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School inspection or supervision is one of the core institutional mechanisms for ensuring the quality of education. While analyzing the practices of this quality assurance tool at the basic education level in six developing and emerging economies, this paper found that there has been a major shift in exercising supervision system pushed by the policy dynamics of both international actors and state institutions. The school supervision system has been shaped by decentralization, school-based management, monitoring, data gathering, and output-focused governance. These are also known as the elements of New Public Management (NPM). The growing practice of NPM in all these countries has made the external supervision a less prioritized issue, which is evident in its stagnated and sometimes deteriorated state. On the other hand, the pro-NPM management system advocating for greater autonomy, decentralization and results has not evidently yielded any major positive outcomes, especially in lower-income countries. Thus, the absence of an effective supervision system, both support and control, has created a vacuum in the educational quality assurance instruments. By oversimplifying local contexts in situating NPM, this foreign-emerged management system also has shown reluctance toward fundamental crises of weak institutions in lower-income countries, including resource constraints, skills shortage, and service recipients’ lack of trust, among others. In short, developmental level and institutional capacity matter for the successful implementation of NPM.

Over the past decade most central governments across sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) have begun to decentralize some fiscal, political, and administrative responsibilities to lower-levels of government, local institutions, and the private sector in pursuit of greater accountability and more efficient service delivery, often in an attempt to solve broader political, social, or economic problems (SARA, 1997). Education, in particular, has been fertile ground for such decentralization efforts. From Ethiopia to South Africa, SSA countries have engaged in some form of education decentralization, though the pace has been quite uneven. Ethiopia, Uganda, Senegal, and South Africa, for example, are proceeding fast, while Ghana, Mali, Tanzania, and Zimbabwe are under way more slowly. Guinea, Niger, Zambia, and Nigeria are at the other end of the continuum. Decentralization of social services, including education appears to be embedded in the political changes occurring in the region. In almost all SSA countries the introduction of decentralized systems are accompanied by popular elections for local councils as part of the general trend of the introduction of or return to democratization.

The Covid-19 crisis has coerced organisations and business schools to rethink and reflect their practices about well-being and purpose individually and collectively. While this discourse was existent within academic and professional sphere, it was rather muted or isolated in the quest of pursuing traditional indicators of progress in terms of economic productivity. It is within this context we revisit our past interaction with the leader who has been advocating for responsible leadership which encompasses well-being and purpose amidst Covid-19. Arianna Huffington is the Founder and CEO of Thrive Global, which is a platform to help corporations in promoting individual and collective well-being. Formerly she was also the Co-founder and the President and Editor-in-Chief of the Huffington Post Media Group. In 2014, she received the Tesla Sustainable Leadership Award, after which one of the authors had an opportunity to interview her for the Sustainable Leadership Blog.¹ A staunch advocate of issues like climate change, gender equality, work-life balance and youth empowerment, Arianna exemplifies the commitment to articulate and implement purpose-led corporations, proposing the People–Planet–Profit approach to leadership . By shedding light on Arianna’s perspective this chapter suggests reflective pointers for decision-makers in management education, these are follows: (a) business schools can lead integrating sustainability in their purpose and practice; (b) relevance of the spiritual dimension and its significance in business schools and organisations; and (c) proposing a holistic view in comparison with a traditional view of business education. Finally, we also posit that her practice as role model for responsible leadership during Covid-19 reflects consistent adherence in her past and present discourse about responsible management issues. Thus, her insights can help leaders of public, private and social organisations to grapple with complex organisational issues arising due to of Covid-19.

In this chapter, the authors review talent management in the research university sector, business schools in particular. The authors adopt an “exclusive” perspective on talent management, assuming that some scholars contribute disproportionately to organizational performance. The authors identify two particular groups of scholars likely to be the target of exclusive talent management practices in business schools: (i) faculty on a tenure track career path and (ii) “star” tenured faculty with exceptionally strong track records. Focusing on these current and potential future “stars,” the authors review and discuss talent management practices related to talent identification, recruitment and selection, performance management, talent development, benefits and rewards, and tenure, promotion, and retention. In the extant literature, these topics have been mostly examined in the general university environment and less so in the business school context. This is somewhat problematic given that business schools have their own special characteristics. Moreover, some of the reviewed topics – especially talent development – have received only marginal scholarly interest thus far. Based on this literature review, and by drawing on their own experience working in different roles in academia, the authors highlight some of the gaps in the current body of knowledge and propose an agenda for future research.

Within current educational management literature, it could be argued that the cultural perspective that is generally articulated is one in which the social context of education policy, school culture and educational management is almost entirely overlooked (Angus, 1996). The emphasis is typically on individual school ‘leaders’ and an internally constructed organizational culture in which principals are expected to become manipulators of culture and belief. School principals, in this literature, and in current government policy in many countries, are expected to construct or impose corporate control within their institutions in the increasingly decentralized organizational form that is considered necessary for organizational efficiency and, most importantly, market success and legitimacy in the increasingly complex post-industrial society (Parker, 1992). My general argument is that this perspective misconceives culture as an internal aspect of organizations that may be manipulated by management in order to enhance organizational commitment and efficiency (Caldwell & Spinks, 1993, 1998; Deal & Peterson, 1999).

The introduction of performance-related pay with performance management in the state school sector of England and Wales represents a considerable change in the school management system. After 2000, all teachers were subject to annual goal setting performance reviews. Experienced teachers were offered an extended pay scale based on performance instead of seniority, and to gain access to the new upper pay scale, teachers had to go through a ‘threshold assessment’ based on their professional skills and performance. This paper reports the results of a panel survey of classroom and head teachers which started in 2000 just before implementation of the new system, and then after one and after four years of operation. We find that both classroom and head teacher views have changed considerably over time, from initial general scepticism and opposition towards a more positive view, especially among head teachers by 2004. We argue that the adoption of an integrative bargaining approach to performance reviews explains why a growing minority of schools have achieved improved goal setting and improved pupil attainments as they have implemented performance management. Pay for performance has been one of the measures of organisational support that head teachers could bring to induce changes in teachers’ classroom priorities. We argue that the teachers’ case shows that a wider range of performance incentives than previously thought can be offered to employees in such occupations, provided that goal setting and performance measurement are approached as a form of negotiation instead of top-down.