Because administration is the process of making decisions andbecause values are an important part of administrative culture, valuesare important in administrative work. The value…
Abstract
Because administration is the process of making decisions and because values are an important part of administrative culture, values are important in administrative work. The value orientations of American public school superintendents are described. Interviews with 15 Midwestern superintendents provided the data for the study. Responses to explicit questions about values are reported regarding the qualities valued in subordinates, the factors that have limited professional success, and criteria used to determine successful problem resolution. Superintendents were also asked to describe the most serious problems they had faced in their careers and their greatest achievements. Analysis of the data indicated that superintendents as a group valued human skills over either technical or conceptual skills. Though superintendents said that they value individual discretion among subordinates, they see it as a limited and qualified opportunity. Those interviewed demonstrated a selective management memory, finding it easier to describe their past accomplishments than serious problems they had encountered during their careers. In general, they did not focus on limitations, problems or failures. Most of those interviewed showed little inclination to retrospective analysis of administrative actions, contrary to contemporary calls for more reflective practitioners.
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The genesis of the moral leadership concept in educational administration and examples of studies exploring this idea during the 1979‐2003 period are discussed. The author…
Abstract
The genesis of the moral leadership concept in educational administration and examples of studies exploring this idea during the 1979‐2003 period are discussed. The author recommends more contextually sensitive descriptive studies with a focus on the social relations among school leaders and others, giving particular attention, in a phenomenological sense, to the meanings, perspectives, and espoused purposes of school leaders’ actions, social relationships, and interpersonal orientations.
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As part of a major study, an attempt was made to examine the organizational values of secondary schools in Hong Kong with a self‐constructed, standardised instrument, the School…
Abstract
As part of a major study, an attempt was made to examine the organizational values of secondary schools in Hong Kong with a self‐constructed, standardised instrument, the School Values Inventory. Values are chosen, because organizations are not only theory‐laden, but are also value‐laden and the sharing of organizational values are the binding forces that hold an organization together. Using LISREL confirmatory factor analytic modelling techniques and based on a sample of 554 teachers from 44 secondary schools in Hong Kong, a four‐factor model of organizational values was developed. The model which, precisely and concisely, concludes binding forces in Hong Kong schools as bureaucratic linkage, cultural linkage, tight coupling, and loose coupling provides an insight to understand school administration and organizational cultures.
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This article proposes the concept of an ethic of community to complement and extend other ethical frames used in education (e.g. the ethics of justice, critique, and care)…
Abstract
This article proposes the concept of an ethic of community to complement and extend other ethical frames used in education (e.g. the ethics of justice, critique, and care). Proceeding from the traditional definition of ethics as the study of moral duty and obligation, ethic of community is defined as the moral responsibility to engage in communal processes as educators pursue the moral purposes of their work and address the ongoing challenges of daily life and work in schools. The ethic of community thus centers the communal over the individual as the primary locus of moral agency in schools. The usefulness of the ethic of community in regard to achieving the moral purposes of schooling is illustrated with the example of social justice. The author concludes that the ethic of community is a vehicle that can synthesize much of the current work on leadership practices related to social justice and other moral purposes of educational leadership.
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This research seeks to explore the inevitable internal struggle experienced by school leaders when making ethically‐informed judgments. The study acquired principals' intimate…
Abstract
Purpose
This research seeks to explore the inevitable internal struggle experienced by school leaders when making ethically‐informed judgments. The study acquired principals' intimate reflections about professional decision making in response to personal versus organizational and/or professional value discrepancy as identified in the ethic of the profession and its model for promoting students' best interests.
Design/methodology/approach
A modified phenomenological research method, appropriate for an educational research context, was used to capture administrators' perspectives about moral practice and decision‐making experiences. The primary data collection strategy was participant interviews by means of purposeful sampling.
Findings
A clash between personal beliefs and values and organizational/professional expectations was very real for participants. The experience was generally frequent, but varied among principals. The struggle can be characterized as a phenomenon of intrapersonal moral discord experienced as part of the process of deciding ethically when faced with difficult moral choices.
Practical implications
The study contributes to the understanding of moral conflict in school leadership as an intrapersonal moral phenomenon, and how the conflict is resolved in practice, while providing insights into a more recently defined and theorized professional ethic for educational leadership. The study offers empirically derived knowledge for theory building and offers conceptual clarification of the moral leadership construct.
Originality/value
Moral judgment was complicated and contextually defined for participants. Administrators reported various ways of dealing with the nuances of personal and organizational value incongruity in order to engage in ethical decision making, including relying on, in some instances, a fundamental professional injunction.
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Hye Jeong Kim, Susan Pederson and Moira Baldwin
The purpose of this paper is to examine students’ experiences with a case‐enhanced e‐learning environment in a higher‐education institute.
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to examine students’ experiences with a case‐enhanced e‐learning environment in a higher‐education institute.
Design/methodology/approach
In total, 67 graduate students volunteered to take part in this experiment. The participants were assigned to treatment groups using tutorial with case‐based learning (CBL) module or comparison groups using tutorial only. They completed a background survey, a technological proficiency survey, a pre‐ and post‐knowledge test, and a learner perception survey of the e‐learning environment.
Findings
The present study found a significant increase in the level of domain knowledge in both a tutorial‐only group and a tutorial with CBL module group. The tutorial with CBL group scored significantly higher on learners’ perceptions of the e‐learning environment in terms of ease of use, satisfaction, and usefulness. In addition, the results of the use of a CBL module based on individual differences such as gender, degree level, and information technology self‐efficacy are discussed.
