Distributed leadership and Sunzi’s Art of Warfare

International Journal of Advance Study and Research Work, 2020

During the last few decades, effective leadership research has been an area of growing interest, debate, and examination in many scholarly studies. Scholars such as Peter G. Northouse (1997), Catherine Barrett and Robert Breyer (2014), Bradley S. Smith (2016) have provided a host of reviews and studies in the realm of effective leadership with the purpose to demarcate the potential leadership styles, approaches, and insights into what constitutes effective leadership qualities in educational institutions. This paper aims at examining effective leadership in the educational context in Morocco. Specifically, it attempts to unravel the timely challenges facing the development and progress of leadership in Moroccan educational institutions. By the same token, it tries to discuss some perspectives which foreground potential advancements in the educational sphere. The paper adopts a meta-synthesis technique, whereby a special examination of the various already conducted studies came out with conclusions: perspectives and challenges. The typical meta-synthesis method consists of articles, books, and any scholarly academic source related to school effectiveness with respect to leadership. Owing to its descriptive, diagnostic, and generative nature, this method allows the researcher to explore the wide-range of pitfalls and weaknesses which provide potential opportunities for alternative conclusions to be adopted in restructured and well-run approaches to leadership and school effectiveness. The major results and conclusions drawn from this paper are to be deeply and qualitatively discussed and analyzed.

Tian, Meng Distributed Leadership in Finnish and Shanghai schools Jyväskylä: University of Jyväskylä, 2016, 85 p. (+ included articles) (Jyväskylä Studies in Education, Psychology and Social Research ISSN 0075-4625; 571) ISBN 978-951-39-6858-8 (nid.) ISBN 978-951-39-6859-5 (PDF)

This national review aims to give a short state of the art on distributed leadership in the Hungarian school leadership practice. The paper outlines the legal framework related to sharing leadership, the formal frames that characterise leadership practice in Hungary and develops on certain aspects of a distributed leadership culture such as team work, the co-operation of the teaching staff and decision-making in schools. Finally, some questions are proposed for the further investigation of distributed leadership in practice.

IOER International Multidisciplinary Research Journal, 2020

Empowering school teams and personnel considered as essential component to expand community participation and involvement in school organization to deliver quality education services to improve school performances. It determines the manifestation of emerging distributed leadership and its relationship to School-Based management and organizational commitment. It was an attempt to identify the most practiced distributed leadership frameworks that reflects the inter-correlation on the concept of different authors about the emerging distributed leadership practice. It pertains to interactive, appreciative, and adaptive distributive leadership. It was determined the manifestation of emerging distributed leadership frameworks as obtained from 715 respondents from public secondary schools in the Division of Quezon who were purposively selected. The study utilized the descriptive method of research. Aside from quantitative data to determine the correlational analysis, the qualitative data also used to strongly support the qualitative results. In general, correlational analysis of the study found out that there was a significant relationship between emerging distributed leadership, School-Based Management practices and organizational commitment. The study illustrates that the distributed leadership frameworks ware being manifested to achieve school effectiveness that develop school structural change and innovation to sustain quality education engaging school heads, teachers, and other stakeholders.

Referring to the Huainanzi (The Master of Huainan), this article delineates an ancient Chinese understanding of distributed leadership. Accordingly, distributed leadership advocates the distribution of task that combines responsibility and authority; and the harmonious coexistence of the empowerment of others and positional authority. The distribution of responsibility and authority is undertaken by an exemplary leader who inspires others through one's moral character and influence. Furthermore, distributed leadership infuses responsibility with positional, social and moral authority; harmonises the personal and interpersonal qualities of leaders; and reinforces rational persuasion with role-modelling by the leaders. The notion of distributed leadership that is informed by the Huainanzi contributes to the existing literature by addressing a prominent challenge and a prevailing misconception concerning this leadership construct. In addition, the proposed account guides leaders to revamp organisational structure, implement staff deployment policies and lead on the basis of fairness and moral leadership.

Australian Educational Leader, 2015

The citizens of Western societies intuitively value the Utopian, democratic, egalitarianism that is embedded in the leadership and actions of both individuals and organisations. Leadership is a complex relational equation that takes into account the aspirations of the affected parties, but some organisations propose that leadership can be learned. For example, the Australian military advertises that the Royal Military College Duntroon is, “Where Leaders are Made” (Australian Army Television Advertisement, 2015). If leadership were only that simple! However, such is the power of leadership that its foil, management, is often relegated to a far lesser status in literature on the subject, and leadership is often projected as distributed. Our understandings of leadership have changed profoundly since Taylor developed his “scientific” approach to organisational management in the 1890s (Taylor, 1911). Ciulla (2003) in her developmental description of leadership showed how leadership morphed to a modern description incorporated in a mutual purpose equation. She argued that the perception of leadership has significantly altered from a 1920s perspective. Specifically, leadership as the ability to impress one’s will on those led and induce obedience, respect, loyalty and cooperation evolved to the more recent position of leadership as being a transactional relationship between leaders and followers who expect changes that reflect their mutual purposes (adapted from Ciulla, 2003). In schools it is important to note that the often-ignored concept of moral altruism (improving students’ life options) plays an important role in the mutual purpose equation for teachers and school administrators (Harris & MacNeill, 2015).

PUPIL: International Journal of Teaching, Education and Learning, 2021

School leadership has become very popular in the current educational discourse. Distributed leadership has been identified as one of the most important leadership practices in terms of enhancing the quality of teaching and learning since it involves many members of the school. Also, it has been found that the main purpose of distributed leadership is to create secondary level leaders within the school and thus give more opportunities for teachers to improve their leadership skills. This study focused on investigating the distributed leadership practices and their impact on teaching and learning in type 1C and type 2 schools in Sri Lanka. The objectives of this study were to identify how principals and teachers understand the concept of distributed leadership; how distributed leadership practices enhance teaching and learning; and what challenges principals and teachers face when devolving and practicing leadership responsibilities in their schools. Altogether 8 schools, 8 principals, 10 sectional heads, and 200 teachers were selected for the study. Both questionnaires and semi-structured interviews were used to gather the data necessary. The findings revealed that all the principals and a significant number of teachers in the type 1C and type two schools fully understood the concept of distributed leadership and have linked it with teaching and learning. The study further revealed that the distributed leadership practices contributed to

The Leadership Quarterly, 2002

This article proposes a new unit of analysis in the study of leadership. As an alternative to the current focus, which is primarily on the deeds of individual leaders, the article proposes distributed leadership. The article shows how conventional constructs of leadership have difficulty accommodating changes in the division of labor in the workplace, especially, new patterns of interdependence and coordination which have given rise to distributed practice. A number of forms of distributed leadership are then outlined, in particular, three varieties of concertive action in which a key defining criterion is conjoint agency. These forms provide the basis for a taxonomy of distributed leadership and a review of examples in the literature. The article concludes with a consideration of some implications of the adoption of a revised unit of analysis, particularly for recent work on levels of analysis and for future research into leadership as a process.

Journal of Education and Training Studies, 2015

In recent years, many studies are conducted about shared leadership process. Distributed leadership (DL) approach addresses leadership along with teams, groups and organizational characteristics. In practice, this approach objects the supposition that an individual should take the lead in order to ensure change. Proponents of this idea claim that shared leadership is required since educational institutions are too complex to be managed with only one individual. Responsibility for managing various complex tasks in organizations is distributed among a myriad of individuals with different roles. The basic principle advocated in this approach is based on the futility of efforts to ascertain a series of best single leader characteristics or best single leader behaviors. Current study aims to provide information on distributed leadership and discuss the applicability of the concept in educational organizations.