It is widely recognised that digitalisation has a significant impact on the organisational environment, triggering challenges on all levels of organisations irrespective of the industry. Despite the fact that digitalisation also brings forth opportunities, ultimately, companies are required to transform their businesses to stay competitive. Although leadership plays a crucial role in this digital transformation process, there is only little research on the link between leadership theory and digitalisation as well as a lack of understanding of what effective leaders in the digital age should encompass. Hence, the purpose of this paper is to add to the discussion of effective leadership in the digital age by investigating employees’ perception of leadership. Therefore, we conduct a qualitative study with twelve semi-structured interviews. Following an abductive research approach, we interpret the empirical findings with the prior established theoretical framework and further literature to fulfil the purpose of research. The study reveals that effective leadership in digitalisation as perceived by employees consists of an interplay between seven leadership skills and respective leadership behaviours that are also partly reflected in specific leadership styles.

Thesis advisor: Diana Pullin / It is widely accepted that school leadership has both a direct and indirect impact on student achievement. Hitt and Tucker’s (2016) Unified Leadership framework summarized a decade of work by numerous researchers identifying the five most effective leadership domains that influence student learning. Using that work as a conceptual framework, this qualitative case study analyzed one of the five interdependent leadership domains in an urban elementary school that succeeded in educating traditionally marginalized students and outperformed other schools with similar demographics in the district. This study focused on the fourth of Hitt and Tucker’s (2016) key leadership domains or practices: creating a supportive organization for learning. Creating a supportive organization for learning is important because just as teachers need to establish a sense of well-being and trust for students to learn in their classroom, administrators must establish the same sense of trust and comfort to create an environment where teachers can teach to their highest capacity. This study explored whether the key leadership practices of creating a supportive organization for learning were present in a school and whether the school leaders believed that presence of the attributes contributed to the effectiveness of the school. This study found that the five attributes of creating a supportive organization for learning were present at the school in that the principal built capacity in her building, the school resources targeted student achievement and there was a belief that all students can learn. Importantly, the superintendent also highlighted the principal’s ability to push her staff to continuous results without pushing so hard that they lost trust in her and love for the students they serve. There were, however, opportunities for improvement including creating a clear set of district supports for schools and improving cultural proficiency at the school level. We also found that administrators in the district believe that school leaders have made the school successful by setting high expectations for the students, no matter their situation, and created a culture of productive collaboration that was focused on continuously improving student achievement, key components of creating a supportive organization for learning. / Thesis (EdD) — Boston College, 2018. / Submitted to: Boston College. Lynch School of Education. / Discipline: Educational Leadership and Higher Education.

With over 200 definitions of leadership, the question has evolved from ‘what is leadership?’ to ‘what is good leadership?” This paper analyzes the importance of personal ethics in leadership and how ethics produce effective leaders. The importance of understanding ethics, motivation to act as a role model and developing a plan of action for an organization are discussed because of their importance regarding development of good leadership. These key aspects suggest personal ethics positively affect leadership and when made a priority for leaders will produce ethical and effective leadership.

This mixed-methods study identified the effective practices of the principal and leadership team in an Improvement-Required (IR) high school that significantly influenced student achievement and guided their school from IR to a rating of Met Standard in one year. IR or F schools under the new system are schools that failed to meet the state accountability target goals. The high school in this study had a large culturally and economically diverse student population with a high percentage of English learners. The leadership practices were identified through four themes revealed by the qualitative data analysis of focus group and individual in-depth interviews: (a) importance of instructional, collaborative leadership, (b) intentional planning of effective instruction for all students, (c) consistent use of data to guide instruction, and (d) ongoing, data based, targeted staff development. The study findings are significant due to strong corroboration between the qualitative data collected from the interviews and the quantitative results from the faculty survey.

