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Presentation inthe More Than Our Rank community call on April 17, 2023.

University rankings have led to the following paradox. On one hand, global and national university rankings have an increasing impact on scientific research and higher education. On the other hand, a growing number of researchers have argued that university rankings are biased and methodologically flawed as well as documented their unintended consequences that are counterproductive to education and research activities in universities. In this article, I combine sociological and cognitive perspectives to develop a theoretical framework for explaining this paradox. The theoretical framework has four interrelated parts. The first is a distinction between three temporal stages through which university rankings commensurate universities. The second consists of an account of the social mechanisms through which university rankings generate reactive outcomes that tend to transform universities instead of just measuring their quality. The third is a league table metaphor that links the conceptual domain of team sports and the conceptual domain of universities and, I argue, provides a cognitive mechanism that shapes how many extra-academic actors, such as prospective students and policymakers, understand the results of university rankings. The fourth focuses on the affordances of the published league tables of university rankings that many extra-academic actors use for outsourcing part of their decision-making to the league tables. As a whole, this framework allows us to understand how the interrelated and materially mediated actions of different groups of actors give rise to and sustain the paradox of university rankings.

We study an alternative approach to determine the final league table in football competitions with a premature ending. For several countries, a premature ending of the 2019/2020 football season has occurred due to the COVID-19 pandemic. We propose a model-based method as a possible alternative to the use of the incomplete standings to determine the final table. This method measures the performance of the teams in the matches of the season that have been played and predicts the remaining non-played matches through a paired-comparison model. The main advantage of the method compared to the incomplete standings is that it takes account of the bias in the performance measure due to the schedule of the matches in a season. Therefore, the resulting ranking of the teams based on our proposed method can be regarded as more fair in this respect. A forecasting study based on historical data of seven of the main European competitions is used to validate the method. The empirical results suggest that the model-based approach produces more accurate predictions of the true final standings than those based on the incomplete standings.

The existence of home advantage (HA) has been found in a variety of team sports including football. There is a paucity of research on the relationship between team ability and HA in domestic football leagues and the findings of previous studies are inconclusive. Using longitudinal data from the top four football divisions in England, this study investigates the influence of team ability on the HA of teams. The data collected for this study spans 24 seasons from 1995/96 to 2018/19 and includes 48,864 matches from the English Premier League (n = 9120), the Championship (n = 13,248), League One (n = 13,248) and League Two (n = 13,248). Team ability was interpreted in two ways: (1) the division in which teams play and (2) their league table position within each division. For both the divisional and positional analysis, HA was calculated as the ratio of home points to total points achieved by teams in each season under review. Evidence of a statistically significant HA was found in all four divisions and for teams of all abilities within each division. Small but statistically significant differences in HA were observed between divisions and between high, moderate and low ability teams within divisions.

The paper suggests a new approach to performance evaluation of universities in Russia and worldwide based on aggregation of the results of ten global rankings and the Database of External Quality Assurance Results (DEQAR). The method of league analysis (MetALeague) allows the authors to integrate the diverse results of ranking and evaluation regardless of considerable variations in ranking methodology and indicators. As a result of MetALeague integration, the Global Aggregated Ranking of higher education institutions has been made. The paper analyses the global rankings and the position of Russian HEIs in these rankings. The authors have also analyzed the positions of countries based on the number of HEIs included in the Global Aggregated Ranking. The due consideration of research results, according to the authors, can propel the leading Russian universities to higher positions in the global educational environment.

Competition among universities has existed for many decades, with universities now under intense scrutiny due to increased marketisation with perceptions of their reputation becoming ever more important to remain competitive. Current measures of university reputation, such as league table rankings, focus predominantly on student achievement and research success. However, these measures do not consider perceptions from these institutions’ diverse range of stakeholders. Measuring reputation from multiple stakeholders and multiple areas of organisations has previously been done in for-profit organisations using the RepTrak™ model. Nevertheless, the characteristics used in this model have not been tested for their applicability to measure University reputation within the United Kingdom, presenting an opportunity measure and understand university reputation from alternative globally accepted criteria. Data were collected through online questionnaires that received 594 responses, and analysed using Exploratory, followed by Confirmatory Factor Analysis. This research confirms characteristics used in the RepTrak™ model are also applicable to measuring a university’s reputation, offering a clearer measure of university reputation from multiple stakeholder groups. Key findings identified differing perceptions of the importance of measured characteristics by internal and external stakeholders, with ‘performance’ and ‘products and services’ perceived as the most important, respectively. These findings provide clear evidence for the need to tailor marketing and PR communications to different audiences to maximise opportunities for improving perceptions of a university’s reputation.

