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Competencies for leadership in higher education have begun to emerge in the literature. Yet to better equip future leaders in higher education, the use of a learning taxonomy may serve as a framework to understand necessary learning for leaders in higher education. The aim of this study is to explore the competencies of higher education leadership through Bloom’s knowledge, skills and attitudes framework.

An explanatory case study qualitative methodology was used to explore the experiences of senior leaders within a singular university to determine the necessary competencies of leadership in higher education. Purposive sampling was used to recruit participants who served in Dean-level or higher positions. Eligible participants participated in a semi-structured interview.

Each of Bloom’s domains had a variety of themes emerge: knowledge (2), skills (6) and attitude (2).

Sample size was limited by the availability of senior leaders and may not represent the experience of leaders at all institutions.

Findings from this study may allow future researchers to investigate the outcomes of a combination of competencies. Findings from this study will hopefully be able to be extrapolated to better understand the learning required of those who aspire to be future leaders in similar university structures.

Available studies fail to explore the process by which one learns the skills necessary to become a leader in higher education. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study to map higher education leadership competencies through a learning taxonomy.

The hydrologic losses due to net evaporation in the Aral Sea have interesting analogs in the interior-drainage basins of the American West. Each of the three places discussed here – the Salton Sea, Owens Lake, and Mono Lake – has its own unique historical and geographic circumstances, but the story of each place has certain parallels to the Aral Sea disaster. Each place experienced dramatic water losses during much of the 20th century, but the emergence of environmental science and law in recent decades has caused significant policy changes. The Salton Sea is still declining, and modest efforts by state and federal agencies to halt the decline are inadequate. A proposal to build dikes to save part of the water body and convert the rest to salt evaporation ponds cited the Aral Sea as a model for the Salton Sea's future. The dry Owens Lake bed yields windblown dust that exceeds the Clean Air standard for fine particulate matter (PM 10), so Los Angeles is now required to release additional water back into the basin to create more shallow wetlands. In Mono Lake, a negotiated settlement has reversed the water loss while protecting vital interests of all parties, and a substantial ecological restoration plan is being implemented. The history of the American analogs to the Aral Sea, especially the success story of Mono Lake, may indicate potential pathways to progress in reducing problems caused by large-scale water diversion.

In spite of escalating efforts to curb abuse, fraud, and corruption in Congress, members of Congress persist in violating the norms, rules, and laws that aim to ensure they behave ethically. This chapter combines qualitative and quantitative analysis to describe congressional corruption in the modern era. Case studies illustrate consequential financial scandals while also differentiating four categories of corrupt financial practices.

Existing datasets on congressional scandals span the time period from 1972 to 2010, and this chapter extends the dataset to 2018. The analysis next uses the dataset to answer important questions empirically. Which types of scandals occur more often? Have these scandals grown more common or less common over time? What are the consequences of financial scandals for representatives' careers as public servants?

This paper aims to investigate the emerging relevance of gratitude within a contracted, long-term business-to-business context. Specifically, the authors examine the relationships between personality, gratitude and performance in franchisor–franchisee relationships.

A self-report survey was used to collect data from a sample of 225 franchisees drawn from across 28 franchise systems.

The results reveal that extraversion had a negative relationship with gratitude, while agreeableness and emotional stability were positively related to gratitude. Gratitude was also positively related to performance and mediated the relationship between extraversion, agreeableness and emotional stability and performance. Moreover, the results confirm that relationship length moderated the relationship between conscientiousness and gratitude.

The study shows that an individual’s personality is a factor in determining the onset of perceived gratitude, which acts as a mediating mechanism between personality and performance. This extends current research into the relational sentiment of gratitude, which has, to date, only examined the traits of the benefactor within the context of perceived benefits.

It is proposed that the knowledge of franchisees’ personal characteristics can be used to develop and maintain on-going interpersonal relationships between franchisees and franchisors. Moreover, the authors suggest that franchisors’ relationship strategy should be revised over time to maintain its effectiveness.

This paper represents the first empirical examination of the influence of personality on an individual’s proclivity to experience felt gratitude in a franchisor–franchisee relationship. This addresses one of the major issues in franchising research, which often overlooks the role of individual dispositional personality traits.

The purpose of this paper is to examine how small and medium-sized, regional financial service firms reacted to the financial crisis by helping their customers cope with their heightened state financial anxiety during the Economic Crisis of 2008. It also examines the variety of strategies pursued by these firms to rebuild consumer trust in their brands in the ensuing years.

The authors relied on grounded theory as a methodological approach to understand the unfolding situation of the financial crisis and to inductively develop a framework explaining managers’ experience with consumer financial anxiety and trust. Data collection involved key informant interviews with 20 CEOs and senior marketing and sales professionals of financial service firms in the USA.

The study discloses a desire among many retail financial institutions to re-personalize their relationships with customers following the financial crisis. One motivating factor for this has been a demand by regulators for more evidence that the firm really knows its customers. The paper also found that some managers are ambivalent about mentioning regulatory oversight and Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) insurance to customers because it is unclear whether these issues heighten or reduce consumer fears. More research is needed to provide guidance to managers on how mention of regulatory oversight may be used strategically in a crisis.

This study was limited to regional financial service firms in the USA with assets of less than$1 billion. The extension of the study to compare other geographical markets or to large financial service firms remains to be done. This investigation could tell us whether consumers now trust regional banks more than they do large national banks, difference in the strategies they employed and whether they resulted in different rates of brand equity recovery.

This paper suggests that the 2008 financial crisis may have resulted in permanent changes in consumer attitudes to financial services. As one manager suggested, “consumers have moved from a trust-me phase to a show-me phase.” This implies that financial service managers need to rethink how they build consumer trust. Such managers would do well to consider ways of integrating actions that reinforce the company's integrity and commitment to its customers into different stages of their firms’ relationships with consumers.

Many small and medium-sized banks are re-embracing community-banking practices including building strong personal relationships with stakeholders after years of underinvesting due to these banks’ pursuit of property development investments. As a result of these developments, a stronger financial services industry could likely emerge. Accordingly, trust for this battered industry among consumers could improve.

This paper discuss how the depersonalization of customer interactions by financial services firms through increased use of electronic channels and the use of call centers as primary interaction points may have weakened customer relationships and worsened consumer anxiety during the 2008 financial crisis. Additionally, it discusses both the failure of regulatory oversight and the symbolic effects of the big bank failures and the Madoff scandal in heightening consumer fears. Based on managerial interviews the paper discusses how financial service firms countered consumer anxiety by providing social support to customers, by repersonalizing customer interactions, and by reconnecting with local community values.

This study aims to investigate the impact of various audit committee (AC) characteristics on the performance of Indian commercial banks. Additionally, it also analyses the non-linear relationship of AC size and AC chairman tenure with bank performance.

A panel data approach has been used in this study. The authors have used the fixed-effect estimation technique to examine the relationship between AC characteristics and bank performance during the period 2009–2010 to 2016–2017.

The authors find that the professional financial education of the AC chairman and members positively affects bank performance. the frequency of the AC meetings and audit chair busyness bears an inverse relationship with performance. The findings are more or less consistent across the various bank performance measures and subsamples classified based on the time period and ownership of the banks.

This study provides insights to policy regulators and policymakers who are entrusted with the establishment of ACs in the banks in light of the ongoing regulatory reforms.

The study is among one of the early studies, which study the relationship between AC characteristics and bank performance in the light of recent regulatory reforms. It also extends the existing study by considering both public and private banks operating in India.