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This chapter provides a retrospective and prospective exploration of some of the challenges faced by doctoral education, specifically as they relate to advanced studies of educational administration (EA).

It applies a critical stance to the current status of knowledge in the ‘leadership field’ and the intellectual underpinnings that inform the studies available as reference for doctoral students.

Nested within wider changing conditions for university and doctoral education, it is argued that the published field as currently constituted suffers from both banal and ‘non-wicked’ leadership orthodoxies that might lead to doctoral stagnation.

Reasons are suggested and prospects considered for revitalising scholarship for the upcoming generation of EA alumni, scholars and practitioners.

As Big Data is creating new underpinnings for organisations’ intellectual capital (IC) and knowledge management, this paper aims to analyse the implications of Big Data for IC accounting to provide new conceptual and practical insights about the future of IC accounting.

Based on a conceptual framework informed by decision science theory, the authors explain the factors supporting Big Data’s value and review the academic literature and practical evidence to analyse the implications of Big Data for IC accounting.

In reflecting on Big Data’s ability to supply a new value for IC and its implications for IC accounting, the authors conclude that Big Data represents a new IC asset, and this represents a rationale for a renewed wave of interest in IC accounting. IC accounting can contribute to understand the determinants of Big Data’s value, such as data quality, security and privacy issues, data visualisation and users’ interaction. In doing so, IC measurement, reporting and auditing need to keep focusing on how human capital and organisational and technical processes (structural capital) can unlock or even obstruct Big Data’s value for IC.

The topic of Big Data in IC and accounting research is in its infancy; therefore, this paper acts at a normative level. While this represents a research limitation of the study, it is also a call for future empirical studies.

Once again, practitioners and researchers need to face the challenge of avoiding the trap of IC accountingisation to make IC accounting relevant for the Big Data revolution. Within the euphoric and utopian views of the Big Data revolution, this paper contributes to enriching awareness about the practical factors underpinning Big Data’s value for IC and foster the cognitive and behavioural dynamic between data, IC information and user interaction.

The paper is relevant to prepares, users and auditors of financial statements.

This paper aims to instill a novel debate on Big Data into IC accounting research by providing new avenues for future research.

The paper reports on public sector organisations'/institutions' work to develop knowledge management and intellectual capital statements. Building on experiences collected during 2001‐2002 where 26 public sector institutions in Denmark sought to develop intellectual capital statements, this paper discusses their experiences and in particular, it addresses the role of intellectual capital in relation to the development of the new public management philosophy. It is suggested that these public sector organisations use intellectual capital activity to promote themselves as “businesses” with their own strategies and modes of operations. Intellectual capital helps these firms differentiate themselves and develop their own strategic approach to their mode of functioning by showing how they function as enterprises.

This study gave rise to four policy recommendations. First, firms are encouraged to use both narrative and visual forms of disclosure to complement one another in disclosing intellectual capital resource items on websites. Secondly, it is important to conduct an awareness program about intellectual capital disclosure on websites so that small firms become aware of the positive impact such disclosure can have in enhancing corporate reputation. Thirdly, firms should prepare guidelines for intellectual capital disclosure on websites so that they can favour a best practice model. Finally, fostering a dialogue between stakeholders and the accounting regulators can help to streamline intellectual capital disclosure for more value relevant, forward-looking information. These points are elaborated in the following.

This chapter introduces intellectual capital and intellectual capital disclosure and provides an overview of the subsequent chapters of the study. Section 1.2 outlines the relevance of intellectual capital in the present context. Section 1.3 explains the motivation for undertaking a study investigating revenue growth reputation and intellectual capital. Section 1.4 explains the aims and objectives of this study. The last section provides an introduction to and overview of the following chapters.

This study examines the impact of intellectual capital efficiency and corporate governance mechanisms on the annual report readability of Oman's financial sector companies.

The study uses a sample of 150 firm-year observations of listed financial sector companies in the Muscat Securities Market, Oman, from 2014 to 2018. Flesch Reading ease and Flesch Kinkaid Index are used as proxies for annual report readability. As part of sensitivity analysis, the study also uses the natural logarithm of annual report pages as alternative readability measures. The investigation is conducted using random effects regression analysis and supported with system GMM estimation for robustness.

