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In this study we investigated the effects of news reports on acquirer short-term performance. Our focus was on the extent to which key deal characteristics – the type of deal, during a merger wave or not or the presence of a significant premium – are made explicit. Moreover, we looked for the effect of the assessment of the deal characteristics by different key informants: board members, top management team members, and analysts. Configurations derived using the set-theoretic approach suggest that media-transmitted signals form complex interrelations among content and informant. We found that investors react positively to deals that are surrounded by unequivocal signals of synergy potential: they contain explicitly stated deal characteristics as well as deal endorsements from the boards and/or top management of acquirer and target companies. Analysts’ assessments of the deals seem to bear little influence on investor reaction. Meanwhile, investors react negatively to deals with low or absent media coverage as well as deals surrounded by signals of ambiguous synergy potential.

For the longest period of its history, the university was the guardian and transmitter – not the producer – of knowledge. This relatively recent change of transmitting canonical knowledge and generating new knowledge is normally associated with Wilhelm von Humboldt. Other highly influential university models were provided by France and Great Britain. The association of certain types of universities with particular countries is a strong indicator of the intricate link between nation-state and education. Hence, the history of tertiary education and its elite institutions, the research universities, must be considered in relation with a sea change in educational history – the gradual emergence of national education systems. Only under the conditions of the by now standard form of organizing modern societies as nation-states did education become a central institution (Meyer, Boli, Thomas, & Ramirez, 1997) collapsing individual perfectibility and national progress. The nationally redefined university was integrated into the education system as its keystone while also being considered the motor of societal development. From a social history perspective, the latter aspect in particular indicates the pragmatic (training professionals, imparting military and technical knowledge, etc.) and symbolic expectations, “myths” of the nation-state that have been so aptly described and analyzed in numerous macro-sociological neo-institutionalist studies (Meyer, Ramirez, & Soysal, 1992; Meyer et al., 1997; Ramirez & Boli, 1987). In a macro-phenomenological perspective, the term “myth” is used to denote a fundamental change in the self-description of European society which since the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries no longer views itself as consisting of separate collectivities divided from each other by social origin – as was the case under feudal conditions – with each collectivity providing itself the necessary education for its members or being provided for by others in the case of neediness. Instead, as a result of a number of material and immaterial changes, society now defines the individual as its key unit, with the nation being consequently the aggregate of individuals and not of collectivities and the state redefined as the guardian of the nation. This conception might be taken as a kind of overlapping area which includes different approaches, such as Michel Foucault's concept of the disciplinary society (Foucault, 1977), Balibar and Wallerstein's (1991) deliberations on the relation between race, class, and nation, and Benedict Anderson's (1991) description of nations as imagined communities. All these studies could be taken as sharing the notion of “constructedness” (cf. Berger & Luckmann, 1972) of modern society with the neo-institutionalist perspective. The concept of a “world polity” which encompasses the “myths” society is based on, the overall notion of a cognitive culture, which takes Max Weber's concept of rationality as a point of departure, is identified as the basis of isomorphic change in the organizational structure of modern education systems (cf. Baker & Wiseman, 2006). However, the strong emphasis on international, world system embeddedness of nation-states and their education systems is not to be taken as a unidirectional dependence on external forces. While modern nation-states originate from and remain tied to international dynamics and developments, they are conceived as unique entities. For most of their history, modern nation-states have been preoccupied with making themselves distinct from each other. Thus, while international competition has always been present, looking abroad traditionally meant reworking, adapting, and reshaping what was imported, or borrowed (Halpin & Troyna, 1995; Steiner-Khamsi, 2004). This is true for education as well as for other areas of society.

Women leaders operate within multiple roles, managing both work and nonwork obligations. Exploring work-life balance constructs, this study examined role integration, social support sources, and work-family conflict to determine their influence on women leaders. Findings suggested that women leaders felt the benefit of a variety of social support services, but especially from sources external to the organization. Women leaders were diverse in role integration strategies, with respondents largely divided between blurring and segregating their work and nonwork roles. Time-based work-family conflict was slightly more apparent than strain-based conflict. Women leaders also indicated that their work interfered with their family more than their family interfered with their work. Findings provide valuable insights as to how women view work-life balance within their roles as leaders.

