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This paper aims to integrate the extant literature on the impact of positive leadership on organisational outcomes within the Australian not-for-profit (NFP) organisations, identifies existing gaps in the literature and proposes a framework capturing feasible pathways for future research on positive leadership in NFP organisations.

This is a systematic review of the existing literature on positive leadership and external/environmental factors and organisational values as applied to Australian NFP organisations mainly based on journal articles.

This paper proposes a plausible conceptual framework postulating how Australian NFP organisations could attain superior performance outcomes when there is a perfect alignment between positive forms of leadership, external/environmental factors and organisational values. We explain the conceptual framework through testable research propositions explaining interrelationships between positive leadership, external/environmental factors, organisational values and organisational performance.

The review focused on two positive forms of leadership (i.e. transformational and servant) and could benefit by including other closely related leadership styles and behaviours (like authentic and ethical leadership). In addition to the positivist paradigm and quantitative approach adopted by this paper, interpretative and critical paradigms and related qualitative approaches may also lend themselves well to exposing pertinent issues and relationships that have not been imagined before in the under-researched NFP sector.

Leaders within NFP organisations need to understand when and how to align positive forms of leadership, external/environmental factors and organisational values to maximise limited resources available to Australian NFP organisations.

This systematic review adds to the limited literature exploring the impact of positive forms of leadership within Australian NFP organisations. The proposed framework offers unique insights into the relationships between positive forms of leadership, external/environmental factors, organisational values and organisational performance.

In the UK signposting services can be developed as enhanced support for people with health and social care needs or service diversion to help primary and urgent care services manage their workload. This review considers these two conflicting purposes.

The review used a realist approach, initial searches to identify theory; we then selected 22 publications and extracted programme theories, from which we developed questions from three viewpoints: the service user, the front-line service provider and the commissioner. A rich sample of studies were found from purposive searching. To optimise the applicability of synthesis findings predominantly UK studies were included.

Users value signposting service that understand their needs, suggest a range of options and summarise potential actions. People with complex health and social care needs generally require extended time/input from signposting services. Front-line providers require initial and ongoing training, support/supervision, good knowledge of available services/resources and the ability to match users to them and a flexible response. Commissioned signposting services in England are diverse making evaluation difficult.

Meaningful evaluation of signposting services requires greater clarity around roles and service expectations. Signposting services alone fulfil the needs of a small number of users due to the unreconciled tension between efficient (transactional) service provision and effective (relational) service provision. This is underpinned by competing narratives of whether signposting represents diversion of inappropriate demand from primary care and other urgent care services or improved quality of care through a joined-up response encompassing health, social care and community/voluntary services.

This paper explores how INGOs communicate their activities and achievements. In doing so, the study seeks to increase our understanding of INGOs' accountability practices.

This paper uses thematic analysis to analyse 90 ‘leaders’ letters' (the letters that many charities include at the beginning of their Annual Reports and Accounts), published by 39 INGOs between 2015 and 2018.

This paper argues that within the Annual Report letters under consideration, INGOs' accountability practices focus on quantitative, process-driven, output reporting. In doing so, it is the actions and agency of INGOs that are primarily emphasised. INGO constituents are largely excluded from representation. Donors are presented only as contributors of financial capital. Drawing on field theory, the paper argues that this representational practice means INGO constituents are almost irrelevant to INGOs' representational and accountability communication practices.

This paper is indebted to previous important work and, building on such scholarship, seeks to contribute to the ongoing conversation about INGO accountability. While reinforcing some prior knowledge, the findings here also differ in the understanding of how donors are portrayed. The paper extends previous analyses by using field theory to show that the INGO field as considered here is a space in which representations of accountability are based on organisational and transactional factors, and does not value the humanity of INGOs' constituents. This connects to operations of power, between donors, INGOs, and constituents, and reinforces inequitable power within the development system.

This study seeks to estimate union wage effect in the public and private sectors of Ghana, respectively. It also seeks to ascertain whether the union wage effect in the two sectors varies.

The authors use data from the Ghana Living Standards Survey 6 (GLSS 6, 2012/2013) and Ghana Labour Force Survey (GLFS, 2015). In terms of estimation technique, the authors employ the Blinder–Oaxaca decomposition technique to estimate union wage effect in public and private sectors, respectively.

The findings indicate that union wage effect in the public sector is positive and higher relative to that of the private sector.

The findings imply that strict enforcement of Section 82 of Labour Act 2003 (Act 651) will curb the political influence of public sector unions over their employer (Government).

This research paper has not been presented to any journal for publication and it is the authors' original work.

The peer review history for this article is available at: https://publons.com/publon/10.1108/IJSE-01-2023-0045

Learning and development occur in many spaces both within and outside formal education settings. This chapter explores progress and possibilities of a knowledge exchange programme with a third sector organisation involved with community development, playwork and youth work in an urban area of the East Midlands. Theoretical concepts draw on a growing international interest in intergenerational play (Graves, 2002) and ‘cultural circles’ (Gill, 2020) as a method of challenging power and communication barriers between practitioners and families from diverse ethnic backgrounds. Using Foucault, post-structuralist feminism and autoethnography, as well as insight from a knowledge exchange partnership – the chapter offers a critique of a national initiative aimed at addressing ‘holiday hunger’ and community engagement. Practitioners in international contexts may benefit from the chapter’s attempt to address a series of co-constructed questions that include:

1. How do we raise the profile of children’s play as a non-negotiable starting point for universal service provision to children and young people?

