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The purpose of this paper is to describe a symbolic-interpretative research on the leadership culture and its subcultures in one unified comprehensive school in Finland.

The research is a phenomenological, qualitative case study. Its methodology is based on triangulation.

The leadership culture of the unified comprehensive school studied in the present research seemed to be based on equality, communality, appreciation, flow of information and humor. Besides examining the general leadership culture of the school, an attempt was made to study the possible subcultures of the school by examining the six subject groups into which the teachers were divided in the school on the basis of the teachers’ education and tasks. These subject groups formed the subgroups of the research. If a subgroup's interpretation of the leadership culture of the school differed significantly from those of the other subgroups, the subgroup was considered to have a subculture of its own. Only one such subculture was found, that of the mathematic teachers. It, too, although being clearly a subculture of its own, included several common features with the main leadership culture of the unified comprehensive school.

The study is the first one in Finnish schools where leadership culture is conceived as a constantly reforming outcome of the meaning and interpretation processes which form themselves through the social structures of the school in connection to the leadership actions at the school.

Investigates the relationship between perceptions of women principals’ leadership (in terms of sex‐role orientation and leadership functions) and teachers’ work attitudes (in terms of sense of efficacy, sense of community and sense of professional interest) by controlling teachers’ personal demographics in a sample of teachers under the administration of women principals in secondary schools. Gives the results of Pearson and canonical correlation analyses, which indicated that, according to teachers’ perceptions, among the measures of perceived women principals’ leadership, human leadership, political leadership, symbolic leadership, structural leadership, educational leadership, androgynous orientation and undifferentiated orientation (negatively) were strong predictors of a teacher’s work attitudes. The findings of this study support the advocacy of the five leadership dimensions and androgynous orientation in women principals’ leadership. Advances implications for further study and practice.

This paper explores how Selznick’s approach to leadership can inform contemporary organizational theory and research. Drawing on Selznick’s writing in Leadership in Administration and related works, we characterize organizations as simultaneously technical entities pursuing economic goals and value-laden entities pursuing non-economic goals arising from their members and their role in society. These two aspects of organizations are deeply intertwined and in continual tension with one another, and the essential task of leadership is to uphold both – protecting and promoting values while also meeting technical imperatives. To do so, leaders establish a common purpose that includes values and ideals not just technical imperatives, they create structures and practices that embody this purpose, and they make organizational decisions and personal behavioral choices that are consistent with this purpose. We consider each task of leadership in turn, showing how Selznick’s ideas enrich and extend contemporary research on competing institutional logics, organizational design, culture, and identity, leadership, and meaningful work.

The purpose of this study is to develop new knowledge on corporate branding from a corporate social responsibility (CSR) perspective. The paper is particularly concerned with how environmental awareness can function as a specific CSR activity, and how environmental awareness can impact corporate brand. The paper also investigates the role of personal leadership, both within the company and externally, in developing an environmentally responsible company.

The paper uses an explorative research method and studies one company within the Norwegian offshore oil and gas industry. The analysis is based on qualitative interview data.

The study shows how the founder's role as “cultural architect” has a positive impact on how external constituents assess the image of the company, especially with regard to the company's innovations and its awareness of environmental issues, in two ways: first, it shapes, coordinates, energizes and leverages employees' attitudes and behaviors in relation to environmental issues; second, it thereby enforces a positive external reputation for the company, especially as a “green innovator”.

The findings are induced from a case study of one company in a particular industry. The results may therefore not be applicable or generalizable to other companies or other industries.

The study suggests that companies may gain reputational advantages and differentiation in integrating corporate social responsibility and environmental awareness as a core element of their business strategy.

The paper contributes to the corporate branding literature by exploring the role of CSR, and in particular concern for environmental issues and personal leadership, in building corporate reputation and developing a strong corporate brand.

Concepts of values-based leadership posit that school principals’ professional practice must be informed by values to ensure coherently purposeful activities. Contingency models stress the contextual dependency of professional practice and the need to match activities to local opportunities and constraints. The purpose of this paper is to reconcile both positions from an integrative perspective and to illustrate examples of “values-based contingency leadership” (Day et al., 2001).

Analyses draw on survey data from 56 German schools in order to relate professional values stated by the principals as well as organizational features of their schools to teacher ratings on leadership behaviour (n=910). Instead of scrutinizing singular variables in isolation, a typological approach serves to identify value profiles as well as organizational configurations. Analyses of variance are applied to examine the combined effects of both factors on leadership behaviour.