Two previous studies mapping university mathematics students’ summative assessment diet in the UK revealed a clear picture. In general, there was a dominance of closed book examinations with a strong relationship to departmental league table position. The decade since then has seen many changes in higher education in the UK, particularly in the strength of the student voice. The study we report here replicated the earlier work to see if there has been an impact on the assessment diet. While the analysis shows a very small decrease in the use of closed book examinations, this may be accounted for by the addition of adjunct modules, rather than a broadening of the assessment diet across mainstream mathematics topics.

El sistema educativo coreano se ha convertido en un referente internacional debido a los buenos resultados obtenidos en las últimas décadas, que lo sitúan en los primeros puestos de las clasificaciones mundiales. Sin embargo, este modelo ha traído aparejados diversos problemas que requieren atención. El gobierno coreano ha tomado conciencia de esta realidad y ha propuesto reformas que promuevan “talentos creativamente integrados”. Este artículo analiza las líneas de actuación planteadas en relación con el pensamiento del filósofo y pedagogo John Dewey, y se centra en lo que se ha denominado “pedagogía de la creatividad”.

On 25 February 2020, TelSoc hosted the third NBN Futures Forum in Melbourne on the theme of learning from international experience for Australia’s National Broadband Network. Three speakers discussed various aspects of the topic, including comparisons via league tables, the experience in New Zealand, and the need for good broadband to participate in the global economy. Discussion following the speeches brought out a need to understand the range of demands for broadband from a variety of end users and industrial applications.

The article presents a new method of designing a national ranking of higher education institutions on the basis of aggregating all existing public national rankings. The new aggregating method MetALeague (Method of Analysis of Leagues) can help to do away with monopoly in evaluation, thus, providing room for independent evaluation of HEIs. The analysis of the current state of procedures and methods of independent evaluation of Russian HEIs in the form of rankings and databases was carried out. The suggested MetALeague method is based on the mathematical tool of the voting theory in small groups and helps to combine different independent evaluations in a single format. A possible approach to creating such a unified national ranking in the form of 10 leagues is considered and the calculation results are presented. The developed ranking methods and the obtained results can be useful for self-diagnosis and promotion of research, organizational and methodological activities of HEIs, and also when introducing a risk-oriented approach in oversight activities.

Home advantage (HA), or the effect of match location, has been shown to play an important role in determining the result of a game. A method introduced over 30 years ago has enjoyed wide use. However, there is a possible problem with its interpretation. Although this can be overcome by rescaling the original value for HA, this paper introduces a somewhat different approach to quantifying HA, one that is derived by expressing home performance specifically as a function of away performance. The various methods are illustrated by analyzing HA for teams in the men’s professional handball leagues in Portugal and Spain for the 2016-17 season. Results show that the traditional and rescaled methods both ensure a maximum value of 100% for HA, while the new method can produce values well above 100%. Also, when HA is small, as in the case of goals scored and conceded, then values from the new method are about twice those from the rescaled method. However, when HA is larger, as in the case of most of the teams in the lower half of the Spanish league table, when based on points, the new method produces HA values which are much higher that the rescaled. This method provides a new dimension to considerwhen trying to quantify HA. It has the advantage of also being appropriate for the difference between goals scored and goals conceded. Choice of methodology will depend on the specific objective being sought when studying the effect of HA on performance. Resumen Se ha demostrado que la ventaja en jugar en casa (HA), o el efecto de la ubicacion del partido, juega un papel importante en la determinacion del resultado de un juego. Un metodo introducido hace mas de 30 anos ha gozado de amplio uso. Sin embargo, hay un posible problema con su interpretacion. Aunque esto se puede solucionar por reescalar el valor original para HA, este trabajo presenta un enfoque algo diferente a la cuantificacion de HA, uno que es derivado de la expresion del rendimiento en casa especificamente como una funcion del rendimiento fuera de casa. Los distintos metodos se ilustran mediante el analisis de HA de los equipos de las principales ligas de balonmano profesional masculino en Portugal y Espana para la temporada 2016-17. Los resultados muestran que tanto los metodos tradicionales como los reescalados aseguran un valor maximo de 100% de HA, mientras que el nuevo metodo puede producir valores muy por encima de 100%. Tambien, cuando HA es pequeno, como en el caso de los goles marcados y concedidos, entonces los valores de este nuevo metodo son sobre dos veces los del metodo reescalado. Sin embargo cuando HA es mas grande, como en el caso de la mayoria de los equipos en la mitad inferior dela tabla de la Liga espanola, cuando se basa en puntos, el nuevo metodo produce HA valores mucho mas altos que lo reescalado. Este metodo proporciona una nueva dimension a tener en cuenta cuando se intenta cuantificar HA. Tiene la ventaja de tambien ser apropiado para la diferencia entre goles marcados y goles concedidos. La eleccion de la metodologia dependera del objetivo especifico que se busque al estudiar el efecto de la ventaja de jugar en casa en el rendimiento deportivo. https://doi.org/10.5232/ricyde2020.05902 References/referencias Clarke, S. R., & Norman, J. M. (1995). Home ground advantage of individual clubs in English soccer. The Statistician, 44 (4), 509-521. https://doi.org/10.2307/2348899 Courneya, K. S., & Carron, A.V. (1992). The home advantage in sports competitions: A literature review. Journal of Sport and Exercise Psychology, 14 (1) , 13-27. 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Germany and Taiwan top a ranking drawn up pre-crisis by architect of US Affordable Care Act; United States trails behind. Germany and Taiwan top a ranking drawn up pre-crisis by architect of US Affordable Care Act; United States trails behind.

