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The paper presents an investigation into the validity and robustness of the concept of competitive productivity (CP) using linguistic analysis and theory to explore the foundational CP concepts and the relationships between them.

The aim of this paper is to make a theoretical contribution to the conceptualisation of CP in order to inform its understanding, measurement and application.

The investigation indicates the relevance of three dimensions (instantiation, stratification and system) to understand CP as a complex, multidimensional system. Instantiation both clarifies CP as a multilevel system and highlights the need for an additional dimension(s) to understand the relationship between national, firm and individual CP (NCP, FCP and ICP). In combination, the two dimensions of stratification and system model CP as a series of nested strata (theory/models, concepts, constructs, variables and measures) through which marketing and management theory and knowledge is created and demonstrate how the options at each level can be articulated as system networks.

Managing the complexity of CP by mapping different aspects along different dimensions and, in doing so, better understanding the nature of and relationships between different phenomena within the domain can potentially inform future qualitative and quantitative research in business studies and beyond.

The paper uses a novel, interdisciplinary approach to demonstrate the existence of CP as a complex, multidimensional system, where such dimensions inform the understanding, measurement and application of CP, and so is of value to marketing and management researchers and practitioners.

The purpose of this eight-country study is to examine what drives performance at the individual worker’s level and compare the explanatory power of such drivers between emerging, newly developed and developed markets around the globe.

The study combines established behavioural theory developed in a Western context with three factors anticipated to be most relevant in Asia (competitive attitude, willingness to serve and speed) as drivers of workforce performance. Four thousand working and middle-class respondents from eight countries were sampled. The associations were tested using structural equation modelling, and workforce performance was measured using univariate analysis.

Three country clusters emerged from the research: emerging economies in Asia (Indonesia, India), where the three factors powerfully explain performance; “Confucian orbit countries” (China, Japan, Korea), where the factors explain 81-93 per cent; and highly developed Western countries (the USA, the UK, Germany), where the factors account for only 20-29 per cent.

As well as providing a framework for modelling workforce performance, particularly in Asian countries, the findings indicate that workforce performance should be incorporated in performance indexes. The findings as to which drivers best explain workforce performance in each country can inform workforce recruitment and management, as well as the location of businesses and outsourcing.

For the first time, the study addresses the anomaly between economic growth and development experienced by Asian countries and their relatively low rankings in global competitiveness indexes by making the link between workforce performance and country performance.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate and identify threshold concepts that are the essential conceptual content of finance programmes.

Conducted in three stages with finance academics and students, the study uses threshold concepts as both a theoretical framework and a research methodology.

The study identifies ten threshold concepts in finance that are clearly endorsed by finance academics. However, the extent to which students are explicitly aware of the threshold concepts in finance is limited.

As well as informing further research into the design and delivery of finance programmes, the findings of the study inform the use of threshold concepts as a theoretical framework and a research methodology. The study does not explore the bounded, discursive, reconstitutive and liminal aspects of threshold concepts. Implications include the lack of recognition of more modern concepts in finance, and the need for input from industry and related disciplines.

The threshold concepts in finance provide the starting point for finance educators in the design and delivery of finance programmes. In particular, the threshold concepts in finance need to be made more explicit to students.

Using the threshold concepts in finance as well as the other findings of this study to inform to finance curriculum design and delivery is likely to achieve better quality educational outcomes for finance students as well as better prepare them for professional finance roles.

The finance curriculum is under researched and for the first time this study identifies the threshold concepts in finance to inform the design of finance programmes.

The design narrative details how the authors systematically and concretely adapted the design of afterschool club for children and pre-service teachers to respond to the increasingly explicit racism in US political discourse that fueled Trump’s election and coinciding forms of evading race.

The purpose of this paper is to present a design narrative focused on tensions around evading race in our after-school program for predominantly Latinx children and White pre-service teachers; how the authors re-mediated the material, ideational and relational resources of the program to address the tension; and the effects of our re-mediation on the adaptation of the program and how this shaped pre-service teachers’ engagement with children’s racialized experiences.

Re-mediating the design of ideational, relational, and material resources in the afterschool club allowed the designers to address how racial ideologies of color evasiveness limited opportunities for trust and mutual learning between the predominantly White preservice teachers and Latinx children.

The paper describes how concerns with equity emerged and were addressed in a program in a particular place and time for particular people. It offers a systematic view into the inner-workings of designing for equity and why people’s lived experiences, history and social practices around engaging with processes of racialization and power matter for the design of learning.

The design narrative suggests practical implications including the need to develop coursework and practicum experiences that support pre-service teachers’ and educators’ study of how power, enacted through racial ideologies of color evasiveness and other forms of epistemic violence, frames and materially impacts our interactions with children from non-dominant groups.

Two social implications from the design narrative include the following: the need to deepen the understandings of the past and present, proud and violent, histories of minoritized communities to organize consequential learning; and the need to recruit more students of color into the programs recognizing that it alone is not adequate for enacting educational justice.

As designers working toward equity, the authors must hold lightly onto their designs, be willing to let go of features that no longer serve the goals and develop new approaches that can help them achieve them. The authors must also attend seriously to the critiques offered by our youth-partners so that they can better support their learning and desires for the future.

