Search results for "Institution"
showing 10 items of 1168 documents
The early childhood care and development mission and the institutional circuit of evidence
2019
Early childhood care and development has increasingly become a part of the global development agenda. Fueled by a threefold rationale, rooted in development psychology, social economy, and human rights, the arguments for investing in early childhood care and development are virtually unassailable. However, this rationale is somehow at odds with insights developed within the sociology of childhood, emphasizing childhood as a social construction amendable to context and children’s own agency. Inspired by the methodological approach known as institutional ethnography, we explore how development aid workers respond to and enact the early childhood care and development mission. Building on inter…
Creating teacher capacity in Early Childhood Education and Care institutions implementing an authoritative adult style
2017
The being together intervention intends to raise teacher capacity in Norwegian Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC) institutions and promote social and emotional development in preschoolers by implementing an authoritative (warm and predictable) adult style in the institution. An authoritative adult balances between building up high quality interactions with children, while at the same time having a predictable structure with clear norms and social expectations in the learning environment. The purpose of this study was to investigate what helped the ECEC institutions to successfully implement the program principles and core components, and what were the challenges. The staff groups of …
Evening early childhood education and care: Reformulating the institutional culture
2020
The article investigates the ongoing reformulation of the institutional culture of early childhood education and care (ECEC) in Finnish evening ECEC. Educators’ practices in implementing evening ECEC were explored and viewed through the lens of young children’s belonging. Data were collected by observing the evenings of eight children aged 20–36 months in two Finnish centers offering flexibly scheduled ECEC and analyzed using qualitative thematic analysis. Three main themes of educators’ practices were identified: (1) managing a unique and changing social group, (2) fostering homeliness, and (3) maintaining routines and institutional order. While these practices mostly contributed to child-…
Le banche italiane nel “secolo breve”. Riflessioni dalla storia dell’ABI, 1919-1991
2012
This article examines the developments occurred in the Italian banking system during the second half of the 20th century from the point of view of the banker’s major professional association, the Associazione Bancaria Italiana (ABI). Starting from the postwar reconstruction we shall describe ABI’s attitude on the changing trade-off between stability and competition, its ability to cope with the new problems arising from the 1970s crisis, the views expressed and the actions undertaken concerning the reform of the banking system during the 1980 and early1990s. In doing so we shall profit from a huge amount of archival sources emerging from two previous books that the authors published on the …
Economic Degrowth and the Collapse of Institutional Order: Theory and Propositions
2022
Integrating insights from new institutional economics and studies on the collapse of past empires, we sketch a process model that links economic degrowth to the collapse of institutional orders. Our thought experiment starts from emphasizing the importance of institutions and enforcement mechanisms in maintaining a sufficient level of economic activity to sustain public costs. We flip this established logic and elucidate the negative role of economic degrowth in the weakening of the public sector’s ability to enforce institutional rules. Internal and external shocks further shake the stability of the institutional order and, at some point, individuals’ belief in institutional rules and nor…
The institutional pillars of management accounting function
2009
PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to theorize the institutional pillars of management accounting function.Design/methodology/approachThe paper adopts a comparative case study approach.FindingsInstitutional pillars of management accounting are explored on the basis of two longitudinal case studies. Competitive/economic forces and three analytical elements of institutional theory are composing institutions: regulative, normative and cultural‐cognitive pillars. Each element is important, and all of them may work in combination, but they operate through distinctive mechanisms and processes. This paper illustrates how they provide the basis for compliance, order and the legitimacy of not the w…
Examining Benchmark Indicator Systems for the Evaluation of Higher Education Institutions
2009
Higher Education Institutions are undergoing important changes involving the development of new roles and missions, with implications for their structure. Governments and institutions are implementing strategies to ensure the proper performance of universities and several studies have investigated evaluation of universities through the development and use of indicator systems. In this paper, we review some of the systems applied to the OECD countries, with special attention to Spain. We demonstrate the difficulty involved in establishing classification criteria for existing indicators, on which there is currently no consensus.
Mergers in higher education
2015
ABSTRACTIn this special issue of the European Journal of Higher Education, a number of experienced scholars provide a broad picture of the most recent round of mergers involving higher education institutions in Europe and beyond. In doing so, they address issues pertaining to the different phases described above and from various theoretical perspectives and in the light of particular historical trajectories and institutional conditions. The primary aim is to provide both an empirical account of recent developments as well as an initial foundation for more sophisticated and robust conceptual models used to illuminate on the complex phenomenon surrounding mergers in higher education, and, in …
Higher Education and Markets in France
2004
When looking at the place of the market in French higher education, one might be surprised by the distance between the opportunities offered by the legal framework and the actual behaviour of institutions and individuals. It is certainly partly due to a national culture that views education as a public service that needs to be provided through a centralised organisation.
One and two equals three? The third mission of higher education institutions
2015
In modern, knowledge-based societies, universities play an increasingly important role in achieving economic growth and social progress. Their traditional roles and missions are being broadened as to accommodate activities that facilitate engagement with various stakeholder groups. Universities do not want to be regarded as isolated and separated islands from their surrounding communities and have therefore developed internal mechanisms to bridge their activities with the needs and expectations of external actors. In this paper, we take stock of recent scholarly work and ongoing debates surrounding universities’ third mission (TM). Broadly speaking, TM refers to the changing roles and funct…