The last twenty years have seen an increased emphasis around the world on the quality and quantity of research in response to national research assessments, international league tables, and...

This paper seeks to describe as a case study the current objective of King Khalid University, Saudi Arabia, of improving its global ranking in higher education league tables. As stated in the Saudi Vision 2030, a broad governmental plan to diversify the Saudi economy and develop aspects of the social sector, an increased emphasis on education is paramount to meeting demands of a changing workforce. This paper examines the situation of King Khalid University (KKU), a public research university, as the institution pursues a spot in the QS top 100 of globally ranked universities. The criteria considered in the construction of global ranking are discussed, as are the steps KKU has taken to improve its ranking position as well as the consequences of this pursuit on the climate and culture of the institution. Several recommendations are presented which seek to inform the university’s goal of academic excellence in both Saudi Arabia and at a global level.

This paper seeks to provide further evidence about ‘league table’ orderings for deprivation in local areas, especially for two domains – employment and education – which seem likely to be closely related. Rather than relying solely on administrative Local Authority areas and functional economic areas, our focus is to refine the concentric banding approach introduced in Nolan et al. (Local Economy 27(4): 403–418, 2012), and to apply it throughout England. We also introduce two new procedures by which areas might be systematically split into smaller components. The spatial distributions of employment and education deprivation turn out to be quite different (and distinct from the spatial distribution of overall deprivation). Throughout, there is clear evidence that it matters what size of local area is considered.

Ireland’s fee-paying schools consistently rank highly in Ireland’s secondary school league tables. Evidence also notes that the alumni of fee-paying schools represent a large proportion of those in leadership positions in business, politics and the legal professions. This paper examines the factors that affect the decision of Irish households to enrol their children in fee-paying secondary schools in Ireland. The paper uses Irish Household Budget Survey data that cover three waves from the period 2004–2016. We examine the head of household’s education, occupation, income, marital status, the location of the household and temporal factors on the school choice decision. The main results indicate that fee-paying students are more likely to come from higher income, better educated and Dublin located households. This research highlights the significant driver that affluence may have in determining secondary school enrolment in Ireland. This self-selected affluent group effect may explain the performance disparities between fee-paying and non-fee-paying schools. The results enlighten any discussion around whether or not the Government should consider a transition to a fee-paying market or eliminate fee-paying schools altogether.

We investigate persistence and change of regional new business formation in West Germany over a period of 30 years. Our indicator is the position of a region in the national ranking. We confirm the role of several sources of this persistence, namely, persistence in regional determinants of new business formation and path dependence in new business formation activity. The results for the role of a distinct regional culture of entrepreneurship are, however, ambiguous. Main factors that are related to changes in the national ranking are the employment share in small businesses, the share of manufacturing employment and a relatively low regional wage level. R&D activities are also conducive for new business formation but become effective only with a time lag.

