Methodological individualism, educational administration, and leadership

Abstract

There are two major categories of explanation for organisational performance: structural and individual. With the shift away from systems-theoretic accounts that occurred in the 1980s, structural explanations have been replaced increasingly by the individualism of leadership and leader-centric explanations, especially when it comes to schools. In this paper, we argue that leader-centric accounts involve a commitment to methodological individualism and that there are four serious problems with this view. First, it is logically difficult to describe individual actions without recourse to structures. Second, methodological individualism fosters a centralised mindset inviting the attribution of ..