministic and inevitable. While the authors do not question the long-term nature of business relationships, they argue that the process of “institutionalization” requires more construct clarity. Consequently, they ask the following: What is the source of resilience in business relationships, and how are these relationships maintained over time?

To unravel these questions, the authors conducted an historical case study of a business relationship between a government buyer and a software seller extending over two decades.

The authors found that while the network around the business relationship is crumbling and all odds are in favor of relationship dissolution, the active maintenance work of key individuals in the relationship prevented detrimental effects and resulted in not only its continuation but also an increased degree of institutionalization.

The authors contribute to the Industrial Network approach (INA) by providing a non-deterministic approach to the typically taken-for-granted end phase of business relationships.

The findings illustrate that the process of institutionalization is manageable but requires hard work, highlighting managers as the principle vehicle of relationship maintenance.

The authors provide construct clarity around the process of “institutionalization”. In fact, they regard the process as reverse compared to the early interpretation in the INA literature in which a business relationship is assumed to start as a “clean slate” and then begins to represent the industry codes of practice over time. They found that “institutionalization” implies that a business relationship is no longer compared with nor is comparable to the institutional prescriptions; in contrast, the relationship has established its own rules and norms, which have been taken for granted by the buyer and seller organization.

Aarhus Kommunes Biblioteker (Teknisk Bibliotek), Ingerslevs Plads 7, Aarhus, Denmark. Representative: V. NEDERGAARD PEDERSEN (Librarian).

The purpose of this article is to address research gaps relating to agency and institutionalism in new institutional theory (NIT) and institutional work (IW) and use the critical sensemaking (CSM) approach to bridge the debates around agency, especially on issues of language and discourse, actor network theory (ANT) and history.

A conceptual analysis of the literature is performed to discuss issues of agency in IW and CSM in organizations, and examples of empirical studies are used to illustrate connectivity, contrast and fusion.

The analysis illustrates points of distance (rather than disconnect), but most importantly, connectivity and the potential for further developments between the literature on IW and CSM.

Discussion around new possibilities to focus on agency has the potential to contribute to humanist thinking about the (agentic) character of organizations and the potential for social change.

The article contributes to the discussion of agency in the organization through a starting point (i.e. CSM) outside of NIT.

THE changes in London local government which came into operation on 1st April, 1965, cut across the existing regional library bureaux organisation.

I ENTERED the literary world late in the immediate post‐war years when changes of literary taste and loyalty were already in the air. The first broadcast I gave was, I remember, an attack upon Virginia Woolf. Her books had nurtured me as an adolescent, and I was in reaction against her influence.