Educational leaders are confronted by external and internal challenges and expectations that make considerable demands on their time, expertise, energies and emotional wellbeing. Increasingly, they are being held accountable for both performance and compliance with ethical and moral standards in their relationships and practices.

While leaders may experience confusion, even frustration, in attempting to respond productively to these challenges, many other organisational members feel used, even devalued, by the current emphasis on corporate management values, strategies and practices in many educational organisations. Many educational leaders are faced with tensions between the demands of managerialism (efficiency, productivity, accountability) and the expectations created within a values-based school community. This perception of ‘excessive managerialism’ has led to a call for the transformation of managers and administrators into leaders who focus more on people-related issues in organisations (Little, 1997).

This book is written within a leadership context that is increasingly sensitive to the need for sound ethical and moral standards in how organisations are led and decisions made. The recent lapses in ethical and moral judgements by leaders in worldwide organisations such as WorldCom and Enron – as well as HIH, James Hardie Industries and the Australian Wheat Board in Australia – have heightened leaders' awareness of the necessity of maintaining high standards of ethical behaviour in their organisations. I believe that many of the leaders who have recently had to stand trial for their misadventures lacked basic appreciation of the need for ethical and moral standards in their actions and transactions.