A preferred vision for administering secondary schools : a reflective essay

An effective administrator has a passion for assisting children in their educational growth. Administrators strive for a quality, equitable and applicable education for all children. Leadership is developed from the core values held by the individual. Values that are essential for a distinguished leader are integrity and honesty. Respected administrators have established positive working relationships with all members of the learning community, and they challenge each individual to achieve their fullest potential

Communication competence in cross-cultural business interactions

What does the future hold for the theory and practice of management? What role, if any, is there for organisational communication in these deliberations? Exactly which aspects of communication contribute centrally to the core of corporate practice? This book addresses itself to these and other key issues. In this chapter our objective is to contextualise the book by examining a number of areas central to this overall ambition. We look at the business context in which most organisations now work. Many if not all are under enormous external pressure. The agenda faced by managers is crowded to breaking point. These pressures sometimes see organisations fragment rather than cohere. A primary focus on the bottom line has often elbowed other considerations, including communication, to the sidelines. In the process, the theory and practice of management has entered into crisis. Many aspects of this crisis are explored in this book, and we showcase some of the main themes in the present chapter. We explore whether organisational communication makes any difference to how organisations function and how their internal relationships are managed. Recent years have seen a voluminous research literature into the human dimensions of organisational functioning. Communication has contributed to this, directly and indirectly. Our discussion of these issues does not presume that all members of organisations share a common set of interests and a readily agreed set of priorities or goals - what some researchers would describe as a 'unitarist' or 'functionalist' bias. Rather, it is to emphasise that while many management theorists have been developing inclusive agendas of involvement, participation and empowerment, most management practice has been marching to a different drum, and in the opposite direction. We discuss precisely what we mean by the terms 'communication' in general, and 'organisational communication' in particular. Our intention is to alert readers at the outset to the themes that they will find in the chapters to follow. Contributors to this volume repeatedly discuss the communications implications of issues that have been deemed vital to the theory and practice of management. It is essential that readers appreciate the full range of issues implied by any discussion of communication, the better to grasp their full implications. We summarise some key debates in the field concerning the parameters of organisation science and organisational communication. Thus, we acknowledge that there is no one agreed agenda guiding communication research, or a single theoretical paradigm that is employed when communication processes are analysed. For example, some researchers adopt a critical management perspective, in which a principal concern is to explore relationships of power and domination. Others pursue a more positivistic agenda, characterised by a search for causal explanations of observable phenomenon. Readers will find a variety of approaches in the text, and are alerted here to some of the main issues involved. Clearly, therefore, this book is not intended as an introductory text on organisational communication or management. While we outline some basic principles of communication in this chapter, the main thrust of the book is to explore the brutal dilemmas that now confront organisations daily, and to illuminate many of the debates engulfing the field from the often neglected perspective of communication studies

Growing Pennsylvania's High-Tech Economy: Choosing Effective Investments

Compares Pennsylvania's high-tech economic development incentives, programs, and taxes with those of six competitor states. Includes case studies, program summaries, and analyses using a proprietary model and database. Makes policy recommendations

The double-edged sword of exemplar similarity

We investigate how a firm’s positioning relative to category exemplars shapes security analysts’ evaluations. Employing a two-stage model of evaluation (initial screening and subsequent assessment), we propose that exemplar similarity enhances a firm’s recognizability and legitimacy, increasing the likelihood that it passes the initial screening stage and attracts analyst coverage. However, exemplar similarity may also prompt unfavorable comparisons with exemplar firms, leading to lower analyst recommendations in the assessment stage. We further argue that category coherence, distinctiveness, and exemplar typicality influence the impact of exemplar similarity on firm evaluation. Leveraging Natural Language Processing (NLP) techniques to analyze a sample of 7,603 US public firms from 1997 to 2022, we find robust support for our predictions. By highlighting the intricate role of strategic positioning vis-àvis category exemplars in shaping audience evaluations, our findings have important implications for research on positioning relative to category exemplars, category viability, optimal distinctiveness and security analysts