Undeniably, student satisfaction in higher education is one of the important key factors for university ranking and league table. Accordingly, this article describes the student satisfaction data between Russell Group and Non-Russell Group universities in United Kingdom (UK). The data includes 19 Russell Group and 102 Non-Russell Group universities. We present some descriptive statistics of the variables included in the dataset. The results of the article are based on the two-Sample t-Test and CI. The findings from the data suggest that there is no statistically significant difference on student satisfaction rating between Russell Group and Non-Russell Group universities. This study has policy implications for the higher education in the UK. Keywords: Student satisfaction, National Student Survey (NSS), Russell Group, United Kingdom

During Michael Gove’s educational reforms between 2010–2014, he imposed several policy changes that changed the nature of assessment in terms of grading, terminal examinations and classroom expectations. Despite his vision of England rising up the international league tables, there has been little change in England’s position and even signs of stagnation of attainment at upper secondary. This paper uses the Teacher Assessment Literacy in Practice (TALiP) framework to understand why the reforms associated with assessment have had little impact on attainment and reveals the devastating effect of such wholesale change to school assessment systems, without time or support to change, leaving teachers in a decade of assessment wilderness.

World league tables for higher education are flawed, poorly used and entrench inequity. World league tables for higher education are flawed, poorly used and entrench inequity.

From the bottom of the league table for PISA 2000 Portugal has raised to the OCDE average being the only OECD member that showed, up to PISA 2018, consistent growth in reading, mathematics, and science. This chapter gives a brief description of the Portuguese Education system and how PISA outcomes have shaped Portuguese education policies. It identifies the policies that probably explain the improvement in PISA and pinpoints weakness of the Portuguese education system through the lenses of PISA.

According to Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) run by Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), Estonian education system stands out as a high performing system where students from different socio-economic backgrounds achieve high results. In PISA 2018 Estonian students ranked first in reading and science and third in mathematics among the OECD countries. What has Estonia done to be at the top of the PISA league tables? There are many aspects that have contributed to the success of Estonian education. The following chapter will look at the historical background, describe the factors, policies and conditions that have contributed to the current educational landscape that has attracted considerable attention from all over the world.

Bearfield, Maranto and Wolf (2020) advise policy-makers to measure policing outcomes using a metric that includes rates of homicide, police-related civilian deaths (PRCD) , and poverty. They present such an index, which they call the Police Performance Index (PPI). But alternative functional forms that are equally plausible can lead to different rankings of police departments, and therefore different policy conclusions.

The article has been written in order to present activities in social media of PlusLiga teams in Polish men's volleyball sport clubs. The aim of this report is to show the diversified social media management (Facebook and Instagram in particular) influence on the recipients statistics. The main research method for the given article is data obtained from club profiles on Instagram and Facebook. The Instagram data has underwent a detailed analysis as this social medium is one of the main tools of sports marketing, building and promoting a good image of sports teams. Thanks to the information provided, it is possible to determine at what stage is the social media sports marketing of the PlusLiga clubs. Eight teams with different positions in the league table from season 2017/18 were selected for the study. The presented results and charts are an original work and can be used to analyze the development of social media activities of men's volleyball teams.

Background In 2003 the Uganda Ministry of Health (MoH) introduced the District League Table (DLT) to track district performance. This review of the DLT is intended to add to the evidence base on Health Systems Performance Assessment (HSPA) globally, with emphasis on Low and Middle Income Countries (LMICs), and provide recommendations for adjustments to the current Ugandan reality. Methods A normative HSPA framework was used to inform the development of a Key Informant Interview (KII) tool. Thirty Key Informants were interviewed, purposively selected from the Ugandan health system on the basis of having developed or used the DLT. KII data and information from published and grey literature on the Uganda health system was analyzed using deductive analysis. Results Stakeholder involvement in the development of the DLT was limited, including MoH officials and development partners, and a few district technical managers. Uganda policy documents articulate a conceptually broad health system whereas the DLT focuses on a healthcare system. The complexity and dynamism of the Uganda health system was insufficiently acknowledged by the HSPA framework. Though DLT objectives and indicators were articulated, there was no conceptual reference model and lack of clarity on the constitutive dimensions. The DLT mechanisms for change were not explicit. The DLT compared markedly different districts and did not identify factors behind observed performance. Uganda lacks a designated institutional unit for the analysis and presentation of HSPA data, and there are challenges in data quality and range. Conclusions The critique of the DLT using a normative model supported the development of recommendation for Uganda district HSPA and provides lessons for other LMICs. A similar approach can be used by researchers and policy makers elsewhere for the review and development of other frameworks. Adjustments in Uganda district HSPA should consider: wider stakeholder involvement with more district managers including political, administrative and technical; better anchoring within the national health system framework; integration of the notion of complexity in the design of the framework; and emphasis on facilitating district decision-making and learning. There is need to improve data quality and range and additional approaches for data analysis and presentation.

