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This special issue reveals how lesson study in China continues to serve as a powerful platform to support change in teaching. The papers included in this issue explore how university faculty members and researchers support teachers to cross boundaries resulting from the introduction of key competencies-based (hexin suyang 核心素养) curriculum reform (KCR).

The theme of continuity and change is examined against the backdrop of Chinese lesson study's (CLS's) consistent supporting role in enabling curriculum reform. These analyses make use of concepts involved in understanding boundary crossing, such as using boundary objects and their roles, to help make sense of the new theories, tools, and resources as well as relationships engendered in responding to the reform's demand. While recognizing the continuity at play in Chinese LS, the authors use the lens of learning at the boundary of research-practice partnerships (RPPs) (Farrell et al., 2022) to contemplate the future of CLS.

The papers touch on three major themes: (1) the role of university-school partnerships in meeting the new demands of key competencies reform; (2) resourceful tools, strategies and structures to support boundary crossing for teachers; and (3) roles and relationships for mutual learning in university-school partnerships. Together these three themes, considered across the papers in this issue, point to the need to redefine CLS to engender versatility and hybridity and to enlist mutual learning relationships in future university-school partnerships. Such redefinition positions lesson study to both continue and change.

The papers in this issue are expected to promote mutualist learning in future CLS research-practice partnerships. To do so, research needs to move from focusing on change of a single case teacher to clarifying what experts and teachers each learn from the LS and from each other. Attention also needs to focus on the collaborative discourse and ways such discourse is able to promote mutual learning, emotional support in facing change as well as critical and constructive problem solving.

Practically, to better support boundary crossing, this special issue encourages academics and teachers to identify and work around boundary objects and their enabling features to enhance knowledge and identity of both university and teacher participants for more effective research-practice partnerships.

This special issue offers a pioneering set of studies that contributes to an in-depth understanding of how CLS is supporting the current competencies-based reform in China. It also provides concrete future directions for research and practice to enhance university-school partnerships' response to reform.

In this article the authors discuss the utility of value‐based management on the basis of the case of value‐based management in the Mayor’s office of the administration of the Municipal of Aalborg, Northern Denmark. This was done in response to the pressure on public organizations in complex Scandinavian welfare states. They argue that value‐based management was introduced as an efficient way to make the organization more open to stakeholder expectations and demands, in particular the increasing request for efficiency of public organizations by citizens. Accordingly, value‐based management is a way to make public organizations less bureaucratic and more service‐oriented in a welfare state which is more open to management strategies from private firms. In particular they emphasize the significance of middle managers for the success of the process in organizations. Middle managers are requested to internalize values in their daily work. If this is done value‐based management is an efficient way to improve boths the ethics and the utility of public organizations without transforming them totally in to private market‐driven organizations.

The purpose of this paper is twofold: First, to provide an overview of the COVID-19 pandemic and its holistic impacts and implications for organizations and management. Second, to report what organizations have been doing via their corporate social responsibilities about the pandemic. Research implications for academics are offered.

The approach taken in this article was to survey the literature and news reports about the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and to summarize results. Further, the approach was to analyze these findings using my four-part CSR construct examining economic, legal, ethical and philanthropic impacts, implications, and responsibilities.

It was found that the COVID-19 pandemic has had important impacts and implications for most spheres or sectors of the business world. Employees, consumers and communities have been the most significantly affected, but other stakeholder groups in societies are being impacted as well. The global pandemic is putting CSR to the test, and the emerging evidence supports the idea that many companies are striving to reset their CSR thinking and initiatives to accommodate this crisis and to meet what the public expects of them.

Much of this paper involved reporting findings that have appeared in the literature and news. The originality involved interpreting and analyzing stakeholders affected, and how managers have been responding to these challenges. Strategic recommendations are offered.

The purpose of this paper is to describe the relationship between authentic leadership and the ethic of care (EoC) and to propose that leadership is characterized by the commitment of others that is represented by EoC’s moral perspective.

This paper is a conceptual paper that compares authentic leadership characteristics with the moral and ethical elements of EoC.

This paper proposes that authentic leadership is closely tied to the commitment of others which characterizes the leader’s moral responsibility and shows how EoC fits with 11 other ethical perspectives in enabling leaders to serve others

The contribution of this paper lies on its focus on the importance of EoC as a guiding moral perspective in the actions of authentic leaders. Although authentic leadership has been written about extensively, very little has been written to link authentic leadership with the EoC.

The purpose of this paper is to explain the importance of virtuous leadership and identify six characteristics that are necessary for the modern leader to be effective in an increasingly challenging and competitive world market.

Theory development.

The authors suggest that virtuous leaders possess an uncommon level of commitment to those employees whom they serve, to their customers, to their shareholders, and to society at large, the authors extend the concept of the moral continuum and identify the importance of a virtuous perspective in honoring the obligation to optimize wealth creation and enriching outcomes and relationships, and the authors suggest ten propositions about virtuous leadership that may be empirically tested by both scholars and practitioners who are interested in studying and/or applying virtuous leadership to improve relationships and build organizations.

Original article.