ABSTRACT
Senior management in schools now began to find collaboration, as distinct from compliance, less easy to come by from their junior colleagues who grew understandably less ready to risk their vital interests in the cause of change which took form of contraction of their service. Change strategies which are intendedly influence-based rather than reliant upon sanctions are increasingly suspect. More subordinates respond to managerial initiatives not so much with offers of collaboration as with compliance, resistance or even by ignoring superordinate move. The key issues no longer surround the question as to whether teachers can be helped to respond, in their own self-interest, to the initiatives of enlightened benevolent heads. Today we need to understand the interactions between superordinates defending the interests of the providers of the education service, and subordinates defending their opposing interests. Common interests remain, or so it is claimed on all sides, although they seem to have slipped down the agenda of priority matters for attention.
