Distributed Leadership

1 Distributed LeadershipJames P. Spillane, Katie MertzLAST MODIFIED: 29 MAY 2015 DOI: the first decade of the 21st century , a modest but expanding body of work has emerged on what is commonly referred to in theliterature as Distributed Leadership . The idea has also garnered considerable attention from policymakers, practitioners, andphilanthropists in several countries and international organizations such as OECD, though there is no shortage of scholarship on schoolleadership and management in particular and organizational Leadership and management in general. Still, the appeal of a distributedperspective appears to lie in part in that it offered an alternative to dissatisfaction with the great person approach to theorizing aboutorganizational Leadership and management, what Gary Yukl terms the heroics of Leadership paradigm (Gary Yukl, An Evaluation ofConceptual Weaknesses in Transformational and Charismatic Leadership Theories, The Leadership Quarterly [1999]: 285 305,p.)

2 292). At least two ideas are central in writing about and research on Distributed Leadership . The first is an acknowledgement thatleading and managing schools (and other organizations) involve multiple individuals, not just the school principal, including otherformally designated leaders and individuals without such designations ( , teachers with no formal Leadership position, parents, oreven students who influenced an organization s core work). In this way, a Distributed perspective called for attention to both the formaland informal organization and how these two aspects of the organization worked in interaction with one another (James P. Spillane, Distributed Leadership (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2006); Spillane and Diamond 2007, cited under Empirical Work on DistributedLeadership in Primary and Elementary School). Still, writings about Distributed Leadership often focus rather narrowly on the array ofindividuals that take responsibility for Leadership and management work.

3 The second idea is that the practice of leading and managingneeds to be a central concern in research and development work on organizational Leadership (Gronn 2000 and Spillane, et al. 2001,both cited under Theoretical and Conceptual Work). Rather than narrowly conceptualizing practice in terms of the actions or behaviorsof an individual leader, from a Distributed perspective practice is framed in terms of the interactions among organizational members asenabled and constrained by aspects of their situation. Studying the practice of leading and managing necessitates examining how thepractice is stretched over school leaders, followers, and aspects of their situation. Thus, careful attention to interactions, rather thanfixating exclusively on the actions of an individual leader, is necessary when taking a Distributed perspective to school Leadership and Conceptual WorkIn the first several years of the 21st century , several papers and books were published that theorized and conceptualized organizationalleadership and management, especially in schools, from a Distributed perspective.

4 This work involved conceptualizing and theorizingabout school Leadership and management using theoretical work from various disciplinary traditions including Distributed cognition,sociocultural activity theory, situated cognition and micro-sociological theory. Consistent with the theory building tradition, scholars alsodrew on their own empirical observations of school Leadership and management to theorize about Leadership and management from adistributed perspective. The author of Gronn 2000, working in Australia, used work in sociocultural activity theory to theorize distributedleadership. At the same time, the authors of Spillane, et al. 2004, working in North America, used both sociocultural activity theory andwork in Distributed cognition to theorize a Distributed perspective on school Leadership and management. Additionally, work in situatedand social cognition has been especially influential in this earlier theorizing about Distributed Leadership , as in Spillane, et al.

5 Recently still, work in sociology has also been employed in Spillane, et al. 2003. A key aspect of this conceptualizing andtheorizing work centered on the role of the situation in Leadership and management practice. Specifically, scholars theorized that thesituation, including the materials that people interacted with and the organizational structures that enabled and constrained their dailyinteractions with one another, did not simply affect the actions of individual leaders from the outside in but rather were constitutive oftheir practice. Aspects of the situation contributed to defining practice, just like people do, by framing and focusing interactions amongorganizational members. For example, organizational routines, such as teacher hiring routines or staff meetings, define leading andmanaging practice. In this way, the material situation does not simply affect what school leaders do, it is constitutive of their practices,as shown in Spillane, et al. 2001 and Spillane, et al.

