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Academic Motherhoodtells the story of over one hundred women who are both professors and mothers and examines how they navigated their professional lives at different career stages. Kelly Ward and Lisa Wolf-Wendel base their findings on a longitudinal study that asks how women faculty on the tenure track manage work and family in their early careers (pre-tenure) when their children are young (under the age of five), and then again in mid-career (post-tenure) when their children are older. The women studied work in a range of institutional settings-research universities, comprehensive universities, liberal arts colleges, and community colleges-and in a variety of disciplines, including the sciences, the humanities, and the social sciences.Much of the existing literature on balancing work and family presents a pessimistic view and offers cautionary tales of what to avoid and how to avoid it. In contrast, the goal ofAcademic Motherhoodis to help tenure track faculty and the institutions at which they are employed \"make it work.\" Writing for administrators, prospective and current faculty as well as scholars, Ward and Wolf-Wendel bring an element of hope and optimism to the topic of work and family in academe. They provide insight and policy recommendations that support faculty with children and offer mechanisms for problem-solving at personal, departmental, institutional, and national levels.

On a global level, COVID-19 has shaken the foundations of every sector. In the South African education context, the traditional methods of teaching, learning, and managing schools changed drastically overnight and management roles and responsibilities were pushed to unprecedented levels. Moreover, the roles of middle leaders and managers took place within a more distributive framework, encouraging school leaders to adopt varying styles of leadership to cope with the demands of COVID-19. For this study, middle leaders constitute departmental heads, grade heads and subject heads. This study utilised a qualitative research design, adopting a case study approach within the interpretivist paradigm. Three departmental heads and seven post level one educators who occupy grade heads/leaders’ roles in a primary school constituted the sample. Semi-structured individual interviews were conducted with participants to gain their understanding of how distributive leadership was practiced during the pandemic. Four themes emerged, namely leadership styles and factors informing the leadership behaviour and leadership growth of middle leaders and managers in schools; middle leaders’ and managers’ perceptions of distributive leadership and the responsibilities of the different stakeholders; the impact of COVID-19 on distributive leadership as perceived by middle leaders and managers; and the advantages and disadvantages of distributive leadership practices. The study recommends that School Management Teams (SMTs) involve middle leaders and managers to a greater degree to secure an effective ‘buy-in’ to the concept of distributive leadership and that middle managers offer opportunities for others to lead, by developing leadership-specific courses for them. SMTs must also ensure that individuals have a stable working environment where their psychological, sociological, and emotional needs are respected, fulfilled, and validated during any pandemic.

The aim of this study was to identify key challenges of practice that departmental heads (DHs) face during their transition from a teacher to their DH role. The study was based on Bridges’ transition theory. The researcher employed a qualitative research methodology and interviewed 15 DHs working in the Department of Basic Education’s Tshwane South district. A thematic analysis of the collected data showed that the DHs experienced four main challenges during the transition process: negative change in teachers’ attitudes and behaviours, a lack of management/ leadership skills, a lack of subject knowledge and heavy workloads and time constraints. Based on the above findings, the researcher concluded that transitioning from teacher to DH is more difficult than meets the eye. These findings imply that policymakers, researchers, school principals and teachers should work together to minimise challenges and ensure a smooth transition to the DH role for newly appointed DHs.

The unplanned expansion of conventional agriculture resulted in biodiversity loss and ecosystem degradation. Agroforestry systems (AFS) have emerged as a promising alternative to promote sustainable land use systems (SLUS) in tropical regions. This study explores the potential for scaling out SLUS from localized interventions to broader landscape-level applications in Colombian cacao agroforestry systems (CAFS). We employ a multi-level framework, integrating qualitative and quantitative data from primary and secondary sources. We apply text mining, cluster analysis, and principal component analysis. First, we identify the interconnections among agro-ecological, biophysical, economic, social, institutional, and political factors influencing the scaling out of SLUS in cacao farming in two municipalities located in conflict-affected Colombian departments. Secondly, we conduct a national quantitative exploratory analysis, grouping similar departments based on socioeconomic and biophysical data from official sources. This analysis provides the foundation for the design of regional typologies and an adaptive pathway for the scaling out of SLUS in cacao farming. This pathway encompasses five distinct departmental groups. Our findings highlight the need for a landscape-based approach that is sensitive to regional socio-cultural and institutional nuances. The analysis reveals that key variables, including land availability for agricultural use, water use risk level, deforestation, social conflict, land tenure informality, and agricultural productivity, influence the successful scaling out process across diverse regions. This study advocates for a collaborative approach that links scientific insights with practical initiatives co-created at the regional level, thereby empowering communities to design pathways for scaling out SLUS across Colombia.

