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Centralization, which indicates distribution of decision-making power in organizations, is well-discussed in innovation literature as one of the influencing factors of innovation implementation. Motivated by a gap in enterprise resource planning (ERP) research, the purpose of this paper is to investigate the influence of centralization on the success of ERP implementation.

Centralization is characterized twofold: policy-related centralization (PRC) and work-related centralization (WRC). ERP implementation success is captured in terms of user acceptance and the use of the ERP system. Using organizational innovation theory, six hypotheses relating centralization, ERP implementation success, and organization size are built and tested using data gathered from 51 Indian organizations that implemented ERP. The data are analyzed using partial least squares-structural equation modeling.

User acceptance is significantly inhibited by PRC. WRC has a negative influence on use. The negative influence of PRC on acceptance is more pronounced in the case of larger organizations. On the whole, a decentralized set-up is favorable to ERP implementation success.

The study highlights the impact of a centralized management structure on success of ERP implementation and in doing so, it demarcates the varied influence of two types of centralization. It contributes to the scarce research on ERP implementation using the strong theoretical basis of organizational innovation. The findings highlight the implications of centralization to the implementation outcomes, for organizations embarking upon ERP.

The purpose of this paper is to report on the policy and practice contexts for school autonomy and twenty-first century learning in Canadian provinces.

This paper reports on an analysis of policies in Canadian provinces (particularly the provinces of Alberta and Saskatchewan). The authors review policies related to school autonomy and twenty-first century learning initiatives.

In this paper, the authors argue that autonomy is a complicated and multi-levelled phenomena with a measure of autonomy devolved from the state to local school divisions, and yet other elements of autonomy devolved to the school and to individual teachers. The link between autonomy and twenty-first century learning are unclear as yet. This paper attempts to establish the policy contexts for school autonomy and twenty-first century learning without making claims about a causal relation between the two.

The originality of this paper lies in its description of autonomy beyond the school level. Autonomy, as a construct, is rarely examined as a dynamic process among multiple layers of the educational system.

This paper aims to analyze the relationships between discourse leading indicators and citations from perspectives of integrating altmetrics indicators and tries to provide references for comprehending the quantitative indicators of scientific communication in the era of open science, constructing the evaluation indicator system of the discourse leading for academic journals and then improving the discourse leading of academic journals.

Based on the theory of communication and the new pattern of scientific communication, this paper explores the formation process of academic journals' discourse leading. This paper obtains 874,119 citations and 6,378,843 altmetrics indicators data from 65 international multidisciplinary academic journals. The relationships between indicators of discourse leading (altmetrics) and citations are studied by using descriptive statistical analysis, correlation analysis, principal component analysis, negative binomial regression analysis and marginal effects analysis. Meanwhile, the connotation and essential characteristics of the indicators, the strength and influence of the relationships are further analyzed and explored. It is proposed that academic journals' discourse leading is composed of news discourse leading, social media discourse leading, peer review discourse leading, encyclopedic discourse leading, video discourse leading and policy discourse leading.

It is discovered that the 15 altmetrics indicators data have a low degree of centralization to the center and a high degree of polarization dispersion overall; their distribution patterns do not follow the normal distributions, and their distributions have the characteristics of long-tailed right-peaked curves. Overall, 15 indicators show positive correlations and wide gaps exist in the number of mentions and coverage. The academic journals' discourse leading significantly affects total cites. When altmetrics indicators of international mainstream academic and social media platforms are used to explore the connotation and characteristics of academic journals' discourse leading, the influence or contribution of social media discourse, news discourse, video discourse, policy discourse, peer review discourse and encyclopedia discourse on the citations decreases in turn.

This study is innovative from the academic journal level to analyze the deep relationships between altmetrics indicators and citations from the perspective of correlation. First, this paper explores the formation process of academic journals' discourse leading. Second, this paper integrates altmetrics indicators to study the correlation between discourse leading indicators and citations. This study will help to enrich and improve basic theoretical issues and indicators’ composition, provide theoretical support for the construction of the discourse leading evaluation system for academic journals and provide ideas for the evaluation practice activities.

A recent survey conducted on a sample of 101 Singaporean production managers, studying their responsibilities and activities in a number of decision areas, is examined. The findings are summarised and the differences between production managers in local and foreign firms are discussed. Results are compared with two similar studies conducted earlier in the UK and India.

Blockchain is a disruptive technology that has matured to deliver robust, global, IT systems, yet adoption lags predictions. The authors explore barriers to adoption in the context of a global challenge with multiple stakeholders: integration of carbon markets. Going beyond the dominant economic-rationalistic paradigm of information system (IS) innovation adoption, the authors reduce pro-innovation bias and broaden inter-organizational scope by using technological frames theory to capture the cognitive framing of the challenges perceived within the world’s largest carbon emitter: China.

Semi-structured interviews with 15 key experts representing three communities in China’s carbon markets: IT experts in carbon markets; carbon market experts with conceptual knowledge of blockchain and carbon market experts with practical blockchain experience.