6 , Peter. 2000. Distributed properties: A new architecture for Leadership . Educational Management AdministrationLeadership : 317 argues for a reconceptualized stream of Leadership that still values Leadership as essential for organizational success but altersthe form to fit better with the flow of influence in organizations. He focuses on the activity system model, which bridges Leadership ororganizational structures and the actions that occur through the agents of the , Peter. 2002. Distributed Leadership as a unit of analysis. The Leadership Quarterly : 423 conceptual piece argues for the adoption of a Distributed Leadership framework, given the dichotomy between traditional leadershipparadigms and the division of Leadership practice in reality. Gronn reviews different forms of Distributed Leadership , offers his owntaxonomy of Distributed Leadership , and reviews the literature on the , James P., John B. Diamond, and Loyiso Jita. 2003. Leading instruction: The distribution of Leadership for of Curriculum Studies : 533 paper takes a closer look at the notion of Leadership as a Distributed practice, focusing attention chiefly on the social distribution ofleadership practice; that is, the ways in which Leadership practice in schools is stretched over both formal and informal leaders foranalytical purposes.

7 The authors identify categories or levels of distribution: co-enacted practice and independently enactedcoordinated , James P., Richard Halverson, and John B. Diamond. 2001. Investigating school Leadership practice: A distributedperspective. Educational Researcher : 23 and colleagues sketch a Distributed framework for research on school Leadership and management, grounded in activity theoryand Distributed cognition. The framework suggests that Leadership and management practice is not simply a function of an individualleader s ability, skill, charisma, and cognition but also those of others in the situation as well as aspects of the situation that contribute todefining these , James P., Richard Halverson, and John B. Diamond. 2004. Towards a theory of Leadership practice: A distributedperspective. Journal of Curriculum Studies : 3 for the centrality of the study of Leadership and management practice in scholarship on Leadership and management, theauthors develop a Distributed framework for such work using activity theory and Distributed cognition theory.

8 Their Distributed frameworkfocuses on interactions among actors, rather than the actions of individual leaders, and affords the situation a central role in leadershipand management , Kate. 2010. The nature of Distributed Leadership and its development in online environments. In Leadership in thedigital enterprise: Issues and challenges. Edited by Pak Yoong, 1 14. Hershey, PA: IG chapter looks at how Leadership can be Distributed in online environments, specifically, in online communities of practice, virtualteams, and online action learning groups. Based on a review of the literature, Thornton finds that Leadership actions in the initial stagesof such environments are critical for the development of Distributed Leadership , as are the technologies , A., and G. Riordan. 2010. Leading collective capacity in culturally diverse schools. School Leadership & : 51 article looks at collective capacity building in schools with culturally diverse staff bodies. Through a review of selected literature,the authors find that in order to build collective capacity in diverse environments school leaders need to have a firm understanding ofthe school s various cultures, support formal structures that foster intercultural relationship building, and understand how cultural valuesmay influence , Philip A.

9 2004. Democratic Leadership : Drawing distinctions with Distributed Leadership . International Journal ofLeadership in Education : 3 report covers the philosophical framework for democratic Leadership and the ways in which it is similar to Distributed similarities include an emergent, cooperative property and an analytical approach. The concept is differentiated from distributedleadership on the grounds that the latter does not include a moral Reviews and Epistemological and Methodological ChallengesGiven the relative novelty of efforts to theorize a Distributed perspective, applications of the perspective as a conceptual frame inempirical work are not uniform. Many working in the field of school Leadership and management have appropriated existing studymeasures, concepts, and data collection approaches to investigate school Leadership and management from a Distributed is good reason to do that. Still, there are epistemological and methodological challenges involved in studying the schoolleadership and management from a Distributed perspective that are unlikely to be addressed by relying on existing constructs,measures, and even popular methodologies in the field.

10 Loose constructs contribute to fuzzy scholarship as researchers easily talk pastone another with broad, ill-defined constructs that denote very different things depending on the user, creating consensus where nonemay exist. Work on construct conceptualization, study operations and measures, and instrument development will determine the qualityof any effort to make causal inferences between Leadership and management when framed from a Distributed perspective and keyschool outcomes. Fancy statistical methods, or even random assignment, cannot compensate for loose constructs, weak studyoperations, and invalid and unreliable measurement. Some scholars have worked on the epistemological and methodologicalchallenges posed by taking a Distributed perspective to frame research on school Leadership and management. This work has includedattention to operationalizing core constructs when using a Distributed framework and examining different ways of measuring theseconstructs, as in Spillane, et al.