“The Click-Clack of Her Heels and the Jingle of Her Keys”: Exploring the Tensions in the Leadership of a Successful Turnaround Principal

2017 ◽  
Vol 27 (4) ◽  
pp. 491-520
Author(s):  
Ulrich C. Reitzug ◽  
Kimberly Kappler Hewitt

This qualitative case study explores the practices and tensions of being an effective principal in a turnaround school through an in-depth analysis of one principal who has been successful in several turnaround settings. Although principals have long been cited as foundational to a school's success, being the principal of a turnaround school is a significantly different enterprise than being a principal of a non-turnaround school. Newly appointed turnaround principals are expected not only to generate significant improvement in achievement in schools that have been low-achieving for many years, but to do so in a short period of time. To gain insight into the leadership practices of a principal who was successful in accomplishing school turnaround, we conducted interviews with 21 of the principal's current and past colleagues, observed her in practice, analyzed documents related to her leadership, and interviewed her three times. In this report, we describe her leadership practice and conclude that it was characterized by four dynamic tensions that resulted in the turnaround of the schools she led: • The tension between focusing on mission and focusing on personal connection; • The tension between high expectations and high trust and respect; • The tension between strong principal presence and strong staff presence; and • The tension between disrupting complacency and continuity. We conclude by arguing that a key to effective practice for turnaround principals lies in their creating ongoing dynamic tensions in their schools.

2021 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Azelia Machsari Haqq ◽  
Yohanna M.L. Gultom

Purpose This study aims to explore the reasons behind the lengthy delays in completing a single public-private partnership (PPP) project in Indonesia and investigates how the transaction costs play a significant role in hindering the project’s success. Design/methodology/approach To broaden insight into the transaction cost theory, the authors used a single case study approach to provide a more in-depth analysis of a context whose complexity can be fully explored. As the primary data sources, 16 face-to-face semi-structured interviews were conducted with the stakeholders directly involved in the project’s initiation, design and execution. Findings This case study demonstrates that transaction cost issues, both political and economic, play a significant role. This study has identified four main problems associated with transaction costs hindering project success, namely, executing agencies’ lack of knowledge and experience, lack of coordination for such a complex governance structure that links too many stakeholders and the financial and political risk that increase the uncertainty and public distrust. Research limitations/implications This study contributes mainly to the PPP and transaction costs economics literature, providing empirical evidence on why major PPP projects may fail to be procured. The Greater Bandung waste to energy (WTE) Project case demonstrates that transaction costs, both political and economic, have played a significant role in the lengthy delay of the PPP project. Practical implications As the project involves many transaction cost issues, mapping the failure factors at the project sites can significantly contribute to the practitioners/stakeholders involved in the PPP WTE projects. Therefore, this study provides a lesson to the policymakers at all levels interested in PPPs to consider the issues of transaction costs related to the PPP projects. It can be used as guidance as well as a reference for future PPP WTE projects in Indonesia. Social implications Mapping the failure factors also signifying the response of the public in the PPP WTE projects undertaken. As the citizens become more rule-conscious and rights-conscious, they demand the opportunity to participate in creating rules and project plans. If the project failed to consult with affected communities and undermined democratic accountability, the angry citizens will confront the government to cancel the project. Therefore, political and economic influences for public attitude play significant roles in making the PPP WTE projects successful. Originality/value This study provides insight into the transaction cost issues that have hindered the completion of Indonesia’s PPP WTE project over the past 15 years. Additionally, the project feasibility analysis should include an understanding of transaction costs for partnering in PPP.


Romanticism ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 25 (1) ◽  
pp. 69-80
Author(s):  
Ruth Knezevich

The genre of annotated verse represents an under-explored form of transporting romanticism. In annotated, locodescriptive poems like those in Anna Seward's Llangollen Vale, readers are invited to read not only the spatiality of the landscapes depicted in the verse but also the landscape of the page itself. Seward's poems, with their focus on understanding geographical, political, and historical spaces both real and imaginary, provide geocritical insight into poetic productions of the early Romantic era. Likewise, geocriticism offers a fresh and useful – even necessary – analytic approach to such poems. I adopt Anna Seward as a case study in annotated verse and argue that attending to the materiality and paratextuality of her work allows us to access the complexities of her poetry and prose as well as her position within the wider framework of transporting Romanticism.


Somatechnics ◽  
2012 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 263-283 ◽  
Author(s):  
Svenja J. Kratz

Abstract: Presented from an ArtScience practitioner's perspective, this paper provides an overview of Svenja Kratz's experience working as an artist within the area of cell and tissue culture at QUT's Institute of Health and Biomedical Innovation (IHBI). Using The Absence of Alice, a multi-medium exhibition based on the experience of culturing cells, as a case study, the paper gives insight into the artist's approach to working across art and science and how ideas, processes, and languages from each discipline can intermesh and extend the possibilities of each system. The paper also provides an overview of her most recent artwork, The Human Skin Equivalent/Experience Project, which involves the creation of personal jewellery items incorporating human skin equivalent models grown from the artist's skin and participant cells. Referencing this project, and other contemporary bioart works, the value of ArtScience is discussed, focusing in particular on the way in which cross-art-science projects enable an alternative voice to enter into scientific dialogues and have the potential to yield outcomes valuable to both disciplines.


Author(s):  
Jifeng Chen ◽  
Peilin Song ◽  
Thomas M. Shaw ◽  
Franco Stellari ◽  
Lynne Gignac ◽  
...  

