Paul J. Davis and William Callahan
This paper aims to explore potential opportunities for corporate learning and development functions to play a strategic leadership role by meeting the professional development…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to explore potential opportunities for corporate learning and development functions to play a strategic leadership role by meeting the professional development needs of company directors.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors conducted an interview with Mr Dmitriy Larionov, an independent director at Kazakhtelecom and Air Astana.
Findings
The interview revealed that, from the perspective of the interviewee, company directors do have important professional development needs. These needs, however, are not easily satisfied and can go unmet.
Practical implications
Learning and development professionals in listed companies can play a heightened strategic and influencing role in corporate governance by better equipping directors to perform their duties well.
Originality/value
Air Astana is a rapidly expanding company in a highly competitive and universally significant industry. Kazakhstan is a new country without a history of private companies. Kazakhstan is one of the world's fastest developing economies.
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Paul J. Davis, Yuliya Frolova and William Callahan
The purpose of this paper is to identify Australian managers’ attitudes and understandings regarding workforce diversity management (WDM) and the practices and incorporation of…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to identify Australian managers’ attitudes and understandings regarding workforce diversity management (WDM) and the practices and incorporation of WDM in organisations.
Design/methodology/approach
Methodology is quantitative. A questionnaire in the form of a self-administered survey instrument was mailed to 650 managers (325 HR managers and 325 other managers) in Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane.
Findings
The research found that workforce diversity is not especially well understood or appreciated; especially by non-HR managers. Organisations appear generally not to prioritise WDM and levels of senior manager engagement with the topic are tentative. Statistical analysis highlighted considerable divergence of opinion across the surveyed group.
Research limitations/implications
As an exploratory study, further research is encouraged to better understand cause and effect relationships pertaining to the findings.
Practical implications
There are implications for HR managers or those in related roles who might design, implement and promote WDM initiatives. There are implications for consultants, employees and senior managers regarding education, awareness and support of diversity objectives.
Originality/value
Addresses a gap in the literature by looking at contemporary attitudes and practices regarding WDM in Australian organisations. Provides the first empirical comparison between HR and other managers on the topic.
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Abstract
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The United States’ population is rapidly aging. As older people require more expensive medical and nursing attention, health-care/nursing costs keep rising, to the extent that…
Abstract
Purpose
The United States’ population is rapidly aging. As older people require more expensive medical and nursing attention, health-care/nursing costs keep rising, to the extent that they are not sustainable. As a result, the USA is faced with an ethical dilemma. While egalitarian ethical principles and the provisions of the American Nurses Association (ANA) code of ethics require the provision of medical/nursing care to everyone regardless of age, severity of disease and productivity, utilitarians view that as impossible. Assuming that provisions ANA’s codes of ethics are the same as ethical principles, this paper aims to discuss the debate between those two sides in detail.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper, viewing the rise of health-care/nursing costs as the cause of the above ethical dilemma, discusses Daniel Callahan’s utilitarian argument that, given the ever-rising health/nursing costs as a percentage of GDP, the USA will be forced to ration health care/nursing on the basis of age. The ethical arguments opposing Callahan’s arguments will also be presented.
Findings
While the debate between those two viewpoints is bond to continue, some writers have tried to find a compromise, a solution by assuming that, through efficiency, health/nursing costs can be lowered, making Callahan’s age-based rationing unnecessary.
Originality/value
This paper is original as it, by including nursing costs as an inseparable component of health-care costs, makes the aforementioned debate applicable to nursing care.
