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Parents are sometimes perceived as barriers to providing comprehensive and inclusive sexuality education to young people. However, little is known about parents’ actual attitudes towards providing such broad information to young people. The purpose of this paper is to examine two different approaches to measuring parents’ attitudes towards sexuality information, a programme title approach and a topic-centred approach.

Illinois parents of adolescents (n=301) indicated their knowledge about and attitudes towards sexuality education programmes and 18 sexual health topics via online survey. Confirmatory factor analysis was used to examine whether parents’ attitudes were more consistent with a programme-centred (i.e. abstinence-only, comprehensive) or a topic-centred (i.e. physical health, sexual and gender identity, pleasure, and relationships) approach.

Parents were uncertain about what form of sexuality education was offered but most were equally comfortable with both abstinence-only and comprehensive programmes. Parents’ ratings of topics grouped significantly better by the topic-centred than the programme-centred approach. Parents rated all four subjects as important, with the highest mean ratings given to physical health topics. Further, parents’ ratings of importance by subject matter were largely independent of their reported programming preference. Together these findings provide evidence that parents believe it is important for their children to have access to a broad range of sexual health education information.

This study is one of the first to document parents’ support for information for young people that goes beyond being comprehensive to include topics such as identities and pleasure. In addition, parents’ lack of knowledge about sexuality education programming may obscure their support for sexual health information. Measuring support by specific topics, however, can help to overcome issues due to parents’ lack of knowledge about programming.

The purpose of this paper is to argue that the epistemology of the strategic literature is dominated by a Modernist (scientific) and Cybernetic system approach and that other epistemological options especially critical management studies and complex self‐adapting systems, might provide greater insight for strategic thinking.

An extensive review of the literature was undertaken.

The current dominant way of thinking about management is based on closed system notions of causality in which good enough long‐term prediction is possible. The process PLOC depends totally on this foundation. If a system's long‐term behaviour is unpredictable, then using the PLOC model is questionable. In the current turbulent business environment long‐term prediction may not be possible.

The life expectancy of a firm is only 40 years. Using closed system concepts to drive businesses to the equilibrium of a business plan may be killing the business, because a complex self‐adapting system in equilibrium is dead.

Very little work, especially in strategy has been done outside the Modernist paradigm. This paper explores the possibility of incorporating open system ideas into a strategic methodology.

The purpose of this paper is to challenge an over‐reliance on past experience as the cognitive underpinning for strategic decisions. It seeks to argue that, in complex and unknowable conditions, effective leaders use three distinct and complementary thinking capacities, which go beyond those normally learned during their rise to the top.

A conceptual model of thinking capacities is justified through a review of the psychology literature; the face validity of the proposed model is supported through six in‐depth interviews with successful CEOs.

A model of non‐conventional thinking capacities describes how strategic decision‐makers make choices that are better adapted to the conditions of uncertainty, ambiguity and contradiction, which prevail in complex situations. These capacities are complementary to the more conventional approaches generally used in thinking about decisions.

The paper aims to stimulate awareness of the limitations of habitual mental responses in the face of difficult strategic decisions. It challenges leaders consciously to extend their abilities beyond conventional expectations to a higher order of thinking that is better suited to multi‐stakeholder situations in complex environments.

The paper responds to the challenge of McKenna and Martin‐Smith to develop new theoretical approaches to complex environments. It extends conventional approaches to decision making by synthesising from the literature some essential thinking capacities, which are well suited to the demands of situations dominated by uncertainty, ambiguity and contradiction.

This chapter focuses on the Turkish businesses’ and individuals’ perspectives on sustainability and environment and provides a socio-cultural analysis regarding the problems underlying in the implementation of sustainability and environmental practices in an emerging economy.

Current sustainability and environment studies literature regarding the Turkish businesses and society are examined. Socio-cultural perspective is used to explain the problems in the field.

Turkish culture is traditionally associated with harmony with the nature and many studies point to its environmental awareness. But the lack of future orientation, paternalist way of management, and survival concerns of the individuals and businesses cause a certain lack of environmental initiative. Turkish culture has a unique pluralistic approach to nature, and in this approach mastery, harmony, and subjugation are combined.

The suggested pluralistic approach should be considered by the relevant stakeholders to understand the dynamics of business and environment relations in Turkey. This unique structure calls for unique environmental solutions.

Present studies of Turkey in terms of sustainability and environmental issues are generally lacking socio-cultural perspectives. This study aims to fill this gap by suggesting an alternative pluralistic approach based on a socio-cultural evaluation of Turkish culture.

The purpose of this paper is to explore how organizational leadership capability as a knowledge coordinating mechanism affects service organization activities towards different stakeholder groups.

The subjects in the case study are four Estonian service companies from the banking and retail industry providing high- and low-skill services, respectively. The data for the study were collected using the Organizational Leadership Capability Questionnaire with a total of 375 employees as respondents, and the organizations’ web sites to analyse corporate social responsibility (CSR). Assessment and analysis of the data included: the measurement of organizational leadership capability; the measurement of CSR communication; and analysis of the results gained from studying issues pertaining to organizational leadership capability as a knowledge coordination mechanism and innovative behaviour in terms of CSR.

Ultimately, the study reveals that organizations with higher intensity of knowledge use in high-skill service industries have greater ability to coordinate knowledge as expressed in terms of organizational leadership capability, which in turn, allows them to behave more innovatively in terms of CSR towards stakeholders.

This study suggests that innovative behaviour in organizations towards different groups of stakeholders depends on organizational leadership capability. However, the results of this study are only valid in the context of the Estonia service sector, and more precisely the retail and banking industry.

This paper demonstrates the role of organizational leadership capability in the coordination of knowledge to generate innovative behaviour in terms of CSR in service organizations.

School principals make sense of multiple messages, policies, and contexts within their school environments. The purpose of this paper is to examine specifically how school leaders make sense of hiring and subjective evaluation of on‐the‐job teacher performance.

This qualitative study drew from 42 interviews with 21 principals from a mid‐sized Florida school district. Two rounds of semi‐structured interviews (one to two hours each) were conducted with the informants over two summers (2005‐2006). The multi‐year study allows the authors to assess the consistency across principal participants.

Principals' personal beliefs, background, and experiences were found to shape their conceptions and preferences for teacher characteristics. School type (e.g. elementary, secondary, levels of poverty) also influenced principals' perceptions of and preferences for specific applicant and teacher characteristics. Principals in the sample, however, showed surprising consistency towards certain characteristics (caring, subject matter knowledge, strong teaching skills) and job fit (person‐job). Sampled principals reported that each vacancy is different and is highly dependent on the position, team, and individuals. Regardless of the position or school setting, federal, state, and district mandates strongly influenced how principals made sense of the hiring process and on‐the‐job performance.

The findings underscore the complexity of the human resource functions in education and raise important questions of how school leaders reconcile personal preferences and building‐level needs with demands from the district, state, and federal levels.

The authors' findings offer important insight into the complex conceptualizations that principals hold and the balances that must be struck in the face of policy and hiring constraints. How principals make sense of teacher quality, however, has not been examined. This study contributes to the extant research and makes a theoretical contribution to studies using a cognitive frame to understand school leadership.