Search results

This study investigates whether block acquisitions lead to changes in board and CEO compensation characteristics and finds that block purchasers do not play a significant role in improving the firm’s governance practices. However, the majority of professional investors have sold their block within a year, suggesting that they do not own their stock long enough to alter governance policies nor to benefit from such changes. For the smaller number of firms where a new blockholder maintains their investment for more than a year, the use of equity based CEO compensation increases while the use of cash based compensation decreases.

Aim of the present monograph is the economic analysis of the role of MNEs regarding globalisation and digital economy and in parallel there is a reference and examination of some legal aspects concerning MNEs, cyberspace and e‐commerce as the means of expression of the digital economy. The whole effort of the author is focused on the examination of various aspects of MNEs and their impact upon globalisation and vice versa and how and if we are moving towards a global digital economy.

In recent years, practitioners have identified a number of problems with traditional performance management (PM) systems, arguing that PM is broken and needs to be fixed. In this chapter, we review criticisms of traditional PM practices that have been mentioned by journalists and practitioners and we consider the solutions that they have presented for addressing these concerns. We then consider these problems and solutions within the context of extant scholarly research and identify (a) what organizations should do going forward to improve PM practices (i.e., focus on feedback processes, ensure accountability throughout the PM system, and align the PM system with organizational strategy) and (b) what scholars should focus research attention on (i.e., technology, strategic alignment, and peer-to-peer accountability) in order to reduce the science-practice gap in this domain.

One recent direction for leadership research has been the use of purely qualitative data and qualitative analysis. One analytical method used in this phenomenological research has been the full grounded theory method. That method has generated social process theories about leadership in organizational settings. The present research operationalizes those theories into questionnaire format. This operationalized work gives support to a one-factor model for social processes of leadership (SPL) in organizations. It also identifies four lower-order social processes of leadership. Concurrent validity is concluded from a high correlation with Bass & Avolio’s and Podsakoff’s transformational leadership constructs. The correlations are so high that the SPL scale might be tapping the same underlying construct as transformational leadership. The augmentation effect of transformational leadership over (transactional) management is also supported. Support has been obtained for ongoing grounded theory-based research into the social processes of leadership and influence, and related phenomena, in organizations.

The purpose of this paper is to gain insights into how a group of novice principals, all in schools that deployed principles of autonomy as mechanisms for improvement, conceptualized what the authors label “controlled autonomy” – a condition in which school leaders are expected to both make site-based decisions and be accountable to district oversight. The study aims to support more effective interactions between school and district leaders around controlled autonomy to increase performance.

Using schema as a framework to guide the inquiry, this paper uses qualitative methods and interviewing in particular to explore the questions of interest. Seven novice principals were each interviewed three times over the year each interview lasting approximately one hour (n=21). Data were analyzed thematically using both inductive and deductive coding techniques.

Findings show that principals tended to group potential district supports into four categories: operations, instruction, advocacy, and vision and their perceptions regarding the balance between their and the district’s control over activities in each category was dynamic, varied and dependent on views relating to issues as broad as values alignment to perceptions of bureaucratic efficiency.

Because of the small sample size and methodological approach, it may be inappropriate to generalize the findings across all controlled autonomy contexts. Further research in additional settings is encouraged to support the proposed findings.

This paper has a number of implications for districts and school leaders. Among these is the need for districts to better articulate the parameters of controlled autonomy and for school leaders to receive more and more effective training and support to effectively utilize autonomy as a mechanism for reform.

This work fills a gap in the research regarding on how principals conceptualize controlled autonomy or, more specifically, how they view what school autonomy should look like relative to district control and is this paper’s focus. It also provides insights into practice and potential means to enhance a growing, but so far unevenly implemented and under performing reform initiative (i.e. controlled autonomy).

The principalship is a social position, and inherent in the position is the ability to understand and influence people, ultimately developing productive and positive working relationships. Managing a school in this social realm requires two interrelated types of human interaction and management skills: the relational/social skills involved in building positive interpersonal relationships; and political skills, which involve negotiating macropolitical and micropolitical influences as well as proactively making use of these influences to achieve organizational goals. It is argued that these sets of skills can be acquired through leadership development programs that build social, relational, and political acumen. This chapter begins the discussion of the inseparable nature of the social, political, and relational dimensions of educational leadership within the social context of schools. This discussion also addresses the ethical and pedagogical implications for leadership development programs to incorporate the understanding and development of social, relational, and political “leadership acumen.”

Using a case study analysis of one undergraduate program that focuses on training science majors to perform sustainability outreach in their communities, this study offers pedagogical suggestions for how educators in universities might incorporate sustainability and activism into their curricular design.

This chapter discusses the relationship between the hard academic knowledge of the classroom and the outreach work done by the students by examining how curricular design and classroom activities lead to outreach work. Drawing on interviews, curriculum materials, and observations of staff meetings, this chapter examines how the course teachers use a peer-learning model to collaboratively develop the pedagogy of the classroom.

This model of teacher training through engagement with the content material of the course represents reflective learning practices. By being asked to break down and contextualize class themes and units for themselves as thinkers, the teachers first reflect on their own learning process and disciplinary participation as a way of developing course material for their students, who are themselves not incredibly far behind their facilitators in their own learning development.

The effectiveness of this practice suggests possibilities for using teacher training as a way to model the classroom space that each discipline believes best serve their learning goals. By first reflecting on their own individual relationship to the subject material, the teachers engage in a re-negotiation with knowledge that is synonymous with effective learning. The knowledge of the discipline is constantly re-negotiated around why that knowledge matters for each individual member of the discipline.

By considering how the classroom in this program combines disciplinary knowledge of environmental science with outreach and activist-oriented praxis, this case study analysis allows for pedagogical techniques that instructors might use with similar goals of combining traditional academic discourse with public outreach and participation.

Signs are not wanting that the policy we have so often urged in these pages, that the present is the appropriate time for all public libraries to pay strict and systematic attention to their collections upon science and its technological and industrial applications, is being adopted by several libraries. An interesting example is that of Richmond, where a special “trades” section is to be formed having as its purpose the collecting and segregating of industrial literature, and Aberdeen has formed a sub‐committee to revise its collections similarly. No librarian believes there is anything novel in either case, since the competent librarian is continually reviewing his collections with the object of replacing obsolete works; but the public particularising of the technology sections is at the moment a policy the wisdom of which cannot be gainsaid. Moreover, numbers of books on important, but little understood, industries are coming from the press at present, and an unusual alertness is necessary to prevent them passing out of notice. Further, definite advertising of the books was never more desirable. In this connexion we have not seen any recent lists more calculated to serve the purpose than those issued by the Coventry Public Libraries, and not their least virtue is their unpretentious character— they are single leaflets with brief library information, a carefully selected set of titles, and an invitation to manufacturers, artisans and other readers to use the telephone in their search for information. We do not suppose that a very great number will avail themselves of the privileges these collections and bulletins offer; but it is all‐important that they should exist. A keen publicity spirit, which is not ashamed of or deterred by lack of visible results, is required now in order to reach the employer and the young worker in particular. Many methods suggest themselves: Lists posted at workshops, special catalogues such as that issued by Gateshead, bulletins such as those at Coventry, even visits from the librarian to the various factories, workshops, business houses and schools. Some of these have been tried, we know, but the circumstances of two years ago are not those of to‐day; and, if results were discouraging in the past, they need not be so now; and, in any case, new efforts should be made.