School leadership manifesting dominating behavioural style leaping towards new public management of community schools in Nepal

Abstract

This research explores the behavioural leadership style of community schools in Nepal under the New Public Management (NPM) initiative of decentralisation of the educational management system. The theoretical background derives from the leadership behavioural theory of Ohio State and Michigan Universities. Case studies were conducted in three primary community schools located in Kathmandu. Interviews were conducted with school stakeholders and members of the school management committee in order to triangulate the data analysis with a view to validating the dominant leadership behavioural style. The result suggests that all the participating schools adopted relations-oriented leadership behaviour as the dominant leadership behavioural style. The decentralisation of educational management by using NPM in community schools enabled the appointment of leaders from the community. It was also revealed that school leaders contributed to the social welfare of the schools for the sake of prestige and political recognition. The school leaders made available lesser time to understand the school's organisational behavioural pattern of the teachers, parents, students and academic programmes. This enabled the school leaders to demonstrate relations-oriented behaviour. Due to the lack of academic expertise, the effective approach of leadership was to adapt chiefly on relations- oriented behaviour. Adopting the dominant leadership relations-oriented behavioural style enabled less flexibility to switch to task-oriented behaviour as determined by the contested environment. The politically contested school context enabled leadership approaches to implement political solutions.