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People’s images of the world and parts of it are important influences on their behaviour in school and elsewhere. Metaphors can be used as tools to enable school leaders and others to gain some insight into these images, and “Images of school through metaphor” (ISM) is a questionnaire, consisting of 26 metaphors, which can be employed to this end. The development of ISM in its actual and ideal forms involved extensive field testing. ISM was used in a large study and the resulting data were subjected to a number of tests to assess further the validity of the instrument. Six clusters of metaphors were identified. ISM is simple, economic, easy to use and is sufficiently valid and reliable for use with teachers in schools, and its potential as a workshop stimulus appears to be considerable.

To outline the emerging imperative for the integration of ICT into schools and to locate such integration within broad notions of governance and effective implementation.

Using a flexible interview structure, conversations concerning ICT integration into schools were held with 65 school‐based personnel in 50 Tasmanian schools.

Coding analysis of conversations enabled 14 themes to be identified; for example: “The use of ICT involves partnerships between people”, “ICT is more or less integrated into the classroom curriculum and is more or less entwined in the various pedagogies employed by teachers”, and “ICT ‘champions’ or ‘heroes’ are recognised more or less in schools”. Many of the themes focus on issues of governance. A number of strong correlations were found to exist between the themes. Few differences were found to exist within the data in regard to four criteria, namely: whether the school was in the Catholic sector or the Department of Education; the urban‐rural location of the school; the size of the school in terms of student enrolment numbers; and the role of the participant (Principal, Assistant Principal, Teacher, ICT Co‐ordinator, Technician). Concludes that there is likely to be considerable agreement about the content of such conversations in schools and that they are likely to be concerned with people and processes rather than with ICT technology/software/hardware and the like per se.

Provides guidance to school leaders and others regarding effective implementation of ICT into schools.

It is expected that the schools taking part in this project will move towards implementing ICT with considerable success and it is hoped that this can be applied to Tasmanian schools in general.

Student evaluations of teaching (SETs) are the most frequent form of faculty performance in the classroom, though they tend to be used as summative rather than formative evaluations. In this chapter, a project involving the use of a virtual learning environment for formative, weekly SETs is explored from both the student and faculty point of view at a rural university college in the United Kingdom. This project encouraged student participation in creating the learning environment and faculty reflection on how to improve the student experience. From the student perspective, the weekly anonymous evaluations were useful for providing feedback; however, students tended to only respond if they were not satisfied with the faculty member. The exception to this was that some students were more motivated to complete the evaluation forms if they believed the faculty member was utilising their feedback. From the faculty perspective, the feedback was not as detailed as they had expected, and some questioned whether it was worth the effort of conducting formative evaluations if the response rate was so low. Others used the feedback for reflective purposes, and it was found that those that reflected on their work at higher levels tended to receive a greater year-on-year increase in their end of year teaching evaluations.

How classrooms are formed and managed sets the foundation for emotional and intellectual well-being. A person-centred learning environment balances the needs of both the teacher and the learner, utilizing shared responsibility, cooperative leadership and caring. Built on humanistic principles, this chapter examines the effects of a person-centred classroom management programme, Consistency Management & Cooperative Discipline® (CMCD®), on the school climate of two large secondary schools in England, the use of which represented a shift in philosophy and practice from primarily behaviouristic to instructional and person-centred approaches to classroom management. The changes in school climate over multiple years demonstrate both the problems schools can create and the potential solutions, when students and their teachers receive the care they need to flourish.

Albeit gradual and uneven, the emergence of social and environmental reporting by publicly held corporations has been a major development in the last few decades. This paper aims to explore patterns of the emergence of these disclosures. Using an institutional theory lens, this paper considers mimetic, normative and coercive possibilities.

US publicly traded company data from 2013 to 2019 is used to test the hypotheses. Mimetic forces are proxied with corporate board interlock frequency. Normative ones use the extent of gender diversity on corporate boards. Measures of business climate and industry regulatory sensitivity proxy coercive potentiality.

