Editorial

Educational Management
Administration & Leadership
Distributed leadership and 2019, Vol. 47(1) 3–4
ª The Author(s) 2018

bureaucracy: Changing fashions Article reuse guidelines:

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DOI: 10.1177/1741143218806704
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Tony Bush

Bureaucracy has been the dominant paradigm in leadership and management since the 19th century.
Developed to explain business organisations, it was subsequently adopted in much of the public
service, including education. Its main features include an emphasis on hierarchy, with vertical
accountability, division of labour based on specialist knowledge, tightly defined rules and regula-
tions, and impersonal relationships based on formal roles. Although bureaucracy is pervasive, it is
particularly evident in centralised education systems. Despite frequent, and often trenchant, criticism,
it remains an important feature of educational organisations in many countries (Bush, 2011).
Several approaches have been postulated as alternatives to bureaucracy, including collegiality
and participative leadership. In the 21st century, the normatively preferred model is distributed
leadership. In contrast to bureaucracy, leadership in this model is uncoupled from formal roles and
may arise in any part of the organisation (Bush and Glover, 2014).
The first article in this issue, by Jacky Lumby, explores the relationship between distributed
leadership and bureaucracy. She notes that the latter is often regarded as ‘hidebound and perni-
cious’ but is more prevalent across the world, and may be seen as ‘a near-universal approach to
leadership’. She suggests a need to ‘shake off the emotional hold’ of distributed leadership’ and
focus on understanding power flows in organisations. She concludes that conceptual pluralism,
rather than the monotheistic concept of distributed leadership, offers a more productive future.
Philip Hallinger has led several important systematic reviews of research in different parts of the
world, in order to diversify the global knowledge base. In this issue (with Waheed Hammad), he offers
a review of knowledge production on educational leadership and management in Arab societies. The
authors identified 62 articles, published in nine ‘core’ journals, including Education Management
Administration & Leadership. They note the relatively low volume of publications, most of which are
relatively recent, suggesting an upward trajectory but from a low base. They also comment that there
are no notable centres of excellence in the Arab world. They conclude that intellectual leadership is
required to develop productive research on educational leadership and management.
Teacher leadership is another model to be advocated in the 21st century, as the notion of
singular leadership has been challenged. Callie Grant notes that it has been the focus of sustained
research in the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada and Australia but is much less evident
in emerging democracies. She provides a review of the ‘emerging archive’ of literature in one such
country, South Africa, where she has been a pioneer. She identifies 46 sources, of which only 11
were published in refereed journal articles, with most being master’s dissertations. She comments
that research on teacher leadership is ‘embryonic’ and concludes that this sub-field requires more
robust conceptual tools and explanatory theories.
Anit Somech and Manar Naameh discuss the role of subject coordinators as boundary manag-
ers. They note that these leaders have to manage both the internal team and the external
4 Educational Management Administration & Leadership 47(1)

environment. They surveyed 83 subject teaching teams in Israeli elementary and junior high
schools. They found that subject team leaders who invest in creating cooperation and team cohe-
sion contribute to their teams’ effectiveness. They also note that external activities, such as
obtaining support or resources, promote team learning.
Paul A. Irvine and Mark Brundrett also explore middle leadership, drawing on a case study of an
independent school in North-West England. They stress the importance of middle leadership, includ-
ing academic and pastoral dimensions, for school effectiveness. They also note the discomfort of
being squeezed between the conflicting requirements of senior leaders and classroom teachers. The
authors interviewed 20 middle leaders in their case-study school and analysed their data through the
notion of progression from ‘novice to master’. They conclude that leadership is context-specific but
add that this does not preclude the cross-fertilisation of experience from other contexts.
Pierre Tulowitzki notes that surveys and interviews are prominent methods for researching school
principals but he adds that shadowing may also be considered to be a powerful tool for learning about
leadership. He analysed school leadership studies reported in journals, and in conference papers,
including those written in French and German, as well as English. He notes a lack of clarity about the
meaning of shadowing, leading to a view that there is no single definition of this term. He argues that
shadowing provides ‘unparalleled accuracy’ but at a substantial cost, leading to small sample sizes.
He concludes that it offers a level of detail no other method can provide.
Black, Asian and minority ethnic (BAME) teachers are significantly under-represented in
leadership positions in England. Jean Pierre Elonga Mboyo examines this problem through inter-
views with eight such professionals, drawing on social identity theory. He presents narratives from
BAME teachers who have experienced discrimination and who felt unsupported by senior leaders,
both white and BAME. He concludes that white teachers and leaders need to be included in
research about the under-representation to fully explain the exclusion militating against the pro-
gression of BAME teachers to leadership positions.
Jarlath Brennan and Gerry Mac Ruairc examine the role of emotions in the personal and
professional practice of leaders, arguing that they ‘play a key role in the social survival of the
school leader’. They explored this issue through multiple interviews with eight principals of Irish
primary schools, comprising four disadvantaged and four middle class. Some of these principals
were active in developing the emotional climate in the school, including being emotionally sen-
sitive to the children, as well as to parents and teachers. The authors conclude that principals play a
central role in the emotional relationships in schools.
Vicente Llorent-Bedmar and his colleagues discuss school leadership in disadvantaged contexts in
Spain. They report on the consequences of disadvantage at a time of high youth unemployment. The
authors surveyed 955 teachers and interviewed 14 principals of schools ‘in particular difficulty’. The
authors show that most teachers are positive about the principals’ leadership practices but they also
note certain ‘deficiencies’ in teacher training for work in such challenging contexts. They conclude that
the limited autonomy of principals is a problem because the educational administrators are ‘removed
from everyday problems’. This final comment might well be echoed in many other countries.

References
Bush T (2011) Theories of Educational Leadership and Management, 2nd ed. London, UK: SAGE.
Bush T and Glover D (2014) School leadership models: What do we know? School Leadership and Man-
agement 34(5): 553–571.