Leadership in context: Insights from a study of nursing in Western Australia

This paper investigates the importance of integrating context when analysing the role and practice of leadership within a specific organization or profession. It does this with reference to a study of nursing in Western Australia. Using theoretical sampling, qualitative data were collected through interviews and focus groups with targeted stakeholders in Western Australia’s public health system. The main purpose of the data collection and analysis was to identify perceptions and understandings of leadership among key stakeholders. Findings emerged which identified the importance of considering specific dimensions of the cultural, social and institutional context in order to understand the practice and experience of leadership among nurses in the Western Australian public health sector

How to manage a Doctor of Business Administration: now the hard sell is over

This chapter examines the recent past, the present, and the future of the Doctor of Business Administration (DBA), a degree that in Australia has experienced fluctuating fortunes and popularity. Due to its nature and its target cohort, the degree may be susceptible to the impact of external factors, including economic downturn, but that makes it timely to consider the future of the degree. The chapter commences with a detailed analysis of the trends in its enrolments and the numerical decline across the sector in the students enrolling. Then follows study of the providers, including the initial expansion in the number of universities offering the degree, but this analysis also revealing a “rise and fall” of the degree from the 1990s into the twenty-first century. For the future, the chapter asks and provides possible answers for questions a university should ask about offering the DBA, related to the degree, including being aware of a strong rationale, knowing the market and cost, finding industry partners among others, followed by recommendations for a university and the candidates to manage the degree

The Move to Online Teaching: A Head of Department’s Perspective

Integrating online teaching strategies within universities is now well established, but there is little on how HE teachers experience this shift. One strand of literature suggests that university senior management teams often assume academic staff lack motivation to participate and resist change. This case study, from a Head of Department’s perspective, challenges that view. Focusing on academics who chose to move to the Open University, an online and distance learning provider, it argues that teaching online requires different skills and presents a fundamental challenge to teacher identity. It concludes that there is a need to both understand the academics’ perspective and acknowledge that there is motivation within the academic community; and support, at all institutional levels, is critical for academics making this transition

Personal values of principals and their manifestation in student behaviour

Although there is growing research evidence to support the view that the leadership practice of the school principal is the second-most important influence on student learning behind classroom teaching, there is no clarity about what, exactly, the principal is meant to do to ensure this outcome. Hence, Leithwood et al. (2010) propose that one of the principal’s important influences on student learning is the ‘rational’ path, which includes the issue of school-wide disciplinary climate. This argues that the principal plays a pivotal role in establishing the school-wide disciplinary climate that aids student learning. This article reports upon research conducted in Pakistan that focuses on the disciplinary climate aspect of school leadership by exploring how the personal values of principals are made manifest in student behaviour. Data from this research infers that the establishment of an appropriate school-wide disciplinary climate for improving student learning is influenced by two important factors. First, there needs to be an alignment between personal and organizational values and behaviour throughout the school. Secondly, the consistency of alignment between the values and behaviour of the principal, in particular, is the cornerstone in creating a beneficial school-wide disciplinary climate