2. What can be done to ‘connect’ diverse communities living in close proximity and sharing amenities within urban areas?

3. How can we celebrate differences whilst designing universal services, which promote social cohesion through play and leisure spaces?

How do we raise the profile of children’s play as a non-negotiable starting point for universal service provision to children and young people?

What can be done to ‘connect’ diverse communities living in close proximity and sharing amenities within urban areas?

How can we celebrate differences whilst designing universal services, which promote social cohesion through play and leisure spaces?

This chapter explores the role of an ethics committee led by disabled academics, in supporting co-produced disability research beyond academia, in the context of a five-year research programme in the UK (2015–2020). This chapter includes reflections by the Ethics Committee members, alongside documentary research which analysed the communications between the Ethics Committee and the research projects it supported. This review of the role of the Ethics Committee showed that there were dilemmas in considering the boundaries between ethical review and providing pedagogic advice on research design, and in balancing its role in supporting and regulating research. Ethics review processes are sometimes seen as overly bureaucratic and as an obstacle course for researchers, and this was also sometimes the case for projects supported by the DRILL (Disability Research on Independent Living and Learning) Ethics Committee. Lessons to be learned from the process included that communication between ethics committees and researchers is key, and that ethics review can be a two-way process, recognising the expertise of both the researchers and the reviewers, thus mirroring the principles of co-production. We suggest that an alternative model for ethics review process could build on this generally positive experience of the DRILL Ethics Committee.

Sociologists have long thought of the integration of people in communities – social integration – and hierarchical social systems – systemic integration – as contradictory goals. What strategies allow organizations to reconcile social and systemic integration? We examine this question through 40 in-depth, longitudinal interviews with leaders of nonprofit organizations that engage in the dual pursuit of social and systemic integration. Two processes reveal how the internal structure of organizations often mirrors the ways in which organizations are embedded in their local environments. When organizations engage in loose demographic coupling, relegating those who “match” the community to the work of social integration, they produce internal inequalities and justify them by claiming community building as sacred work. When engaging in community anchoring, organizations challenge internal and external inequalities simultaneously, but this process comes with costs. Our findings contribute to a constructivist understanding of community, the mechanisms by which organizations produce inequalities, and a place-based conception of organizations as embedded in community.

The concept of governance recognises the power dependency that exists between institutions that are engaged in collective action. Government, according to UNESCAP, is a process through which choices are made and executed or rejected. Corporate governance, international governance, national governance and municipal governance are just a few examples of how the term governance may be employed. Governance was also cited by UNESCAP as a player in government. To build a smart city and economy, national level of governance focuses on freedom of media, country history and traditions, civil society, private sector and good government. All those elements are important to build a smart economy and smart city. This chapter discusses the role of government to ensure good governance and good citizen policy choices that benefit the smart city and economy in Bangladesh.

The purpose of this article is to show (1) how social innovations are created through co-production in social enterprises in Finland and (2) how enabling ecosystems for the creation of social innovations can be enhanced by the government.

This study is a descriptive case study. The data comprises focus group interviews that were conducted during a research project in Finland in 2022. The interviewees represented different social enterprises, other non-profit organisations and national funding institutions.

Social enterprises create social innovations in Finland through co-production, where service innovation processes, activism and networking are central. Also, to build an enabling ecosystem, government must base the system upon certain elements: enabling characteristics of the stakeholders, co-production methods and tools and initiatives by the government.

The authors address an important challenge that social enterprises struggle with: The position of social enterprises in Finland is weak and entrepreneurs experience prejudice from both the direction of “traditional” businesses and the government which often does not recognise social enterprise as a potential partner for public service delivery. Nonetheless, social enterprises create public value by contributing to the co-production of public services. They work in interorganisational networks by nature and can succeed where the traditional public organisations and private businesses fail.

Socioeconomic aims and impacts are an explicit part of the UK City of Culture (UKCoC) application, bidding, delivery and evaluation stages. This article engages with existing debates on evaluating cities of culture and introduces perspectives from critical data studies to examine the collection and analysis of different data for the purposes of the CoC application and evaluation processes.

The meta-methodological concept of accompanying researcher is used to analyse the experiences of researchers based within a city bidding for UKCoC 2025 in dialogue with the evaluation reports from past UKCoC host cities.

Findings are analysed under three themes: defining data morsels; local histories and infrastructures of data generation and sharing; and resources, capacities and expertise for data generation and evaluation. The discussion examines data still to be generated and/or brought into relation; tensions around data and measurement; and how constructing an evaluation baseline is generative—creating new organisations, relationships and practices.

The conceptual and methodological approach and empirical findings will be relevant for academic, policymakers and practitioners engaging with cultural evaluation.

In focussing on the bidding stage in real time through the accompanying researcher position, this article presents original empirical insights into the process of creating a baseline for cities of culture evaluation. The conceptual originality of this article is in using critical data studies to explain strategies of data generation and analyse data relations and frictions.