Search results
1 – 10 of 606Datron Messtechnik has been involved with non‐contact sensing for some 20 years ever since the technology was initially devised to measure the speed of molten steel. The…
Abstract
Datron Messtechnik has been involved with non‐contact sensing for some 20 years ever since the technology was initially devised to measure the speed of molten steel. The technology was then seen by the motor industry for which it has since been developed together with specification requirements from companies like Mercedes Benz, BMW, Jaguar, Austin Rover and has now resulted in a well‐established market. The vehicle manufacturers use the sensor technology to measure true vehicle speed, distance, time, acceleration, height, slip, etc.
This study aims to investigate how actors’ responses to competing logics (academic and business logics) in budgetary practices in a university setting in Tanzania were shaped by…
Abstract
Purpose
This study aims to investigate how actors’ responses to competing logics (academic and business logics) in budgetary practices in a university setting in Tanzania were shaped by state pressure, market pressure and organizational characteristics (funding certainty and changes in university ownership) and how actors’ agency was exercised in enacting competing logics.
Design/methodology/approach
The data for this study were collected from interviews, observations, informal discussions and document review. The data analysis processes were guided by institutional logic concepts and the role of actors’ agency.
Findings
The findings demonstrate how academic logic traditionally subsisted in a university setting in which there was funding certainty. Changes in the university’s ownership resulted in funding uncertainty. Market and state pressure increased the intensity of funding uncertainty, which supported business logic. While market logic supported the emergence of business logic, state pressure altered the balance of the competing logics. University actors responded by selective coupling and compartmentalizing where both elements of academic and business logics were enacted. While managers prioritized business logic, academics prioritized academic logic. However, the role of agency was exercised in actors’ responses, subverting both academic and business logics.
Practical implications
Managers should appropriately enact both elements of competing logics to avoid marginalization of some of the core university activities. In addition, profitable business ideas should be considered, identified, planned and implemented successfully. Moreover, there is a need to change the historically contingent and culturally situated environment when enacting competing logics. Furthermore, the state influence on universities should be considered to prevent unnecessary uncertainties in budgetary practices.
Originality/value
The paper demonstrates how selective coupling and compartmentalizing strategies were used by actors to enact both elements of competing logics in budgetary practices in a university setting. It further shows how actors’ agency influenced and subverted competing logics. The paper, thus, responds to the recent calls to investigate the influence of institutional logics on control practices, and the role of actors in strategically handling different logics in developing countries (Damayanthi and Gooneratne, 2017; Argento et al., 2020; Anessi-Pessina et al., 2016; Grossi et al., 2020). It further suggests new analysis of academic and business logics in their context.
Details
Keywords
This paper aims to investigate whether educational leadership in Greece implements the values of total quality management and contributes to the improvement of the educational…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to investigate whether educational leadership in Greece implements the values of total quality management and contributes to the improvement of the educational process, and to offer proposals for a framework of total quality management that would contribute to an improvement in the overall quality of the education process.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper is based on theoretical analysis and on the current legislative framework. Three different aspects of the Greek education system are critically reviewed and discussed.
Findings
This study recognises that, due mainly to the lack of a long‐term educational strategy, the absence of an educational leadership development programme and limited financial support, the Greek educational system needs to review its structure and procedures ‐ even those that are “taken for granted”.
Research limitations/implications
Given the differences between education and industry, and the fact that only three different aspects of the Greek education system are investigated here, more research and analysis would be required in this field.
Practical implications
The paper is useful to educational planners and policy makers. From the perspective of total quality management, there may be a substantial impact on the improvement mechanisms and outputs in education, contributing to a country's social and economic well‐being.
Originality/value
The paper contributes to the better understanding of the value of total quality management in education, and offers recommendations that may be more widely adopted, and may contribute to an enhancement of overall educational quality.
Details
Keywords
Hyleen Mariaye, Mark Price, Shalini Jagambal Ramasawmy, Jane Melvin and Tejwant Mohabeer
The study explores the relational encounters of five higher education tutors and programme leaders, working in collaboration across contrasting institutions: one, a modern, civic…
Abstract
Purpose
The study explores the relational encounters of five higher education tutors and programme leaders, working in collaboration across contrasting institutions: one, a modern, civic university in the Global North, and the other, a parastatal institution in the Global South. The purpose of the study is to deepen the understanding of evolving collegiality within a transnational partnership, stimulated by the COVID-19 pandemic related shift to online teaching and learning.
Design/methodology/approach
The inquiry is informed conceptually by the concept of narrative encounter as a site of learning, with inductive, meta-analysis undertaken across our individual reflective narratives.
