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The purpose of this paper is to investigate how principals and school supervisory authorities understand and use feedback from mandatory proficiency tests (VERA) in the low-stakes context of Germany. For the analysis, the authors refer to a theoretical model of schools that differentiates between Autonomous and Managed Professional Organisations (Thiel, 2008a).

The empirical basis of the qualitative research are contrastive case studies which are focusing on individual schools and on school supervisory authorities. The selection of cases was oriented on Theoretical Sampling according to Glaser and Strauss (2005). For the analysis, the authors used a sample of upper track secondary schools (Gymnasien), four from Berlin and five each from Thuringia, Brandenburg and Baden-Wuerttemberg. In total, the authors conducted 229 structured interviews over two periods in 19 schools with different protagonists on all levels of the educational system (principals, heads of subject departments, teachers and school supervisory officials). The interview data were descriptively analysed according to procedures of qualitative content analyses (Mayring, 2010).

The analyses show a clear tendency in the direction of the Autonomous Professional Organisation within the context of VERA. However, some principals reported activities according to a Managed Professional Organisation. The traditional decoupling remains and the supervisory authorities retain their picture of the individual school as an Autonomous Professional Organisation. Both levels have a major deficit in a competent use of VERA and lack profound experience with accountability and evaluation processes.

The sampling has certain restraints: schools of a particular type, few schools within one state, four of 16 states.

Even though German test-based school reforms have been in progress for one decade, systematic analyses of the reform’s relevance for leadership and for school supervisory authorities’ actions in a low-stakes context have not been conducted yet. The analysis meets this lack of research with an explorative reconstruction of principal leadership within the context of test-based school reform as well as the corresponding school supervisory officials.

The primary goal of this study is to look at the behavioral factors that influence an individual's decision to invest in the Pakistan Stock Exchange (PSX).

Existing behavioral finance theories serve as a foundation for hypotheses. Further hypotheses were investigated by disseminating questionnaire results from a number of individual Pakistani investors. Brokerage and asset management fund managers were also questioned in semi-structured interviews. The obtained data were analyzed using statistical package for the social sciences, and latent variables were identified using the structural equation model (SEM) and an asset management operating system (AMOS).

Individual investor investment decisions in the PSX are influenced by five behavioral factors: herding, market, prospect, overconfidence and gambler fallacy and anchoring-ability bias. The majority of the variables have a modest impact; however, the market component has a significant impact. Only three behavioral elements, herding, prospect and heuristic, are found to influence investment performance among the behavioral factors stated above. Heuristic habits have been discovered to have the greatest positive impact on investment performance.

This study is one of the few in Pakistan that looked at the factors that influence stock investment decisions using behavioral finance. Prior research has only considered the effects of a restricted number of behavioral characteristics on Pakistani individual investors; however, this study seeks to use a whole collection of behavioral factors to examine their impacts on Pakistani individual investors.

The focus of the study remains on the individual investor, whereas the impact of institutional investors on investment behavior could bring different outcomes.

This is among the few studies that investigated the impact of cognitive factors on investment decisions in the context of Pakistan and will help policy makers, opinion makers and individuals.

Two studies investigate how different structural properties of images – symmetry (vertical and horizontal) and image contrast – affect social media marketing outcomes of consumer liking and engagement.

In Study 1’s experiment, 361 participants responded to social media marketing images that varied in vertical or horizontal symmetry and level of image contrast. Study 2 analyzes field data on 610 Instagram posts.

Study 1 demonstrates that vertical or horizontal symmetry and high image contrast increase consumer liking of social media marketing images, and that processing fluency and aesthetic response mediate these relationships. Study 2 reveals that symmetry and high image contrast improve consumer engagement on social media (number of “likes” and comments).

These studies extend theory regarding processing fluency’s and aesthetic response’s roles in consumer outcomes within social media marketing. Image posts’ structural properties affect processing fluency and aesthetic response without altering brand information or advertising content.

Because consumer liking of marketing communications (e.g. social media posts) predicts persuasion and sales, results should help marketers design more effective posts and achieve brand-building and behavioral objectives. Based on the results, marketers are urged to consider the processing fluency and aesthetic response associated with any image developed for social media marketing.

Addressing the lack of empirical investigations in the existing literature, the reported studies demonstrate that effects of symmetry and image contrast in generating liking are driven by processing fluency and aesthetic response. Additionally, these studies establish novel effects of images’ structural properties on consumer engagement with brand-based social media marketing communications.