Studied in isolation, each of the three forces through which organizations pursue the heightened legitimacy of enhanced environmental and social disclosures has credibility. The strongest support exists for mimetic and normative mechanisms, perhaps because the US government has been reluctant to make these expanded disclosures mandatory.

In the world of voluntary action, more attention to diffusion is needed. For these purposes, better proxies will be needed to study change. Social and environmental information should be separated for individual analysis.

At least in the USA, companies are attentive to what other companies are doing. There is something to be said for the ethical dimension of corporate transparency.

Governmental action in this area has not been effective, at current levels. Corporate leadership is essential. Critical information is shared about disclosure by board members.

Although institutional theory makes several appearances in this area, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, the current study is the first empirical archival study to examine the three forces simultaneously, providing evidence as to the relative magnitude of each institutional force on environmental and social disclosures. Should these disclosures not be mandated by government, this study shows pathways for enhanced disclosures to continue to spread.

SO THE Nissan Company of Kyoto has laid the foundation stone of its factory in Sunderland. An era, perhaps a new era in the history of the British Motorcar Industry is really on the way.

Big data management research and practice, however, have received enormous interest from academia and industry; the extant literature demonstrates that the authors have limited understanding and challenges in this knowledge-stream to fully capitalize with its potentials. One of the contemporary challenges is to accurately verify data veracity, and developing value from the verified data for an organization and its stakeholders. Consequently, the purpose of this paper is to develop insights on how the authors could strategically deal with the contemporary challenges in strategic management of big data, related to data veracity and data value.

The inductive–constructivist approach is followed to develop insights at the intersection of dynamic capabilities theory and stakeholder relationship management concept, in order to strategically deal with the contemporary challenges in big data management, related to data veracity and data value.

At the intersection of dynamic capabilities theory and stakeholder relationship management concept, an implication is acknowledged, which has research and practical significance to strategically verify data source, its veracity and value. Following this implication, a framework of a data incubator is proposed to proactively develop insights on veracity and value of data. Empirical insights are also presented in this study to support this initial framework.

For future research in strategic management of big data, academics will have contextual understanding on the particular interconnected and interdependent attributes from dynamic capabilities and stakeholder relationship management research streams to further enhance the understanding on big data management. For practice, these insights will be useful for executives to focus on specific attributes of the proposed data incubator to confirm data veracity and develop insights on how to design, deliver and evaluate stakeholder value based on the verified data.

Following a synthesis at the intersection of dynamic capabilities theory and stakeholder relationship management concept, this study introduces a data incubator to meaningfully deal with the big data management challenges, related to veracity and value of data.

This paper aims to evaluate the implementation of innovative programmes within the downstream domain of the pharmaceutical supply chain (PSC), with the aim of informing improved service provision.

A mixed-method approach was used to assess to what extent innovation could be adopted by hospital and community pharmacies to improve the delivery process of pharmaceutical products. Unstructured interviews and 130 questionnaires were collected and analysed to identify factors that facilitate or prevent innovation within PSC processes.

The analysis led to the creation of the innovative pharmaceutical supply chain framework (IPSCF) that provides guidance to health-care organisations about how supply chain management problems could be addressed by implementing innovative approaches. The results also indicated that the implementation of Lean and Reverse Logistics (RL) practices, supported by integrated information technology systems, can help health-care organisations to enhance their delivery in terms of quality (products and service quality), visibility (knowledge and information sharing), speed (response to customers and suppliers needs) and cost (minimisation of cost and waste).

The study’s recommendations have potential implications for supply chain theory and practice, particularly for pharmacies in terms of innovation adoption. The IPSCF provides guidance to pharmacies and health-care organisations to develop more efficient and effective supply chain strategies.

This research contributes to the academic literature as it adds novel theoretical insights to highly complex delivery process innovation.