Starting from personal experience and expertise, this article discusses the relevance of international rankings for improving the individual performance of universities. After analyzing the most relevant indicators used by one such ranking, the article suggests possible solutions to be considered by one individual university (i.e. Al Farabi Kazakh National University) if it aims to improve its position in international league tables and the quality of the processes in the university. At the same time, the article debates the degree to which the indicators used by the afore-mentioned international ranking are still relevant and can still be useful at institutional level, for university leaders.

Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) has been widely used for efficiency assessment in many sports and specifically in football. This paper presents a novel approach to measuring the scoring efficiency of football teams in a match. It uses a parallel process network DEA model that takes into account the defensive and attacking variables of the two teams, their respective percentage of possession of the ball and also the team's economic value. The proposed approach provides estimates of how many more goals each team should have scored in each of the matches played in the season. By averaging the scoring efficiency in the different matches played, team scoring efficiencies for the season can be computed. Moreover, the proposed DEA model can be run after each match so that the changes in efficiency can be monitored throughout the season. This can help coaches and managers assess their team's past performance and plan ahead for each match. The proposed approach has been applied to Spanish First Division teams for the season 2013/2014 and a virtual final league table has been computed.

Background Doubts exist around the value of compiling league tables for cost-effectiveness results for health interventions, primarily due to methods differences. We aimed to determine if a reasonably coherent league table could be compiled using published studies for one high-income country: New Zealand (NZ). Methods Literature searches were conducted to identify NZ-relevant studies published in the peer-reviewed journal literature between 1 January 2010 and 8 October 2017. Only studies with the following metrics were included: cost per quality-adjusted life-year or disability-adjusted life-year or life-year (QALY/DALY/LY). Key study features were abstracted and a summary league table produced which classified the studies in terms of cost-effectiveness. Results A total of 21 cost-effectiveness studies which met the inclusion criteria were identified. There were some large methodological differences between the studies, particularly in the time horizon (1 year to lifetime) but also discount rates (range 0 to 10%). Nevertheless, we were able to group the incremental cost-effectiveness ratios (ICERs) into general categories of being reported as cost-saving (19%), cost-effective (71%), and not cost-effective (10%). The median ICER (adjusted to 2017 NZ$) was ~ $5000 per QALY/DALY/LY (~US$3500). However, for some interventions, there is high uncertainty around the intervention effectiveness and declining adherence over time. Conclusions It seemed possible to produce a reasonably coherent league table for the ICER values from different studies (within broad groupings) in this high-income country. Most interventions were cost-effective and a fifth were cost-saving. Nevertheless, study methodologies did vary widely and researchers need to pay more attention to using standardised methods that allow their results to be included in future league tables. Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (10.1186/s12963-019-0192-x) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

World University rankings have become well-established tools that students, university managers and policy makers read and use. Each ranking claims to have a unique methodology capable of measuring the 'quality' of universities. The purpose of this paper is to analyze to which extent these different rankings measure the same phenomenon and what it is that they are measuring. For this, we selected a total of seven world-university rankings and performed a principal component analysis. After ensuring that despite their methodological differences, they all come together to a single component, we hypothesized that bibliometric indicators could explain what is being measured. Our analyses show that ranking scores from whichever of the seven league tables under study can be explained by the number of publications and citations received by the institution. We conclude by discussing policy implications and opportunities on how a nuanced and responsible use of rankings can help decision making at the institutional level, Paper accepted for publication in Research Evaluation

