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1 – 10 of 85Daniel Nordholm and Carl-Henrik Adolfsson
Using a large-scale school improvement program in Sweden as a case, this article aims to explore the state governance of a large-scale school improvement program in Sweden and how…
Abstract
Purpose
Using a large-scale school improvement program in Sweden as a case, this article aims to explore the state governance of a large-scale school improvement program in Sweden and how officials at the state agency level made sense of the reform ideas and operationalized them in policy actions.
Design/methodology/approach
Data were integrated from Swedish Government Official Reports and formal directives from the Ministry of Education. Officials of the Swedish National Agency for Education (SNAE) were also interviewed. Data were analyzed to identify how regulatory rules, professional norms and cultural–cognitive beliefs shaped SNAE's design of the program.
Findings
The article shows how different types of governance (i.e. regulatory rules, professional norms and cultural–cognitive beliefs) set the direction for managing large-scale school improvement. In particular, in the studied case, the lack of clear regulatory directives enabled sensemaking processes clearly influenced by normative ideas and cultural–cognitive beliefs.
Research limitations/implications
The findings are mostly presented from the perspective of managers, so further study is required to attain a broader understanding of the state agency level's role and function.
Practical implications
By illustrating the strengths of understanding various dimensions of educational governance, the findings are highly relevant to both policymakers and educational managers at different levels of school systems.
Originality/value
The article offers a valuable perspective on large-scale school improvement and educational governance by focusing on a level that has hitherto received little attention.
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Curt Adams and Olajumoke Beulah Adigun
This study addressed a relatively understudied process of school leadership: the principal-teacher conversation about instructional change. Two distinct conversation structures…
Abstract
Purpose
This study addressed a relatively understudied process of school leadership: the principal-teacher conversation about instructional change. Two distinct conversation structures were examined: controlling conversation and transformative leadership conversation (TLC). Self-determination theory (SDT) was used to make the case that TLC is a better fit for instructional change than controlling conversation. Hypotheses were developed on the relationship between principal-teacher conversation and teacher trust in the principal, teacher autonomy and teacher vitality. These mental states were identified for empirical testing because of their influence on change processes.
Design/methodology/approach
The empirical study used a correlational research design with survey data. The data came from a random sample of 2,500 teachers from the population of certified teachers in a southwestern state in the USA. Useable survey responses were obtained from 1,615 teachers, for a response rate of 65 percent. Teachers in the sample averaged 15 years of teaching experience, with 7 years in their current school. Around 81% of teachers identified as female and 18 percent as male and 79% of teachers listed a racial identification as white. Hypotheses were tested in a path model using AMOS 28.0 with robust maximum likelihood (MLR).
Findings
As hypothesized, TLC had moderate to strong positive relationships with teacher trust in the principal, teacher autonomy and teacher vitality. Controlling conversation had small, negative relationships with teacher trust in the principal and teacher autonomy. Controlling conversation was not related to teacher vitality in the path analysis. Compared with controlling conversation, TLC had stronger relationships with teacher mental states.
Originality/value
The results of this study begin to reveal useful evidence on the inherent social-psychological mechanisms active in principal-teacher conversations. With results indicating that conversation structure has consequences for positive teacher mental states, the study directs attention to a ubiquitous yet understudied leadership process.
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Recent archiving and curatorial practices took advantage of the advancement in digital technologies, creating immersive and interactive experiences to emphasize the plurality of…
Abstract
Purpose
Recent archiving and curatorial practices took advantage of the advancement in digital technologies, creating immersive and interactive experiences to emphasize the plurality of memory materials, encourage personalized sense-making and extract, manage and share the ever-growing surrounding knowledge. Audiovisual (AV) content, with its growing importance and popularity, is less explored on that end than texts and images. This paper examines the trend of datafication in AV archives and answers the critical question, “What to extract from AV materials and why?”.
Design/methodology/approach
This study roots in a comprehensive state-of-the-art review of digital methods and curatorial practices in AV archives. The thinking model for mapping AV archive data to purposes is based on pre-existing models for understanding multimedia content and metadata standards.
Findings
The thinking model connects AV content descriptors (data perspective) and purposes (curatorial perspective) and provides a theoretical map of how information extracted from AV archives should be fused and embedded for memory institutions. The model is constructed by looking into the three broad dimensions of audiovisual content – archival, affective and aesthetic, social and historical.
Originality/value
This paper contributes uniquely to the intersection of computational archives, audiovisual content and public sense-making experiences. It provides updates and insights to work towards datafied AV archives and cope with the increasing needs in the sense-making end using AV archives.
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Magnus Frostenson and Leanne Johnstone
Motivated to know more about the internal means through which accountability for sustainability takes shape within organisations (in what ways and by whom), this paper aims to…
Abstract
Purpose
Motivated to know more about the internal means through which accountability for sustainability takes shape within organisations (in what ways and by whom), this paper aims to explore how accountability for sustainability is constructed within an organisation during a process of establishing a control system for sustainability.
