New governance for higher education institutions:prospects for female university careers and equality law

This paper analyses the reforms in employment conditions at German public universities from the 1990s to the 2000s, considering how these impact on practical equal opportunities between women and men. It concludes that while the so called "new governance" in universities would have offered opportunities to integrate positive measures to increase female participation in research and teaching, these opportunities were missed in most German states.

Knowledge stocks, knowledge flows and innovation: Evidence from matched patents and innovation panel data

Successful innovation depends on knowledge – technological, strategic and market related. In this paper we explore the role and interaction of firms’ existing knowledge stocks and current knowledge flows in shaping innovation success. The paper contributes to our understanding of the determinants of firms’ innovation outputs and provides new information on the relationship between knowledge stocks, as measured by patents, and innovation output indicators. Our analysis uses innovation panel data relating to plants’ internal knowledge creation, external knowledge search and innovation outputs. Firm-level patent data is matched with this plant-level innovation panel data to provide a measure of firms’ knowledge stock. Two substantive conclusions follow. First, existing knowledge stocks have weak negative rather than positive impacts on firms’ innovation outputs, reflecting potential core-rigidities or negative path dependencies rather than the accumulation of competitive advantages. Second, knowledge flows derived from internal investment and external search dominate the effect of existing knowledge stocks on innovation performance. Both results emphasize the importance of firms’ knowledge search strategies. Our results also re-emphasize the potential issues which arise when using patents as a measure of innovation.

Property and Emotions

Relatively little has been written on the connection between property and emotions from a legal perspective, despite the centrality of property in everyday life and the complex relationships that exist between owners and their property. Scholars working in other disciplines have analyzed these links, identifying ‘proprietary’ emotions and corresponding emotional traits. However, little has been mapped onto the field of law. This paper looks at key emotions surrounding property as identified in psychological and, to a lesser extent, sociological literature. After mapping these onto selected areas of property law, it posits the need for a deeper and more collective field of inquiry.

Sports coaching and the law of negligence: implications for coaching practice

The ordinary principles of the law of negligence are applicable in the context of sport, including claims brought against volunteer and professional coaches. Adopting the perspective of the coach, this article intends to raise awareness of the emerging intersection between the law of negligence and sports coaching, by utilising an interdisciplinary analysis designed to better safeguard and reassure coaches mindful of legal liability. Detailed scrutiny of two cases concerning alleged negligent coaching, with complementary discussion of some of the ethical dilemmas facing modern coaches, reinforces the legal duty and obligation of all coaches to adopt objectively reasonable and justifiable coaching practices when interacting with athletes. Problematically, since research suggests that some coaching practice may be underpinned by “entrenched legitimacy” and “uncritical inertia”, it is argued that coach education and training should place a greater emphasis on developing a coach’s awareness and understanding of the evolving legal context in which they discharge the duty of care incumbent upon them.

Bio-fuelling the Hummer? Transdisciplinary Thoughts on Techno-Optimism and Innovation in the Transition from Unsustainability

An overarching aim of this chapter is to offer an informed and critical analysis of ‘techno-optimism’, informed by an explicitly transdisciplinary approach. A transdisciplinary perspective is one in which knowledge production goes beyond the academy to include end non-academic stakeholders and users. In effect it seeks to ‘upstream’ the involvement of non-academic interests in research design and knowledge production, as opposed to limiting those non-academic interests to the dissemination end point stage of research, which is the dominant research model. Techno-optimism is understood as an exaggerated and unwarranted belief in human technological abilities to solve problems of unsustainability while minimising or denying the need for large-scale social, economic and political transformation. More specifically, techno-optimism is the belief that the negative environmental and social costs of high-consumption, affluent, consumer societies and associated ways of life within capitalist orthodox economic growth orientated socio-economic systems, can be solved or eradicated through technological innovation and breakthroughs. Business as usual can be ‘greened’; a capitalist, growth-based economy can be made more ‘resource efficient’, consumerism less ‘resource intensive’ (and maybe a little bit more ethical). Techno-optimism, to be deliberately provocative for a moment, can therefore be described as a ‘biofuel the hummer’ response to the challenges (and opportunities) of the crisis of unsustainability. What I mean by that analogy is the seductive promise and premise of techno-optimism of not questioning or doubting the status quo (the hummer), hence it’s putative (but entirely false) non-political character. The capitalist, consumerist, growth-based socio-economic system is thus removed from critical analysis (usually on the implicit or explicit assumption of either the normative rightness of this system, or on strategic political grounds that it is naive or utopian to envisage widespread support for a non or post-capitalist consumer system). Techno-optimism simply enables a different means (biofuel) to the same ends.

