Suchergebnisse

The nature and role of social housing across the European States is growing more diverse every decade. From the wide range of social housing as a percentage of total housing stock, the many different housing options provided, to the vast array of housing allocation mechanisms and differing levels of equity delivered by such mechanisms, social housing across Europe presents an increasingly complex social challenge. As such a one-size-fits-all solution to these challenges is unlikely to present itself, and researchers are therefore forced to focus on the specifics of a region or state—this is the case with this study. Within the UK, Housing Associations (HAs) have played a fundamental role within successive government social housing policies for at least three decades. However, through a succession of legislative changes, welfare reform and the deregulation of their non-profit social role, HAs have been fundamentally challenged, and are now exposed to competition from private registered providers. This study poses the overarching research question; what role does performance management play in the transition to a competitive hybridised social housing sector? Exploring this question, the paper analyses the effect of this transition through institutional isomorphism and considers specifically how a sample of English HAs sense uncertainty within the social housing sector and respond to the coercive, normative, and mimetic isomorphic pressures at play. This study finds the primary mechanism by which HAs appear to sense and respond to external changes within the sector is through their strategic performance measurement systems and metrics. Social, political, and competitive changes in the sector are 'sensed' as a misalignment within the existing strategic performance metrics, exerting isomorphic pressures on the organisational governance team to respond by realigning the performance metrics with the sensed changes. In this way, we posit that strategic performance measurement is linked to and plays a much more pivotal ...

"The field of management consultancy research has grown rapidly in recent years. Fuelled by the drivers of complexity and uncertainty, a growing number of organizations - both profit and third sector alike - are looking at management consultancy to assist in their aims for development and change. Consultants have become a common feature in organizational change initiatives, involved in both providing advice and in implementing ideas and solutions. However, despite this growing recognition and influence, management consultancy is still often misunderstood or criticized for its lack of theoretical underpinning. The book seeks to address these issues by offering applied theoretical insights from academics that both teach and practice management consultancy. Written by recognized experts in their field, the contributors combine original insights with authoritative analysis. Uniquely, this book identifies emerging themes with critical discourse and provides rich empirical case study evidence to show the reader how management consultancy projects are implemented. Real-world international consultancy projects are featured, as written up as cases featuring organizations from multi-national corporations to the public sector. Written for graduate level managers or those that have practical leadership experience, this book will enable readers to apply management consultancy models beyond a classroom context"--Provided by publisher.

This study aims to develop the theory of knowledge management and organisational performance within a small and medium enterprise (SME) context using action research (AR) involving a higher education institution (HEI) and a SME. The vehicle for the knowledge exchange was Knowledge Transfer Partnerships (KTPs), the United Kingdom's primary mechanism for delivering government funded knowledge transfer to small and medium enterprises (SMEs). KTPs facilitate knowledge exchange from HEIs to SMEs via the recruitment of a graduate plus an academic supervisor from the partnering HEI. The AR study was an award winning KTP and the project deliverable included the implementation of a balanced scorecard for the SME to improve organisational performance. The transfer of knowledge was subsequently fed-back into the university in order to develop a performance framework for measuring the effectiveness of KTP research within the HEI in order to share knowledge and improve effective for other KTP projects.

Purpose
Social entrepreneurship education (SEE) is gaining increasing attention globally. This paper aims to focus on how SEE may be better understood and reconfigured from a Bourdieusian capital perspective with an emphasis on the process of mobilising and transforming social entrepreneurs' cultural, social, economic and symbolic resources.


Design/methodology/approach
Drawing on qualitative research with a sample of social entrepreneurship educators and mentors, the authors generate insights into the significance of challenging assumptions and establishing values and principles and hence that of developing a range of capitals (using the Bourdieusian notion of capital) for SEE.


Findings
The findings highlight the significance of developing a range of capitals and their transformative power for SEE. In this way, learners can develop dispositions for certain forms of capitals over others and transform them to each other in becoming reflexive social agents.


Originality/value
The authors respond to the calls for critical thinking in entrepreneurship education and contribute to the field by developing a reflexive approach to SEE. The authors also make recommendations to educators, who are tasked with implementing such an approach in pursuit of raising the next generations of social entrepreneurs.