Findings
The narratives reveal three emergent themes: shared purpose, shared responsibility – through focus, routinised dialogue and concreteness; collective and individual risk-taking – through negotiated decision-making; and trust in self and in peers – through reciprocity, caring, duality and building on stable practices.
Research limitations/implications
The data from which this paper is developed and its related central thesis of collegial capital are limited and partial. However, when agility within higher education partnerships is at a premium, this paper is a useful touchstone for further reflection.
Originality/value
The paper seeks to further the concept of collegiality and collegial capital, a dialogical affordance which enabled the partnership to build on previous collaborative successes.
Details
Keywords
How teachers collectively address conflicting beliefs about reforms and come to privilege some over others is critically important in understanding instructional change and…
Abstract
Purpose
How teachers collectively address conflicting beliefs about reforms and come to privilege some over others is critically important in understanding instructional change and stability. The paper aims to discuss this issue.
Design/methodology/approach
Drawing on in-depth qualitative data gathered in interviews and observations of teachers’ formal collaboration time, this study focuses on teacher dialogue to examine the voicing and debate of teachers’ beliefs about reform efforts in their schools. Specifically, in two urban middle schools engaged in math instructional reforms, what are the conditions of teachers’ collaboration time that shape their dialogue about the feasibility of these reforms?
Findings
The findings reveal that the beliefs teachers voice vary widely depending on the topic of conversation. Teachers’ conversations about student achievement data and tracking elicited doubts about the possibility of instructional change, and conversations about other forms of student data and instructional strategies elicited a wider range of beliefs. Further, opportunities to meet with trusted colleagues as well as with wider groups provide teachers with different, but both useful experiences in exploring their own conflicting beliefs.
Practical implications
Avenues for shifting institutionalized beliefs about instruction in schools that have struggled to embrace equitable instructional practices for struggling students are discussed, along with implications for future research.
Originality/value
There is considerable research highlighting the characteristics of productive collaboration, but this paper provides a deeper understanding of the way teachers collectively negotiate beliefs about instructional changes in schools struggling to meet that mark.
Details
Keywords
The purpose of this essay is to honor, position and reflect on key themes related to high school reform within the careerlong scholarship of Karen Seashore Louis. It is presented…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this essay is to honor, position and reflect on key themes related to high school reform within the careerlong scholarship of Karen Seashore Louis. It is presented in relation to my own and others' key studies and book-length arguments regarding educational change, knowledge utilization, professional communities and innovation, over the past 30 years and up to the present time.
Design/methodology/approach
The article examines and interprets major works by Karen Seashore Louis and other educational change theorists that address repeated systemic failures, and episodic outlier efforts, at transformational change in high schools.
Findings
High school change has only failed if it is judged by the overarching criterion of system-wide transformation. Fair assessments of high school change must also examine accumulated incremental innovations. In light of the need for transformational aspirations in schools to mesh with transformational directions in society, the global pandemic and its aftermath may provide five key opportunities for long-awaited transformation.
Originality/value
There are different levels and degrees of innovation. Incremental innovation is as important as wholesale transformation. The growing number of networked outliers of innovation raises questions about the false equation of whole system change with bureaucratic state reform. Although the influential literature on whole system change is rooted in a small number of English-speaking countries, transformational change on a system-wide basis already exists in Northern Europe and parts of the Global South. Last, the pandemic and other major disruptions to the global social order have produced conditions that are highly favorable to transformational change in the future.
Details
Keywords
The purpose of this paper is to use empirical data on new principals to clarify the connection between different succession situations and the challenges their successor…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to use empirical data on new principals to clarify the connection between different succession situations and the challenges their successor principals face.
Design/methodology/approach
The study draws on two waves of interview data from a random sample of 16 new elementary school principals in a major urban school district in the USA.
Findings
New principals face distinct practice challenges depending on the nature of their successions. The less planned the succession, the less information and knowledge the new principal tends to possess. The more discontinuous the new administration’s trajectory is with the previous administration, the greater the staff resistance that the successor principal tends to face.
Research limitations/implications
Few studies systematically examine how succession situations differ in schools that are in need of transformation vs those in need of stability. This study addresses this gap by illuminating the varied processes of succession and highlighting specific mechanisms that link these processes to different organizational trajectories.
Practical implications
For district officials, this study suggests that principals in unplanned successions need greater support in quickly gathering information about their new schools while principals in discontinuous successions need greater expertise in how to balance trust-building and accountability in their attempts to promote transformational change.
