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The purpose of this research is to illuminate the processes that give rise to gendered career pathways in Spanish academia, tracing how individuals might move from academic “passion” to academic “consecration” in a setting in which both visible and veiled discrimination persist. By examining academics' testimony, the paper aims to explore the production and reproduction of complex dynamics of power and gender inequalities through informal processes.

Qualitative study, drawing on semi‐structured interviews with 33 academics (16 female and 17 male) working in academic departments of psychology (17) and engineering (16) in three Madrid universities.

Although the percentage of professors in Spanish universities who are female is relatively high, compared to many European countries, this quantitative feminization does not appear to be associated with clear institutionalization of formal gender equality policies or the elimination of tacit discriminatory practices. Despite recent measures to reform the recruitment patterns in Spanish universities towards a more meritocratic model, the tradition of a sistema endogámico (an “inbreeding” system) persists, under which appointments are frequently made on the basis of internal (departmental) networks. This was found to operate to the disadvantage of women in both disciplines studied.

Despite the limitations inherent in a small‐scale study, this paper is likely to help not only to increase awareness of gender bias, but also to contribute to the reevaluation of the current university culture in Spain which, through its ostensibly gender‐neutral recruitment practices rooted in internal networks, constrains women's career opportunities.

This paper analyses the strengths and weaknesses of the 1995 administrative reform proposal announced by the Brazilian government. The reform proposal, described in the Directive Plan on the Reform of the Governmental Apparatus – a document publicly released by the Brazilian authorities – argues that the need for reform springs from a “crisis of the state”, involving three aspects: a fiscal crisis resulting from the incapacity of the government to face current public services costs; the collapse of interventionist governments within a global economy; and the failure of the bureaucratic model in the delivery of public services. Adopting the theoretical reform strategy framework developed by Matus in 1996, this paper focuses on eight aspects of the reform in discussing strengths and weaknesses. Finally, the paper discusses the similarities of the reform proposal to the administrative reform undertaken by the Brazilian government in 1967, the effects of the current political environment on the reform proposal and the role of administrative reform in governmental policies. The overall conclusion is that, in addition to the lack of a clear implementation strategy, the administrative reform proposal over‐emphasizes the solving of the fiscal crisis and ignores the role of reform in addressing problems of inequality. Consequently, the reform may lack purpose if it is not strategically connected to wider and encompassing policies aimed at ameliorating acute social problems.

Purpose and approach – We examine theoretically and experimentally how unequal abilities to contribute affect incentives and efficiency when players compete for membership in stratified groups based on the contributions they make. Players have either a low or a high endowment. Once assigned to a group based on their group contribution, players share equally in their group’s collective output. Depending on the parameters, the mechanism has several distinct equilibria that differ in efficiency.

Findings – Somewhat counter to conventional expectation our theoretical analysis indicates that as long as certain assumptions are satisfied, efficiency increases rather than decreases the more abilities to contribute differ. The analysis also suggests various follow-up experiments about equilibrium selection, tacit coordination, and the effect of unequal abilities in systems with endogenous grouping. We conduct an experiment that shows that subjects tacitly coordinate the mechanism’s asymmetric payoff-dominant equilibrium with precision; this precision is robust to a change in the structure and complexity of the game.

Implications – The results suggest that people respond to merit-based grouping in a natural way and that competitive contribution-based grouping encourages public contributions even when abilities to contribute differ, which is the case in all communities and societies.

The purpose of this article is to examine matching in the graduate labour market (GLM) in order to understand how expansion of higher education is perceived and translated in practice.

The article uses meritocracy and credentialism as frames of reference to explain the role of educational certification in systems of social structuring. Correspondingly, qualifications may function as signals, screens or proxies. Qualitative evidence, drawing on 40 interviews with graduates, employers and educators gives insights on access requirements, recruitment and selection and transfer of knowledge and skills, in three graduate occupations: chartered accountants; active schools co‐ordinators; and risk managers.

Findings suggest that expanding graduate numbers has produced altered patterns of closure. Employers use the availability of relevant degrees to limit applications, define jurisdictional boundaries and exclude the less, or inappropriately qualified. Yet correspondence between degree and occupation cannot necessarily be read off by a connected degree.

Closer connections between degree and occupation imply labour market segmentation although this requires further evidence in other occupations.

Supply‐side policy interventions are countered by strategic use of graduates. The paper explores issues of relevance to policymakers, employers, educators and graduates and will be of interest to those in the field.

Structural explanations of racial stratification are weakened by a failure to in‐corporate attitudinal and ideological factors into their theories. But attitudinal researchers have tended to focus on racial prejudice and tolerance and neglected non‐racially specific beliefs that support white dominance. This article reviews the limits of each approach, discusses the problem of ideology for race relations theory and explores how, through the analysis of ideology, attitudinal and structural analysis might be synthesised. Findings on the relation between adherence to individualist explanations of poverty, perceptions of racial discrimination in employment and attitudes toward affirmative action programs are used to exemplify the power of class ideologies in shaping beliefs about racial inequality and vice versa. An exploration of ideologies of local autonomy and attitudes toward public housing and residential desegregation might elicit similar findings.

