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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 purpose of this paper is to establish what is known regarding how supply network governance leads to network outcomes, what mechanisms underlie this relationship, and how context impacts it.

A systematic literature review identified 44 conceptual and empirical studies. Purely dyadic studies were excluded. Synthesis used the context‐intervention‐mechanism‐outcomes (CIMO) logic.

From a categorization of contexts, governance instruments, mechanisms and outcomes a contingent conceptual framework is developed in the paper relating governance instruments to network outcomes dependent on the context. In general, formal instruments are adopted in dynamic and unstable circumstances defined as risky, uncertain, unpredictable or during organizational change. These instruments can result in coordination, control, viability and performance outcomes. Informal instruments tend to be adopted in contexts where prior relationships exist between actors.

Arising from the conceptual framework three robust propositions are developed. A more nuanced view of power and trust is proposed to augment the explanations provided by transaction costs and social embeddedness. This provides opportunities for further research, including longitudinal and comparative studies.

The conceptual framework provides three propositions suggesting that in dynamic or unstable circumstances formal governance instruments can provide viability, control, coordination or performance outcomes. Informal governance instruments are more effectively used in established relationships to improve performance, control and viability.

The synthesis reveals contingencies in the appropriate governance modes of supply networks for desired outcomes in specific contexts, resolving apparent inconsistencies between prior studies.

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.

To the Most Rev. M.A. Corrigan, Archbishop of New York:

This paper aims to explore how and why the Australian records and archives professions are in decline by examining job advertisements. The hypothesis was that competencies, developed as standards to communicate a professional identity to recruiters, would show in job advertisements.

Searches were set up to capture job advertisements for records and archives positions advertised on Australia’s largest job seeking website: Seek.com.au. Criteria developed to identify relevant advertisements were based on existing competencies and standards outlining records professionals’ skills, knowledge and attributes. Statistical analysis was used to assess the data.

Employers and recruiters are looking for generalist skills rather than specialist knowledge. Additionally, the requirement of having experience outweighs qualifications. Most job advertisements did not demonstrate awareness of records professionals’ specialist skills, knowledge and attributes.

There is a dearth of research into the Australian records workforce. There has been only one other research project into job advertisements in Australia, which focussed only on Western Australia. This research collected data over a three-month period for jobs advertised all over Australia. This paper raises questions about the role of competencies in establishing and communicating professional identity, as well as the future of records profession in Australia.

The present chapter puts one perspective center stage and looks at the relationship between TSC and its manifestation in individuals. More specifically, we are concerned with the relationship between processes of attitude formation and attitude change. The concept of attitudes is one out of several psychological constructs which are known to have mediating influence on actual behavior. Thus, it is a possible starting point to positively influence behavior in road traffic toward higher levels of (commitment to) safety. Understanding how safety culture is internalized by individuals and how it shapes safe conduct shall be theoretically described and practically exemplified to show how this approach can become useful and relevant for practitioners in the field of road safety.

The argument is developed in three parts. In the first part, Herbert Kelman’s (1958) conceptual scheme of three stages of attitude change is presented in which the levels of compliance, identification, and internalization of values are distinguished. In the second part, it is argued that these different levels of value integration correspond with three different kinds of psychological theories which address the relationship between attitudes and deliberately conducted behavior (action). It is a well-known fact in the science of human action that there is no direct relationship between attitudes, decision making, and action. Using Kelman’s three levels of value internalization as a scheme of reference, the conditions under which persons act in line with their attitudes can be conceptualized more precisely. From a normative point of view, it is argued that persons who align their actions and attitudes with reference to socially appreciated values are said to be elaborated. They orient their conduct by an ethos of safety to which they feel committed and they are able to interact in mindful ways. We discuss some of the basic constructs at each level and underpin their importance with reference to behavioral change toward higher levels of safety with empirical findings that have been published. In a third part, we present our findings in a summarizing table and suggest a list of factors and themes which mainly correspond to one of the three stages of attitudinal change and value internalization. Finally, we outline some examples of how traffic safety interventions can be conceptualized at these different levels.

How do transnational social movements organize? Specifically, this paper asks how an organized community can lead a nationalist movement from outside the nation. Applying the analytic perspective of Strategic Action Fields, this study identifies multiple attributes of transnational organizing through which expatriate communities may go beyond extra-national supporting roles to actually create and direct a national campaign. Reexamining the rise and fall of the Fenian Brotherhood in the mid-nineteenth century, which attempted to organize a transnational revolutionary movement for Ireland’s independence from Great Britain, reveals the strengths and limitations of nationalist organizing through the construction of a Transnational Strategic Action Field (TSAF). Deterritorialized organizing allows challenger organizations to propagate an activist agenda and to dominate the nationalist discourse among co-nationals while raising new challenges concerning coordination, control, and relative position among multiple centers of action across national borders. Within the challenger field, “incumbent challengers” vie for dominance in agenda setting with other “challenger” challengers.

This study explores the nature of the spot foreign exchange risk premium. Employing Ross's Arbitrage Pricing Theory (APT) as a vehicle, it tests the hypothesis that cross‐sectional differences in pure currency returns depend on measures of systematic (covariance) risk. These tests have greater power, in the sense of an enhanced ability to reject the hypothesis, since they explicitly allow for the possibility that idiosyncratic risk is priced. A battery of tests is unable to reject the hypothesis that expected exchange returns can be explained by a single‐factor APT. One implication of these results is that official intervention in exchange markets is unnecessary and undesirable.