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Tenure is frequently conceived as a two-edged sword: on the one hand, it provides professional security enabling individuals to initiate hazardous endeavors characterized by uncertainty, risk and potential negative results. On the other hand, professional security may negatively affect motivation, promote indifference and undermine genuine initiatives. The purpose of this paper is to assess the implications tenure has on school leaders’ proactive behavior, evident in their tendency to innovate and initiate creative and authentic endeavors.

Questionnaires were administered to 30 non-tenured Greek school principals and 42 tenured Israeli school leaders. School leaders were questioned about their tendency to innovate and act creatively and authentically.

Comparisons of groups’ mean scores show that Greek school leaders obtained higher scores when creativity, authenticity and innovativeness are compared between the two groups. These findings are further supported in a discriminant analysis indicating that the two groups’ orientations toward the discriminant function comprising variables, which characterize proactive behavior, are opposite.

The findings of the authors obtained in this study show that job security, which follows tenure, does not guarantee proactive behavior. Implications are further discussed.

Using a document analysis methodology, the study analyzes official policy documents produced by the centralized Israeli Ministry of Education and by the State Comptroller responsible for reviewing the Israeli government's policies and operations. Coordination is assessed using three lenses: coordination among policy plans initiated by different governmental ministries; coordination among policy plans initiated by the Ministry of Education; and coordination within policy plans, referring to the congruence among various components comprising a particular policy.

Following previous studies testifying to the significance of coordination for organizational effectiveness and to the contribution of centralized structures for coordination, the current study attempts to assess whether centralized complex educational systems exhibit coordination among their articulated policy plans.

In spite of the highly centralized nature of Israeli governance, coordination among policy plans articulated by different governmental ministries is limited. This also applies to the coordination found among various educational policy plans or among various components comprising particular policy plans articulated by the Ministry of Education.

While centralized structures produce administrative bottlenecks creating ideal grounds for coordination, it appears that the assumed connection between centralization and coordination may not be applicable to educational systems and that coordination among and within policy plans in complex systems is not a zero-sum game. Implications are further discussed.

While the significance of principals for the organizational behavior of schools is crucial, school leaders’ influence on school outcomes is indirect and mediated through various means that leaders employ in order to increase the productivity of their school. Although the exercise of power is viewed among the main factors explaining followers’ willingness to comply with leaders’ demands and means to promote school effectiveness, it is rather surprising that the educational administration literature lacks substantial evidence testifying to the mediating effect that principals’ use of various powerbases has on school effectiveness. The purpose of this paper is to make an attempt to fill this gap.

Questionnaires were administered to 954 teachers coming from 191 randomly sampled public elementary schools.

Evidence testifying to the relation between leadership styles and use of powerbases suggests that the transformational leadership style is positively related to the use of soft powerbases and negatively related to the use of harsh powerbases. Findings also show that leadership style and powerbase utilization differentiate effective and ineffective schools. Finally, it is evident that soft powerbases such as expertise, personal reward and referent powerbases partially mediate the relation between the transformational leadership style and school effectiveness, moderating the negative relation found between the passive leadership style and school effectiveness.

These findings confirm that powerbases are in fact a mechanism through which school leaders influence school effectiveness. Implications are further discussed.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the extent to which the introduction of school‐based management (SBM) affects schools' incomes and educational equity?

An analysis of financial reports coming from 31 SBM schools during a period of four sequential years reveals that the overall inequity among schools has slightly decreased, although significant differences are found between high and low socio‐economic schools.

The findings show that significant differences exist between schools of low and high socio‐economic backgrounds in the relative amount of incomes coming from parental payments. An analysis of the income provided to schools by the LEA suggests that the differences and inequalities between schools are moderated by the LEA, which provides relatively more funds to schools of low socio‐economic backgrounds following the introduction of SBM in schools.

The study points to the danger inherent in SBM for educational equity and highlights the significance of a compensating formula that will take into account mainly parental payments de‐facto in previous years.

The paper aims to investigate the mediating effect of teacher empowerment on the relationship between teachers' perception of their school support and their intrinsic and extrinsic job satisfaction.

Data were collected from a sample of 2,565 teachers affiliated with 153 Israeli elementary schools. A path analysis procedure was employed to test the mediating effect of teacher empowerment on the relation between perceived organizational support and job satisfaction.

The results reveal that teacher empowerment mediated the relations between perceived organizational support and satisfaction, adding more than 30 per cent to the explained variance of each of the satisfaction types. Teacher empowerment shows different relationships when intrinsic versus extrinsic type of satisfaction is considered. The most influential dimension of empowerment predicting teacher intrinsic satisfaction is self‐efficacy, a psychologically oriented variable, while the most powerful dimension of empowerment predicting extrinsic job satisfaction is earned status and respect, a sociologically oriented variable.

