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The classical dichotomy between success and failure is hardly applicable in the analysis of organisational behaviour, performance and outcomes in complex social roles, such as those in education. A unique approach has to be developed. Hence, a threefold classification has been pursued here: unequivocal failure, “satisficing”, and unequivocal success. Although viewed as existing along a continuum, they are marked out by failure and success thresholds. Four basic role climates, transpiring from four basic failure‐success configurations, have been identified and analysed: “apathetic”, “frustrating”, “tense”, and “tranquil” role climates, from which preliminary hypotheses of organisational behaviour have been derived. Application of the analytical framework developed here was restricted to the school principal, a complex role, with many components which are characterised by different and often conflicting role climates. Tentative propositions relating to school principal role climates and organisational behaviour were postulated on the basis of this analytical framework.

Since role images are determinants of organizational behavior, discrepancies in such images might lead to inner‐organizational social tension. This study concentrates on the inter‐relationships between Israeli elementary school principals, perceived authority and responsibility. School principals are victims of multi‐discrepancies in role perceptions. Their perceived investment in responsibility is not equivalent to expected returns in authority, it is equivalent to what they seek, but not to what they get. There are discrepancies between teachers' and supervisors' perceptions of principals' authority and responsibility, as well as discrepancies between teachers and supervisors, and between them and principals themselves. Further investigation is needed to deepen understanding of organizational leadership and organizational behavior as affected by multiple role images.

Educational planning depends on the interaction between mental processes and social behaviour. The ongoing disparity between planning and implementation calls for a shift in attention from technical problems to the more conceptual. An alternative way of thinking about educational planning is discussed. The basic idea that a plan is a symbol means that someone ostensibly gives it meaning. Metaphorical images are one way of attaining insight into such meaning. By elaborating 11 groups of metaphorical images of planning, a bridge between expression and impression is offered. A conceptual frame relates the metaphorical analysis to approaches of educational policy. This might open up a whole new area of analysis essential to the understanding of educational planning as a social process of change.

Undertaking responsibility is basic to moral behaviour. However, the explicit act of undertaking responsibility may be derived from various motives. The purpose here is to investigate to what extent organisations tend to bound the level of responsibility and to disclose some of the different motives of undertaking responsibility. This is done by employing four different theories of behaviour which relate to conformity, compliance, needs and moral development. Although none of these theories directly treats the question of responsibility, an attempt is made to apply each to it. By way of a summary, six generalised types of responsibility are suggested: responsibility based on anxiety, shame, guilt, arrangement, ethics and freedom. Furthermore, an organisational boundary line of responsibility is suggested.

Entrepreneurship is one of the fundamental strategies of business organizations. However, the unique characteristics of entrepreneurship in education have not been fully examined. This study examines the concept of entrepreneurship in a centralized educational system, presents a tool for measuring educational entrepreneurship, and demonstrates its relevance by inquiring into the relationship between a school's geo‐social location and entrepreneurial profiles. The public school entrepreneurship inventory was tested on a representative sample of 1,395 elementary school teachers within the Israeli public school system. The results demonstrate high reliability and convergent validity of the instrument. The study explores the different entrepreneurial profiles existing within the Israeli educational system, and demonstrates the instrument's use in studying the degrees of freedom for school entrepreneurship in the same national expanse. The study has found that school entrepreneurship in the periphery is better able to exploit the freedom existing within the system than school entrepreneurship in the center. In all cases, however, this freedom is limited and schools’ entrepreneurship cannot go much beyond what is legitimized by the system. These findings are then explained by reference to the canonical mechanisms that serve as constant points of reference in a centralized educational system.

