Search results

The purpose of this paper is to establish a historical context for the often maligned capital theory of Henry George within a North American frontier tradition that includes John Rae.

Modern discussions of rapid technological and institutional change provide a framework for detailed re‐examination of the capital theories of Rae and George, whose critics were largely constrained by a rigid neoclassical perspective.

Both Rae and George presented capital theories, defined as explanations of the supply of and demand for capital resulting in a determinate capital stock. Both writers stress elements that were not emphasized in neoclassical capital theory, most notably that the capital stock can increase rapidly under certain conditions; increases in knowledge, inventions, technical and technological changes, and scale are more important than mere accumulation of capital; high rates of return combined with rapid technical obsolescence and physical deterioration provide the opportunity for rapid changes in the form of the capital stock, and; the ephemeral nature, and hence potential mobility, of capital implies that security of property is essential for economic growth.

The focus on two writers leads to the question of how widespread their ideas were in nineteenth century North America.

The rapidly changing technology and institutions that Rae and George observed place their theories closer to some modern trends in the study of economic development than to the literature of neoclassical capital theory.

George's grasp of economic theory deserves greater respect than it has often received in the economics literature when his work is considered in its historical context.

This study aims to investigate the feasibility of integrating the social, environmental and innovation processes within the four-perspective sustainability balanced scorecard (SBSC) model by determining the extent of linkages between and within the four SBSC perspectives.

A survey collected responses from senior management and middle management of large Australian companies.

The findings support several positive significant associations. Direct associations are found between value-creating processes within the internal process perspective. These results support the feasibility of integrating environmental, social and innovation-orientated value-creating process into the internal process of the four-perspective SBSC model. The results also provide evidence about the extent to which direct or indirect associations exist between the four SBSC perspectives: first, direct association of human capital (learning and growth perspective) with value-creating processes (internal processes perspective); second, direct association of value-creating (internal processes perspective) with customer value (customer perspective); and third, direct and indirect associations of value-creating (internal processes perspective) with financial performance (FP; financial perspective).

Several limitations are acknowledged related to cross-sectional data, senior and middle managers’ perceptions and assumptions underpinning structural equation modelling.

The implications for practice from this study concern how organisational management should relate to their stakeholders while providing value in their FP.

These associations reflect the influence of stakeholders’ recognised needs on process and product innovation. These needs highlight the benefits of focusing on future-orientated environmental budgets and ongoing employee training that lead to customer value and FP.

This is an initial in-depth study of a four-perspective SBSC model that provides an effective means of integrating social, environmental and innovation processes within the traditional four SBSC perspectives.

THE training model to be discussed is based on an integrated set of manual and mechanised indexing systems, all handling the same body of information from a limited subject field. By extending the scope of the model's operations to include prior and subsequent activities like the selection and abstracting of the documents to be indexed, and the preparation and dissemination of material through the use of the indexes, the model may be used for a wide range of documentation training, principally at three levels: demonstration by the lecturer to the students; use by the students in the retrieval and dissemination of information; and development by the students through the selection and abstracting of documents, the indexing and storage of information and ultimately the use of feedback from the dissemination stage to improve the systems.

The purpose of this study is to review the definition, perspective, measurement and context of workplace learning and explored workplace learning to identify its role in quantitative research.

Through an integrative review of the literature, the following four roles that workplace learning has played in these studies were identified: workplace learning as an antecedent, a mediator, a moderator and an outcome.

This paper synthesized results for workplace learning in 45 studies. A total of 88 variables related to workplace learning were identified after four overlapped variables (autonomy, social support, work engagement and workload) in multiples areas were excluded from a total of 92 variables (56 antecedents, 8 mediators, 7 moderators and 21 outcomes).

Because this study identified four roles of workplace learning (as antecedent, mediator, moderator and outcome), this study did not focus on the process of learning in the workplace. Additional study is needed to investigate how workplace learning can lead to outcomes and how this process can link workplace learning and its consequences.

This paper synthesized the antecedents, mediators, moderators and outcomes for workplace learning by integrating the findings in this study. This provided a comprehensive framework that could be used by researchers to continue the empirical research on this topic to develop the dynamics between individual, group, job and organizational variables on the one hand and workplace learning on the other.

The purpose of this paper is to illustrate the ideological impasses between educationally minded faculty and neoliberal oriented university administrators. To bridge and benefit from these two perspectives, Follettian integration is introduced. Specifically, the ensemble learning theory (ELT) and entrepreneurship centers are illustrated as Follettian interventions and their reasons for success are discussed.

This paper is theoretical, but provides ethnographic anecdotes of the problems occurring during the rise of neoliberalism and academic capitalism in the public university. The successful use of the ELT and entrepreneurship centers is likewise explored anecdotally.

This paper illustrates the benefits of utilizing the ELT and entrepreneurship centers in two different university settings.

While the sample sizes of this paper are small, the anecdotal examples provide the basis for reasoning by analogy.

This work illustrates two possible Follettian interventions that serve as a guide to assist university administrators and faculty to find common ground and better serve students and university communities.

The rise of academic capitalism and neoliberalism has devalued education and resulted in poorer educational outcomes and a modern generation with less intellectual capital. This is one of the first papers to utilize Mary Parker Follett’s theories of education and apply them to the impending identity crisis of the public university. The result is a win-win for both neoliberal administrators and faculty in the face of an impending identity crisis for the public university.

This paper sets out in the wider context of globalization to examine how and what specific reform strategies the Government of the Hong Kong special administrative region (HKSAR) has adopted in reforming its higher education system to enhance the competitiveness of its higher education in the increasingly globalizing economic context. More specifically, this paper has chosen a focus to examine how, and in what way universities in Hong Kong have attempted to make themselves internationally competitive, and what systems have been introduced to assure quality.