Interactional effects in the sample indicate that contextual influences are not homogenous across differing value profiles of principals who operate under equal conditions. Descriptive patterns of leadership behaviour within each organizational configuration reveal how principals accentuate leadership activities according to their value profile.

Due to the low statistical power of the small sample, findings are clearly exploratory in nature. However, replication and extension studies seem fruitful, as effect sizes of value-context interactions are consistent with theoretical assumptions and not artificially inflated by common-source variance.

This paper elaborates and exemplifies the moderating role of values in contextual influences on leadership behaviour. It also provides deeper insights into the content and structure of professional values advocated by school principals.

The purpose of this study is to evaluate the effects of nursing students' personality traits and leadership orientations on their career adaptability.

A total of 322 nursing students were enrolled in this cross-sectional study. The methods used to collect data included the semi-structured data collection form, five factors personality scale, leadership orientation scale and career adaptation-abilities scale.

The regression model created to determine the effects of personality traits and leadership orientations on the students’ career adaptability proved to be highly insightful. The students' leadership orientations have a statistically significant effect on their career adaptability score, with an explanatory coefficient of 43.1% and personality traits accounted for 18% of the career adaptability.

The results of this study indicated that leadership orientations and personality traits of the students exerted effects on the career adaptability of nursing students. Developing the leadership orientations of nursing students and being aware of their personality traits will contribute positively to the development of their career adaptability and strengthen the health system.

The study reported on in this article examines how instructional leadership is exercised by superintendents in effective school districts. We employ concepts drawn from school effectiveness studies and from organizational literature on coordination and control in an attempt to understand how superintendents organize and manage instruction and curriculum in these effective districts. Specific instructional management practices are examined within a framework of six major functions, setting goals and establishing expectations and standards, selecting staff, supervising and evaluating staff, establishing an instructional and curricular focus, ensuring consistency in technical core operations, and monitoring curriculum and instruction. Based on interviews with superintendents from 12 of the most instructionally effective school districts in California and analysis of selected district documents, we present descriptions of district‐level policies and practices that these superintendents use to coordinate and control the instructional management activities of their principals. Similarities and differences in the patterns of control and coordination found in these districts are highlighted. The implications of the findings are then examined in light of recent findings regarding coupling and linkages in schools. The results of this study suggest that superintendents in instructionally effective school districts are more active “instructional managers” than previous descriptions of superintendents would have led us to expect. In particular, coordination and control of the technical core appears more systematic in these districts. The results do not, however, provide a uniform picture of how instruction is coordinated and controlled. A wide range of both culture building activities and bureaucratic policies and practices were emphasized by the superintendents in this study as they exercised their instructional leadership roles.

The internationalization of United States higher education has been described as a “two-way street” where students arrive at knowledge transfer. That transfer occurs through a curriculum deemed “unidirectional” with no relevance to local issues or needs and results in limited application and educational colonialism perceptions. Specific to leadership education, the extant literature presents implications of neglect to cultural contexts traditionally reflected in the curriculum within a host nation. We used an explanatory mixed methods design for this study to investigate the degree to which undergraduate Western-based leadership studies courses taught in China reflect the notion of “neocolonialism” by prioritizing Western interests and values.

While the study’s quantitative results reveal cultural differences in leadership education concepts, the qualitative follow-up phase finds students’ appreciation in the utility of leadership concepts and knowledge gained from the leadership curriculum. Students could cite specific situations in which they employed leadership concepts acquired from their respective leadership courses.

Aims to develop the conception and theory of school‐based management and map its characteristics of school functioning for facilitating the ongoing discussion and effort for school management reforms in local or international contexts. School‐based management employs theories of “equifinality” and “decentralization”, assumes that “school is a self‐managing system” and regards “initiative of human factor” and “improvement of internal process” as important. When compared with externally‐controlled schools, the characteristics of school‐based managing schools are very different in school functioning. They should have clear school mission and strong organizational culture. In these schools, managing strategies should encourage participation and give full play to members′ initiative; there should also be considerable autonomy of procuring and using resources to solve problems in time; the role of people concerned should be active and developmental; human relationship is open, co‐operative with mutual commitment; administrators should be high quality and always learning; and evaluation of school effectiveness should include multilevel and multi‐facet indicators of input, process and output in order to help the school learn to improve.