ABSTRACT
It is all the more surprising that educational policy, leadership, and management as a field of study has tended to neglect the importance of societal culture in an era of globalization. This chapter makes a plea to redress this situation. Its central argument pivots on the need for educational management, leadership, and educational policy at a time of globalization to incorporate societal culture—conceptually, theoretically, and practically—in redefining and refining the field. The following terms are used at various points throughout the discussion—“school leadership,” “educational management” and “educational administration.” Reference is made to all three since they are applied in different countries and universities to refer broadly to the same area of study and practice. Distinctions between policy, leadership and management’ are also difficult to make since the three are not entirely exclusive. For example, leadership may involve policy making and vice versa. In addition, commentators even within the Anglo-American world use the terms differently. In this chapter, leadership is taken to mean a higher order set of abilities such as goal setting, visioning, and motivating, while management is viewed as a lower order group of activities concerned with maintenance of performance through supervision, coordination, and control. Policy refers to macro- or system-level policy.