The findings of this study demonstrate a decrease in intellectual capital efficiency associated with better readability of annual reports for the financial sector firms. Alternatively, banks report a positive association of intellectual capital efficiency with the Flesch Reading ease score of the annual report. The structural capital and capital employed efficiency are also found to be negatively associated with annual report readability. Corporate governance mechanisms such as dispersed ownership and audit committee size also result in easy-to-read annual reports that support agency theory.

The research was conducted for financial firms of Oman, and thereby the findings can be generalized to the financial sector of countries with similar settings, such as the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) region.

The policy implications arising from this study suggest a strengthening of the intellectual capital efficiency and corporate governance mechanisms to improve the readability of the firms and thereby increase investor confidence.

This paper's uniqueness is in the model used to investigate the impact of intellectual capital efficiency and corporate governance mechanisms on the annual report readability of an emerging market.

The balanced scorecard (BSC) and intellectual capital (IC) concepts are two strategic management methods that help to identify and elevate organizations' intellectual resources in the knowledge economy. However, very little research has examined the usefulness of the BSC and IC concept in nonprofit organizations. This paper aims to discuss these issues.

This paper uses a critical analysis of current literature in relation to BSC and IC concepts within the social service nonprofit context.

The findings suggest that BSC is less effective in social service nonprofit organizations (SSNPOs) because the model's strategy, cause‐and‐effect relationships and its four linked perspectives are incompatible to the unique social service nonprofit environment. IC, however, can be harnessed to co‐ordinate with the values and core character of SSNPOs.

The paper contributes a new dimension to the body of literature; raising critical questions as to the usefulness of the BSC in SSNPOs and theoretically arguing that IC is an alternative strategic management framework in the social service nonprofit sub‐sector. The increased awareness of the IC concept in SSNPOs, as a result of this paper, likely generates further research from both nonprofit practitioners and scholars.

The paper is considered as a starting point and serves as a milestone in applying IC as a strategic management conceptual framework in the nonprofit sector. Also, the paper informs nonprofit leaders that IC is a more appropriate strategic management concept in the nonprofit sector.

This paper addresses innovations based on open source or non‐proprietary knowledge. Viewed through the lens of private property theory, such agency appears to be a true anomaly. However, by a further turn of the theoretical kaleidoscope, we will show that there may be perfectly justifiable reasons for not regarding open source innovations as anomalies. The paper is based on three sectorial and generic cases of open source innovation, which is an offspring of contemporary theory made possible by combining elements of the model of private agency with those of the model of collective agency. In closing, the paper addresses implications for further research, practitioners and other policy‐makers.

Why is Tandem Computers, a $1 billion a year computer firm, buying a minority equity interest in a company with less than 50 employees? Why is Eastman Kodak, with more than $12 billion in sales and spending over $1 billion on R&D, buying an 18 percent stake in a company with 35 employees? Why is DuPont, a $29 billion a year firm, also spending more than $1 billion a year on R&D, collaborating with a company with just 14 employees? Why is Pfizer investing $2.9 million in a company with less than 75 employees? None of these investments is expected to significantly boost these blue chip corporations' earnings per share in the near future, and the firms' managements are fully aware of the risks of getting involved with businesses they don't have time to run. When a mega‐giant firm invests in a tiny start‐up company, it's obviously prospecting for hot intellectual property and not just earnings growth.

The purpose of this paper is to explore parents as “stakeholders” in higher education in England and how they perceive teaching excellence.

The study adopted a qualitative research design using an interpretative approach through which the authors aimed to develop understandings of parents’ perspectives as higher education “stakeholders”. The empirical data were gathered via focus group interviews and an online survey with 24 participants in the UK.

This study found that the majority of parents wished to be treated as an important stakeholder group in higher education. Parent participants perceived that teaching excellence could be evidenced through indicators and measures, for example, the design and delivery of the courses, progress measures, contact hours, speed of return of marked work, graduate employability and so on. They also saw value and significance in the students’ exposure to ideas and perspectives not previously experienced, in zeal and passion in the teaching, and in an academically nurturing, understanding and supportive pedagogical relationship between academic and student.

This study uncovered some apparent tensions, contradictions and challenges for parents as stakeholders in higher education, for example, in reconciling the co-existence of their desire to be involved and engaged with scope for students to be formed as independent young adults. Parents’ desire to measure teaching excellence is also compounded by their concern that excellent teaching is thereby reduced to a box-ticking exercise. This study has implications for higher education institutions wishing to engage parents as a stakeholder group in a meaningful way.