Design/methodology/approach
This paper adopts a qualitative case study approach of a decentralised industrial group, operating mainly in Scandinavia, between 2017 and 2020. Both primary and secondary data are used (e.g. document analyses, semi-structured interviews, informal conversations and site visits) to inform the findings and analysis.
Findings
The findings reveal a multi-faceted path towards accountability for sustainability that involves several concerns and priorities at organisational and individual levels, resulting in a separate sustainability control systems within each subsidiary company. Although hierarchical structures for accountability exist, socialising accountability activities are needed to (further) mobilise sustainable accounts.
Practical implications
Successful sustainable control systems require employees making sense of formalised accountability instruments (e.g. policies and procedures) to establish their roles and responsibilities in organisations.
Social implications
This paper proposes socialisation processes as important for driving forward sustainability solutions.
Originality/value
This study elaborates on the internal accountability dynamic for the construction of sustainable accounts. Its novelty is built upon the interaction of hierarchical and socialising accountability forms as necessary for establishing a control system for sustainability. It furthermore illustrates the relationship between the external and internal pathways of accountability.
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Izhak Berkovich and Tahani Hassan
The purpose of this study was to investigate the mediating role of teachers' intrinsic and extrinsic motivation in the relationship between principals' perceived distributed…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this study was to investigate the mediating role of teachers' intrinsic and extrinsic motivation in the relationship between principals' perceived distributed leadership and organizational learning capability in schools.
Design/methodology/approach
The study employs a quantitative research design and a survey methodology. Data were collected from 400 teachers in Bahrain.
Findings
The results reveal that teachers' intrinsic and extrinsic motivation fully mediates the relationship between principals' perceived distributed leadership and organizational learning capability in schools.
Originality/value
The study contributes to the literature on distributed leadership, organizational learning and motivation by highlighting the important mediating role of teachers' intrinsic and extrinsic motivation in the relationship between principals' perceived distributed leadership and organizational learning capability. The study also has practical implications for school administrators by suggesting that distributed leadership practices can be an effective strategy for promoting organizational learning capability in schools.
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Sandra G.L. Schruijer and Petru Lucian Curseu
This paper aims to provide a deeper understanding of what collaborative leadership in interorganizational systems entails.
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to provide a deeper understanding of what collaborative leadership in interorganizational systems entails.
Design/methodology/approach
The empirical basis consists of the dynamics observed during two behavioral simulations involving seven stakeholders with managers and professionals as participants, dealing with a complex regional development issue.
Findings
The authors describe what functions collaborative leadership in multiparty collaboration serve by discussing relevant literature and introducing a system psychodynamic perspective on leadership that focuses on the emerging dynamics between a leading party and other stakeholders. The relational dynamics between the leading party on the one hand and the other stakeholders on the other, are described and interpreted, taking the larger systemic context into account.
Practical implications
The authors discuss some important group dynamics aspects that emerge in a multiparty context that can be used by participants in and facilitators of such complex systems in order to foster effective collaboration.
Social implications
Multiparty systems are set up to deal with some important societal challenges that require the integration of insights, resources and interests across several organizations and societal actors, therefore this study provides important insights into the complexity of collaborative leadership emergent in such contexts in which position power is lacking.
Originality/value
The study provides a qualitative, in depth analysis of the collaborative leadership as it emerges in a multiparty context simulated by an experiential learning context.
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Abdelmoneim Bahyeldin Mohamed Metwally and Ahmed Diab
In developing countries, how risk management technologies influence management accounting and control (MAC) practices is under-researched. By drawing on insights from…
Abstract
Purpose
In developing countries, how risk management technologies influence management accounting and control (MAC) practices is under-researched. By drawing on insights from institutional studies, this study aims to examine the multiple institutional pressures surrounding an entity and influencing its risk-based management control (RBC) system – that is, how RBC appears in an emerging market attributed to institutional multiplicity.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors used qualitative case study research methods to collect empirical evidence from a privately owned Egyptian insurance company.
Findings
The authors observed that in the transformation to risk-based controls, especially in socio-political settings such as Egypt, changes in MAC systems were consistent with the shifts in the institutional context. Along with changes in the institutional environment, the case company sought to configure its MAC system to be more risk-based to achieve its strategic goals effectively and maintain its sustainability.
Originality/value
This research provides a fuller view of risk-based management controls based on the social, professional and political perspectives central to the examined institutional environment. Moreover, unlike early studies that reported resistance to RBC, this case reveals the institutional dynamics contributing to the successful implementation of RBC in an emerging market.
