This book discusses principals' prerequisites and work within the five Nordic countries and focuses on schools as formal institutions that carry out functions delegated to them by the social collective. It includes a discussion about what kind of state policy demonstrates autonomy in Nordic schools, as well as the ways in which school leaders as…

The study of leadership has faltered partly because the wrong phenomenon has been studied. Whereas the usual definition considers leadership either as a personal property or as a property of position, this paper argues that it is a transient phenomenon residing neither in the person nor the situation and one that can be practiced equally well by…

An overview is provided of the research conducted in Japan during the past 30 years on the Performance-Maintenance Theory of Leadership. Experimental and field studies are described which suggest that the consequences of leadership in Japan result from interaction of performance-oriented and maintenance-oriented behaviors. (TE)

Using ethnographic methods of field work and data analysis, this study investigated one example of a comprehensive senior high school to illuminate the nature of its organizational structure and the way in which organizational control and leadership is exercised. Three principal findings emerged from theme analysis of the data. First,…

This paper highlights the findings of Gougeon's 1989 study of high school principals of schools with grade configurations 9 through 12 in the state of Washington, a study based on the Principal Leadership as Social Control (PLASC) theory. Accordingly, the first section describes the PLASC theory as social control of teachers through power- and…

Presents a study extending a model of leadership response based on attribution theories to include measures of locus of control and situational control. Describes a procedure by which subjects responded to descriptions of subordinate performance. Concludes that supervisors with an external locus of control were less sensitive to subordinate…

Recent research casts doubt on the commonly held notions that administrators affect student learning through instructional leadership and that changing administrators will improve school performance. To help construct a model for examining the process of leader succession that specifies a number of major school process and outcome variables…

This study of incumbent British Columbia school board members prior to election analyzes relationships between individual members' feelings of political efficacy and trust and their decisions to seek or not seek reelection. The 60 subjects, from 24 districts, represented candidates (those members seeking reelection) and retirees (members not…

Maintains that in the future the state will have to move beyond the politics of particular advantage (individual and group rights) to politics serving the general advantage (environmental concerns, economic development). Argues that current politics are dangerously outmoded in everything from their theoretical assumptions to data collecting. (MJP)

This study of the school board agenda-setting role among 30 Minnesota superintendents interprets their perceptions in relation to environmental contexts, group demands, issues control, and district enrollment size. A microperspective of David Easton's political systems model provided the guiding conceptual framework. Respondents were interviewed…