Celebrity capital as a strategic asset : implications for new venture strategies

Despite an increase in businesses started by celebrities, we have limited understanding as to how celebrity entrepreneurs benefit new ventures. Drawing on a reputational capital perspective, we develop the notion of celebrity capital and show how it can be used to uniquely differentiate the venture and to overcome liabilities of newness. We discuss how celebrity capital can negatively influence the venture when negative information about the celebrity surfaces and in terms of limiting the scope of the venture. We discuss the different strategic implications of celebrity capital for ventures using celebrity entrepreneurs versus endorsers.

Realising competitive advantage through HRM in New Zealand service industries

An emerging source of competitive advantage for service industries is the knowledge, skills and attitudes of their employees. Indeed, achievement of a 'service quality' culture, considered imperative for competitive advantage in service organisations, supposedly results from the use of best practice human resource management (HRM), and from a strategic approach to their implementation. This paper empirically explores the use of these dimensions of HRM as a source of competitive advantage. It finds high-performing service organisations actively engage best practices across the areas of recruitment and selection, training and development, communication and team working. Evidence of a strategic approach to the implementation of these practices is also found.

Managerial effectiveness for a new millennium in the global higher education sector

With the global tertiary education environment undergoing some of the most rapid changes it has experienced since the 1980s, a technology-driven new millennium is requiring an unprecedented capacity for change on a number of fronts, one of these being the way managers manage. This article discusses some of the new realities facing tertiary education organizations, one of which is a realization that "knowledge capital" is the lifeline of an organization. It ultimately vests in the people whom successful organizations will lead, motivate, develop, and value in a manner sensitive to global trends of convergent social, cultural, and organizational change. This article suggests that the effective leadership of people will return as the touchstone for success, the technological age notwithstanding, and notes recent theory on increased reliance upon organizational integrity in the form of value-based policy and practice. This article draws on management and futurist theory to suggest some of the "flexibility imperatives" in managing the potentially different-looking work force of the future.

Addressing the needs of struggling literacy learners

Think back to your teaching experiences over the past four years. Were there a number of children or adolescents in your classes who seemed to have learning difficulties? What area of their learning seemed to be of greatest concern for these students? Did most of these struggling learners have difficulty with reading? Was expressing their thoughts in writing also a challenge? Did some of these students also have difficulty in listening to and following directions? And did some of these students seem hesitant when asked to speak to the class?

Investigating the influences on attendance and intention to rejoin with inaugural members of a new football team

This study investigated the effects of factors like member satisfaction and social rituals on desirable outcomes such as attendance, intention to rejoin and merchandise sales. This study focuses on the inaugural members of a new team in Australia’s A-League to gain insight into how loyalty develops amongst fans of new sporting organisations. The results show the importance to sports marketers of satisfying members and building ritual behaviour, as both are correlated with all of the positive outcomes investigated here.

Producing new Asian masculinities

An exploration of issues of Asian masculinity in white cultures, integrating film and literary analysis, autobiography and postcolonial theory.

Identifying effective leadership practices for implementing a new mathematics curriculum in Taipei

This study explores successful junior high school principals’ leadership practices for implementing the reformed mathematics curriculum in Taipei. Avolio and Bass’s (2002) full range leadership theory was used to record data through interviews and observations of five Taipei “Grade A” junior high school principals. Findings revealed that specific leadership practices linked to management by exception-active and contingent reward (transaction leadership), and individualised consideration and idealised influence (transformational) were considered effective for implementing reform measures. Ensuring principals are aware of effective measures may further assist reform agendas.

Preservice EFL teachers’ beliefs about teaching writing and learning to teach writing before their practicum : a case study in Vietnam

The standard of English as a Foreign Language (EFL) education has prompted calls for reform to preservice EFL teacher education. Field experiences are central to their professional development and for implementing reform measures. This study aims to examine preservice EFL teachers’ attitudes, needs, and experiences about learning to teach writing in English before their practicum in Vietnamese high schools. An open-ended questionnaire collected data from 97 preservice EFL teachers at the beginning of their final practicum. The data suggested that these preservice EFL teachers were motivated to learn to teach English in general and teaching writing in particular but required mentors to model effective teaching practices and share their teaching experiences. They also needed their mentors to be enthusiastic and supportive, and provide constructive feedback. These findings may assist teacher educators and school mentors for motivating and developing preservice EFL teachers’ practices.

A new look at leadership in collaborative networks : process catalysts

Collaborative networks have come to form a large part of the public sector’s strategy to address ongoing and often complex social problems. The relational power of networks, with its emphasis on trust, reciprocity and mutuality provides the mechanism to integrate previously dispersed and even competitive entities into a collective venture(Agranoff 2003; Agranoff and McGuire 2003; Mandell 1994; Mandell and Harrington 1999). It is argued that the refocusing of a single body of effort to a collective contributes to reducing duplication and overlap of services, maximizes increasingly scarce resources and contributes to solving intractable or 'wicked’problems (Clarke and Stewart 1997). Given the current proliferation of collaborative networks and the fact that they are likely to continue for some time, concerns with the management and leadership of such arrangements for optimal outcomes are increasingly relevant. This is especially important for public sector managers who are used to working in a top-down, hierarchical manner. While the management of networks (Agranoff and McGuire 2001, 2003), including collaborative or complex networks (Kickert et al. 1997; Koppenjan and Klijn 2004), has been the subject of considerable attention, there has been much less explicit discussion on leadership approaches in this context. It is argued in this chapter that the traditional use of the terms ‘leader’ or ‘leadership’ does not apply to collaborative networks. There are no ‘followers’ in collaborative networks or supervisor-subordinate relations. Instead there are equal, horizontal relationships that are focused on delivering systems change. In this way the emergent organizational forms such as collaborative networks challenge older models of leadership. However despite the questionable relevance of old leadership styles to the contemporary work environment, no clear alternative has come along to take its place.