HRM and Innovation: A Multi-level Organizational Learning Perspective

Drawing on the 4I organizational learning framework (Crossan et al., 1999), this article develops a model to explain the multi-level and cross-level relationships between HRM practices and innovation. Individual, team, and organizational level learning stocks are theorized to explain how HRM practices affect innovation at a given level. Feed-forward and feedback learning flows explain how cross-level effects of HRM practices on innovation take place. In addition, we propose that HRM practices fostering individual, team, and organizational level learning should form a coherent system to facilitate the emergence of innovation. The article is concluded with discussions on its contributions and potential future research directions.

Exploring the effects of a universal classroom management training programme on teacher and child behaviour: a group randomised controlled trial and cost analysis

Teachers frequently struggle to cope with conduct problems in the classroom. The aim of this study was to assess the effectiveness of the Incredible Years Teacher Classroom Management Training Programme for improving teacher competencies and child adjustment. The study involved a group randomised controlled trial which included 22 teachers and 217 children (102 boys and 115 girls). The average age of children included in the study was 5.3 years (standard deviation = 0.89). Teachers were randomly allocated to an intervention group (n = 11 teachers; 110 children) or a waiting-list control group (n = 11; 107 children). The sample also included 63 ‘high-risk’ children (33 intervention; 30 control), who scored above the cut-off (>12) on the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire for abnormal socioemotional and behavioural difficulties. Teacher and child behaviours were assessed at baseline and 6 months later using psychometric and observational measures. Programme delivery costs were also analysed. Results showed positive changes in teachers’ self-reported use of positive classroom management strategies (effect size = 0.56), as well as negative classroom management strategies (effect size = −0.43). Teacher reports also highlight improvements in the classroom behaviour of the high-risk group of children, while the estimated cost of delivering the Incredible Years Teacher Classroom Management Training Programme was modest. However, analyses of teacher and child observations were largely non-significant. A need for further research exploring the effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of the Incredible Years Teacher Classroom Management Training Programme is indicated.

Revolution and the ritual year: religious conflict and innovation in Cristero Mexico

This article analyses Catholic responses to persecution of the Church by the Mexican state during Mexico's cristero rebellion (1926–9) and seeks to make a new contribution to the revolt's religious history. Faced with the Calles regime's anticlericalism, the article argues, Mexico's episcopate developed an alternative cultic model premised on a revitalised lay religion. The article then focuses on changes and continuities in lay – clerical relations, and on the new religious powers of the faithful, now empowered to celebrate ‘white’ masses and certain sacraments by themselves. The article concludes that persecution created new spaces for lay religious participation, showing the 1910–40 Revolution to be a period of religious, as well as social, upheaval.

Cross-Border Environmental Governance and EC Law

This article examines the nature and scope of emerging cross-border participatory rights under European Community environmental law. It reviews the legal and political forces that have stimulated the development of such rights and also the specific nature of the rights conferred by three major legislative initiatives: the Community Directives on Environmental Impact Assessment, Integrated Pollution Prevention and Control, and the Water Framework Directive. The article concludes with a case study on Ireland which assesses the likely significance of these cross-border participatory rights for transboundary environmental governance in Ireland.

'National Antiquities' and the Law

National museums, housing â??national antiquities', were a nineteenth-century cultural phenomenon throughout Europe. In the United Kingdom, they afforded the Treasury a means of preserving relics of antiquity claimed as treasure trove. While satisfying the desire of the scientific community for the preservation of archaeological finds, and national sentiment in Scotland and Ireland, Treasury practice undermined the British Museum's eponymous mission. This paper traces the development and legal consequences of the Treasury policy of national allocation of treasure trove, including the discussion in the Museums Committee of 1898â??99 of the â??nationality' of objects and artefacts, and considers the potential wider significance of â??national antiquity' in the context of changing constitutional arrangements in the United Kingdom in the 1920s, and in the future.