On a global level, COVID-19 has shaken the foundations of every sector. In the South African education context, the traditional methods of teaching, learning, and managing schools changed drastically overnight and management roles and responsibilities were pushed to unprecedented levels. Moreover, the roles of middle leaders and managers took place within a more distributive framework, encouraging school leaders to adopt varying styles of leadership to cope with the demands of COVID-19. For this study, middle leaders constitute departmental heads, grade heads and subject heads. This study utilised a qualitative research design, adopting a case study approach within the interpretivist paradigm. Three departmental heads and seven post level one educators who occupy grade heads/leaders’ roles in a primary school constituted the sample. Semi-structured individual interviews were conducted with participants to gain their understanding of how distributive leadership was practiced during the pandemic. Four themes emerged, namely leadership styles and factors informing the leadership behaviour and leadership growth of middle leaders and managers in schools; middle leaders’ and managers’ perceptions of distributive leadership and the responsibilities of the different stakeholders; the impact of COVID-19 on distributive leadership as perceived by middle leaders and managers; and the advantages and disadvantages of distributive leadership practices. The study recommends that School Management Teams (SMTs) involve middle leaders and managers to a greater degree to secure an effective ‘buy-in’ to the concept of distributive leadership and that middle managers offer opportunities for others to lead, by developing leadership-specific courses for them. SMTs must also ensure that individuals have a stable working environment where their psychological, sociological, and emotional needs are respected, fulfilled, and validated during any pandemic.

This book poses two pertinent questions: First, if a European Executive Order is emerging, how can we empirically see it? Second, if a European Executive Order is emerging, how can we explain everyday decision‐making processes within it? The goal of this book is twofold: First, it identifies key institutional components of an emergent European Executive Order. The nucleus of this Order is the European Commission. The Commission, however, is increasingly supplemented by a mushrooming parallel administration of EU‐level agencies and EU committees. This book provides fresh empirical survey and interview data on the everyday decision‐making behaviour, role perceptions, and identities among European civil servants who participate within these institutions. In addition, this book reveals how an emergent European Executive Order profoundly penetrates the domestic branch of executive government. Secondly, this book claims and empirically substantiates that an emergent European Executive Order is a compound executive order balancing a limited set of key decision‐making dynamics. One message of this book is that an emergent European Executive Order consists of a compound set of supranational, departmental, epistemic, and intergovernmental decision‐making dynamics. Arguably, a compound European Executive Order transforms the inherent Westphalian order to the extent that intergovernmentalism is transcended and supplemented by a multidimensional mix of supranational, departmental, and/or epistemic dynamics. This book also theoretically explores conditions under which these decision‐making dynamics gain prevalence. It is argued that the decision‐making dynamics evolving within an emergent European Executive Order is conditioned by the formal organization of its composite parts and by the social interaction patterns that emerge among the civil servants. Political processes and political systems can neither be adequately understood nor explained without including the organization dimension(s) of executive orders.

There is growing interest, worldwide, in the link between education systems and the production of skills that are valued in the labor market. With growth stagnating and unemployment soaring in much of the world, educators are being asked to focus more on producing skills that feed into labor productivity and support the sustainable growth of employment and incomes. This timely volume contributes important new findings on the dynamics of education systems and labor market outcomes in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC). It analyzes an important recent shift in labor market trends in LAC: the first decade of the 21st century has witnessed a marked decline in the earnings premia for university and secondary education. This, in turn, is contributing to reduced income inequality across the region. The recent trend contrasts with the sharp rise in tertiary earnings premia that was observed in the 1990s and that helped to reinforce high levels of income inequality in the region at that time. The authors recommend that, having achieved very large increases in secondary and tertiary enrollment, the region should now focus on improving the quality of its education systems and the pertinence of education curricula for the needs of the labor market. At age 15, the learning achievement of the average Latin American student still lags two years behind his or her Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) contemporary. The study opens up an important agenda for future research. While the evidence presented on the trends in education earnings premia is clear, the conclusions about the causes and significance of those trends are largely based on suggestive evidence for a limited number of countries, and are not definitive because of data limitations. The findings call for further in-depth analysis of the nature of skill mismatches, to inform policies that can strengthen the region's future economic growth by enhancing the productivity and earnings potential of the workforce.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the impact of antecedent factors on business level strategies of Nigerian agro-based firms. The study made use of survey method over one hundred and ninety-three respondents. Pearson's correlation and regression analysis were used to analyze the data obtained. The existing relationship stemming from the results revealed that top management factor, organizational system, and departmental connectivity are important antecedent factors that determine the success or otherwise of strategic orientation dimensions. The study recommends that the calibre of the top management personnel and the internal cohesion between departments should be considered a critical variable in the adoption of particular orientation.

This paper empirically examines the effect on wages in Mexico of Mexican emigration to the United States, using data from the Mexican and United States censuses from 1970-2000. The main result in the paper is that emigration has a strong and positive effect on Mexican wages. There is also evidence for increasing wage inequality in Mexico due to emigration. Simple welfare calculations based on a labor demand-supply framework suggest that the aggregate welfare loss to Mexico due to emigration is small. However, there is a significant distributional impact between labor and other factors.