Explores the nature of the cognitive preferences of school administrators, thus opening up a new line of enquiry which may provide a base for future studies on administrative behaviour. The study offers an insight into the school administrators′ mode of information perception according to four basic modes: relating and recalling information without considering its implications; relating to information according to its practical applications; posing critical questions about the information′s validity; and relating to information according to the fundamental principles. School administrators were found to be different in their cognitive preferences as a function of individual differences, and different roles of school administration.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze two parallel processes in the Israeli educational system: first, the idea of school autonomy, exploring its origins and its pedagogical implications and effectiveness; and second, the development of the progressive education evident mainly in the cognitive domain of twenty-first century skills (21st CS), focussing on fostering “deep knowledge” and children’s thinking skills. The manuscript explores the various “waves” of progressive pedagogies that have taken place in the Israeli school system over the years, describing and analyzing the processes that characterize them.

Based on a historical perspective, the paper describes chronologically the main developments related to school autonomy and 21st CS policy initiatives, based on a literature review and analysis of policy documents.

The review indicates that the Israeli educational system is still caught in the “centralization trap,” inhibiting major changes in the patterns of central control and degrees of freedom granted to school-level educators. As for school pedagogy, it is evident that most of the changes in pedagogy suggested by the numerous policy documents over the years have not resulted in sustainable, system-wide change. In both issues a large disparity is evident between declarations about innovative pedagogies and school autonomy and their actual implementation.

The review reflects the idiosyncratic articulation of policy plans conducted by the Ministry of Education, producing discrepancies and incongruences at the school level. Some implications of the “declarative culture” created are further discussed.

The purpose of this study was to expose the phenomenon of self‐renewal and its dynamic aspects among women headteachers in mid‐career. Based on findings from an exploratory study conducted among Israeli primary school women headteachers in their mid‐career period, the study presents the phenomenon of self‐renewal that was experienced by these headteachers. This phenomenon included elements such as coping with burnout crisis, critical inner reflection, reframing managerial perspectives, elation and energy replenishing and reinforcing innovative behaviors. A conceptual frame is presented in order to understand the process of self‐renewal and its contextual and biographic determinants which enable the existence of the phenomenon in mid‐career

Der Streit um die 35 Stunden‐Woche in der Bundes‐republik Deutschland, der tatsächlich zu den härtesten sozialen Auseinandersetzungen geführt hat, liegt nun einige Zeit zurück. Weder die Untemehmerseite noch die Gewerkschaft kann sich als Sieger feiern lassen. Aber eines ist gelungen, ein entscheidender Durchbruch in der Tarif‐ und Arbeitszeit‐politik, eine Belebung der Diskussion um flexiblere Arbeitszeitformen ist ausgelöst. Diese Entwicklung wird sich auch in anderen europäischen Ländern fortsetzen. Denn einerseits sind viele Arbeitgeber von der seltsamen Vorstellung abgebracht, dass es sich bei der bisher geltenden Regelarbeitszeit von 40 Stunden in der Woche um eine festgelegte Grösse handelt, andererseits wurde den Gewerkschaften zu der Einsicht verholfen, dass nicht immer alles für alle gleich geregelt sein muss.

The purpose of this paper is to understand how primary school principals in Israel cope with the gaps between authority and responsibility in their work, deriving from partially implemented decentralization processes, and how this relates to school-based management (SBM) and accountability principles.

Using the qualitative method, 20 semi-structured interviews were conducted with school principals from one district in Israel. Thematic analysis was used in order to identify themes in the interviews that enable creating codes for the characteristics of authority and responsibility and for the principals’ strategies.

Gaps were found between authority and responsibility, with particularly low levels of authority alongside high levels of responsibility. Coupled with the demand for accountability, those gaps led principals to adopt three strategies – active, partly active, and passive – to help reduce the tension resulting from them. The SBM definition has links to the specific strategy that principals used.

The results indicate the importance of clear definitions of authority and responsibility in principals’ work. The current study deepens the understanding of the gaps between these concepts as key for understanding accountability at decentralized schools; tensions that principals cope with as a result of those gaps; and the strategies that enable principals to ease the tension for the benefit of all those involved in the principals’ work.