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The aim of this paper is to present the challenges external drivers and internal inertia faced by curriculum designers and implementers at institutions of higher education. The challenges to academics from competing factors are presented: internal resistance to changing existing curricula vs the necessity to continuously evolve programmes to reflect a dynamic, uncertain future. The necessity to prepare future leaders to face global issues such as climate change, dictates changing curricula to reflect changing personal, environmental and societal needs.

This paper uses the case study method to examine two models of climate change curriculum design and renewal. One model, from an Australian university, is based upon national education standards and the second is a non-standards-based curriculum design, developed and delivered by a partnership of four North American universities.

The key findings from this study are that the highest level of participation by internal-to-the-programme academics and administrators is required. Programme quality, delivery and content alignment may be compromised with either stand-alone course delivery and learning outcomes, or if courses are developed independently of others in the programme. National educational standards can be effective tools to guide course and programme management, monitoring, review and updating.

The paper includes implications for postgraduate level curricula design, implementation and programme evaluation.

The paper is the first to compare, contrast and critique a national standards-based, higher education curriculum and a non-standards-based curriculum.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the difference between experts and novices when reading with navigational table of contents (N-TOC). Experts refer to readers with high level of domain knowledge; novices refer to readers with low level of domain knowledge.

The authors performed a controlled experiment of three reading tasks (including fact finding task, partial understanding task, and full-text understanding task) on an N-TOC system for 35 post-graduates of Wuhan University who have rich experience in reading with N-TOC. Participants’ domain knowledge was measured by pre-experiment questionnaires; reading performance data including score, time, navigation use, and evaluation of N-TOC were collected.

The results showed that there was significant difference in neither navigation use nor participants’ evaluation, but domain experts performed significantly better in both score and time of all tasks than domain novices, which revealed an “illusion of control” phenomenon that rich experience in reading with N-TOC enabled domain novices to achieve the same performance as domain experts. In addition, this research found that N-TOC was not suitable for domain novices to solve full-text understanding task because of “cognitive overload” phenomenon.

This study makes a good contribution to the literature on the effect of domain knowledge on reading performance during N-TOC reading and how to provide better digital reading service in the field of library science and information science.

The focus of this research paper is on the effects of work satisfaction and organizational commitment on withdrawal behaviours. In order to acquire a better understanding of this relationship, the moderating effects of work satisfaction and organizational commitment are examined.

A questionnaire study was undertaken with Dutch and Slovakian respondents.

Although the results do yield support for the claim that work satisfaction and organizational commitment have moderating effects on withdrawal behaviours, not all the hypotheses were confirmed, particularly in the case of sample two.

Although a cross‐sectional design was used, light was shed on the complex relationship between work satisfaction, organizational commitment and withdrawal behaviours.

The results suggest that targeting one employee attitude in order to prevent withdrawal behaviours may not be enough. It is recommended to focus on a combined pattern of attitudes to obtain the desired goals.

Rather than concentrating on single relationships, this paper examines the effects of two employee attitudes on withdrawal behaviours, taking into account moderator effects.

The purpose of this paper is to focus on strategies and “spoken discourses” used to construct legitimation around change at the individual level. Comparing changes in financial accounting, budgeting and performance management at two government levels (Westminster and Scotland), it explores the use of legitimation strategies in the implementation of accounting change and its perceived outcomes.

Drawing on semi-structured interviews, six legitimation/delegitimation strategies are used to code the transcribed data. Patterns with the perceived outcomes of change are explored.

Changes introduced to enhance “rational” decision making are often received as pushed by some source of authority. Regardless of the interviewees’ background and level, the results suggest that for radical accounting change to embed, it is necessary for it to be perceived as rational, rather than merely driven by authorisation-based pressures. Conversely, incremental change is associated with modest legitimation via rationalisation and delegitimation based on pathos and rationalisation.

The study deals with actors’ legitimation strategies and perceptions of change. These may not correspond to actual substantial change. Taken-for-granted ideas often remain “under the radar”, therefore care must be taken in interpreting the results. The focus of the empirical study is on the UK, therefore conclusions are restricted to this context.

Existing studies struggle to explain organisations’ heterogeneity and practice variation; this study sheds light on how individual legitimation, which may lead to different organisational results, occurs. Differences in how actors interpret changes may be based on their position (central vs devolved administration) and on their ownership of the changes.

This paper shows how the perceptions of people regarding five dimensions of workplace spirituality (team’s sense of community, alignment with organizational values, sense of contribution to society, enjoyment at work, and opportunities for inner life) predict affective, normative, and continuance commitment, as well as self‐reported individual performance. One sample in Portugal and another in Brazil were collected. The findings show that employees’ perceptions of workplace spirituality predict significant variance of commitment and individual performance in both samples. The empirical evidence suggests that workplace spirituality is a pertinent construct for researchers and an important concern to be taken into account by managers.

What is the rhetoric that higher education institutions use when they develop and publish policies to improve student retention? Using the organization literature on institutional environments, this study examines the nature and evolution of institutional rhetoric used by three public universities in a single state over a 20‐year period. Consistent with the intent of the larger volume, this study provides an example of how the frameworks and concepts provided by organization theory can be used to complicate thinking about educational organizations.

