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1 – 6 of 6Wolfgang Kaltenbrunner, Stephen Pinfield, Ludo Waltman, Helen Buckley Woods and Johanna Brumberg
The study aims to provide an analytical overview of current innovations in peer review and their potential impacts on scholarly communication.
Abstract
Purpose
The study aims to provide an analytical overview of current innovations in peer review and their potential impacts on scholarly communication.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors created a survey that was disseminated among publishers, academic journal editors and other organizations in the scholarly communication ecosystem, resulting in a data set of 95 self-defined innovations. The authors ordered the material using a taxonomy that compares innovation projects according to five dimensions. For example, what is the object of review? How are reviewers recruited, and does the innovation entail specific review foci?
Findings
Peer review innovations partly pull in mutually opposed directions. Several initiatives aim to make peer review more efficient and less costly, while other initiatives aim to promote its rigor, which is likely to increase costs; innovations based on a singular notion of “good scientific practice” are at odds with more pluralistic understandings of scientific quality; and the idea of transparency in peer review is the antithesis to the notion that objectivity requires anonymization. These fault lines suggest a need for better coordination.
Originality/value
This paper presents original data that were analyzed using a novel, inductively developed, taxonomy. Contrary to earlier research, the authors do not attempt to gauge the extent to which peer review innovations increase the “reliability” or “quality” of reviews (as defined according to often implicit normative criteria), nor are they trying to measure the uptake of innovations in the routines of academic journals. Instead, they focus on peer review innovation activities as a distinct object of analysis.
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Kerstin Sahlin and Ulla Eriksson-Zetterquist
Recent changes in university systems, debates on academic freedom, and changing roles of knowledge in society all point to questions regarding how higher education and research…
Abstract
Recent changes in university systems, debates on academic freedom, and changing roles of knowledge in society all point to questions regarding how higher education and research should be governed and the role of scientists and faculty in this. Rationalizations of systems of higher education and research have been accompanied by the questioning and erosion of faculty authority and challenges to academic collegiality. In light of these developments, we see a need for a more conceptually precise discussion about what academic collegiality is, how it is practiced, how collegial forms of governance may be supported or challenged by other forms of governance, and finally, why collegial governance of higher education and research is important.
We see collegiality as an institution of self-governance that includes formal rules and structures for decision-making, normative and cognitive underpinnings of identities and purposes, and specific practices. Studies of collegiality then, need to capture structures and rules as well as identities, norms, purposes and practices. Distinguishing between vertical and horizontal collegiality, we show how they balance and support each other.
Universities are subject to mixed modes of governance related to the many tasks and missions that higher education and research is expected to fulfill. Mixed modes of governance also stem from reforms based on widely held ideals of governance and organization. We examine university reforms and challenges to collegiality through the lenses of three ideal types of governance – collegiality, bureaucracy and enterprise – and combinations thereof.
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Lindsay Portnoy, Ash Sadler and Elizabeth Zulick
Amidst continued calls for the democratization of access to higher education for historically underrepresented populations alongside the first global health crisis in a century…
Abstract
Purpose
Amidst continued calls for the democratization of access to higher education for historically underrepresented populations alongside the first global health crisis in a century lies the opportunity to address persistent societal needs: increasing access for underrepresented minority students to educational pathways that lead to careers in lucrative fields of science, technology, engineering and math (STEM).
Design/methodology/approach
Student participants enrolled in the biotechnology pathway Associates, Bachelors and Masters programs share programmatic experience in an accelerated biotechnology program through a bi-annual survey grounded in the central tenets of social-cognitive career theory aimed at understanding requisite academic, social and financial support for student success.
Findings
The pathway program described in this paper emerged to address the need to support underrepresented students in degree attainment and taking on roles in the growing field of biotechnology through a novel, multi-degree, multi-institutional pathway to STEM degree attainment and career success.
Social implications
This work has advanced understanding about how to effectively align higher education institutions with each other and with evolving STEM labor market demands while documenting the impact of essential academic, career and social supports recognized in the literature as high impact practices in broadening participation and increasing retention of underrepresented minority students in lucrative STEM careers.
