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The purpose of this paper is to reconceptualize the theory-practice gap in educational leadership, not as a deficit, but as a necessity for legitimacy within institutional contexts.

This paper draws on institutional theory to reframe the theory-practice gap, which is often seen as a deficit of leaders or preparation programs.

Three vignettes illustrate how aspiring and current educational leaders engage with theory and practice within specific contexts and in relation to specific aspects of leadership. Importantly, the vignettes show that when school leaders decouple theory from practice, they may be doing so to function as legitimate providers of K-12 educational leadership.

The theory-practice gap, while often perceived as something negative, can have certain benefits within particular contexts. Scholars interested in the interconnections of theory and practice would benefit from considering why and how school leaders engage theory and practice.

Implications for leadership preparation programs highlight developing more complex views of the challenges that leaders face in tightly coupling theory and practice. To support future and current leaders, leadership preparation programs need to ensure that their students understand their institutional contexts and the reasons that leaders may decouple theory from action in various ways.

Instead of viewing the theory/practice gap as a deficit, this paper argues for a new way to consider why school leaders and leadership candidates may engage with theory and practice in different ways.

Tobacco sponsorship of sports has increasingly been cast as a public issue on the grounds that it supports pediatric smoking by circumventing advertising restrictions and communicating positive brand information to children(28,31,32). Research on tobacco sponsorship effects on children is as yet inconclusive, but growing evidence suggests that sponsorship is an effective medium for building cigarette brand awareness and image among under‐aged youth. Research in this area has been inconclusive in part because it lacks a unified framework in which the various contributions of sponsorship to brand knowledge and use can be analysed holistically. This paper proposes that the brand equity concept(1,2,18) provides such a framework. The paper reviews previous research on tobacco sponsorship and children, and presents findings from a study that assessed the relative contribution of sponsorship to brand awareness among fourteen year‐olds (n=366) in Dunedin, New Zealand. The value of sponsorship‐derived cigarette brand knowledge among youth is expressed in terms of Keller's(18) concept of customer‐based brand equity. The study found that children's awareness of tobacco brands and tobacco sponsorships varied according to their smoking experience, sports interests and gender. Cigarette brands with the strongest event associations were those that sponsored events that had a high appeal for the youth in the study. The brands with the highest unaided recall levels were those that were prominently shown in point of purchase displays in stores frequented by the youth, and included those with the highest sponsorship profiles. The research demonstrates that tobacco companies can achieve significant brand recall among children through sport sponsorship, as well as interest‐based (lifestyle) segmentation and targeting benefits, and brand positioning (personality) benefits. The findings have implications for public policy and industry practice. In policy terms, if the goal of tobacco advertising prohibitions is to denormalise smoking by restricting the positive promotional imagery of cigarettes, then sport sponsorship and point of purchase displays need to be incorporated into advertising legislation. In terms of industry practice, the fact that tobacco sponsorship reaches and influences under‐aged youth stands to be a matter of concern for any entity that does not want this social burden. It is recommended that corporations considering involvement in a tobacco‐sponsored event should evaluate the reach of the event and the potential effects of its promotions on youth. Where a youth‐interest connection has been demonstrated for the event, corporations should weigh the social risks and costs of the sponsorship. For non‐tobacco related entities these costs include the potential negative impacts of tobacco‐linked event cross‐promotions on their own brands and corporate image.

The application of just‐in‐time manufacturing techniques in batch chemical processing environments, under conditions of variable demand, imposes significant capacity management problems. Making decisions which involve levels of customer service and resource untilization can be aided by the application of the calculation methodology outlined, which uses standard spreadsheet techniques and forecast queue analysis. Presents a case example to clarify the links between service levels and resource utilization which can aid management decisions regarding timing, levels of stocks and sizing of facilities.

The purpose of this paper is to explore how British cycling brand Rapha innovatively embeds stories throughout its touchpoints and in its garments.

Using narrative inquiry methodology and subjective personal introspection, it analyses published brand texts, cycling apparel, primary interviews and lived experience to establish a key story theme and the role, form, value and continuity of stories in the brand’s canon.

It claims that Rapha’s texts reveal evidence of a specific story plot, the “Quest” (Booker, 2015), which acts as a structural editorial device and provides a rich lexicon that taps into a transformative personal experience. The study proposes that the brand’s employees identify themselves with quester values that define the brand’s essence, providing a coherent message and magnifying the agency in Rapha’s stories.

This inquiry offers insight into a single consumer brand, yet it is the material manner in which stories are embedded within the brand offerings plus how lived experiences are recounted through structured storytelling that are of significance to wider practice and understanding.

It brings together industry, academic and personal insight to Rapha’s storytelling praxis to illustrate how storied content can be used to transmit values, purpose and passion to its audience.

Shops and shopkeepers are a British tradition. More than 150 years ago, we were a nation of shopkeepers, and the picture of shops and the shopping public seemed unchanging. There were, of course, the early departmental stores, the co‐operative societies, the multiple shops, the chain‐stores, but the position was much as it had always been and the greatest proportion of retail trade was still in the hands of the traditional type of shopkeeper. The two Wars changed many things, but it was not until after the last War that retail trade really began to change and looking at it objectively and at the food trade particularly, it has become a revolution.

Explores the theoretical linkage between organisational learning and organisational performance by analysing the different systems of performance management. Aside from focusing on the traditional financial aspects of performance, deals with the much‐hyped qualitative nature of non‐financial performance measures. Discusses in conjunction with organisational learning outcomes which can be seen to be operating at two levels: formal and informal. Arguably, the former involves the bottom‐line tangible indicators while the latter, the intangible indicators. Further suggests alternative views of performance measures by examining the cognitive and behavioural development of individuals. This, to a large extent, deals with intellectual capital and knowledge acquisition, and how they can be translated into competence which will in turn benefit the organisation financially.

Presents a case study that probes the process of leading professional development in a specific educational setting, namely, a primary school, and offers a critical analysis of the process over an eight‐ to ten‐month period. Hopes that the approaches used and the lessons learned will have a relevance to the wider field of educational research and practice.