Editorial

Article Type: Editorial From: International Journal of Educational Management, Volume 24, Issue 5

Welcome, reader, to this issue of IJEM which contains papers from authors hailing from Thailand, UK, USA, China (Hong Kong), and Australia. There is a good mix of topics on a variety of management subjects specific to education which I hope you will find interesting.

The first is from Sooksan Kantabutra based at Mahidol University, Bangkok. The paper is on the critical gap in educational research review in which the author argues that although leaders are expected to “employ” visions,little appears to be known about what constitutes effective vision in the higher education sector. A research model is proposed for examining relationships between the components of a vision and performance, as measured by financial stability, student satisfaction and growth, process improvement and learning and faculty satisfaction. The model proposes that vision attributes of brevity,clarity, abstractness challenge, future orientation, stability, and desirability and vision content relating to the previously mentioned measures can affect performance through four vision realisation variables.

In the second, Jonathan Ivy of Lancaster University contributes a work on the influence of ethnic origin on university choice at one university. The research was derived from 427 sixth form students in the schools/colleges of Leicester. Five distinct motivational factors were derived from this research. For all students, future career is most important, but then family influence was most important in those of Pakistani and African origin. Indian and other Asians were strongly associated with academic and social motivation. White applicants had no strong common motivators and it was apparent that family influence was unimportant. There were also pointers to the type of university applied for by the different groups with interesting results. Widening participation is part of university agendas and the study assists in helping to understand this agenda.

The third offering is from Barbara Curry, Lillian M. Lowery and Dennis Loftus and is entitled “What a community will bear: leadership and the change process”, around the theme of the leadership and change process. The paper concentrates on the dynamic and stressful negotiations that can take place as part of the change process and follows three strands:

• 1.

  the extent to which a project is institutionalised determines its longevity;

• 2.

  the form it may take ultimately may look different from the original model;

• 3.

  how individuals structure change with short term concerns in mind which reveals an organisation in crisis.

This is an interesting contribution to the way in which changes are negotiated and implemented within communities.

Professor Brent Davies and Dr Barbara J. Davies of the University of Hull submit a piece on talent management which takes a critical look at the academy movement within the UK in which academies identify, develop and establish a talent culture. The academy is a school sponsored by industry or other type of sponsor which has a background of being involved in under achieving schools with the intention of turning them around – they are at arm’s length from the local authority although have to embrace a number of its polices. There has been some criticism of them as some have not achieved an upturn in results. The paper is therefore a timely one. The paper looks at the definitions of talent and highlights how talent management culture differs from current development. It is really about maximising people skills and human resources. It is essential to work on talent as the future of education and industries depends on successful succession planning. The talent management approach consists of ten stages commencing at the defining of values and strategy through to establishing a talent management culture. The sustainability of the academy movement depends on this process.

The penultimate work is from Dr Alan C.K. Cheung of John Hopkins’University, Timothy W.W. Yuen, Celeste Y.M. Yuen and Professor Yin Cheong Cheng from Hong Kong Institute of Education, in which Hong Kong’s higher education system is promoted to other Asian markets via various strategies and marketing techniques. The threefold objectives of the study are:

• 1.

  to analyse the current HE services offered to target markets;

• 2.

  to conduct market segmentation analysis;

• 3.

  to recommend the most appropriate market entry strategies for Hong Kong’s educational services providers.

In the final paper Scott Eacott of the University of Newcastle, Australia submits a paper on “Tenure, functional track and strategic leadership”,the purpose of which is to investigate whether the demographic variables of tenure and functional track have a moderating effect on the strategic leadership of school leaders. Although the study was a small sample size it is suggested that there is a moderating effect on public primary school principals. The combination of tenure/functional track is unusual as a study and the research may be of benefit at a time of great difficulty in filling school leadership positions.

Brian Roberts