Originality/value
Pathway programs which best support student success include robust mentoring, experiential learning and robust student scholarship support, part of the design of this unique pathway program. The authors share how this program utilizes high impact practices to provide low-income, underrepresented minority students with supportive, accelerated biotechnology degrees in preparation for success in the job market. What's more, of all our BS-level graduates thus far, 100% are employed and 93% within the biotechnology field. For many, the opportunity to raise their family out of poverty via a stable, high paying job is directly tied to their successes within this program.
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Sakshi Chhabra, Rajasekaran Raghunathan and N.V. Muralidhar Rao
The purpose of this paper is to understand the role of entrepreneurial intention in promoting women entrepreneurship in Indian micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs). This…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to understand the role of entrepreneurial intention in promoting women entrepreneurship in Indian micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs). This study seeks to clarify the construct of entrepreneurial intention and then reports the validation of the entrepreneurial intention instrument.
Design/methodology/approach
An instrument has been designed and administered on a sample of 103 respondents across India from women entrepreneurs to understand the entrepreneurial intention by using cluster and snowball sampling. The data has been streamlined and then analyzed using descriptive analysis for validity and reliability checks.
Findings
This research was aimed to determine the constructs of entrepreneurial intention. Through data analysis, it has been observed that the reliability coefficients reveal the adequacy of the sample. The Cronbach’s alpha values for all the items in the instrument were found to be greater than or equal to 0.6. Strong correlations were also found between direct and indirect measures of entrepreneurial intention and hence confirmed that all the measures in the instrument were well constructed. Analysis has also explained the relationship between various constructs of entrepreneurial intention by using Pearson’s correlation coefficients. Strong and positive values of correlation explain the existence of the convergent and discriminant validity of the instrument.
Research limitations/implications
The research results obtained from the analysis of reliability and validity tests not only provides the establishment of the relationship among the various constructs but also suggests that the model provides a promising potential to measure entrepreneurial intention. This study will contribute to new knowledge of the conditions of women entrepreneurship from different perspectives by developing and validating an analytic model for promoting the women entrepreneurship in MSMEs of India.
Practical implications
From a government perspective, this model will help in designing training programmes for promoting women entrepreneurship in India. The obtained result also brings significant implications for practice as well as raises a broad future direction for other researchers
Originality/value
Extended SCCT model has recently suggested an inclusive framework of factors affecting the entrepreneurial intention, there is not much attempt made in research using this theory as background for predicting intention in the context of women entrepreneurship. This paper attempts to fill this gap by formulating a conceptual model for measuring entrepreneurial intention among women entrepreneurs by integrating and adapting the constructs of extended social cognitive career theory model and entrepreneurial potential model.
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The current paper aims to analyse the antecedents of leader–member exchange relationships (LMX) by specifically focusing on the influence of the supervisor’s feedback delivery…
Abstract
Purpose
The current paper aims to analyse the antecedents of leader–member exchange relationships (LMX) by specifically focusing on the influence of the supervisor’s feedback delivery tactic.
Design/methodology/approach
This study uses qualitative research methods with primary interviews as the main data source. Primary interviews with 40 managers from top supermarkets in Nigeria, South Africa and the UK were undertaken.
Findings
The authors found that both high-quality positive feedback and constructive criticisms produced the same feelings – more positive interpersonal relationships with their supervisors, higher levels of commitment to their organisations, higher job satisfaction and thus, high-quality LMX relationships. Where criticisms were delivered without greater interpersonal treatment, feedback was perceived as negative, and participants revealed lack of job satisfaction, lack of commitment to their organisations, poor interpersonal relationship with their supervisors, high turnover intent and thus low-quality LMX relationship.
Originality/value
To the best of the authors’ knowledge, the current paper is one of the first studies to highlight the consequences of different feedback delivery tactics on subsequent LMX quality particularly in African context. The authors specifically develop a process-based model of enhancing high-quality LMX, which shows the role of the supervisor’s feedback delivery tactic in the process. The authors also develop a process-based model that illustrates how negative/unconstructive feedback could result in a low-quality LMX. Finally, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, this paper is also one of the first to offer a comparative assessment between African and British (the UK) empirical settings and highlight some interesting dynamics concerning LMX quality and role of supervisor’s feedback delivery tactic.
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