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When the first full round of teaching quality assessments (TQAs) was completed by the UK funding councils, the older universities had gained the largest percentage of the higher grades of assessment, while the new universities had the highest share of the lower grades. This pattern repeated itself, with minor variations, during later assessments. Utilising data from the Times Higher Education Supplement league tables for all UK universities (THES, 2000), covering the years 1993‐2000, this paper examines the relationship between TQA results, reputational factors, and resourcing indicators. Concludes that league tables may be instrumental in perpetuating the divide between the old and new university sectors, by failing to acknowledge the diverse missions of the institutions. We suggest that it may be more useful to group universities by set criteria which would allow for more meaningful comparisons.

Looks at the 2000 Employment Research Unit Annual Conference held at the University of Cardiff in Wales on 6/7 September 2000. Spotlights the 76 or so presentations within and shows that these are in many, differing, areas across management research from: retail finance; precarious jobs and decisions; methodological lessons from feminism; call centre experience and disability discrimination. These and all points east and west are covered and laid out in a simple, abstract style, including, where applicable, references, endnotes and bibliography in an easy‐to‐follow manner. Summarizes each paper and also gives conclusions where needed, in a comfortable modern format.

THE somewhat limited attendance at the Annual Meeting of the London and Home Counties Branch of the Library Association at Twickenham gave some colour to the contention of one of our writers that London is rather moribund to‐day. Fortunately it cannot be said that the younger members of the profession are losing their interest, because the bulk of the attendance was of assistants, and as the A.L.A. section has its own monthly meetings, it will be seen that assistants are doing their share. The chief librarians of London, and in this we include librarians of other than public libraries, make at present a most: disappointing showing. A few years, or even months, ago this could be attributed to the fact that they were all senior men whose vitality, if not their interest, had been reduced by age. To‐day, however, every library in London is in the hands of a young man. There is something significant in the fact that they do not come together in any numbers. When we read from the Annual Report of the Branch that the membership is nearly 700, we are somewhat surprised to learn that the attendance at Twickenham was less than one‐forteenth of that number.

The second in a new series about mental health in old age, this article reviews policies and research evidence on services for people with dementia at the end of their lives, and looks at future commissioning priorities

The purpose of this paper is to examine the relationship between skills and employability of business graduates. The study also examines the moderating effect of ‘social mobility factors’ in the ‘skills–employability’ relationship.

A quantitative positivist approach was undertaken to test the hypotheses. Business graduates from two universities in a developing country responded to a questionnaire about their perceptions of different sets of employability factors. Partial least squares (PLS)-based structural equation modelling (SEM) was used to examine the relationships between skills and employability of business graduates.

The findings show that both soft skills and technical skills are positively related to employability, which is consistent with prior studies. The findings also indicate that social mobility factors play a significant role in employability.

The study is based on data from two public universities, and its findings need to be interpreted with care as universities differ in their size, area of concentration and ownership structure.

The findings advance the evidence of graduate employability of business students. Based on these results, university authorities, policymakers, teachers and business graduates will benefit from the findings related to students preparedness for the competitive global job market.

The study's findings contribute to business graduates' skill set development in the developing countries that share a similar education system, culture and values.

This paper examines instructional coaching as a means to support teachers at all levels in primary and secondary schools in implementing new and innovative practices using the Universal Design for Learning (UDL) framework as a design guide.

This mixed-methods study compared the impact of an instructional coaching intervention around the implementation of the UDL framework on educators versus the UDL implementation efforts of educators who did not receive the coaching intervention. Coached participants shared their experiences with the coaching cycle. These qualitative data were collected through teacher interviews, self-assessments, and observations. The data assisted in the interpretation of the quantitative findings from a quasi-experimental pre-test–post-test comparison group design.

The results of this study revealed positive outcomes for teachers in knowledge and application of UDL, although not at statistically significant levels. The qualitative data collected supported the positive gains and revealed that teachers valued and changed their practices from the use of coaching as they navigated the implementation of UDL in their learning environments.

One limitation to be noted includes the district site that participated in this study had used the UDL framework for several years and maintained high expectations for teachers to increase their UDL-aligned practices each year. Therefore, all teachers who participated in this study were under the same district evaluative expectations to participate in professional development at some level to increase proficiency with UDL implementation, whereas a district in the beginning stages of UDL implementation might serve as a better gauge of growth. Additionally, the control participants were self-identified and not randomly assigned.

