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This study explores the perceptions of Australian employers regarding the benefits and challenges of micro-credentials within higher education and enablers of their effectiveness.

A qualitative approach that included 11 semi-structured interviews with employers affiliated with an Australian university was used. A deductive thematic approach was employed to analyse the data.

Micro-credentials were generally seen to be beneficial for an array of people, including employees, employers, customers and communities – stakeholders in all environmental layers of micro-credentials’ ecological system. Findings also indicated that both challenges of micro-credentials and enablers of their effectiveness depended heavily on attributes of learners, employers and higher education providers. The conclusion is that, based on the evidence of this study, micro-credentials within higher education are worth trialling.

Although research interest in micro-credentials is growing, few empirical studies have investigated micro-credentials’ benefits, challenges and enablers of effectiveness, especially from the perspective of employers. The study carries practical and policy implications for those involved with micro-credential research and development.

In 2003 HM Treasury published a revised “Green Book”, otherwise known as The Green Book Appraisal and Evaluation in Central Government – a technical guide, which is designed to help decision makers appraise and evaluate capital expenditure decisions more effectively. Coincidentally, the RICS brought out its revised edition of the “Red Book”, now called The Appraisal and Valuation Standards, in March 2003. This paper looks at the development and recent changes to these documents particularly from the viewpoint of a public sector property practitioner involved in day‐to‐day appraisal.

In the current climate of outsourcing services the extent to which facilities managers make use of external contractors to supply property valuations and appraisals has grown significantly. In‐house facilities or property managers in the UK that are members of the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (RICS) are bound to the use of the RICS Appraisal and Valuation Manual (the Red Book). This paper examines the roles of the Red Book for property professionals involved in the review of appraisal reports and contrasts it with the Uniform Standards of Professional Practice (USPAP) used in the USA. The paper concludes that the Red Book in its existing form may inhibit any appraisal review process that any organisation may try to implement.

Examines a practical problem that arises in the Depreciated Replacement Cost (DRC) valuation of specialised property assets, particularly those owned by Central Government and the National Health Service which are subject to capital charging. The DRC approach values the site on a market basis and the building on a cost basis, adjusted for obsolescence, and aggregates the two elements. The literature and most practitioners having tended to focus on the problems of the cost elements, aims to look more closely at the problems relating to the site valuation. Different approaches significantly affect the value and can also react perversely with other strands of Government policy. While the main focus here is on Central Government property assets, these throw into sharp focus issues which are of wider interest.

History teaching in a multi‐cultural society was one of the most frequently discussed topics in educational circles in 1990. Anybody who learned history in the pre‐1960 period would, however, have been surprised to learn that it was thought that “multi‐cultural society” was a new‐thing in the UK. To them the history of these islands seemed to be one wave of invaders after another with a sort of English only established as a universal language some 400 years ago. This strand in our history was matched by another in which brave Britons went off in search of fame and fortune, or to head off a foreign threat, overseas.

This multi-day lesson involves grade 2-grade 4 students in exploring the life and achievements of Susan B. Anthony. It provides opportunities for students to investigate events associated with the Women’s Rights Movement as well as issues related to women’s right to vote, work, and to receive an education. This three-day learning cycle lesson will provide students with a better understanding of women’s suffrage as well as the time period and contributions of women leaders. Day 1 begins with a simulation of gender bias and follows with a Quickwrite and read aloud. On the second day, students will participate in station activities. On the third day, students will use a Bio Cube to describe the activities of a current woman reformer and how those acts have impacted U.S. history.

Since the late 1970s, research in accounting has been colonized by positive accounting theory (PAT) despite strong claims that it is fundamentally flawed in terms of epistemology and methodology. This paper aims to offer new insights to PAT by critically examining its basic tenets.

The paper subjects the language of the Rochester School to a deconstruction that is a transformational reading. This uncovers rhetorical operations and unveils hidden associations with other texts and ideas.

A new interpretation of the Rochester School discourse is provided. To afford scientific credibility to deregulation within the accounting field, Watts and Zimmerman used supplements and missing links to enhance the authority of PAT. They placed supplements inside their texts to provide a misleading image of PAT. These supplements rest on von Hayek's long‐term shaping blueprint to defeat apostles of the welfare state. Yet, to set PAT apart from normative theories that Watts and Zimmerman claimed were contaminated by value judgments, they made no reference in their text to the tight links between the Rochester School and the libertarian project initiated by von Hayek.

Any reading of PAT cannot present the infinite play of meaning that is possible within a text. Deconstruction involves a commitment to on‐going, eternal questioning.

The paper provides evidence of the relation between PAT and the neoliberal (libertarian) project of von Hayek. PAT is viewed as part of the institutional infrastructure and ideological apparatus that legitimates the hegemony of markets.

The purpose of this paper is to explore whether and how changes in the management control systems (MCS) of post-secondary institutions (PSIs) in Western Canada can be described and explained in terms of formal and informal MCS; and whether and how changes in the MCS of PSIs in Western Canada can be described and explained in terms of an integrative contingency-based framework of MCS based on regulatory accountability systems, competitive markets and organizational culture?

The empirical research was undertaken with an exploratory mixed design. The first phase involved descriptive univariate and bivariate statistics as well as non-parametric statistics computed on data from annual reports and financial statements of 46 PSIs in Western Canada to quantitatively explore MCS. The second phase involved the grounded theory (GT) analysis of annual reports of 46 PSIs in Western Canada to qualitatively explore formal MCS in relation to changes in contingencies. The third phase involved the GT analysis of 20 semi-structured interviews of senior managers from PSIs in Western Canada to qualitatively explore informal MCS in relation to formal MCS and changes in contingencies.

The research showed that emphasis on formal MCS in Western Canadian PSIs resulted in biased compliance within informal MCS. The exploratory research also demonstrated that the distinction between formal and informal MCS was better understood in a wider framing of MCS in terms of regulatory accountability systems, competitive markets and organizational culture.

This research led to the elaboration of an exploratory theoretical framework to subsume the distinction between formal and informal MCS into an integrative contingency-based framework of MCS.

The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate the ability to researchers of using design of experiments (DoE) as a structured and systematic approach to performing systematic literature reviews. The authors demonstrate a simple case study illustrating the application of DoE in executing a systematic literature review on two popular topics in higher education: academic leadership and Lean Six Sigma.

The methodology involves the systematic literature review of linking academic leadership with terms such as Lean, Six Sigma, Total Quality Management, Maturity Model and Continuous Improvement. The main tool used to structure the systematic literature review is a Taguchi Orthogonal Array design, specifically an L16 grid and the method is verified by conducting another review, replacing the term academic leadership with simply leadership.

The approach identified at first no research papers linking the terms; however, when academic leadership was replaced with university, 19 research papers where discovered. The verification exercise, linking just leadership with the other search string generated over 1,000 results – demonstrating that the tool can find large volumes of articles if they exist, the search was completed for a ten year time frame – 2004 to 2014.

The case study focussed on a field which is known to have little current research and the verification exercise deliberately targeted a known large body of research. The authors will continue to use the approach and refine the technique over time.

This approach would help any researcher despite of their discipline to identify opportunities and gaps in the current literature.

The paper shows how DoE can be used in an academic research-based process. No other literature review approach currently exists which uses Taguchi approach to DoE to filter the search criteria.