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THE RECENT DECLINE in issues has been noticed fairly generally over the country; many librarians have been considerably concerned about it, and your April comments in ‘Off the cuff’ are relevant. I have not felt concerned to a great degree, though previously I had enjoyed seeing constantly increased use of the city libraries service in my 20 years in Cambridge. The final figures for 1972/73 together with comparisons for the previous year are as follows:

Upward appraisal involves a formal input by students/staff into the performance appraisal of their lecturers/managers. Briefly reviews the literature on upward appraisal and examines its practice in higher education by exploring the experiences and perceptions of a sample of lecturers drawn from a UK business school. Examines the integration of upward appraisal into the wider decision‐making processes on teaching and learning strategies and suggests areas for future research on upward appraisal. Argues that potential to facilitate improvements in performance may be undermined in practice by problems in implementation and, paradoxically, may lead to a reduction in student and lecturer commitment. Draws out for higher education some lessons from industry′s more advanced use of upward appraisal.

The purpose of this study is to explore the impact of empowering leadership (EL) on work attitudes [job satisfaction (JS) and organizational commitment (OCOM)]. The effects of EL on these work attitudes were also analysed in terms of the mediating effects of psychological empowerment (PE).

A survey research methodology was adopted where responses were collected on relevant measures of the constructs from 431 middle-level executives from 12 Indian organizations.

Results implied that EL enhanced the levels of JS and OCOM of employees. The results further indicated that EL was positively related to PE at the workplace. The findings also revealed that PE was positively related to these positive work attitudes. Moreover, strong indirect effects of EL were observed on these work attitudes through PE, implying that PE partially mediated the impact of between EL on JS and OCOM.

The findings of this study affirm the efficacy of EL and PE in predicting positive work attitudes in a different cultural milieu than the West –the Indian work context. Especially, by establishing a strong positive relationship between empowerment and JS, it contributes to the existing literature underlining inconsistent findings with regard to this relationship.

This study, based on construal level theory, aims to examine the influential mechanism of leader empowerment behaviour on employee creativity. Specifically, it examines the mediating role of cognitive flexibility between leader empowerment behaviour and employee creativity, along with the moderating effect of consideration of future consequences (CFC) on this linkage.

A two time-point survey study (n = 214) was conducted to collect information from leaders and employees in terms of mutual evaluation in several Chinese industries. To effectively avoid common source bias, this survey was conducted through pairing leaders and employees. During the survey, the supervisors and subordinates were double-blinded. Correlation analysis and hierarchical regression analysis were used to test the research hypotheses.

Firstly, leader empowerment behaviour can significantly predict employee creativity. Second, cognitive flexibility plays a partial mediating role in the linkage between leader empowerment behaviour and employee creativity. Thirdly, CFC moderates the relationship between leadership empowerment behaviour and cognitive flexibility. The mediating role of cognitive flexibility underlies the overall moderating effect of CFC on the relationship between leader empowerment behaviour and employee creativity.

We used construal level theory to explain the influence of the mechanism of leader empowerment behaviour on employee creativity. In this manner, this study bridges the gap between theory and practice, as well as enriching the research on leader empowerment behaviour and employee creativity, especially in the Chinese context. Moreover, our study has several practical managerial implications, based on the importance of employee creativity. It inspires the implementation of leader empowerment behaviour, cultivation of employee creativity and introduction of several procedures.

This paper discusses the influential mechanism of leader empowerment behaviour on employee creativity from a new perspective and explains the process of encouraging employee creativity through information-processing methods. It mainly highlights the application of construal level theory to discuss employee creativity and develops a new research frame for employee creativity. Leaders can raise employee creativity through leader empowerment behaviour.

While the number of entrepreneurship education programmes offered around the world is on the rise, research into the assessment of entrepreneurship education programmes is still lacking. The purpose of this paper is to take the stance that entrepreneurship education has to focus on a set of transversal competences aimed at teaching individuals to become more enterprising, and develop a framework and practical proposal for the teaching and assessment of entrepreneurial competences.

The authors followed a three-pronged research design. First, the authors reviewed the literature and practices on the definition of entrepreneurial competences and measures for their assessment and identified a rubric of competences and a set of assessment tools. Second, the authors tested the identified tools to assess entrepreneurial competences through the development of an intensive extra-curricular initiative on entrepreneurship based on a business model challenge. Third, the authors evaluated the outcomes of this experience based on 72 student pre-test and post-test survey responses.

The authors assessed the impact of participation in a business model challenge with regard to five competence areas: positive attitude and initiative; communication and interaction; team-work and collaboration; critical and analytical thinking or problem solving, including risk assessment; creativity and innovation. The authors found no relevant changes across these dimensions, concluding that the mere exposure to the business challenge was not a sufficient condition for stimulating the development of entrepreneurial competences in our sample.

This work provides a relevant contribution to researchers, educators and policymakers by taking an interdisciplinary approach to reviewing previous literature and proposing ways of assessing transversal competences in the context of entrepreneurship education.

The current research review aims to provide a conceptual framework for future research on individual psychological distance in leadership tasks.

Through literature review, the authors developed an intended research framework.

The need of intended framework from theoretical perspective, meta-analysis and situational analysis is presented in this paper. The discussion on a present study about the various aspects of individual perspective, strategic leadership and its link with organizational outcomes are hypothetically aligned in the framework.

Strategic change management is the process of managing change in an organization. Change is critical to measure existing structures in the thoughtful way. Mapping individual behavior change is a difficult task, and organizational goals, objectives and missions are an important element of the learning process. Through this framework, the authors attempt to reach the model.