Stinchcombe's definition of institutions as “communities of fate” and key concepts from the organizational ecology and institutional literatures provide the framework for this study. Using a qualitative methodology, over 2,800 retention‐oriented statements were used as study data. These were analyzed using codes generated from the institutional theory and student‐retention literatures.

Study data suggest that, while each institution developed a unique, defining identity over time, an institutional isomorphism emerged around student‐retention in these same institutions. This ideology centered on the creation of a “caring and student‐friendly” campus environment and played an important role in the development of student‐retention policies on each campus.

Research in student retention theory and policy has almost exclusively studied retention practice and student persistence. The research for this paper was deliberately designed to operationalize theoretical concepts in organizational ecology literature and to examine their manifestation in universities over time.

This paper seeks to explore the way charity accountants understand, interpret and legitimate or delegitimate the introduction of accounting and reporting changes (embedded in the extant charity statement of recommended practice), before these are actually implemented.

Drawing on 21 semi-structured interviews with accountants in large UK and Republic of Ireland charities, the manner and extent to which forthcoming changes in charity accounting are legitimated (justified) or delegitimated (criticised) is explored.

Acceptance of accounting changes in the charity sector by formal regulation may not be necessary for future required adjustments to practice to be legitimated. Using interviews carried out before the implementation of required changes, the results suggest that other factors, such as national culture, identity and mimetic behaviours, may play a major role in the homogenisation and acceptance of accounting and reporting rules. In particular, it is argued that mimetic pressures can be much more influential than regulative pressures in legitimating change in the charity sector and are more likely to lead to the embedding of change.

The contribution of this paper is threefold. First, it explores rhetoric and legitimation strategies used before changes are actually implemented. Second, it contributes to filling a gap in charities’ research related to intra-organisational legitimation of managerial and accounting changes, illustrating institutional-field identity at work to preserve shared organisational values and ideas. Finally, the research illuminates the importance of particular contextual pressures and individual legitimation arguments during accounting-change processes.

This paper aims to examine the relationship between fringe benefits (FB) provided to hotel managerial employees as part of their compensation and managers’ organisational commitment (OC).

This empirical study collected quantitative data from 104 managers from three-, four- and five-star hotels in Langkawi Island, Malaysia. Data collected included types of FBs received and three components of OC – affective commitment (AC), normative commitment (NC) and continuous commitment (CC).

Significant relationships were found between types of FBs and component of OC. Relocation allowances, sports and social facilities, birthday celebrations and free laundry services have a greater correlation with AC compared to other types of FB. Most types of FBs have stronger correlation with AC compared to NC and CC.

The findings of this study are limited to hotels in Langkawi Island, Malaysia and to three-, four- and five-star hotels.

Practitioners can use the information provided in this study to develop effective and competitive FB packages.

It is of utmost importance to ensure the well-being of all employees (managers and non-managers) in the provision of FB packages.

Managers’ FBs are an important component of their salary, but there have been few studies of the effectiveness of FBs on hotel performance. This paper provides empirical evidence for the positive effect of FB on OC.

This paper aims to examine an early stage of the institutionalization of accounting practices in devolved UK governments, concentrating on: the construction by devolved bodies of a “rational” set of planning and budgeting documents; the extent of homogeneity/heterogeneity in organizational response to seemingly similar institutional pressures; and politicians' cognition of accounting numbers.

The paper uses neo‐institutional theory to examine the planning and budgeting documents of the devolved bodies and material gathered from semi‐structured interviews.

The findings point to a process of nested translations, from mission through aims and objectives to targets, with accounting numbers present only in the last stage whereby time‐bounded targets are formulated and used to assess achievements. Because of the negotiations around the diverging interests of actors, the translation process is neither linear nor stable.

The paper contributes to the literature by: examining the emergence and use of new accounting and budgeting systems in political organizations; understanding the experience of institutionalization of accounting practices; and exploring the impact of accounting reform on political deliberation and joined‐up government.

This paper explores how performance-management systems are understood and framed through the use of rhetoric and language within universities, where not-for-profit, charitable goals are (or should be) central. It addresses the issues of: how strategic rhetorical frames are used by university actors; and how these relate to actors' primary frames and reactions to performance-management practices. The study focuses on the case of UK universities, taking into consideration both old and newer institutions.

This study adopts a case-study approach, relying on 28 interviews with key-academic actors involved in the design and implementation of university performance-management systems in four UK universities.

The research highlights the important effect of primary frames over the strategic frames that are mobilised to achieve desired outcomes or individual advantage. In Business disciplines, the consistency between actors' primary frames and managerial and performance-management tools introduced into universities makes such disciplines a fertile ground for these practices to be embraced. This is not the case with Natural Sciences.

While framing a new practice consistently with existing/prevailing primary frames may be a winning strategy in the short term, in the long term, those tasked with introducing new practices should consider that the prevalence of a certain view of the world has the potential to hamper innovation and learning.

The paper contributes to advance our understanding of the interaction between individual primary and strategic frames, as well as academic staff's reactions and interpretations of performance-management practices in universities as knowledge-intensive, not-for-profit organisations.