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Advocates of market-based reforms in the public sector argue that competition between providers drives up performance. But in the context of schooling, the concern is that any improvements in efficiency may come at the cost of increased stratification of schools along lines of pupil ability and attainments. In this chapter, we discuss our empirical work on competition and parental choice in English primary schools and present a methodology for identifying competition effects that exploits discontinuities in market access close to education district boundaries.

The main contribution of the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB) appears to be the credibility they add to a school that has achieved accreditation and the branding they provide to an accredited school that helps the market differentiate between high quality programs and those that have not achieved that status. The authors ask a simple question in this paper – if the AACSB were a business school, would it receive accreditation?

The paper tests the assumptions by examining all accredited US programs to determine whether the quality of the schools accredited prior to the change to the mission-driven approach was equal to the quality of the schools accredited after the change.

The paper empirically demonstrate that since the move to a mission-driven focus in the early 1990s, the AACSB has not achieved its own mission and may have damaged its credibility in the process.

This failure raises the question of whether the organization actually provides the necessary information for third parties to differentiate between high quality business programs and those that do not meet the same standards. This puts into question the value of the AACSB brand.

The AACSB has the ability and responsibility to do better in its role as the main accreditation body for business schools.

It is the hope that the insight provided in this paper will initiate a serious discussion about the role of the AACSB in the determination of quality in business schools and how this role can be enhanced.

Companies in all industries are searching for new sources of competitive advantage since the competition in their marketplace is becoming increasingly intensive. The resource-based view of the firm explains the sources of sustainable competitive advantages. From a resource-based view perspective, relational based assets (i.e., the assets resulting from firm contacts in the marketplace) enable competitive advantage. The relational based assets examined in this work are brand image and corporate reputation, as components of brand equity, and customer value. This paper explores how they create value. Despite the relatively large amount of literature describing the benefits of firms in having strong brand equity and delivering customer value, no research validated the linkage of brand equity components, brand image, and corporate reputation, simultaneously in the customer value–customer loyalty chain. This work presents a model of testing these relationships in consumer goods, in a business-to-business context. The results demonstrate the differential roles of brand image and corporate reputation on perceived quality, customer value, and customer loyalty. Brand image influences the perception of quality of the products and the additional services, whereas corporate reputation actions beyond brand image, estimating the customer value and customer loyalty. The effects of corporate reputation are also validated on different samples. The results demonstrate the importance of managing brand equity facets, brand image, and corporate reputation since their differential impacts on perceived quality, customer value, and customer loyalty. The results also demonstrate that companies should not limit to invest only in brand image. Maintaining and enhancing corporate reputation can have a stronger impact on customer value and customer loyalty, and can create differential competitive advantage.

Offers new insight in the case of educational evaluation in Greece by presenting the history and the current state of school effectiveness research (SER). From an historical perspective, presents the beginnings and the two generations of SER. A number of essential studies are reviewed. From a comparative perspective, examines the current advances of SER in many other parts of the world. Using these approaches, a number of theoretical and statistical issues are clarified. Examines the policy implications of SER in France, England and Greece. Expresses a number of thoughts for the future of SER and its contribution to the issue of educational evaluation.

The international literature on the inclusion of pupils with special educational needs has been wide‐ranging, focusing mainly on curriculum and assessment, and social inclusion. The issue of funding has been mainly confined to discussions about the size of budget needed to support the resource needs of inclusion (e.g. the costs of additional teachers, support assistants or transport). Less attention has been given to the actual structure of the budget for special education. There has been greater interest in the strategic management of budgets and in the interaction of funding mechanisms at the national, local and institutional levels. This article discusses the effect of resourcing mechanisms for special education and draws on a study across Europe, and other studies based in The Netherlands, the USA and the UK. The strategic behaviours generated by different approaches are considered and the degree to which any particular strategy can influence the inclusion of pupils with special educational needs is assessed.

To share some key strategic paradigms for business schools with leading educators, academic administrators and executives.