Practical implications
Designing an e‐learning environment for adult learners needs to consider their needs and motives. Adult learners who have specific learning goals tend to be more satisfied with an interactive and supportive e‐learning environment using real cases, rather than sequential and less flexible e‐learning only.
Originality/value
This paper describes an e‐learning system including the case module to enhance learner's satisfaction and knowledge. The paper contributes to the literature on CBL in adult learning and higher education context and in the design of a practical learning environment for user satisfaction.
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Keryn Chalmers, David Hay and Hichem Khlif
In 2001, the US moved to regulate internal control reporting by management and auditors. While some jurisdictions have followed the lead of the US, many others have not. An…
Abstract
In 2001, the US moved to regulate internal control reporting by management and auditors. While some jurisdictions have followed the lead of the US, many others have not. An important question, therefore, is the relevance of internal control to stakeholders. The more specific issue of the benefits of US-style regulation of internal control reporting is also topical. We review studies on the determinants of internal control quality and its economic consequences for stakeholders including investors, creditors, managers, auditors and financial analysts. We extend previous reviews by focusing on US studies published since 2013 as well as all non-US studies investigating IC quality including countries regulating IC disclosure as well as unregulated settings and both developed and developing economies. In doing so, we identify research questions where evidence remains mixed and new directions in which there are research opportunities.
Three main insights arise from our analysis. First, evidence on the economic consequences of internal control quality suggests that the quality of internal control can have a significant effect on decision making by users of financial information. Second, the results of research on the empirical association between ownership structure, certain board characteristics and internal control quality is generally mixed. Empirical evidence concerning the association between audit committee characteristics and internal control quality generally supports a positive and significant association. Finally, while studies in non-US jurisdictions are increasing, opportunities remain to explore the determinants and consequences of internal control in other jurisdictions. Our review provides evidence for policy makers of whether there are benefits from requiring management and auditors to report on internal control over financial reporting.
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David Manry, Hua-Wei Huang and Yun-Chia Yan
The purpose of this study is to investigate whether the likelihood that a firm will face financial statement fraud litigation is affected by the disclosure of internal control…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this study is to investigate whether the likelihood that a firm will face financial statement fraud litigation is affected by the disclosure of internal control material weaknesses (MW) and the “busyness” of a firm’s board of directors.
Design/methodology/approach
The results are derived from logistic regression models and data are collected from the Audit Analytics database augmented by data from CompuStat, the Stanford Law School website and the SEC Accounting and Auditing Enforcement Releases. The authors also test for endogeneity with a propensity score matching procedure.
Findings
The authors find that an MW report is strongly associated with the likelihood of subsequent financial statement fraud litigation, and that the influence of entity-level MW on litigation likelihood is stronger than that of account-level MW. Moreover, the number of outside board directorships significantly increases the influence of entity-level MW on the likelihood of litigation, indicating that board of directors’ busyness significantly increases the risk of litigation.
Originality/value
Previous research notes that board members holding multiple directorships cannot effectively oversee the financial reporting process and, thus, are associated with poorer governance. The authors extend this implication of board busyness to the association between disclosure of MW type and the filing of subsequent litigation alleging financial statement fraud. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, no other research has done so.
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Dennis M. López, Kevin T. Rich and Pamela C. Smith
We investigate whether auditor size is associated with the disclosure of internal control exceptions among Circular A-133 audits of nonprofit healthcare organizations. Our…
Abstract
We investigate whether auditor size is associated with the disclosure of internal control exceptions among Circular A-133 audits of nonprofit healthcare organizations. Our analysis is motivated by recent growth and transparency concerns within the sector. Using a sample of 1,180 audit reports from 2004 to 2008, we find evidence that audits performed by Big 4 firms are less likely to disclose internal control weaknesses than those performed by smaller firms. Additional analyses indicate this relation only remains statistically significant for a subsample of small organizations, possibly due to greater selectivity or lower efforts by the Big 4 auditors. We discuss the implications of these findings from an audit quality, market dominance, and client size perspective. The results are relevant to hospital financial managers seeking high quality audits at low cost.
The purpose of this study is to investigate the impact of internal control weaknesses on accounting conservatism in Chinese listed firms. It also investigates the relationship…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this study is to investigate the impact of internal control weaknesses on accounting conservatism in Chinese listed firms. It also investigates the relationship between the demand for external audit and accounting conservatism, and whether additional assurance of internal control reports (ICRs) can mitigate the negative impact of ICWs on accounting conservatism.
Design/methodology/approach
An empirical research approach is taken through the use of ordinary least squares (OLS) models and hand-collected internal control weakness data from ICRs released by Chinese listed firms.
Findings
The results of this paper show that the existence of ICWs has a negative effect on accounting conservatism in China. Further, the results demonstrate that both accounting-related and non-accounting-related ICWs affect accounting conservatism. The authors also find that there is a complementary relationship between accounting conservatism and the demand for additional assurance of ICRs, and additional assurance of ICRs can mitigate the negative impact of ICWs on accounting conservatism.
Practical Implications
This study provides timely evidence to Chinese regulators of the possible economic consequences of the official implementation of internal control standard in China from 2012. The findings of this paper can also benefit regulators around the world and, in particular, the regulators in emerging markets that are considering implement regulations similar to the US SOX.
Originality/value
The paper demonstrates that a wider scope of ICWs, including non-accounting-related ICWs, also has a significant impact on accounting conservatism. Therefore, this research provides a more general evidence on the relationship between internal control quality and accounting conservatism.