On the mergers and acquisitions (M&A) market, buyers and sellers resort to experts in order to secure deals. But as these experts might be prone to opportunism, firms need to find a way to build trust. We identify two trust devices: social ties and public rankings. We explore whether these personal and impersonal devices are substitutes, independent or complementary. We study the French M&A market through a mixed-method approach. We show that both previous contacts and league table rankings of firms contribute to trust and to making deals. These trust devices are all the more likely to be used if the deal is risky, especially within the sell side (more at risk). We also find that firms tend to make deals only with other firms at the same level in the rankings. Finally, we find some evidence of substitution between rankings and personal ties, especially for low-value deals. 1. Introduction 2. Trusting intermediaries in opaque business-to-business markets 3. Ethnographic fieldwork 4. Statistical data and method 5. Results 6. Conclusions Footnotes Acknowledgements Funding References Appendix

The article discusses the Monitoring of higher education institutions’ (HEIs’) effectiveness, which has been conducted annually by the Ministry of Education and Science in the last five years. The method of the Monitoring is based on the technology of collecting and systematizing information used by the state accreditation in 1997–2010. The reasons for the introduction of the Monitoring by the Ministry are described; the features of the performance indicators are justified by the state educational policy. A model of presentation of the Monitoring results in the league table format is suggested, which makes it possible to use its results more flexibly for the management of the higher education system. It also allows higher education institutions to analyze their positions and to form their own ways of the development.

Institutions that are most attuned to university rankings are known as “strivers.” These striving universities chase prestige by altering policies to match league table indicators, while also benchmarking against elite universities within the domestic hierarchy. However, this model has mostly been ascribed to studies in the United States and it has not been considered in non-Western contexts. Through interviews with 48 academics and administrators from Chinese universities, the research explores striving behaviors in China and expands the US-centric model to include global competition with international rankings. The findings show that striving universities in China have placed considerable emphasis on international rankings, but distinctions from the central government have still dominated competition within the domestic hierarchy. Pressures from the various rankings must be balanced between the local and global. These new considerations offer a global outlook on the domestic university striving model.

Sweden has risen in the global music market charts since the early 2000s and has a substantial pool of music companies, songwriters, and artists. Nevertheless, over the last decade it has lost ground relative to South Korea in particular. By analyzing the factors associated with global music market strength among 20–50 countries and comparing Sweden and South Korea's comparative advantages and disadvantages, the current article underscores that intellectual property rights (e.g., r = 0.842), GDP per capita, (e.g., r = 0.754), and piracy rates (e.g., r = −0.699) correlate with music market size. Thus, South Korea (and China) has benefitted from overall economic growth whereas Sweden's growth rates are comparatively lower. Moreover, at the local level, South Korea has a more dominating market niche signified by both big and small K-pop companies that compete for demand and supply at the local (South Korea), regional (greater East Asia), and global levels of the music industries.

© 2016 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. Which are the best and worst universities in the UK for getting a job when you graduate? This question attracts readers of the employability rankings in national league tables. This study critically reviews the employability measure used in the rankings and its subsequent reporting in public news and commentary sources, such as national and local media, student and advisory websites as well as universities and the publishers themselves. A debate that is constrained by a reproduction of the content and apparent neutrality of the employability measure in the tables is revealed. Universities themselves are the most frequent commentators, and echo the content of the tables fairly uncritically. Analysis leads to a consideration that participants in higher education may not be served well by a proliferation of information that can lead to simultaneous over-simplification and obfuscation that does not result in clarity or trust. I will argue that prospective students and their advisers need to review information that is available critically, and that universities individually and collectively should facilitate the production of a more nuanced narrative about graduate career pathways that is not controlled by marketing and metrics.

This article reviews various approaches to measuring business innovation with the aim of drawing lessons for measuring social innovations, and offers several methodological and policy conclusions. First, Innovation Union Scoreboard (IUS) indicators, in principle, could be useful in settings where the dominant mode of innovation is based on RD their essence, however, tends to be organizational, managerial, and behavioural changes. The IUS indicators do not capture these types of changes. Second, an assessment of the 81 indicators used to compile the Global Innovation Index reveals that it would not be fruitful to rely on such indicators to capture social innovations. Third, given the diversity among innovation systems, a poor performance signalled by a composite indicator does not automatically identify the area(s) necessitating the most urgent policy actions; only tailored, thorough comparative analyses can do so. Finally, analysts and policy makers need to be aware of the differences between measuring (i) social innovation activities (or efforts); (ii) the framework for social innovations (pre-requisites, available inputs, skills, norms, values, behavioural patterns, etc.); and (iii) the economic, societal, and environmental impacts of social innovations.