In this era of educational accountability, achieving and maintaining high levels of student academic performance is the goal of every school. State accountability models serve as the measure to determine if school districts are successfully educating students, and the responsibility of student academic success rests on the principal of each school. Effective leadership is a necessary component of successful schools, especially in rural school districts. The focus of this research was to explore teachers' perceptions of the leadership behaviors and practices of their principals and determine if relationships existed between the leadership behaviors and the schools' accountability ratings. A survey research design was utilized in this study of eight schools across three rural school districts in central Mississippi. The researcher utilized The Principal Instructional Management Rating Scale to survey 121 teacher participants regarding their perceptions of principals' leadership behaviors or practices. The study revealed no statistically significant relationships existed between principals' leadership behaviors and school accountability ratings. However, the findings support existing literature on the indirect influence of principal leadership on student achievement.

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to, from an employees’ perspective, study how to define leadership and how a good leader is characterised in terms of traits, charisma and efficiency. Method: This study was made by using a qualitative approach with semi-structured interviews and has been collected through chain sampling. Theoretical framework: The basis of this study is theories that provide different definitions of leadership, traits required for leaders and also what efficiency, effective leadership and charismatic leaders means according to different researchers. Empiricism: Data for this study has been collected through seventeen interviews with people in varied positions. One of them was performed via mail and the remaining eye-to-eye. The age of the respondents varies as well as knowledge and experience of leadership, since all of them have or have had leaders and some of them are or have been leaders. Conclusion: The employees’ definition of leadership is based on traits and personality and show that there is a common link between good, effective and charismatic leadership. However, from the employees’ perspective it is not possible to find a clear equal sign between the three concepts.

1 ABSTRACT: This thesis deals with Dutch primary school headmaster profession standard analysis. Its goal is to break down facts, how this standard is framed, how does it relate to theory, what are the headmaster's job criteria, how is his/her post determined, and lastly, how is this standard used. One of the parts is the analysis of headmaster's position and personal plan as a tool for further education. Considering the size of text and language differences, content text analysis is used. The standard itself, based on competencies, their models, and effective leadership characteristics as tools for headmaster's as well as children education, is going through a lot of change. These changes are widely described in this work, which also mentions what parts of this standard are possible to take into consideration in the Czech republic. KEYWORDS: Standard - kompetence - effective leadership - Personlijk plan

Teacher Job Satisfaction and School Leadership by Saroya N. Pendleton-Brown MSA, Fayetteville State University, 2011 BBA, Baker College, 1993 AAS, Jordan College, 1991 Doctoral Study Completed in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Education August 2019 The problem in a middle eastern school was the high annual rate of teacher attrition, which is above 25% per year. The purpose of this qualitative case study was to examine teacher perceptions of the attrition rates as they relate to the school leadership style at this study site. Herzberg's theory of motivation, which provides insights regarding job satisfaction, served as the conceptual framework that guided this study. The research questions were developed to examine teacher perceptions about administrative influences on teachers' job satisfaction and the programs and services they believe may enhance morale. A case study design was used to capture the insights of 10 purposefully selected teachers from the target school to conduct semi-structured interviews. Emergent themes were identified through open coding, and the findings were developed and checked for trustworthiness through member checking and a process to identify convergence and divergence. The findings revealed that participants preferred leadership styles that were supportive, and they placed a high value on teacher input. A professional development program was designed to educate participants on the connection between leadership styles and teacher attrition. This program may contribute to positive social change by guiding educational leaders to establish an enhanced learning environment that is responsive to the social, cultural, and ethnic differences of the teachers in the middle east.