We conducted a national study of the Collegiate Leadership Competition (CLC), which since inception in 2015, has included over 75 higher education institutions. The CLC brings students together in collaborative institution-based teams to compete with other teams in competitions to achieve goals and practice effective leadership skills. Our goal was to assess leadership capacity growth over the course of a four-month team practice period through the daylong inter-team competition and evaluate participant leadership assessed several months later. Results suggested students made significant and sustainable gains in leader-self-efficacy and short-term gains in leadership skill and motivation to lead. Our results also indicated the team’s coach played a significant role in student leadership development.

Leadership development programs for students in educational settings are proliferating in number and design. Curricular programs range from academic minors and certificates to doctoral programs in a variety of academic homes (e.g., education, business, healthcare). Co-curricular programs often take the form of drop-in workshops, day-long experiences, alternative spring breaks, service-learning trips, and other programs housed in student affairs and administrative offices (Guthrie & Jenkins, 2018). Moreover, the number of programs has steadily increased over the last 15 years from just under 1,000 in 2006 (Brungardt, et al., 2006) to more than 2,000 (ILA Program Directory, 2021). And while there is some commonality among the approach of these leadership programs in terms of content and delivery (see Harvey & Jenkins, 2014), vast differences exist in the structure and learning goals of student leadership programs compared to other social science disciplines. A potentially fruitful area in which to explore its effectiveness in supporting leadership development is the environment of competitive teams, where individuals work together as a group to compete against other teams. The purpose of our research was to investigate the degree to which such a competitive environment might support or detract from student leadership group, employing a potentially effective example of a formal program that utilizes the innovative approach of team competitions to motivate learning (the CLC).

“It should also be noted that the objective of convergence and equal distribution, including across under-performing areas, can hinder efforts to generate growth. Contrariwise, the objective of competitiveness can exacerbate regional and social inequalities, by targeting efforts on zones of excellence where projects achieve greater returns (dynamic major cities, higher levels of general education, the most advanced projects, infrastructures with the heaviest traffic, and so on). If cohesion policy and the Lisbon Strategy come into conflict, it must be borne in mind that the former, for the moment, is founded on a rather more solid legal foundation than the latter” European Commission (2005, p. 9)Adaptation of Cohesion Policy to the Enlarged Europe and the Lisbon and Gothenburg Objectives.

Wirtschaftlichkeit und Rentabilität sind auch im Fremdenverkehr die Richt‐ und Angelptinkte der Unternehmungs‐ und Betriebspolitik. Ihre Bewertung hat im Zeichen der touristischen Ex‐pansion und des damit verbundenen zunehmen‐den Konkurrenzdruckes grössere Bedeutung er‐halten als je. Die Auseinandersetzung mit ihr ist umso notwendiger, als die Auffassungen schon iin Grundsätzlichen vielfach divergieren, was naturgemäss die praktische Anwendung und demgemäss die Ergebnisse beeinflussen muss.

This study aims to explore the experience of performing androgynous leadership approaches by New Zealand women leaders within the context of everyday conflict situations.

The research question “How do women leaders experience gender in conflict situations?” was explored through the facilitation of 4 focus groups with 19 senior female leaders in New Zealand. Poststructural discourse analysis was used to explore how participants negotiated positions of power within their environments and in accordance with competing gendered discourses.

Participants described taking a flexible, balanced, androgynous leadership approach to managing conflict situations. While the expectations to be “empathetic”, “sympathetic”, “gentle”, “nurturing” and “caring” resonated with the participants preferred approach, they remained firm that if conflict persisted, they would “cross the line” and adopt stereotypically masculine behaviours to resolve the situation. However, participants describe that when perceived to be crossing the line from feminine to masculine approaches, they experienced significant backlash. This demonstrates the tensions between the approaches women leaders would like to take in managing conflict and the experiences of doing so within a prescriptively gendered organisational context.

This research contributes to a gap which exists in understanding how gender is experienced from the viewpoint of the woman leader. This research presents a nuanced view of gendered leadership as a contested ground, rather than a series of strategic choices. Despite an increase in the acceptance of women into leadership positions, the authors seemingly remain bound by what is considered a “feminine” leader.