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George Counts' classic 1932 speech asks, “Dare the school build a new social order?” This article proposes examining whether emerging school leaders are prepared to face this challenge and embrace the society‐building responsibility at the core of public schooling. It aims to focus especially on students from homogeneous backgrounds, their capacity to address issues of diversity, and the extent to which their educational leadership program has prepared them to champion social justice within schools.

This study looks at emerging leaders in three master's level cohort programs in educational leadership at a state university in New England. It incorporates survey data, interviews, and document analysis. Descriptive statistics were used to organize and summarize the data. Open‐ended questions and interviews were transcribed and coded, and program documents examined to identify overall purposes of educational leadership and evidence of diversity awareness.

Findings indicate these educational leaders are not adequately prepared to lead public schools toward a greater understanding of diversity or to help change the social order. They claim little responsibility for promoting social justice, especially when social change may challenge local norms. Responses indicate their perspective is not broad enough to understand fully the social responsibility Counts advocated.

This study is limited to graduate students in New England, most of whom experience little diversity within their communities.

The study concludes with suggestions for educational leadership programs.

This study reveals the difficulties in preparing educational leaders to address the complexities of a diverse society – difficulties arising both from their limited personal experience and from voids in their educational leadership program.

New developments in trust‐based working time systems (i.e. systems whereby managers formally devolve their responsibilities for monitoring working time) in Germany are examined. A picture of these systems is presented and the main debates reviewed. It is argued that the successful introduction of such systems is contingent on a number of inter‐related factors. These are: company size and management style, external and internal pressures and effective employee representation. It is concluded that such systems are most likely to be successful in larger organisations and that effective employee representation is a key requirement. Current circumstances are not necessarily conducive to the rapid spread of trust‐based working time systems.

The purpose of this paper is to provide contextual information around the grass-roots activities which resulted in legislation allowing the opening of drug consumption rooms in Denmark. This background has not been included in, e.g. the annual Danish Focal Point reports to the EMCDDA.

An account by some of those involved on the grass-roots and political activities which resulted in the enabling changes in law and the provision of building-based drug consumption rooms in Denmark.

The actions described originated in a concern for the health and well-being of drug users. That grass-roots action can act as a catalyst for political changes in social policy to take account of the situations and needs of socially marginalised groups.

The paper describes the sequence of grass-roots actions from the point of view of those involved. It does not seek to represent the views of those opposed to the activists’ aims.

The use of international evidence to support policy and legal changes in one nation, Denmark, in order to improve conditions for drug users. The need for funding commitments to support and realise the legal and policy changes.

The success of long-term campaigning on behalf of a specific marginalised and socially excluded group of citizens and the countering of myths and stigma associated with this group.

This is a unique account told by those directly involved of the social and campaigning processes which led to a change in the law and a shifting of popular and political opinion and action.

Aim of the present monograph is the economic analysis of the role of MNEs regarding globalisation and digital economy and in parallel there is a reference and examination of some legal aspects concerning MNEs, cyberspace and e‐commerce as the means of expression of the digital economy. The whole effort of the author is focused on the examination of various aspects of MNEs and their impact upon globalisation and vice versa and how and if we are moving towards a global digital economy.

Using data over the period from 1950 to 2000, we estimate a model of bilateral international trade to explore the linkages between (a) alliances, (b) joint memberships in international institutions, (c) mutual cooperation and (d) conflict, (e) mutual economic freedom, and (f) democracy and bilateral trade. We incorporate exporter and importer effects as well as reciprocity into a gravity model and cross-validate it against annual out-of-sample data. The resulting, empirical findings show the importance of second and third-order dependencies in bilateral trade data. Military alliances, membership in IGOs, international cooperation, and mutual economic freedom are shown to be strongly associated with bilateral trade. Conversely, conflict and the level of democracy do not demonstrate strong, discernable linkages to bilateral trade.