The Market That Wasn't: the Non-emergence of the Online Grocery Category

We examine the non-emergence of a potential new market category. In the late 1990s the entrepreneurial firms that attempted to sell groceries online attracted significant resources, made meaningful technological advancements and generated immense publicity, yet online grocery retail still failed to emerge as a stand-alone market category. Drawing on multiple primary and secondary data sources, we elaborate on existing frameworks of category emergence to investigate how the social construction of a market category offers a partial explanation for category non-emergence. Our explanations are rooted in the instability and contestation of the underlying beliefs, logics, and bases for legitimacy that can typify an emerging market’s focal actors and audiences. Our findings suggest that under such conditions of instability and contestation, if a core identity frame fails to emerge for the category as a whole, then in spite of significant advances in other areas, a new market category may still fail to emerge

Legitimate to whom? The challenge of audience diversity and new venture legitimacy

We examine how entrepreneurs manage new venture legitimacy judgments across diverse audiences, so as to appear legitimate to the different audience groups that provide much needed financial resources for venture survival and growth. To do so, we first identify and describe the different mechanisms by which entrepreneurs can establish new venture legitimacy across diverse audiences. We then account for the institutional logics that characterize different new venture audience groups, and use this as a basis for uncovering how and why the legitimacy criteria for a new technology venture may vary depending on the audience. We then consider how leaders of entrepreneurial ventures may use framing as a means to manage legitimacy judgments across various audiences, and thereby improve their chances of accessing critical financial resources for venture survival and growth

Managing grey clays : to maximise production and sustainability

This bulletin discusses the identification, understanding and management of grey clay soils in the south-west of Western Australia.https://researchlibrary.agric.wa.gov.au/bulletins/1033/thumbnail.jp

Management to improve soil productivity and maximise lateral infiltration in permanent bed-furrow irrigation systems

The practice of conservation agriculture has been accepted for some time as conventional wisdom for improving soil conditions and raising the soil organic carbon levels of cropping land. This has been complemented over the past 10 years by controlled traffic agriculture, which has further improved soil management practices by almost eliminating compaction as a form of soil degradation. Not withstanding the improved soil conditions that result from the practice of controlled traffic conservation agriculture, soils minimally tilled by such practices are still subject to consolidation through wetting and drying cycles. In this paper we report on a technique that further improves on these conservative soil management practices. This technique loosens soil at depth without any inversion, and we examine the consequences this has on the proliferation and distribution of roots, the contents and distributions of soil organic carbon and total soil nitrogen, the productivity of cropping soils and the lateral infiltration of irrigation water in permanent bed-furrow systems. Results are drawn from experimental sites in Western Australia, Queensland and Pakistan

Assessment of Critical Habitats for Recovering the Chesapeake Bay Atlantic Sturgeon Distinct Population Segment

The states of Virginia and Maryland along with Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU), Virginia Institute of Marine Science (VIMS) and University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science (UMCES) partnered to assess critical habitat for recovering the Chesapeake Bay Atlantic sturgeon (Acipenser oxyrinchus oxyrinchus) distinct population segment. The primary objectives were to assess reproductive habitat in the James River, nursery habitat in the James and York Rivers and the degree of dependence of those populations to habitat in the Chesapeake Bay

The City Lost and Found : nouvelles perspectives sur la représentation urbaine et l’activisme entre 1960 et 1980

Dans les années 1960 et 1970, la ville était en crise. Les bâtiments étaient en proie aux flammes. Des autoroutes gigantesques menaçaient d’éventrer des quartiers animés. Les citoyens descendaient dans la rue pour manifester. Pour résumer la situation, l’avenir de la ville semblait plus qu’incertain. Que l’on consulte les articles du magazine Life ou les rapports municipaux, ces décennies ont été marquées par l’essor de forces menaçant de détruire le tissu social et physique des villes améric..