Perceived technical challenges were found to be the least significant in explaining adoption. Significant challenges in five areas: social, political legal and policy (PLP), data, organizational and managerial (OM) and economic, with PLP and OM given most weight. Mapping to frames developed to encompass these challenges: nature of technology, strategic use of technology and technology readiness resolved frame incongruence that, in the case explored, did not lead to rejection of blockchain, but a decision to defer investment, increase the scope of analysis and delay the adoption decision.

Increases scope and resolution of IS adoption research. Technological frames theory moves from predominant economic-rational models to a social cognitive perspective. Broadens understanding of blockchain adoption in a context combining the world’s most carbon emissions with ownership of most blockchain patents, detailing socio-technical challenges and delivering practical guidance for policymakers and practitioners.

Governments are no strangers to dealing with crises. On the contrary, a central role of any government is to absorb, navigate and mitigate them. However, crises themselves are unpredictable and represent a significant challenge to governments at both the national and local level. Despite such uncertainty, studying how governments in different countries respond to crises offers a great opportunity to learn from the past and to understand the nature of resilience in the face of significant shocks and disruption.

This book charts how local governments in 11 countries, covering Europe, the United States, South America and Australia, responded to the recent crises and austerity period by shedding new light on the role of contextual- and policy-related conditions as well as the internal capacities and conditions that may influence responses and, ultimately, performance.

This chapter sets the scene for the book, by highlighting the relevance of examining financial crises and austerity and the ways in which governments, and more specifically, local governments, are facing the related shocks. In doing so, it proposes a preliminary framework for exploring governmental financial resilience at the local level. In such a framework, financial resilience is seen as the dynamic combination of internal and external dimensions, including the external environment, financial shocks, vulnerability, anticipatory capacity and coping capacity.

This study analyzed Chinese higher education (HE) governance policies during the first four months of the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic, providing insight into HE management, policymaking and governance. This study also illuminates Chinese student experiences and real-time policy impact, providing insight into the effectiveness of HE crisis management.

Using frameworks of real-time policy evaluation, this paper analyzed theoretical and realized policy impacts through the theoretical framing of temporality. Using real-time evaluation methods, this paper first identified HE policy priorities and then used a mixed-methods approach of “policy as discourse” analysis and a quantitative survey from Chinese HE students to assess the theoretical and realized impact of policies.

An analysis of HE policies identified three priorities: pastoral care, graduate employment and ideological education. Discourse analysis revealed each priority of HE policies was intrinsically linked to mitigating societal, economic and political consequences of the epidemic. Survey data revealed the perceived effectiveness of policies mirrored China's top-down government structure. Additionally, students expressed strong support in the central government's crisis management, despite relatively little realized policy impact.

This paper presents a timely review of HE governance during a global pandemic by offering a snapshot of HE crisis management and contributing to the literature surrounding China's ongoing HE centralization. This paper also provides unique insight into HE's role in state development, variations between prescriptive and realized policy impact and the “crisis as opportunity” paradox in a contemporary setting.

With growing emphasis being placed on the selection of highly qualified teachers, it is inevitable that policies and practices of teacher selection will become more methodical. This chapter explores systematic practices of selecting preservice teachers by examining local/national policies related to teacher selection in South Korea. The first part of this chapter explains why a conceptual understanding is essential to understanding the Korean educational context. Included is a short explanation of various approaches to improve teacher selection processes and procedures. The work is based on the assumption that effective teachers can be chosen by implementing an effective teacher selection system. The second part outlines the current process of teacher selection in South Korea, along with the issues and challenges surrounding practices related to teacher selection. In South Korea, teaching is still considered a highly desirable profession compared to other countries, as well as to other occupations in South Korea. Hence, a huge number of teacher candidates and preservice teachers must pass through many steps before becoming certified as teachers. They also must take national and district tests. The teacher selection system in South Korea is highly centralized and more complicated than most other countries. In this chapter, the teacher selection system in South Korea is critically analyzed in an effort to identify strengths and weaknesses in national policy and practices related to teacher selection. The final part of the chapter discusses implications based on the analysis of the teacher selection system in South Korea.

Using a document analysis methodology, the study analyzes official policy documents produced by the centralized Israeli Ministry of Education and by the State Comptroller responsible for reviewing the Israeli government's policies and operations. Coordination is assessed using three lenses: coordination among policy plans initiated by different governmental ministries; coordination among policy plans initiated by the Ministry of Education; and coordination within policy plans, referring to the congruence among various components comprising a particular policy.

Following previous studies testifying to the significance of coordination for organizational effectiveness and to the contribution of centralized structures for coordination, the current study attempts to assess whether centralized complex educational systems exhibit coordination among their articulated policy plans.

In spite of the highly centralized nature of Israeli governance, coordination among policy plans articulated by different governmental ministries is limited. This also applies to the coordination found among various educational policy plans or among various components comprising particular policy plans articulated by the Ministry of Education.

While centralized structures produce administrative bottlenecks creating ideal grounds for coordination, it appears that the assumed connection between centralization and coordination may not be applicable to educational systems and that coordination among and within policy plans in complex systems is not a zero-sum game. Implications are further discussed.