The University of Southampton
University of Southampton Institutional Repository

Distributed leadership: critical perspectives

Distributed leadership: critical perspectives
Distributed leadership: critical perspectives
This article questions the dominance of distributed leadership as a worldwide theory of educational leadership. It critiques the theory’s uncertain definitions, its unrealistic reliance on positive behaviours and its avoidance of engagement with issues of power. It explores why it is widely presented as preferable to bureaucracy when the worth of bureaucracy is evidenced by its ubiquity in organisations, despite being caricatured and side-lined. The article suggests that a more critical stance in relation to distributed leadership and a more open-minded embrace of the potentialities of bureaucracy offer a credible and positive path forward for educational leadership.
Administration Bureaucracy Discrimination Distributed leadership Distributed cognition Exclusion Management Leadership Power Professionalism Race Weber
Elsevier Science
Lumby, Jacky
Tierney, Rob
Rizvi, Farzal
Erckican, Kadriye
Lumby, Jacky
Tierney, Rob
Rizvi, Farzal
Erckican, Kadriye

Lumby, Jacky (2022) Distributed leadership: critical perspectives. In, Tierney, Rob, Rizvi, Farzal and Erckican, Kadriye (eds.) Elsevier International Encyclopedia of Education. 4th ed. Nederlands. Elsevier Science.

Record type: Book Section

Abstract

This article questions the dominance of distributed leadership as a worldwide theory of educational leadership. It critiques the theory’s uncertain definitions, its unrealistic reliance on positive behaviours and its avoidance of engagement with issues of power. It explores why it is widely presented as preferable to bureaucracy when the worth of bureaucracy is evidenced by its ubiquity in organisations, despite being caricatured and side-lined. The article suggests that a more critical stance in relation to distributed leadership and a more open-minded embrace of the potentialities of bureaucracy offer a credible and positive path forward for educational leadership.

Text
Lumby Elsevier distributed - Accepted Manuscript
Download (82kB)

More information

e-pub ahead of print date: 1 October 2022
Published date: 1 October 2022
Keywords: Administration Bureaucracy Discrimination Distributed leadership Distributed cognition Exclusion Management Leadership Power Professionalism Race Weber

Identifiers

Local EPrints ID: 470414
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/470414
PURE UUID: ac2dc882-afa8-4189-a97c-da734dd111f7

Catalogue record

Date deposited: 10 Oct 2022 16:54
Last modified: 16 Mar 2024 22:13

Export record

Contributors

Author: Jacky Lumby
Editor: Rob Tierney
Editor: Farzal Rizvi
Editor: Kadriye Erckican

Download statistics

Downloads from ePrints over the past year. Other digital versions may also be available to download e.g. from the publisher's website.

View more statistics

Atom RSS 1.0 RSS 2.0

Contact ePrints Soton: eprints@soton.ac.uk

ePrints Soton supports OAI 2.0 with a base URL of http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/cgi/oai2

This repository has been built using EPrints software, developed at the University of Southampton, but available to everyone to use.

We use cookies to ensure that we give you the best experience on our website. If you continue without changing your settings, we will assume that you are happy to receive cookies on the University of Southampton website.

×