Hester Nienaber

Conceptualisation of management and leadership

– The divide in the conceptualisation of the terms “management” and “leadership” is not clear. The purpose of this paper is to explore the concepts of management and leadership., – The approach of the study followed a synthesis review and also applied content analysis, identifying the tasks constituting management and leadership respectively., – The findings of the literature review demonstrated that the concepts of management and leadership are intertwined. The word “management” has French and Italian roots, while the word “leadership” has Greek and Latin roots. Essentially, though, these words are synonymous. All of the tasks fall within the boundaries of management, while leadership tasks overlap with management. Unlike management, leadership has no distinct task that falls exclusively within its boundary., – Implications of the findings of the study include debate regarding how practising managers can know what is expected of them if the literature is unclear on the distinction between these concepts, and playing down the demonstrated need and relevance of management., – This paper is original as no previous work on management and leadership has attempted to compare the content of these concepts.

An analysis of the contribution of leadership to organisational performance using complexity science

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to explore the leadership tasks at the different hierarchical levels in the organisation in terms of the teleological approaches to complexity science.Design/methodology/approach – It is based upon a theoretical discussion linked to conceptual and managerial frameworks in conjunction with a conceptual analysis.Findings – The introduced conceptual and managerial frameworks provide a foundation to the understanding of organisational performance. They also strive to offer a foundation of understanding to management and leadership and how they complement each other.Research limitations/implications – It is not easy to empirically substantiate complexity in conceptual and managerial frameworks. The authors use teleological approaches of complexity science in an unorthodox way that need validation in a broader context offering opportunities for further research.Practical implications – We need to think differently about organisational performance and how we present and ref...

EXAMINING SERVANT LEADERSHIP IN EFFECTIVE SCHOOL GOVERNANCE

The issue of effective school governance ensuring quality in education in South Africa is often raised in the literature. Some authors are of the view that the current form of school governance is sophisticated and complex. A question that arises is whether school governing board members have the skills to effectively discharge their responsibility. Literature suggests training as a means of capacitating members to be able to effectively do so. However, limited success is achieved with training. The question thus arises whether the training is perhaps too limited. Servant leadership is examined as an alternative to empower members of school governing bodies to effectively discharge responsibilities. According to servant leadership, all members of a group/community, irrespective of designation, can contribute to the betterment of the group/community.