The results reinforce the notion that both types of job satisfaction are two different entities that should be addressed differently. Taking a theoretical perspective, it appears that teacher empowerment should be conceived as a multi‐dimensional scale, where its various components are differently associated with the two types of satisfaction.

Moreover, it seems that teacher empowerment has a much stronger impact on teacher satisfaction when it takes place in an organizational context that supports individuals. Hence, school leaders need to focus on different qualities of teacher empowerment, depending on the qualities of satisfaction that they wish to promote.

Little is known about perceived organizational support in the educational realm. Studying it in relation with teacher empowerment and job satisfaction, key concepts in the school arena, is unprecedented.

The purpose of this paper is to provide a preliminary analysis to evaluate the implications of political stability for educational quality, evident in the survival rate measure.

Secondary analyses were conducted for data drawn from the Political Risk Service Report, the World Bank Report, the United Nations Report and the OECD Report, using a sample comprising 47 countries, 26 politically stable and 21 politically unstable during a ten‐year period of time (1998‐2008).

The study reveals that political stability plays a major role in explaining the survival rate in education when used as a single predictor or, when introduced in the analysis with the GDP per capita. Following previously reported findings suggesting causal relations between high economic growth and regime stability, the authors’ analyses show that as far as educational quality is concerned, political stability plays a far more significant role compared to countries’ economic circumstances evident in the GDP per capita.

These initial findings suggest that economic conditions create an essential infrastructure which in itself is not sufficient. Political stability which fosters continuity seems to be essential to enable professional considerations to dominate educational processes and allow educators to conduct pedagogical programs from start to finish.

The purpose of this paper is to assess to what extent social groups maintaining traditional‐collectivistic or modern‐individualistic lifestyles while sharing a similar nationality ethnicity and cultural origin, may be differentiated on the basis of their professional job perceptions and attitudes.

Questionnaires were administered to 323 Bedouin teachers who live in the southern part of Israel while maintaining a rather traditional way of life and to 232 Arab teachers who live in modern towns where Arabs and Jews coexist.

The results show that Bedouin teachers exhibit a higher degree of compliance and loyalty to the leader and are more conservative and emotional in comparison to Israeli Arab teachers. These results testify to the strong relationship existing between values and norms accumulated during ethnic socialization processes and individual role perceptions especially when individuals' lifestyles correspond to these values.

In considering the framing influence that ethnic socialization has on individual work perceptions, it is argued that ethnic considerations should be taken into account in multicultural contexts and that some facilitating mechanisms should be established in order to increase tolerance for ethnical diversity and understanding among individuals coming from different ethnic groups.

In what way is administrators’ perceived role vulnerability (PRV) related to the organization’s structural characteristics? A comparison of administrators’ PRV is made of “domesticated” centralized public schools and “undomesticated” self‐governed community centers, both operating and serving children and parents in the same neighborhoods. The findings obtained indicate that school administrators perceive vulnerability to be greater than do community center administrators. These findings are rather surprising considering that public schools are not involved in competition for clients. It is therefore argued that much depends on the degree of autonomy and flexibility that administrators have and that introducing competition to schools has to be synchronized with the autonomy and freedom of action delegated to school administrators.

The purpose of research is to attempt to determine to what extent the salary level of teachers working in public educational systems is connected with the trend towards privatization considering that privatization has become nowadays a prominent phenomenon in educational systems around the world.

A secondary analysis of the 2003 data coming from 29 OECD countries is conducted attempting to reveal what educational as well as economic antecedents other than the GDP per capita may account for the differences among various countries in the salary level of teachers working in public education.

When GDP per capita is controlled in the analysis, it is evident that teacher salary level is correlated with the degree of privatization characterizing a particular educational system. Specifically, the evidence suggests that if less than 15 percent of the students study in private schools in a given state, teachers' salaries are likely to be below the expected salary according to the state's GDP per capita.

These findings enable the conclusion that the existence of a private sector alongside the public one may indirectly contribute to an increase of the salary level of teachers working in the public education sector.

Attempts to establish a distinction among echelons comprising a centralized national educational system by means of exploring their role perceptions of stress, tension, ambiguity risk and exposure to criticism. Statistical factors are computed and a discriminating procedure is executed based on the assumption that different hierarchical positions and work circumstances which exist in public centralized service‐oriented organizational hierarchies create unique influences on echelons’ role perceptions. Findings indicate that echelons are differentiated by their perceptions of risk and exposure to criticism, but not by their perceptions of role tension, stress and ambiguity. Findings indicate that the executing echelon in a centralized system perceives risk and exposure to public criticism to be greater in comparison with other echelons. Argues for back‐up mechanisms to be established in centralized organizational systems, so that the ability of the executing echelon’s members to respond and cope effectively with criticism and risk will be increased, and their perceived vulnerability will be reduced.