In this chapter the autor explores the contours and possible effects of the WMO for the local government level. First she gives a short overview of the main features of the WMO (PAR. 2.5). Then she describes the challenges that local government is confronted with, especially the political decisions that have to be taken at the local level (PAR. 2.3). The question to be answered is whether or not the WMO means an impulse for local democracy in the Netherlands. To that purpose, two quick comparisons are made (PAR. 2.4): with other decentralisation operations in the Netherlands, and with the decentralisation of social care and welfare in Sweden. These comparisons make it possible to determine two main conditions for creating an impulse for local politics, which are presented in PAR. 2.5. The article ends by some concluding remarks on the effect of the WMO on the local democracy in the Netherlands.
What lecturers do and think are a prerequisite for educational change. It is therefore important to gain insight into factors that influence their involvement in educational reform. This study considers the effect of leadership and managerial constructs on lecturers’ commitment to the newly implemented honours programmes in a Dutch University of Applied Sciences, by combining two models: (a) the Excellence Acceptance Model and (b) the Organisational Influence Model. This combination connects two important change factors of content and context included in a combined quantitative measurement framework. A full structural equation analysis on lecturers’ questionnaire data (N = 406) results in insight into the direct influence of executive managers’ leadership style on lecturers’ commitment in a situation of educational change. Especially, visionary leadership and the perceived discussion culture on excellence are of large influence on lecturers’ behaviour towards honours programmes. Based on these findings, directions for future research are suggested.
The future of the business sector for students in higher education is uncertain. The reasons for this are technological developments, the effects of globalisation and the shifting of business models (Brynjolfsson & McAfee, 2014; Helbing, 2014). The consequences of digitalisation and robotisation are large for professions in the financial-economic sector, such as accountancy and finance, business economy, and marketing (Frey & Osborne, 2013; Deloitte, 2016). As a result, certain jobs will disappear, but on the other hand new types of jobs will arise. It is expected that people in employment will have to have a strong adaptive ability to handle fast changes. There is an increasing expectation that they need to be mobile between employers and that they should be able to deal with a variety of new tasks, roles and positions (Dochy, Berghmans, Koenen, & Segers, 2015). Professionals need to have a sense of great flexibility in order to be able to anticipate these changes based on their own power and ambition. In addition to this adaptive ability, good interpersonal skills are essential due to the need for working in multidisciplinary teams on complex issues (Onstenk, 2017). The Social and Economic Council of the Netherlands (Sociaal-Economische Raad, 2017) presumes that the level of basic skills required to participate in an increasingly complex society is continuously growing, and they advise upcoming professionals to train their resistance, flexibility and the ability to continuously develop in order to maintain sustainable employability. In this way professionals regularly need to be able to reinvent themselves during periods of change (Van Water & Weggeman, 2017; Frie, Potting, Sjoer, & Van der Heijden, submitted for publication). This chapter will describe how the Department of Business, Finance & Marketing (BFM) of The Hague University of Applied Sciences (THUAS) has found an answer to the challenges of a Department-wide educational innovation. First it is outlined what this innovation involves and how it will be designed. The net paragraph clarifies the overlap in the competency profiles of the five programmes of BFM. Then the next steps of this educational innovation process are described. Finally, insights will be discussed as to the role of the lecturers and the business sector, as valuable partners, within this educational reform.
