Leading and managing in educational organizations

In this chapter, we argue that leaders, leading and leadership of educational organizations generates three main approaches: functional, critical and socially critical. We present three case studies from research in Naples to illustrate each one, and we examine the way that power works, particularly through micropolitical activities in organizations. We focus directly on formal organizations for educational services, that is, kindergarten or nursery, school, college and university. In doing this we are directly concerned with first, the leader: whom this is; second, leading: what a leader does and why; and third, leadership: or how power operates and is exercised. To make our argument that educational leadership has functional, critical and socially critical approaches, we begin with the dynamics of the organization to develop a conceptual framework. We ask you to reflect on three case studies based on empirical research, and to think about emotional intelligence and micropolitical processes.