This study is one of the first conducted that investigates the effect of instructional coaching on teachers' increased understanding and implementation of the UDL framework. This study examines instructional coaching as a stand-alone professional development in supporting teachers' use of UDL in design-inclusive classrooms. Written into US law, the UDL framework is a scientifically valid framework that supports teachers with the design of flexible and accessible classrooms for an increasingly diverse population of students.

The purpose of this paper is to develop and validate a scale to reliably capture the variance of perceived risk towards purchasing on the internet at the product level.

A two‐dimensional scale to measure internet Product Purchase Risk (IPPR) was developed and tested in three studies. In the first study a preliminary pool of items was generated with evidence of content validity. In the second study the IPPR scale was purified using principal axis factor analysis. In the third study evidence of criterion‐related, known‐group, nomological, and discriminant validity was demonstrated.

The IPPR scale was found to successfully capture the variance of evaluation judgement and internet security risk. IPPR was also found to have a quadratic relationship with experience purchasing a product category from the internet.

Although strong evidence to suggest construct validity was demonstrated, it is understood that efforts to establish the validity of new measures should be ongoing. Specifically, although the IPPR scale was shown to produce reliable‐measurements for seven different products, the measurement of IPPR across more product categories would strengthen evidence of generalizability.

Given that risk is strongly dependent on the type of product, the procedure to develop the IPPR scale demonstrates the importance of measuring risk at the product category level.

This is the first study to develop and rigorously validate a multi‐item measure of purchase risk at the product level. Given the importance of risk in understanding online consumer behaviour, the IPPR scale will be useful for future studies in this domain, especially for comparing findings.

The purpose of this study is to investigate to what extent the professional identity of accountants, as manifested in a set of advanced cognitive, emotional and social intelligence competencies relevant to their professional activities, varies with the respective accounting position.

The systematically developed, formally clearly structured job advertisements for accounting positions provide content-rich representations of those holding the advertised position and thus contribute to revealing the professional identity. This study conducts a content analysis of 600 profiles of accountants presented in job advertisements of German organizations to identify the characteristic set of advanced cognitive, emotional and social intelligence competencies, juxtaposing different accounting positions at various stages of professional life. German organizations were targeted because they traditionally clearly differentiate between financial accounting and management accounting.

The job advertisements suggest that accountants develop a multifaceted professional identity reflecting their area of specialization and their level of entry. Financial accountants are more likely to be team-oriented than management accountants, and non-executive accountants are more likely than executive accountants. Analytical thinking seems to characterize management accountants rather than financial accountants. An independent way of working appears to be more pronounced among financial accountants than among management accountants.

This study refines the understanding of the professional identity of accountants by exploring the recruitment of accountants, the initial step of professional socialization. It identifies the most relevant advanced cognitive, emotional and social intelligence competencies based on a broad sample of job advertisements for accounting positions in organizations of different sizes and industries. By contrasting the competencies relevant to different positions and at different stages of their professional lives, it becomes evident that distinct professional identities of accountants coexist. The relevant competencies may be developed during higher education and continuing professional education. They may also be incorporated into individual performance evaluations and used as the basis for promotion decisions.

The purpose of this study is to examine the quality of reported earnings in the corporate reports of Shariah-compliant companies listed on Bursa Malaysia.

This study hypothesises that companies with Shariah compliance status have higher quality of earnings because of greater demand for and supply of high-quality financial reports. The quality of reported earnings is measured using the cross-sectional Dechow and Dichev (2002) accrual quality model. The study uses a balanced panel data of 3,048 observations from 508 companies during a six-year period of 2003-2008.

This paper finds robust evidence that Shariah-compliant companies have significantly higher earnings quality compared to other firms. The results provide support for the arguments that Shariah-compliant companies supply a higher quality of reported earnings to attract foreign investment, have greater demand for high-quality financial reporting because of their Shariah status and are subject to greater scrutiny by regulators and institutional investors.

This study contributes to the existing literature on Islamic capital market, business ethics, firms’ governance and financial reporting quality. The study would give a better understanding on issues relating to earnings quality of Shariah-compliant companies and would be especially useful for financial statement users, including investment analysts.

This paper provides evidence on the quality of earnings in Shariah-compliant companies and offers new arguments that explain why such companies possess higher quality of earnings compared to their counterparts.