Modes of organisation and control within educational organisations have tended to accord with those of the workplace. Bureaucracy has endured in both. Of late, it has been loosened. This has opened up a new conceptual space within educational management and leadership. Its underlying theme is collaboration. The analysis here extends the space associated with concepts such as distributed leadership and system leadership. It draws upon the recent social theory of the firm proposed by Paul Adler and Charles Heckscher, and introduces their concept of collaborative community, a concept which when applied to educational administration re-instates both trust and community as contributing to education, economy and society. (Contains 85 footnotes.)