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This paper features a narrative case study of a leadership team engaged in an effort to transform both culture and instructional practice at an urban charter school. The paper…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper features a narrative case study of a leadership team engaged in an effort to transform both culture and instructional practice at an urban charter school. The paper describes the team's effort to align their decision-making with two frameworks selected to anchor the school's institutional change process: restorative justice and deeper learning. Interweaving rich case data with analysis, the paper explores the dilemmas that emerged as leaders struggled to “walk the talk” of these two frameworks, using this to theorize about the synergies between them and to explore the broader leadership challenges involved in transforming schools from authoritarian to humanizing institutions.
Design/methodology/approach
The researcher employed an ethnographic approach with the goal of generating a thickly-textured single case study. Data-gathering activities included more than 400 h of participant-observation, in-depth interviewing and artifact collection, conducted over the course of a ten-month academic year. Data analysis was iterative and included frequent member checks with participants.
Findings
The paper finds that restorative justice and deeper learning have powerful epistemological connections that school leaders can harness in order to ensure a coherent approach to change processes. The paper also illuminates several of the core dilemmas that school leaders should anticipate facing when embracing these two frameworks: the dilemma of responding to feedback, the dilemma of power-sharing and the dilemma of balancing expectations with support.
Research limitations/implications
The case study approach employed in this paper allows for rich understandings of specific phenomena while also providing a platform for exploring the general qualities that these phenomena might illustrate. This approach does not allow for statistical generalizability.
Practical implications
The paper suggests that it is imperative for school leaders to explore what it means to lead in ways that are coherent with their vision for change, e.g. to cultivate symmetry. Moreover, the paper demonstrates that the value of such explorations lies in the process of grappling with the tensions that arise when humanizing frameworks are implemented within systems that uphold traditional power hierarchies. Additionally, the paper affirms the value of de-siloing the transformation of school culture from the transformation of instructional practice.
Originality/value
This paper offers an unusually textured account of the messy and uncertain processes that constitute the work of school change. This paper also draws together two educational paradigms which are rarely brought into conversation with each other despite their epistemological synergy.
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Mariana I. Paludi, Isabella Krysa and Marke Kivijärvi
This paper explores working mothers’ coping strategies concerning paid and unpaid work in Chile and Argentina during the Covid-19 pandemic. The paper aimed to understand the…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper explores working mothers’ coping strategies concerning paid and unpaid work in Chile and Argentina during the Covid-19 pandemic. The paper aimed to understand the influence of cultural norms on motherhood and neoliberal workplace practices on mothers’ sensemaking processes and coping strategies. This study focuses on mothers living in Chile and Argentina where governments established mandatory lockdowns between March and September 2020. Drawing on the notion of neoliberal motherhood, women’s demands were analyzed when paid work and mothering duties collide in time and space.
Design/methodology/approach
Open-ended interviews were conducted with 17 women in Chile and Argentina. All interviewees had at least 1 child below the age of 6 and were working from home during the lockdown.
Findings
Neoliberal workplace demands, and disadvantageous government policies greatly heightened the dual burdens of working mothers. Women were expected to fulfill the discourses of the neoliberal worker and the good mother, while also adopting additional strategies in the wake of the lockdown. The data highlights mothers’ strategies to cope with care and work duties by adjusting to new routines involving their partners, relatives and the wider community.
Research limitations/implications
The generalizability of the results is limited by the small sample of 17 interviewees, all from middle to middle-upper class. The changing scenario due to Covid-19 makes the collected data not sufficient to grasp the impact of the pandemic, as during the interviews (December 2020 and January 2021) the process was still ongoing.
Practical implications
Organizations should assess their role in the management of paid and unpaid work for both genders, as the neoliberal discourse views the worker as masculine, full-time, always available and productive, ignoring women’s additional care duties outside of the workplace.
Originality/value
The Covid-19 pandemic provides a unique opportunity to reflect on care work and gender, collective versus individual responses to care and work demands and the idea of organizing.
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Masoud Karami and Mokter Hossain
Knowledge of how entrepreneurial alertness (EA) and effectuation impact small firms' performance in uncertain markets is limited. Suggesting effectuation as a mediation mechanism…
Abstract
Purpose
Knowledge of how entrepreneurial alertness (EA) and effectuation impact small firms' performance in uncertain markets is limited. Suggesting effectuation as a mediation mechanism between EA and small firms' performance, the authors explore how entrepreneurs of small firms apply effectual logic to translate their individual alertness to market opportunities into firms' performance.
Design/methodology/approach
A set of hypotheses is tested by partial least squares analysis of survey data collected from small firms in New Zealand.
Findings
The results show that effectuation works as a mechanism that mediates a positive association between founders'/managers' alertness to market opportunities and small firms' performance.
Originality/value
Integrating EA with the effectuation theory, the authors contribute to the literature on new market opportunity development and firm performance. The authors argue that entrepreneurs concentrate on action and resources to further develop their marketing intelligence in developing new market opportunities. The authors also enhance the understanding of entrepreneurial marketing decision-making by small firms in a relatively small economy in the Asia–Pacific region.
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