The following annotated list of materials on instructing users in library and information skills covers publications from 1982. A few items have not been annotated because the compiler was unable to secure copies of these items.

South Africa is a developing country with an education system that remains in crisis, despite three decades of democracy. The vestiges of South Africa's oppressive past continues to plague a system where repeated efforts at top-down transformation and curriculum renewal have failed to create the change required (Roodt, 2018). Extensive country-wide research attests to persistent inequalities linked to poverty, unemployment, and poor educational outcomes, effectively trapping disadvantaged communities in downward spirals (World Bank, 2018). As in most other countries, evidence-informed practice (EIP) has been widely discussed and advocated for in South Africa, with the matric (school leavers') results resurging the conversation annually. Unfortunately, as is the case in many developing countries, it is well documented that the actual implementation of EIP is not as widespread as desired.

This chapter reviews and analyzes the use of EIP in South Africa through an exploration of the various spaces where EIP is reported to occur within the broader education landscape. Examples of teacher and school level EIP innovations, led by a wide variety of actors within the system, are evident – this despite the pervasive lack of resources, support, and effective leadership within the formal education system. Through reflecting on these ‘pockets of hope,’ which were found to exist not only within, but also outside and alongside the system, we hope to gather insights and initiate debate on how the uptake of EIP might be better informed and facilitated within the broader South African public education system.

The dynamic evolution and new direction of nonprint media in the information professions continually change the emphasis and character of activities, services and equipment. It is essential for libraries and other information agencies to keep abreast with the latest developments in the field.

Communications regarding this column should be addressed to Mrs. Cheney, Peabody Library School, Nashville, Tenn. 37203. Mrs. Cheney does not sell the books listed here. They are available through normal trade sources. Mrs. Cheney, being a member of the editorial board of Pierian Press, will not review Pierian Press reference books in this column. Descriptions of Pierian Press reference books will be included elsewhere in this publication.

The industrial realities of teaching are documented in history, sociology and policy research: studies of the school as workplace, the tools of teaching, processes within the workplace, the changing composition of the teaching workforce, the gender politics of the occupation, teacher organisations, and change in teachers’ work and employment relations. Teaching as a form of work is difficult to pin down because it involves an unspecifiable object of labour, a limitless labour process, and is, in a sense, unteachable. Teaching is always transformative labour, bringing new social realities into existence; and is also fundamentally interactive, not individual. Teachers’ work is not social reproduction, but is creative and therefore a site of social struggle. This can be seen in education in colonial societies, and in the global transformation of the education of girls and women. Teachers are now caught up in the neoliberal agenda, often unwillingly ‐ but since neoliberalism transforms institutions in the public sector, unavoidably, and sometimes traumatically. In a long historical perspective, the modern teaching workforce is unique, and has the possibility of shaping the learning capacities of the whole society; this may now be uniquely important.

The purpose of this paper is to advance our understanding of competitiveness. The authors introduce the concept of Competitive Productivity (CP), supplementing shortcomings of traditional understandings of national, organisational and individual productivity which overlook the nature of competitiveness, i.e. outperforming the competition, or at least bettering one’s own performance. The authors offer definitions, components and construct measurements of CP at three levels: macro, meso and micro.

A review of the literature was conducted to evaluate the need for combining productivity and competitiveness into one new construct. There are theories that combine these ideas – e.g., the resource-based theory of the firm – but the authors are presenting these concepts differently, or in a novel way. The authors’ focus on CP makes necessary a new group of construct measures which are different from that of the strategy literature: the authors measure an agent’s tendency “to be better than the competition” along multiple dimensions. Based on the CP construct, the authors present three testable models to uncover determinants of CP at three levels (macro, meso and micro). Finally, the work around “emergent property” can be applied to examine CP itself as being a determinant for other higher-order outcomes such as welfare, profits and life satisfaction. CP forms a platform to explore likely interplay (bottom-up and/or top-down mechanisms) within the micro–meso–macro architecture.

Three CP models were developed and are briefly discussed in this paper: first, a National Competitive Productivity (NCP) model to capture the components/drivers of national CP (macro level). Second, a Firm Competitive Productivity (FCP) model to capture the components/drivers of firm CP within an industry context (meso). And finally, an Individual Competitive Productivity (ICP) model capturing the components/drivers of CP at the individual (micro) level.

The study provides a combined approach to capture productivity and competitiveness within one innovative concept: CP. It can be used by government and policy makers (NCP model), managers and organisations (FCP model), and individuals such as workers and students (ICP model) to evaluate and enhance their performance. A better understanding of the components/drivers of CP at the three levels and the suggested measurement of CP should provide a stronger theory of competitiveness of nations, firms and individuals. Not least should a focus on the three levels (macro, meso and micro) better prepare citizens, firms, workers and students to effectively function and work in the marketplace and in society. The authors’ work should eventually contribute to more effective benchmarking and continuous improvement in the competitiveness domain. Crucially, this conceptual paper forms the foundation for future empirical testing of CP components in the context of the relative values and moderated behaviour as captured by the ReVaMB model.