This paper adopts a case study approach in examining recent higher education changes/reforms in Hong Kong. Using literature survey, documentary and policy analysis, intensive interviews, as well as field observations, the paper has provided a comprehensive review and a critical analysis of higher education governance in Hong Kong.

This paper has reviewed major higher education reforms in the HKSAR, with particular reference to examine how higher education institutions have changed the ways that they are governed and managed. Academics working in Hong Kong nowadays are confronted with increasing pressures from the government to engage in international research, commanding a high quality of teaching and contributing to professional and community services. As Hong Kong universities have tried to benchmark with top universities in the world, they are struggling very hard to compete for limited resources. “Doing more with less” and “doing things smarter” are becoming fashionable guiding principles in university management and governance. Internal competition in the university sector is inevitably becoming keener and intensified.

The paper discusses the case study of Hong Kong which reflects how a rapidly developed economies in East Asia have attempted to tackle the growing impact of globalization on higher education governance.

This paper provides a comprehensive picture of how the universities in Hong Kong have responded to increasingly intensified quality assurance pressures, and fills an identified information gap on specific strategies in promoting the international competitiveness of universities in the city‐state in East Asia.

This study aims to investigate the association between a motivated and prepared workforce and environmental performance.

Self-administered surveys were used to collect data for the study from 300 organisations operating in Australia. Confirmatory factor analyses were used to test the robustness of the various measurement models, and structural equation modelling was used to test the two propositions for this study.

The results identify significant associations between affective commitment, employee performance process and training and enhanced environmental performance, which is mediated through the value-creating processes, work practices, process improvement and innovation process. Also, there is a set of sequential associations between work practices and process improvement and well as process improvement and innovation process.

The study has identified specific management practices that enhance environmental performance. The findings add to the body of knowledge because previous studies focused on general conceptual rather than actual management practices. The implications for practice are that organisations should enhance organisational affective commitment to their environmental strategy, tailor employee performance processes and provide regular, specific training to employees to improve processes that lead to better environmental performance.

Results, mentioned in findings above, provide some specificity to associations that had been illustrated and explained previously in an abstract or conceptual framework. A framework of identified associations provides a basis for future research and for practical application to assist with organisational environmental performance as part of a corporate sustainability strategy.

This paper seeks to explore notions of enterprise as an instance of organizational change within university business schools, using a theoretical approach drawn from the discourse theory of Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe. Their concept of articulatory practice is useful for examining the management of knowledge workers across multiple levels of discourse, including policy, practice and processes of identification. Specifically, the paper aims to investigate the articulation of enterprise within government policy on higher education, management practices of directing, funding, measuring and regulating the activities of faculty in ways that seek to promote enterprise, as well as demonstrating how agents can resist attempts at top‐down managerial control through processes of self‐identification.

An empirical study consisting of an analysis of government reports on higher education along with 65 interviews conducted at six UK research‐led business schools.

At the level of government policy, the university is recast as an enterprise within a competitive marketplace where the “entrepreneurial academic” who commercializes research becomes the role model. However, management practices and identity processes amongst faculty reveal inconsistencies within the articulation of the university enterprise, to the extent that this idealised identity is marginalised within research‐led business schools in the UK.

The theoretical approach captures the dynamism of hegemonic projects across multiple levels, from policymaking to management practice and the constitution of identity. Laclau and Mouffe's conception of hegemony highlights mechanisms of control, while their assumption of radical contingency illuminates dynamics of resistance.

Changes in the freedoms of individual academics and universities have been gathering apace across the western world since World War II (e.g., Altbach, 2001; Karmel, 2003, p. 2). Such changes have compelled the United Nations Education, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) to alert the world community to the link between freedoms experienced in the university sector and those in wider democratic systems. In 1998, UNESCO held a World Conference on Higher Education with a specific focus on academic freedom and university autonomy. An international charter resulted, detailing mutual rights, obligations and monitoring mechanisms. The International Association of Universities (IAU), the group responsible for convening the UNESCO debate, emphasised that academic freedom and university autonomy were essential to be able to transmit and advance knowledge:For Universities to serve a world society requires that Academic Freedom and University Autonomy form the bedrock to a new Social Contract – a contract to uphold values common to Humanity and to meet the expectations of a world where frontiers are rapidly dissolving. (cited in Ginkel, 2002, p. 347)

The authors explore how social approval assets, namely status and reputation, are used to legitimate and categorise a new national university. They argue that in the course of the legitimation process, status and reputation work as stakeholder-oriented value-creating benefits. The authors specifically analyse the discursive constructions and labels used in the process and how the process enables nationwide university reform.

The authors’ longitudinal case study utilises critical discourse analysis and analyses media and policy discourses regarding the birth of Aalto University.

The findings suggest that the legitimation of the new university was accomplished through the use of two distinct discourses: one on higher education and another on the market economy. These discourses not only sought to legitimise the new university as categorically different from existing Finnish universities, but also rationalised the merger using the expected reputation and status benefits that were claimed would accrue for supporters.

This study elaborates on the role of various social approval assets and labels in legitimation processes and explores how policy enforcement can take place in arenas that are not necessarily perceived as policymaking. For managers, it is crucial to understand how a chosen label (name) can result in both stakeholder support and resistance, and how important it is to anticipate the changes a label can invoke.

The authors propose that the use of several labels regarding a new organisation is strategically beneficial to attracting multiple audiences who may hold conflicting interests in terms of what the organisation and its offerings should embody. They propose that even though status and reputation have traditionally been defined as possessions of an organisation, they should be further understood as concepts used to disseminate and justify the interests, norms, structures and values in a stakeholder network.