This paper aims to consider the impact of outcome-based education (OBE) on students studying human services degrees, particularly those in a policing program. This work examines the validity of the notion that OBE is a progressive teaching approach that improves the quality of education and subsequently professional practice.

A critical analysis of a systemised outcome-based teaching and learning approach is adopted.

OBE has, as an idea, swept across most educational institutions in an apparently revolutionary wave. However, any critical scrutiny of this systemised approach to teaching and learning calls into question whether it is really progressive or empty rhetoric achieving reactionary ends. Any systemised attempt at social change by way of neo-liberal outcomes that are not principle-driven will serve only to reinforce a philosophy of aggressive competition and individualism at the expense of the rule of law and social policy that is situated on a social contract foundation.

The practical implications of this paper relate to the delivery of higher education teaching, with particular reference to human service degrees such as policing: the use of post-modernist theory to develop contemporary teaching and learning systems has created challenges with regards to scientific knowledge; a principled, deontological teaching and learning system rather than a utilitarian “outcome”-based delivery is proposed; the validity of the notion that outcome-based teaching and learning systems are progressive initiatives that improve the quality of education is questioned; and the impact of OBE for students entering human services professions such as policing has implications for public and community safety.

This paper considers the efficacy of OBE as a model for higher education teaching, with particular reference to human services degrees such as policing.

To stimulate research on Latin American businesswomen's career development and help human resource practitioners design culturally‐adapted advancement programs.

A total of 27 interviews with human resources professional from US Fortune 500 companies with business in Latin America undertaken during 2001‐2003 are the basis for reporting on women's advancement programs in Latin America. A survey of literature on culture in Latin American work organizations provides basis for suggestions about cultural adaptation of these programs. Latin American businesswomen's perceptions of their own career development, recorded in interviews with over 100 businesswomen in six Latin American countries in 2002 by participants in the Women Business Leaders in Latin America project, corroborate these suggestions.

Women's initiatives imported from the USA to Latin America are likely to suffer several shortcomings unless modified to accommodate several common cultural attributes of Latin American work organizations.

Provides a guideline for developing gender diversity practices specifically suited to the Latin American context.

Major cross‐national projects on women, culture and leadership in business to date tend to neglect the Latin American region. This research begins to highlight and remedy that lacuna.

Today, there are 16.1 million refugees worldwide under the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees’ mandate. Among the refugee population, half of them are children and six million are of primary and secondary school-going age. The number of displaced people around the world has reached unprecedented levels in the recent years since the Syrian crisis escalated. Refugees, because of language and other barriers, face a particularly difficult challenge in attaining even a basic education. Keeping the barriers and challenges in mind, education is now seeking the help of technology to create new and sometimes unexpected opportunities for pathways to education for refugees. This chapter will highlight the contribution of University of the People (https://www.uopeople.edu), a tuition-free, non-profit, American accredited, online university that has been working with refugees to enable access to higher education for those living in refugee camps and other displaced people around the world.

Today, education shows an urgent need for transformation to better respond to the complex and interdependent nature of current learning and social challenges we are facing. This chapter is based on the evidence of schools and district initiatives that claim for systemic change with a strong focus on wider interconnection and collaboration between learners, professionals and organizations.

Networks for Change is a programme launched in 2017 by the Barcelona Education Consortium that intends to create professional networks of schools in the city. The programme seeks a deep change in the whole system: to influence how teachers learn from one another to lead a collective transformation of schools, moving towards inclusive, significant and profound learning of all students. To achieve this, the programme articulates 25 territorial networks of schools, spread over the 10 districts in the city of Barcelona, grouping a total of 283 schools (ages 3–18), 1,700 leadership teams and 10,000 teachers. The network sessions are facilitated by one district leader, existing a team of 13 facilitators in the programme. Each school assigns an internal and volunteering leadership team that is responsible to assist to the network meetings, so as to empower internal change processes in schools.

The present study evaluates the impact of the programme on the development of territorial networks, as well as on the changes emerged in school communities. The instruments used combine a quantitative and qualitative approach including a questionnaire for teams of leaders involved in the programme, a questionnaire for teachers from schools and a focus group with programme facilitators of the 25 networks.

The main results show that the Networks for Change programme is already becoming a response to the widely contrasted need to weave sustainable relationships between teachers from different schools in the system at the same time that it is strengthening the collaborative capacities of educational actors in the city’s neighbourhoods and territories. Likewise, and to take a step further in the development of the programme, it is suggested emphasizing the increase of transversality in the networks as cross-sector collaboration, distributing the leadership of the programme through its actors and establishing direct ways for the impact to schools and their transformation. Right now, the network mainly fulfils a function of generating learning among its participants, although the desired horizon is to extend this learning to the entire ecosystem and at the same time generate systemic change in the neighbourhoods in order to enhance and document real impact on learners.