Abstract In this paper, we propose a new methodology and test system to enable the early detection and precise localization of Time-Dependent-Dielectric-Breakdown (TDDB) occurrence in Back-End-of-Line (BEOL) interconnection. The methodology is implemented as a novel Integrated Reliability Test System (IRTS). In particular, through our methodology and test system, we can easily synchronize electrical measurements and emission microscopy images to gather more accurate information and thereby gain insight into the nature of the defects and their relationship to chip manufacturing steps and materials, so that we can ultimately better engineer these steps for higher reliable systems. The details of our IRTS will be presented along with a case study and preliminary analysis results.


Author(s):  
Kaye Chalwell ◽  
Therese Cumming

Radical subject acceleration, or moving students through a subject area faster than is typical, including skipping grades, is a widely accepted approach to support students who are gifted and talented. This is done in order to match the student’s cognitive level and learning needs. This case study explored radical subject acceleration for gifted students by focusing on one school’s response to the learning needs of a ten year old mathematically gifted student. It provides insight into the challenges, accommodations and approach to radical subject acceleration in an Australian school. It explored the processes and decisions made to ensure that a gifted student’s learning needs were met and identified salient issues for radical subject acceleration. Lessons learned from this case study may be helpful for schools considering radical acceleration.


2018 ◽  
Vol 35 (2) ◽  
pp. 5-29
Author(s):  
JESRINA ANN XAVIER ◽  
EDMUND TERENCE GOMEZ

This article investigates changes in the conduct of ethnic enterprises followingthe emergence of a new generation of owners with varying class resources andas market conditions transform. The case study method is used to examinethe impact of changing class resources and market conditions on ethnicallybasedenterprises, exploring the effects of generational transitions among smallIndian owned companies in the food industry in Malaysia. The results providean insight into key changes in the evolution of Indian owned enterprises. Theyindicate that changes in class resources and market conditions have enabledIndian owned food-based companies to alter their products to fit a largermarket, while responding to the demands of a rapidly modernizing society.


2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Petronis ◽  
◽  
Vincent Twomey ◽  
William McCarthy ◽  
Craig MaGee
Keyword(s):  

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-26
Author(s):  
Nóra Veszprémi

Abstract After the collapse of the Habsburg Empire and the sanctioning of new national borders in 1920, the successor states faced the controversial task of reconceptualizing the idea of national territory. Images of historically significant landscapes played a crucial role in this process. Employing the concept of mental maps, this article explores how such images shaped the connections between place, memory, and landscape in Hungary and Czechoslovakia. Hungarian revisionist publications demonstrate how Hungarian nationalists visualized the organic integrity of “Greater Hungary,” while also implicitly adapting historical memory to the new geopolitical situation. As a counterpoint, images of the Váh region produced in interwar Czechoslovakia reveal how an opposing political agenda gave rise to a different imagery, while drawing on shared cultural traditions from the imperial past. Finally, the case study of Dévény/Devín/Theben shows how the idea of being positioned “between East and West” lived on in overlapping but politically opposed mental maps in the interwar period. By examining the cracks and continuities in the picturesque landscape tradition after 1918, the article offers new insight into the similarities and differences of nation-building processes from the perspective of visual culture.


Buildings ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (6) ◽  
pp. 260
Author(s):  
James Ellis ◽  
David John Edwards ◽  
Wellington Didibhuku Thwala ◽  
Obuks Ejohwomu ◽  
Ernest Effah Ameyaw ◽  
...  

This research explores the failure of competitively tendered projects in the UK construction industry to procure the most suited contractor(s) to conduct the works. Such work may have equal relevance for other developed nations globally. This research seeks to teach clients and their representatives that “lowest price” does not mean “best value”, by presenting a case study of a successfully negotiated tender undertaken by a small-to-medium enterprise (SME) contractor; SME studies are relatively scant in academic literature. By applying the “lessons learnt” principle, this study seeks to improve future practice through the development of a novel alternative procurement option (i.e., negotiation). A mixed philosophical stance combining interpretivism and pragmatism was used—interpretivism to critically review literature in order to form the basis of inductive research to discuss negotiation as a viable procurement route, and pragmatism to analyse perceptions of tendering and procurement. The methods used follow a three-stage waterfall process including: (1) literature review and pilot study; (2) quantitative analysis of case study data; and (3) qualitative data collection via a focus group. Our research underscores the need to advise clients and their representatives of the importance of understanding the scope of works allowed within a tender submission before discounting it based solely on price. In addition, we highlight the failings of competitive tendering, which results in increased costs and project duration once the works commence on site. These findings provide new contemporary insight into procurement and tendering in the construction industry, with emphasis on SME contractors, existing relationships, and open-book negotiation. This research illustrates the adverse effects of early cost estimates produced without first securing a true understanding of project buildability and programming. Our work concludes with a novel insight into an alternative procurement option that involves early SME contractor involvement in an open-book environment, without the need for a third-party cost control.


2015 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 74-86
Author(s):  
Paul Custance ◽  
Keith Walley ◽  
Gaynor Tate ◽  
Goksel Armagan

The purpose of the article is to provide insight into care farming and the role that it may play in agriltural multifunctionality. The paper outlines three case studies of care farming in the UK to compare and contrast the roles that such organizations may play in multifunctional agriculture. Although the work has the obvious limitation of being based on case-study care farms that are based in the UK, the findings are sufficiently generic to serve as valuable learning material for those interested in the subject and located anywhere in the world. The main finding from this study is that care farming can take many different forms but still contribute to agricultural multifunctionality. The study also confirms the important roles that economic support and favourable legislation play in successful care farming. The paper concludes that care farming is a legitimate form of agricultural multifunctionality but reminds those interested in setting up or promoting care farms of the need for a supportive economic and legislative environment. The paper provides contemporary insight into the concept of care farming as a form of agricultural multifunctionality. A number of generic points are made that should be of value to an international audience of academics researching in this area as well as students studying care farming and agricultural multifunctionality, farmers considering diversifying into care farming and politicians working to create a political and economic environment that may support care farms.


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