Utilising data for comparable B.Sc. graduates in economics who have studied in different universities that had set the same entry standards, we compare job seekers’ employment prospects when they search by themselves for jobs by submitting CVs to the same firms. The outcomes suggest that graduates who studied in universities that are ranked in better positions, based on the UK league tables, gain more invitations to interviews (access to vacancies) and higher entry-level annual salaries than those who studied in universities that are ranked in lower positions. To clarify the assigned pattern, we utilised further qualitative indicators, and we estimated that both membership of a scholarly group of universities and universities’ research intensity can positively affect their graduates’ invitations to interviews and entry-level annual salaries. Interestingly, by assessing the influence of degree grades, the study suggested also that applicants’ degree grades can moderate the relation between university attended and employment prospects.

Education reform is increasingly portrayed as a means to improve a nation's global competitiveness as measured by its performance in international league tables of pupil achievement. This has created a demand for comparative research which identifies ‘what works’ in high-performing school systems. A diverse array of consultancies, thinks tanks, and entrepreneurs has emerged to satisfy that demand, portraying their approach as a pragmatic and objective form of evidence-based policy-making. However, the attempt to translate complex conditions into straightforward solutions (i.e. ‘what works’) leads researchers into a basic paradox. This paper identifies the strategies used to address this paradox and to advocate reforms. We demonstrate that, though they are persuasive, the strategies fundamentally fail to overcome the problems inherent in the enterprise.

County Sports Partnerships (CSPs) epitomise the growing reliance upon building networks and partnerships sports delivery. This study investigated how social networks were created and contested in a CSP-led programme entitled the ‘Workplace Challenge’ (WPC). The WPC used a web-platform to encourage workplace-based teams to engage in physical activity by self-recording their activity over an eight-week period. Points were awarded for activity completed and a peer-challenge facility was promoted via online league tables, prizes and the opportunity to ‘challenge’ other users. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with a total of seventeen participants recruited from one public and one private sector workplace and from a sample of participants registered as individuals. Two programme planners employed by the CSP also took part. A figurational framework was utilised to investigate participants’ negotiation of networks of embodied and virtual relationships within the programme. Findings suggest the messages promoted in the WPC were disseminated and transformed according to the organizational structure of these networks. Embodied social relationships within workplaces reinforced peer support in professional I-we identities, whereas virtual networks sometimes highlighted participants’ isolation. Moreover, emphasis upon competition within and between teams caused some to question their performance. Often, competition motivated engagement. For less active participants, constant comparison could prove discouraging, particularly if participants felt they had let their colleagues down. Planners of similar programmes must be cognizant of the uneven manner of programme dissemination. Contextual differences at the point of delivery including existing organizational structures and power hierarchies have an impact upon participants’ perceptions of a programme.

Recent efforts to grow and strengthen the culture of philanthropy in the UK have largely focused on two dimensions: the total amount of money donated and the effectiveness of philanthropic spending. This paper explores a third dimension: the destination and distribution of donations. A defining characteristic of charitable giving is that it is voluntary rather than coerced, and the resulting respect for donor autonomy makes people wary of promoting one cause above another or implying that any beneficiary group is more or less ‘worthy’ of support. However, the absence of much comment on, or significant research into, the destination of donations does not alter the fact that some groups succeed in attracting significant philanthropic funds whilst others struggle to secure many – or any – donations. This paper explores the concept of ‘unpopularity’ in the charity sector, especially in relation to its impact on fundraising. We unpack what this loaded phrase means, identify good practice by those seeking support and present case studies of charities that have overcome perceived unpopularity to achieve success in raising voluntary income. We suggest that by investing organisational resources and effort in fundraising, by framing the cause to maximise the arousal of sympathy and minimise concerns about beneficiary culpability, and by avoiding the unintended negative consequences of self-labelling as ‘unpopular’ no charity need assume it is their destiny to languish at the bottom of the fundraising league tables.

Schools in England and Wales since the late 1980s have been compared in terms of their performances in public examinations and standardised test scores in the form of 'school league tables', with Wales ceasing to produce these after 2001. One of the factors related to performance in examinations is the choice of the examination board, with five main boards currently active in England and Wales. In this paper, we study differences in student uptake and performance among boards and how this has changed over time. By contrasting the experiences of England and Wales the results of our analyses provide a commentary on recent attempts to understand the effects of league tables on school performance.