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The purpose of this paper is to present the successful school and principal (SSP) model, which has developed over 13 years of Israeli involvement in the ISSPP study.

This is a conceptual paper summarizing the findings of more than 20 case studies of successful, coasting and low-performing schools and their principals, into the SSP model. In all the cases, ISSPP protocols were used to collect the data, and the findings were analyzed in accordance with the organizational approach and organizational routine theory.

The explanatory SSP model comprises three cyclical phases that explain cause–effect relationships and presents intervention points for school improvement toward success. The first phase is an organizational restructuring of two core routines: the school schedule routine and the school tracking routine, which shape and affect school staff behavior. The second phase is the priorities and values revealed in these behaviors and which shape the school as a learning environment. The third phase in school improvement is the institutional legitimacy derived from and reflecting the school’s priorities and values. All these phases are based on the principal as a crucial key player who turns the wheel.

Theoretically, the SSP model explains cause–effect relationships and indicates possible interventions and improvements. Practically, the SSP model can influence principal preparation programs, novice principal mentoring and serve as a roadmap for school improvement.

This article explores the contribution of mentoring to the professional development of novice principals. Based on Abbott’s (1988) framework, the authors suggest that effective mentoring depends on the extent it develops professional core knowledge, which includes the skills of diagnosis, intervention and inference that are heavily based on academic knowledge, practical experience, self-awareness and reflective ability.

An exploratory qualitative methodology was applied to discover principals’ perceptions of their mentoring. The authors interviewed 15 novice principals about their mentoring events and conducted a category-based analysis to find out how these events reflect contributions to their diagnosis, intervention and inference skills.

The study found that most of the mentoring events provided support for the intervention skill, while ignoring the skills of diagnosis and inference. We suggest that to develop novice principals professionally, mentors should place similar emphasis on all three skills.

The small research population and its possible bias toward positive mentoring experience may present only part of the picture. Still, the data provided important insights into how mentoring supports (or not) professional skills development, even in the best cases. Using professional skills in a large sample survey of effective and less effective mentoring relationships would help to validate this framework.

First, the findings serve as a guideline for mentor training programs to help develop mentors’ ability to support all three professional skills. Second, the findings may help novice principals to evaluate their mentoring relationships and their contribution to developing professional core knowledge skills.

The professional skills framework adds to the principal mentoring literature by emphasizing the importance of diagnosis, intervention and inference skills, in addition to certain content and specific conditions.

The paper aims to explore the stages involved in the school establishment phase and detect differences between new and innovative schools startup.

The exploratory study was conducted on the creation phase of two Israeli elementary schools: one new and one innovative. The data were collected through interviews with central figures in each school, school visits, and documentations analysis.

Four stages were found in the establishment phase: building construction and resource achievement, goal prioritization, staff development, and vision formulation, but these stages were found to be in reverse order in the new and innovative schools.

Although the study is limited by the specific context from which data were drawn, it offers a useful conceptual framework for the establishment process of new and innovative schools.

Implications for practice and policy include useful suggestions for the stages and order necessary in the startup of each kind of school, identification of weak spots in the process and apposite remediation, and directions for policy and decision makers.

The study provides a conceptual framework which points to the differences in the startup phase in new and innovative schools, and suggests their different functions for the educational system.

Interorganizational cooperation (IOC) is like harnessing a swan, a crab, and a pike to a single wagon and still expecting it to go. One issue that appears significant under such conditions is building trust and inscribing it into the structure of IOC. The purpose of this study is to explore the relationships between trust and IOC structure.

Trust‐structure relationships are studied by drawing upon a case study of complex and effective IOC in The Early Childhood Center in Israel.

The analysis reveals several structural factors that support the building and maintenance of trust: choice of contribution, involvement in decision making, committee configuration, IOC culture, the director's role, and the representatives' high‐ranking positions and professional background.

Three conditions help to inscribe trust into IOC structure: Low risk and minor expectations from the IOC, a leader willing to share information throughout the IOC structure, and high positions and professional representatives.

The study contributes to IOC literature by highlighting the fact that trust between organizations cannot depend on the goodwill of particular people, but must have an organizational structure to enable and support it.

To study the implementation of a learning content management system (LCMS) at one department of a university in light of Rogers' diffusion of innovation (DOI) theory and in comparison to known critical success factors (CSFs) in implementation of information systems.

A case study approach was used to examine the implementation process.

Under authority decision to adopt the system throughout the department, the diffusion was quick and without resistance, not in line with authority adoption decision in Rogers' DOI theory. Some of the CSFs found are consistent with implementation CSFs mentioned in the literature.

To complement the qualitative research, quantitative research is needed regarding administrative measures taken in implementation processes at other academic departments and the success in terms of system adoption.

Successful LCMS implementation in an academic environment is rather rare and studying the successful authority decision in this case is of value to researchers and to practitioners. To adopt the system might imply that administrative measures could expedite implementation in other academic institutions.

The purpose of this study is to explore the interaction between information communication technology (ICT) and the school's organizational structure, and propose an analytical model based both on Luhmann's system theory and empirical findings.

The approach of building a theory from a case study research along with an instrumental multi‐case study method were applied to analyzing nine Israeli schools that successfully implemented ICT‐based pedagogical innovation.

The findings suggest that ICT generates three kinds of differentiation within the school's structure: segmentation, stratification and functional differentiation. The type of differentiation correlates with the school's communication and set of contingencies which includes ICT usage types, leadership style, time and space arrangement, source of expertise, and the champions – those who bear the burden. All the differentiation types were found to increase internal complexity and enhance school adaptability, and in a recursive process, affect school communication and its sensitivity toward further ICT integration.

The fact that the chosen schools demonstrated extreme cases of successful ICT integration might limit the generalizability of the findings, but nonetheless it offers a significant contribution to the development of a substantive ICT and school structure theory.

Supporting ICT integration called for intervention at the school's top management level; supporting an initial ICT‐based project enhances the school's control over the implementation process, and provides schools with additional resources.

This study bears a substantive theory regarding ICT and school structure, and fosters new insights and propositions for further research.

School marketing and its contribution to school success is a controversial issue in education, and although marketing activities are taking place in schools, they are usually not recognized as such. Relationship marketing (RM), collaborative interactive relations that enlist partners in loyal and supportive long-lasting connections, is no exception. By studying five successful Israeli schools, this study aims to reveal how successful school principals engaged in RM and contributed to their school's success. An “ideal type” of RM was extracted from the data, showing that good RM starts with a key event, develops under enabling conditions, and brings about the desired outcome along with additional consequences. It concludes that successful school principals, like Molière's protagonist who has unwittingly been speaking prose all his life, create RM in their ongoing work without terming it this way, and that this RM contributes to school success. Theoretical and practical implications are presented in the discussion.