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This paper will discuss one university’s efforts to initiate a process to better support PK-12 continuous school improvement goals for all 13 schools in their PDS network as a way to broaden the university’s mission and respond more formally to the individual school communities with which they partner.

The paper is conceptual in that it presents an innovative idea to stimulate discussion, generate new ideas and advance thinking about cross-institutional collaboration between universities and professional development schools.

The paper provides insights and ideas for bringing about change and growth in a seasoned PDS partnership network by connecting PK-12 continuous school improvement efforts to PDS partnership work.

This paper fulfills an identified need to study how seasoned partnerships can participate in simultaneous renewal by offering ideas that school–university partnership leaders can build upon as they make efforts to participate in the process of growth and change.

Drawing on the theoretical concept of organisational fit, this paper questions the relevance of employees' participation in the link between continuous improvement (CI) and operational performance. The literature has long emphasised that to be successful, CI implementation needs to rely on employees' involvement as soon as its inception. This paper argues that this approach is not generalisable.

Based on a database of 330 firms across 15 countries, regression analyses were used to hypothesise that the fit between CI and employee participation is positively associated with operational performance, and that the fit between CI and centralisation of authority is negatively associated with operational performance. The authors also ran a robustness check with polynomial regression analyses and the response surface methodology.

CI–employee participation fit is positively associated with operational performance, suggesting that there is less need for employees to be involved when a firm has scarcely developed CI. Employee participation becomes gradually more relevant as CI progresses. Moreover, the results demonstrate that the CI–centralisation of authority fit is negatively associated with operational performance, suggesting that a top-down management approach with centralised authority is preferable when CI is low, whereas a bottom-up management approach is helpful when a firm has extensively developed CI.

This research draws on the concept of organisational fit to explore the relationships between internal practices in the operations management literature. The authors suggest that managers should dynamically balance the practices of employee participation and centralisation of authority as CI improves. This study highlights that CI has different evolutionary levels that require different managerial approaches and practices.

An interview with Hubert Joly, former CEO of Best Buy. His new book is the articulation of key leadership principles for the next era of capitalism, and how to put them into practice, in both the best and hardest of times.

Joly believes “Work is a quest for meaning. Maximizing profit does not answer that quest.” His “purpose first” approach enabled the acclaimed turnaround of the company during his 2012-to-2019 tenure

Best Buy’s purpose was ‘to enrich our customers’ lives through technology.

According to Joly, “When we ask Best Buy employees what drives them, no one ever says ‘shareholder value.’”

Joly is a CEO who believes in and practices the approach that it is critical for leaders to understand what drives the individuals around them–and how it connects to the purpose of the organization. He believes business is fundamentally about purpose, people and human relationships. When common purpose aligns with individual searches for meaning, it can unleash a kind of human magic that results in outstanding performance.