The objective of this study is to analyze the framework within which microfinance institutions (MFIs) deliver their services and provide an assessment of their operations and financial management. These institutions are examined because of their current importance to a special group of consumers, primarily the poor and disenfranchised in the developing world, and of their future promise as an economic development solution. Since the objective of these institutions is somewhat unique, the manner of their assessment must also differ from that used to assess the performance of traditional financial intermediaries. In particular, assessment of MFIs must recognize their dual (bank and development instrument) status. Their efficiency, then, must be analyzed in terms of its economic (or financial) dimension as well as its social dimension. The first dimension may be examined with traditional measures, while examination of the second requires measures that reflect the MFI’s social objectives. In order to accommodate the special nature of MFIs, this study proposes the use of a Balanced Scorecard approach. It contributes to the study of financial institution performance by examining a non‐traditional group of institutions using a variety of assessment measures. The findings should be of value to those interested in the financial sector as well as those involved in public policy decision making.

The paper seeks to explore whether the development in department management in Norwegian hospitals after the unitary management reform in 2001 constitutes a development in the direction of general management

Interviews were conducted with ten managers from different levels in a large Norwegian university hospital in 2001‐2002, as a unitary management model was implemented.

There is an emerging change of practice among the physician managers according to this study. The manager function is more explicit and takes a more general responsibility for the department and the professions. However, the managerial function is substantiated by conditions related to the professional field of knowledge, which gives legitimacy within a medical logic. Contact with the clinic is stressed as important, but it is possible to adjust both amount and content of a clinical engagement to the demands of the new manager position. This has both a symbolic and a practical significance, as it involves both legitimacy and identity issues.

The paper shows that the institutionalised medical understanding of management has a bearing on managerial reforms. Managerial changes need to relate to this if they are to have consequences for the managerial roles and structures on department level in hospitals.

The paper suggests that the future development of this role will depend on the way the collectivist and individualist aspects of responsibility are handled, as well as on the further development of managerial knowledge of physicians.

Several countries in South Asia face the challenge of ineffective educational reforms manifest in increasing rates of school failure and poor learning outcomes after embarking along education for all. Critical voices from the South have questioned the relevance and appropriateness of ideas that have shaped these reforms. Narratives from the region tell us that importation of educational concepts and policy orientations have led to the dismantling of existing structures and processes of education, creating new forms of inequities and disadvantage. The sheer scale and diversity of populations within the region poses formidable challenges and opportunities for contextual innovation. The construction of national imaginaries in the diverse societies of South Asia has the potential to provide new discourses to educational reform; going beyond the abstract goals set by disconnected international experts and the institutional processes they represent. This chapter deliberates on the need to establish a persuasive critical perspective that can influence and shape the trajectories of policy and practice, research and theorization, within the field of comparative education in South Asia, and the global south.

Although studies have shown that electronic media exposure can negatively affect infants’ and young children’s language development, exposure to these forms of media is increasing in North America. To better understand the types of electronic media exposure and their potential effects, we utilized naturalistic daylong recordings collected in the homes of bilingual Spanish–English infants of Latinx descent (n = 37). The present study examines contextual aspects of electronic media exposure, and the effects of electronic media on two types of parent–infant social interactions associated with child language development: parentese (a style of infant-directed speech distinguished by its higher pitch, slower tempo, and exaggerated intonation) and parent–infant turn-taking. Using Language ENvironment Analysis (LENA), two daylong audio recordings were collected from each family. These recordings were manually annotated for electronic media type, directedness, language, parental support, parentese, and turn-taking. Our results showed that the infants in our study experienced exposure to many different forms of electronic media, in both English and Spanish, and that the programming was predominantly adult-directed rather than child-directed. While both parentese and turn-taking were reduced in the presence of electronic media, the strength of these effects was modulated by electronic media sources, demonstrating that various devices differentially affect parental language input. These results provide a glimpse into what types of media young bilingual Spanish–English learning infants are experiencing and can help researchers design language interventions that are inclusive and relevant for families from these populations.