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Examines the history of educational administration in the USA during the Progressive era (1890‐1940). Using Callahan's Education and the Cult of Efficiency as a starting point…
Abstract
Examines the history of educational administration in the USA during the Progressive era (1890‐1940). Using Callahan's Education and the Cult of Efficiency as a starting point, examines school district‐based administrative practices that offered viable alternatives to the business‐oriented, “scientific management” reforms that tended to dominate much of the educational dialogue and innovation of the early twentieth century. Offers cases studies of three superintendents who creatively resisted the ideology of efficiency or who skillfully utilized administrative structures to buttress instructional reforms. Using archival records and other historical sources, first examines Superintendent A.C. Barker in Oakland, California between 1913 and 1918 and Superintendent Charles Chadsey in Denver, Colorado during the years 1907‐1912. Then analyzes the tenure of Jesse Newlon during his superintendency in Denver from 1920 to 1927. Using the conception of “authentic leadership” and the frameworks of the ethics of care, critique, and professionalism, argues that these administrators demonstrated how leaders grounded in notions of scholarly skepticism, democratic engagement, and the compassionate care of children were sometimes able to avoid the excesses of the ideology of “efficiency”.
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Paul T. Begley and Jacqueline A. Stefkovich
In 1962, historian Raymond E. Callahan argued that American educators had allowed themselves to become overly enchanted by Taylorite notions of scientific management and had…
Abstract
In 1962, historian Raymond E. Callahan argued that American educators had allowed themselves to become overly enchanted by Taylorite notions of scientific management and had adopted the techniques of the business‐industrial world, to the detriment of the nation's students. Callahan's Education and the Cult of Efficiency not only offered a new and bold interpretation of the history of education in the twentieth century, but it also coined a phrase that continues to represent the constant struggle faced by educators as they seek to balance high‐quality instructional practices with external calls for accountability that often come from corporate and public leaders. This special issue of the Journal of Educational Administration (JEA) presents a set of articles which explore the theme of “Education, Ethics, and the Cult of Efficiency.” The articles that make up this issue began as papers delivered at the 8th Annual Values and Educational Leadership Conference held at Pennsylvania State University in October 2003. The essence of our message in this: The traditional parameters of managerialism and efficiency focused responses to administrative situations must now be augmented with more creative, sophisticated and morally defensible approaches to leadership.
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A collection of essays by a social economist seeking to balanceeconomics as a science of means with the values deemed necessary toman′s finding the good life and society enduring…
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A collection of essays by a social economist seeking to balance economics as a science of means with the values deemed necessary to man′s finding the good life and society enduring as a civilized instrumentality. Looks for authority to great men of the past and to today′s moral philosopher: man is an ethical animal. The 13 essays are: 1. Evolutionary Economics: The End of It All? which challenges the view that Darwinism destroyed belief in a universe of purpose and design; 2. Schmoller′s Political Economy: Its Psychic, Moral and Legal Foundations, which centres on the belief that time‐honoured ethical values prevail in an economy formed by ties of common sentiment, ideas, customs and laws; 3. Adam Smith by Gustav von Schmoller – Schmoller rejects Smith′s natural law and sees him as simply spreading the message of Calvinism; 4. Pierre‐Joseph Proudhon, Socialist – Karl Marx, Communist: A Comparison; 5. Marxism and the Instauration of Man, which raises the question for Marx: is the flowering of the new man in Communist society the ultimate end to the dialectical movement of history?; 6. Ethical Progress and Economic Growth in Western Civilization; 7. Ethical Principles in American Society: An Appraisal; 8. The Ugent Need for a Consensus on Moral Values, which focuses on the real dangers inherent in there being no consensus on moral values; 9. Human Resources and the Good Society – man is not to be treated as an economic resource; man′s moral and material wellbeing is the goal; 10. The Social Economist on the Modern Dilemma: Ethical Dwarfs and Nuclear Giants, which argues that it is imperative to distinguish good from evil and to act accordingly: existentialism, situation ethics and evolutionary ethics savour of nihilism; 11. Ethical Principles: The Economist′s Quandary, which is the difficulty of balancing the claims of disinterested science and of the urge to better the human condition; 12. The Role of Government in the Advancement of Cultural Values, which discusses censorship and the funding of art against the background of the US Helms Amendment; 13. Man at the Crossroads draws earlier themes together; the author makes the case for rejecting determinism and the “operant conditioning” of the Skinner school in favour of the moral progress of autonomous man through adherence to traditional ethical values.
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Use a nine‐phase process in every consulting relationship.