The article is normative. The normative propositions and conclusions are drawn from the research done for the author's monograph New Vision for Management Education: Leadership Challenges. A number of case studies are reported, as well as an inductive study of IMD.

There is a need to focus on growth niches, such as executive education rather than MBA, undergraduate or PhD education.

Limitations include the lack of a large‐scale database established from rigorously compiled survey data, and the lack of parametric/non‐parametric statistical analysis.

Leading business schools must be demand‐oriented, must listen to customers‐cum‐executives and corporations, should undertake research that points towards thought leadership, and should work with the business world through lifelong learning networks.

The article draws on IMD's strategy, implicitly and explicitly, and builds on experiences tried out there. IMD's strategy is unique. The paper also reports on unique, new thinking on strategy‐setting and key priorities for business schools and academic institutions.

The purpose of this paper is to explore shared workspace and professional learning community (PLC) interactions in schools. The collaborative culture and PLCs were parts of the school culture. The collaborative culture of each school was designed to ensure teachers share intellectual and physical contributions in learning to investigate the impact of teaching and learning on students. The workspace overlap for teachers was part of the culture of each school and a function of the PLC interactions. PLCs provided opportunities for collaboration and therefore opportunities to share intellectual and physical workspace.

A grounded theory research approach was taken to this investigation, primarily because of the common experiences of educators in schools (Creswell, 2013). Collaborative process between educators in schools was qualitatively investigated as a function of PLC interactions. In all, three communities, five schools, and 70 educators were purposefully selected to participate. Data were collected, including semi-structured interviews, observations, artifacts, and researcher field notes.

The workspace interactions include shared leadership, decision making, teaching and learning practice, and accountability measures. Attributes and characteristics of effective collaboration and PLCs greatly affect the outcomes of PLCs. An emergent framework is provided that includes attributes of effective collaboration and the characteristics of effective PLCs that merge into intellectual and physical shared workspace.

This paper focuses on the connections between PLCs, school culture, and professional educator collaboration. This paper proposes to provide a unique model called the shared workspace. The model combines the intellectual and physical aspects of group members to ensure the effectiveness of collaborative systems that promote quality practice in schools through functional PLCs as part of a positive school culture. This paper further offers extensions to the shared leadership concept (Carpenter, 2015) in how schools, administrators, and teachers should work together, thus more collaboratively through a continuous improvement process of the school as a workplace and a learning organization.

The existing state of K-12 public education in the United States is perceived as unacceptable by a large number and a wide variety of critics. How to improve upon this state is the subject of much disagreement. The public discussion is heated, and even the academic debate is often sharp. One common thread of argument stresses the need to increase accountability as a strategy for improving the quality of public schools. There are two broad classes of mechanisms for increasing accountability. If the current outcomes are too low, then setting acceptable performance standards is one approach to generating quality improvements. The task becomes one of defining appropriate accountability standards and then establishing a system of incentives to implement those standards. Alternatively, the low current performance may reflect weak productivity incentives traceable to the limited competition, which many school operators face. The suggested remedy is a dose of increased choice either increased public sector offerings, such as charter schools, or increased private sector choice via voucher-type programs.

The purpose of this paper is to assess leadership learning in a principalship development programme.

This case study adopted Popper's three worlds as an analytical framework to assess leadership learning in a principalship development programme. The unit of assessment of learning is knowledge – more specifically subjective and objective knowledge. The study involved participants in a principalship development programme called the Leaders in Education Programme (LEP). The LEP is designed and implemented by the National Institute of Education, Singapore with partnership from the Ministry of Education, Singapore. Since its inception in 2001, the LEP has developed more than 300 school leaders in Singapore schools.

Through the analyses linking the concepts of complexity theory and Popper's three worlds, valuable insights were gained into how participants developed practical knowledge in leadership and management.

The outcome of the analyses has implications for leadership programme design and for leadership development in countries with similar challenges to prepare a new type of school leaders for the 21st century.