As globalization is proceeding, it is more and more important to understand effective leadership also in terms of cultural dimensions. This new challenge in the business world has not been approached by scientists in a satisfactory way so far and was the main reason for the conduction of this study. The aim of this research is to investigate how effective leadership varies between cultures and to state the crucial differences of leadership effectiveness among Sweden, England, France and Germany. To be able to figure out these differences a research team out of four students and one professor designed a questionnaire which was sent out to employees in the four studied countries. In this questionnaire the subordinates had to assess different behaviours and skills of their direct leader. The different questions belong to a list of predetermined topic groups which were planned to be used afterwards to set the results into connection with existing theories. The results of this multinational survey offer a general picture about the differences among the average leaders in the four cultures. To be able to make statements about the different importance of leader attributes for effective performance, a statistical evaluation is made. After given the reader a general idea about the gathered data and its composition, the adequateness of the combinations inside the topic groups are revised and some additional topic groups are build up. The findings of the study are used to discuss and challenge McClelland’s Research on Managerial Motivation and to figure out the different relevance of Katz’ three skill dimensions for each national culture. The difference emphasis of task-, relations- and change oriented behaviour in relation to effective leadership as well as the importance of charismatic leadership for effectiveness is exposed and distinguished for every country. Hofstede’s theory of five cultural dimensions is used to provide the necessary explanation for the cultural differences regarding the different theoretical dimensions. As an additional theory the GLOBE Project is introduced. Unfortunately, the results of this project were not available on time, so that they could not be compared to the results of the study. The conclusion at the end of the paper summarizes the general outcome of the thesis and points out the found cultural differences of effective leadership in the four cultures. Charisma and Human skills were found to be important for effective leadership in all countries. However, for effective German leaders it is concluded to possess more technical skills as in the other cultures and to have a higher need of achievement. Controlling employees is much more important in Germany than anywhere else. In England the need of achievement is also higher than in France and Sweden. Effective French leaders have the strongest socialized power orientation. For Sweden no big difference to the others countries could be found. Effective Swedish manager mostly possess a good mixture of the different skills, needs and behaviours suggested in the theory, but were not outstanding significantly in one dimension in comparison to the other three countries. In total, a high concern for relations is concluded for them.

<p>As globalization is proceeding, it is more and more important to understand effective leadership also in terms of cultural dimensions. This new challenge in the business world has not been approached by scientists in a satisfactory way so far and was the main reason for the conduction of this study.</p><p>The aim of this research is to investigate how effective leadership varies between cultures and to state the crucial differences of leadership effectiveness among Sweden, England, France and Germany.</p><p>To be able to figure out these differences a research team out of four students and one professor designed a questionnaire which was sent out to employees in the four studied countries. In this questionnaire the subordinates had to assess different behaviours and skills of their direct leader. The different questions belong to a list of predetermined topic groups which were planned to be used afterwards to set the results into connection with existing theories.</p><p>The results of this multinational survey offer a general picture about the differences among the average leaders in the four cultures. To be able to make statements about the different importance of leader attributes for effective performance, a statistical evaluation is made. After given the reader a general idea about the gathered data and its composition, the adequateness of the combinations inside the topic groups are revised and some additional topic groups are build up.</p><p>The findings of the study are used to discuss and challenge McClelland’s Research on Managerial Motivation and to figure out the different relevance of Katz’ three skill dimensions for each national culture. The difference emphasis of task-, relations- and change oriented behaviour in relation to effective leadership as well as the importance of charismatic leadership for effectiveness is exposed and distinguished for every country. Hofstede’s theory of five cultural dimensions is used to provide the necessary explanation for the cultural differences regarding the different theoretical dimensions.</p><p>As an additional theory the GLOBE Project is introduced. Unfortunately, the results of this project were not available on time, so that they could not be compared to the results of the study.</p><p>The conclusion at the end of the paper summarizes the general outcome of the thesis and points out the found cultural differences of effective leadership in the four cultures. Charisma and Human skills were found to be important for effective leadership in all countries. However, for effective German leaders it is concluded to possess more technical skills as in the other cultures and to have a higher need of achievement. Controlling employees is much more important in Germany than anywhere else. In England the need of achievement is also higher than in France and Sweden. Effective French leaders have the strongest socialized power orientation. For Sweden no big difference to the others countries could be found. Effective Swedish manager mostly possess a good mixture of the different skills, needs and behaviours suggested in the theory, but were not outstanding significantly in one dimension in comparison to the other three countries. In total, a high concern for relations is concluded for them.</p>