School business administrators must be both business managers and educators. As the school district's chief financial officer, the school business administrator must have strong communication and interpersonal skills. Spheres of involvement include working with school staff, parents, the district office, town officials and committees, vendors, and…

Examines the role of physical surroundings and artifacts and how they contribute to the knowledge work occurring there, based on preliminary analysis of data collected in interviews and observations of a research group over a four-month period. General issues of the interaction between information work and environment can be revealed and applied…

University department heads in the United States and Australia function under increased uncertainty and stress: diverse student populations; funding shortages; demands for quality; downsizing; balancing academic/administrative roles. Article examines environmental pressures on these administrators explores strategies department heads in the two…

Suggests ways directors can create a climate to reduce and resolve conflict, including assessing the work environment, improving communication, understanding different personalities involved, and understanding the negotiation process. Applies the process to particular scenarios of early childhood staff conflict. Asserts that how directors deal…

Provides an overview of issues in the literacy policy field from a social practices perspective. Outlines a central dilemma in both theory and practice in adult literacy work: that practice theory has not impacted on literacy policy in large parts of the world. Suggests there is an ever-widening gap between literacies of everyday life and the…

Although there are thousands of studies investigating work and job design, existing measures are incomplete. In an effort to address this gap, the authors reviewed the work design literature, identified and integrated previously described work characteristics, and developed a measure to tap those work characteristics. The resultant Work Design…

Research shows that stability is one component of quality child care. We investigate the understudied phenomenon of the stability of child-care facilities over time, focusing on the province of British Columbia, Canada. Although net figures show growth in the number of providers between 1997 and 2001, they obfuscate a dramatic level of closure…

Purpose: Turnover in nursing homes is a widespread problem adversely affecting care quality. Using complexity theory, we tested the effect of administrative climate, communication patterns, and the interaction between the two on turnover, controlling for facility context. Design and Methods: Perceptions of administrative climate and communication…

This article describes forms of educational leadership observed as part of an evaluation of the Transforming School Workforce Pilot Pathfinder Project in England commissioned by the UK Government. The 32 Pilot Schools made interventions in organizational practice in ways that required them to think differently about leadership. Changes in the…

Against the backdrop of training provision in the apartheid era and a description of the promulgation of a new skills development regime post-1994, this article considers the status and distribution of enterprise training in contemporary South Africa. It is found that reasonable progress is being made with training in large and medium-sized firms…

This paper presents findings from Stage 4 of the Griffith Graduate Project. Graduates from three Schools within Griffith University were surveyed to determine their perceptions of the contributions that the learning contexts of university, work placement and post-graduation employment made to the development of their generic skills. All graduates…

This article about workplace learning examines the relationship between, firstly, individual learners positions and dispositions, and secondly, their working and learning within the workplace community and practices. Drawing on research with secondary school teachers, it presents case study accounts of two teachers from the same school to…

In the midst of deep transformation in the world economy, women have new problems, and still face hurdles that prevent their full and equitable participation in the labour market. Unceasing economic globalisation and the boom in service industries have increased women's employment, despite the pressure to reduce public sector spending and the…

A company's college recruitment practices, as well as its socialization processes for graduates once they have joined the organization, can be improved when there is understanding of college graduates' experience during the first year of employment. This study recorded the experiences of eight college graduates who were employed by a medical…

In the current career climate characterized by change and turbulence, employees may demonstrate limited organizational commitment to their employers. Rousseau (1998) suggests that two key ways to elicit loyalty from employees today are to reinforce perceptions of organizational membership and demonstrate organizational care and support for…