Citation 

Abstract 

This paper reports on a research project conducted by the authors in Australia from 1998-2002. The Service Organisation Leadership Research (SOLR) Project investigated the challenges and ethical dilemmas faced by leaders in a selection of frontline human service organisations and the ways in which such leaders were responding to these pressures. The research findings indicate a need for a reinterpretation of leadership thinking and practices that requires a change in systemic thinking and attitudes, particularly in the formation of authentic leaders and the building of cultures of leadership in service organisations. 

Campbell , E.C. (1992) Personal morals and organizational ethics: How teachers and principals cope with conflicting values in the context of school cultures. Unpublished doctoral dissertation. University of Toronto. 

Miller, G. (2004, October). Choosing Our Legacy Overcoming value conflicts that frustrate society’s efforts to deal with environmental challenges. Paper presented at the 9th Annual Values and Leadership Conference, Southern Palms Resort, Christ Church, Barbados. 

School leaders in the Nordic countries are being caught in a new triangled cross pressure between the demands of local authorities, that often are more interested in financial aspects of school life than of education itself. On the other side they are obliged to strive for the objectives of the school as laid down in Acts. In the Nordic countries the obligation to educate students to become action competent citizens in a democratic society is stresses very much. Thirdly school leaders find that school culture may often be resistant to educational leadership. These conditions give school leaders a number of ethical difficulties like what and whom they should be loyal to: To economics or to school objectives, to authorities or to teachers, to teachers or to students? On the basis of a vision of a Nordic, democratic and reflecting school leader and on a series of Life History interviews with a number of Danish principals I discuss the ways principals try to cope with some of the dilemmas. 

Moos, L. (2000, September). New ethical dilemmas in nordic school leadership – and in other cultures? Paper presented at the 5th Annual Values and Educational Leadership Conference, Bridgetown, Barbados. 

Schooling is always a moral practice conducted according to ethical codes. It takes place in a specific context where regulation steers conduct in certain directions, justified by reference to particular constitutive values. Thus, teaching and fostering are terms infused with moral significance. Consequently, teachers work in a practice which requires a particular conduct. In a context where the curriculum provides an ethical framework and schooling operates within a moral framework, there is a perpetual struggle to align personal practices, school practices and the constitutive values of the national curriculum. This paper focuses on that struggle. It builds on a field study which investigates the relationship between school practices, the encounter between the teacher and the child, and the national constitutive values. Moreover, it draws attention to deliberation in the educational realm. Some critical classroom episodes linked to constitutive values are presented together with the teachers’ reflections concerning these episodes. Overall, the paper reveals the relation between the constitutive values and the moral dilemmas teachers have to engage with in their daily practice.