Originality/value
This study’s primary value is its detailed articulation of how certain characteristics of succession situations are associated with specific types of challenges. Only studies at this level of specificity can be effective guides to practitioners and policymakers who are charged with preparing, selecting, and supporting new principals and their schools.
Details
Keywords
The purpose of this paper is to examine the development of teacher professionalism in Cambodia and the issues and challenges in this area.
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to examine the development of teacher professionalism in Cambodia and the issues and challenges in this area.
Design/methodology/approach
This paper uses Hargreaves’ four ages of teacher professionalism and professional learning to frame the discussion of the development of teacher professionalism in Cambodia.
Findings
This paper argues that the Cambodian government aims to develop the teachers to become autonomous professionals in terms of curriculum and pedagogical improvements. However the reality is that the Cambodian teachers manifest characteristics of both the pre‐professionals and autonomous professionals. This paper also examines the issues and challenges faced in the development of teacher professionalism, which are entwined in the complexities of educational reform, societal and economic development. By identifying some structural, economic and socio‐cultural challenges faced by Cambodian teachers, this paper suggests that Cambodian teachers need greater teacher collaboration within a culture of trust and accountability to become collegial professionals.
Originality/value
The Cambodian case study adds to the literature on the development of teacher professionalism in Cambodia and illustrates the potential of comparative and international research on teacher professionalism between Anglophonic and non‐Anglophonic cultures.
Details
Keywords
This paper aims to explore the gendered narratives of change management at Marks and Spencer (M&S) and uses them as a lens to consider the gendered nature of the change process…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to explore the gendered narratives of change management at Marks and Spencer (M&S) and uses them as a lens to consider the gendered nature of the change process itself.
Design/methodology/approach
Two extant stories: Sleeping Beauty and the Trojan War are taken, along with the cultural archetype of the American West gunslinger to explore the gender aspects of change. The Marks and Spencer case is analysed using the corollary patriarchal narrative of Sleeping Beauty, a story whose organising logic is revealed as one of concern for patriarchal lineage, and legitimate succession. The paper, draws on the Marks and Spencer principals' memoirs and biographies.
Findings
Sleeping Beauty is shown as a narrative saturated in misogyny, aggression and violence. This violence, which is shown to characterise the Marks and Spencer case, is amplified in the second narrative, the Trojan War, in the highly personalised battles of the über‐warriors of The Iliad. The paper concludes that violent, hyper‐masculine behaviour creates and maintains a destructive cycle of leadership lionisation and failure at the company which precludes a more feminine and possibly more effective construction of change management.
Originality/value
Demonstrates how M&S, gendered from its birth, its development through the golden years, the crisis, its changes in leadership and its recent change management has attempted to respond to its changing environment.
Details
Keywords
Phil Lambert, Warren Marks, Virginia Elliott and Natalie Johnston-Anderson
The purpose of this paper is to report on a study examining the existence and perceived influence of “generational collide” for teachers and leaders across three generations …
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to report on a study examining the existence and perceived influence of “generational collide” for teachers and leaders across three generations – Baby Boomers, Generation X (Gen X) and Generation Y (Gen Y). The study sought to further determine if a teacher’s generation, gender, school level or position influenced their beliefs about generational leadership change.
Design/methodology/approach
This study employed a cross-sectional survey using an explanatory sequential mixed methods design. A random sample of teachers and leaders from schools in the Sydney metropolitan area participated in a questionnaire (n=244) and a purposive sample of eight participants from each of the three generational groups (n=24) participated in a follow up interview.
Findings
The data revealed that teachers and leaders across all three generations agreed that “generational collide” is real and is currently happening in some schools. Each generation has their own perceptions about the “collide” and often do not recognise that this may differ for other generations. In relation to the key variables, this study demonstrated that primary teachers were significantly more likely to believe that generational leadership change was happening than secondary teachers and that Baby Boomers were significantly more likely to view their staying on past retirement age as positive compared to both Gen X and Gen Y.
Practical implications
The findings from this study have practical implications for system leaders charged with the responsibility of providing the supply of quality leadership for schools through effective succession planning programmes and policies.
Social implications
The findings from this study have social implications for principals’ (and deputy principals’) professional associations who have the responsibility for the personal, professional and career welfare of principals and aspiring principals.
Originality/value
This paper adds to the growing body of evidence around generational collide in schools by providing an Australian perspective on the phenomenon. Moreover, this paper raises important concerns for school leaders and administrators involved in leadership development initiatives at the micro, meso and macro levels. Teachers in each generation have specific beliefs around promotion, career pathways, knowledge transfer and talent retention that need to be recognised and considered in future succession planning.
Details