The discussion above showed that management and leadership tend to impinge on each other in middle management. Hence in this section I untangle the concepts of leadership and management in order to show the relationship between these terms and how I use them in this study. It is important to note how scholars differentiate between these concepts because I argue in this thesis that women heads of department are not only managers but also leaders of departments.
Within a South African context Singh and Lokostch (2005, p. 279) contend that management in education has traditionally been based on rules and regulations and the control of system inputs and outputs. They argue that a new paradigm of management should be based on shared leadership and shared vision. West-Burnham (1994, p. 28) puts it this way when he proposes that management should be seen as a verb or activity rather than a noun or object. Rather than management referring to a senior group of staff, it should be seen as an activity in which it is engaged by all members of an educational organisation, i.e. senior staff, teaching staff, non-teaching staff and children or students participants. Within the new framing of management, managing is therefore making things happen. It is the processes in which all people engage in an organisation.
38 A different perspective is presented by Cuban (1988). Cuban describes a leader as a person who influences others to embrace change whereas a manager is a person who is involved in effective maintenance of an organisation rather than in change. He states (Cuban, 1988, p.xx):
By leadership, I mean influencing other‟s actions in achieving desirable ends. Leaders are people who shape the goals, motivations, and actions of others. Frequently they initiate change to reach existing and new goals...Leadership...takes... much ingenuity, energy and skill.
Managing is to maintain efficiently and effectively current and organisational arrangements.
While managing well often exhibits leadership skills, the overall function is towards maintenance rather than change. I prize both managing and leading and attach no special value to either since different settings and time call for varied responses.
According to Chance and Chance (2002, p.85), writers often differentiate between leaders and managers in terms of the person rather than the process of managing and leading. In differentiating between the process of management and leadership, Schein (1985) suggests that leadership can be distinguished from management in that the main function of leadership is to shape and direct the organisational culture. Bush (2008) on the other hand, states that the concepts of leadership and management overlap each other and with administration. Different countries show preferences for these terms. Management is widely used in Britain, Europe and Africa, while
administration is used in the USA, Canada and Australia (Bush, 2003). Dimmock and Walker (2005, p. 12) assert that “leadership involves setting the general and longer- term directions of the organization”. In South Africa the Task Team on Education Management Development (DoE, 1996a, p. 27) does not link management with administration but states the following about management: “Management is about doing things and working with people to make things happen. It is a process to which all contribute and in which everyone in an organisation ought to be involved”.
Coleman (2003c, 156) equates leadership with “vision and values” and management with “processes and structures”. In terms of policy some of the management functions of the HoDs are to control and monitor the departmental activities, make decisions and allocate resources within the department. The HoD has to inspire departmental
members to work effectively, set goals and have a vision for the department in order to ensure the “effective functioning of the department” (RSA, 1998). This can be considered the leadership functions of the HoD. Being responsible for a team of educators within their department means that HoDs have to inspire and motivate educators in order to achieve these goals. Therefore, even though HoDs have their
39 management functions and responsibilities, the leadership attributes of inspiring and motivating colleagues is essential for effective teacher performance. The arguments in the literature presented in section 2.2 about women having strengths in collegial relations and caring for colleagues and their development, seem to suggest that women HoDs may have an edge over men HoDs in the dual manager/leader role. I will therefore use the words leaders and managers in this thesis when referring to the women heads of department, because I view them as both managers and leaders of their departments. This resonates with Schon‟s (1984) argument that often the
distinction between the roles of manager and leader is not intended since we generally expect managers to lead, therefore it may be acceptable to treat management and leadership as one concept.
Management and leadership within the South African educational context have changed in the post-1994 era, from a bureaucratic system of educational management to a decentralised decision-making approach that promotes self-managing and
autonomous schools. Thurlow (2003, p. 35) states that the post-apartheid approach to education management in South Africa has the school and its community as its primary focus. To this end the Task Team Report (DoE, 1996a, p. 28) states: “In [South Africa], schools are the building blocks for transformation of the education system. It is in schools that the culture of teaching and learning must be recreated, and the foundational lessons of democracy learned”.
In the light of this, according to Thurlow (2003), the post-apartheid education policies and legislation of post-apartheid South Africa promote a process of decentralised decision-making in which schools have to increasingly manage themselves. The South African Schools Act (RSA, 1996b) has devolved decision-making power to the
schools and thus advocates democratic school governance. The Task Team Report (DoE, 1996a, p. 19) states that the traditional system of management was one in which principals and teachers were consistently at the receiving end of top-down
management structures. During the apartheid era South African schools displayed many bureaucratic features with hierarchical structures (Bush, 2003, p. 49). This meant that the managers of schools worked in a highly regulated environment and had become accustomed to receiving direct instructions from the departmental officials (DoE, 1996a, p. 19).
40 Thurlow (2003) contends that the Task Team‟s proposed self-management of schools does not guarantee a positive change in management styles, but that real
transformation would depend on the nature and quality of internal management. The Task Team (DoE, 1996a, p. 29) proposes that the self management of the schools
“must be accompanied by an internal devolution of power within the school and in transformational leadership”. The Task Team thus recommends transformational and distributed leadership, which is the distribution of power over decisions among the various stakeholders in the school context. Through transformational leadership, a school would be driven by the values and mission that would have been developed consensually and owned by all members of a school, not only the principal (DoE, 1996a). The Task Team (DoE, 1996a, p. 30) also proposes an integrative and collaborative approach to educational management which is based on consent and consensus. Therefore, participatory and collaborate approaches to leadership and management are set as the base for transforming schools in the post-apartheid era in South Africa.
Senge (1996, p. 45) describes the type of leader that is required for the sort of changing educational landscape and conditions as occurring in South Africa:
we are coming to believe that leaders are those people who „walk ahead‟, people who are genuinely committed to deep change in themselves and in their organisations. They lead through developing new skills, capabilities, and understandings. And they come from many places in the organisations.
The type of leader that Senge refers to is one who adopts a transformational leadership approach. Transformational leadership engages various stakeholders in decision- making and therefore assists the internal management of the school in becoming more collaborative (Grant, 2006; Gronn, 2000). There is a shift from a focus on “individual achievement and meritocracy to an emphasis on collective achievement, social
networks, and the importance of teamwork and shared accountability” (Fletcher, 2004, p. 648). Transformational leadership has aspects similar in nature to distributed or shared leadership because participation is from bottom-up, rather than top-down where leadership practices are enacted by people at all levels in an organisation and work within a context of interdependence (Hallinger, 2003). Transformational leadership is collaborative, like that of distributed leadership in which leadership is devolved to include teachers and other line managers and is not only in the control of
41 the principal (Grant, 2006). In this regard the middle managers can therefore be seen as leaders of their departments because they too develop “new skills, capabilities and understanding” in their team members (Senge, 1996, p. 45). The middle managers can thus lead the change process within schools through this transformed leadership style.
The leadership can be around “curriculum issues, assessment, teaching and learning, community and parent participation, school vision building, networking, the
development of partnerships, and so on” (Grant, 2006, p. 514). Transformational leadership moves away from a traditional understanding that involves transactions between members of the department in schools (see Caldwell & Spinks, 1992). In transformational leadership, followers are committed to change (Hallinger, 2003).
Eagly (2007) proposes that women leaders are more transformational than male leaders because of their stereotypically feminine qualities of co-operation, mentoring and collaboration, which are qualities of transformational leadership.
Therefore, within the South African policy context transformational and collegial leadership and management is proposed so that schools with leaders/managers such as women heads of department are capable of meeting the challenges of a changing education system.