Power over, with and through : another look at micropolitics

Understanding micropolitics has become an important part of understanding leadership and power relations within schools. In this paper we review some of the pertinent literature and writing in the field, particularly as it relates to school leadership. Drawing on a couple of existing models, we present a new model that highlights three central power-based leadership approaches—‘power with’, ‘power through’ and ‘power over’. We put forward two contrasting vignettes that reveal a variety of micropolitical strategies used by school principals in the governance of their schools. These strategies range from favouritism and control at one end to empowerment and collaboration at the other. The vignettes are analysed in the light of the model and micropolitical literature presented in this article.

Further evidence of a relationship between explaining, tracing and writing skills in introductory programming

This paper reports on a replication of earlier studies into a possible hierarchy of programming skills. In this study, the students from whom data was collected were at a university that had not provided data for earlier studies. Also, the students were taught the programming language Python, which had not been used in earlier studies. Thus this study serves as a test of whether the findings in the earlier studies were specific to certain institutions, student cohorts, and programming languages. Also, we used a non–parametric approach to the analysis, rather than the linear approach of earlier studies. Our results are consistent with the earlier studies. We found that students who cannot trace code usually cannot explain code, and also that students who tend to perform reasonably well at code writing tasks have also usually acquired the ability to both trace code and explain code.

New insights into rebound effects : theory and empirical evidence

The main objective of the thesis is to seek insights into the theory, and provide empirical evidence of rebound effects. Rebound effects reduce the environmental benefits of environmental policies and household behaviour changes. In particular, win-win demand side measures, in the form of energy efficiency and household consumption pattern changes, are seen as ways for households and businesses to save money and the environment. However, these savings have environmental impacts when spent, which are known as rebound effects. This is an area that has been widely neglected by policy makers. This work extends the rebound effect literature in three important ways, (1) it incorporates the potential for variation of rebound effects with household income level, (2) it enables the isolation of direct and indirect effects for cases of energy efficient technology adoption, and examines the relationship between these two component effects, and (3) it expands the scope of rebound effect analysis to include government taxes and subsidies. MACROBUTTON HTMLDirect Using a case study approach it is found that the rebound effect from household consumption pattern changes targeted at electricity is between 5 and 10%. For consumption pattern changes with reduced vehicle fuel use, the rebound effect is in the order of 20 to 30%. Higher income households in general are found to have a lower total rebound effect; however the indirect effect becomes relatively more significant at higher household income levels. In the win-lose case of domestic photovoltaic electricity generation, it is demonstrated that negative rebound effects can occur, which can potentially amplify the environmental benefits of this action. The rebound effect from a carbon tax, which occurs due to the re-spending of raised revenues, was found to be in the range of 11-32%. Taxes and transfers between households of different income levels also have environmental implications. For example, a more progressive tax structure, with increased low income welfare payments is likely to increase greenhouse gas emissions. Subsidies aimed at encouraging environmentally friendly consumption habits are also subject to rebound effects, as they constitute a substitution of government expenditure for household expenditure. For policy makers, these findings point to the need to incorporate rebound effects in the environmental policy evaluation process.’

The enactment of the New Basics Project in a special school

This study investigates the impact of the New Basics Project on teachers at a special school for students with intellectual impairments. The study is aimed at exploring the complex nature of the work of special educators as they enact the New Basics curriculum with a particular focus on the teachers’ opinions about challenges that arose for their curriculum, pedagogy and assessment practices. Attention is also paid to how the principal’s leadership supported the enactment of the New Basics in respect to what he did and why he used particular strategies. The nine teachers and their principal were involved in a series of in-depth, semi-structured interviews from one of only three special schools in phase one of the New Basics trial in Queensland, Australia. These interviews produced data from the special educators as they were confronted with a new curriculum that challenged their previous teaching practices. The enactment of the New Basics curriculum occurred within the context of a state-sanctioned mandate to provide alternative programs to those offered in mainstream schools, for students with special needs. This thesis explores these teachers' experiences using critical theory as a basis for analyzing their opinions on issues such as the role of the special educator, tensions between old and new curricula, pedagogical and assessment practices, and connections between the at-school learning experiences for intellectually impaired students and the realities of post-school life. The investigation also examines the leadership conduct of the principal in changing times at the school. The findings suggest that the New Basics has played a significant role in providing structures for developing communities of practice amongst teachers; in supporting special educators to focus more on the educational needs of the students (e.g., literacy, numeracy, financial planning) and less on their medical needs (e.g., toileting, feeding, personal hygiene); and supporting school leadership that empowers and listens critically to teachers as essential components of the successful enactment of curriculum reforms like the New Basics.