With contributions from expert, and emerging, leadership scholars, this book challenges assumptions of leadership as being the default option for the explanation of organisational functioning by emphasising the structural features that constrain organisations. It offers a critical and diverse discussion between theoretical perspectives including French social theory from Bourdieu to Foucault, Derrida, Lyotard, and Arendt, as well as notions of wisdom, ethics and social justice. At a time when leadership's dominance seems unshakeable, this is a bold book which should appeal to postgraduates in educational leadership and management, and those undertaking training in educational administration.

1. Challenging leadership: The Issues 2. Beyond leadership: Towards a 'relational' way of thinking 3. Everything we know about educational leadership is wrong: Rethinking scholarship and practice for a fractured field 4. Disambiguating leadership: The continuing quest for the philosopher's stone Commentary: The rise and rise of leadership PART II: Postmodernist Perspectives on Leadership 5. Zombie leadership, the différend and deconstruction 6. Problematisations, practices and subjectivation: Educational leadership in neoliberal times 7. Performatively resignifying leadership 8. Thinking beyond leadership as a service to policy: 'Seeing things big' in a dialogic 'public space' Commentary: Questioning postmodernism - does it have something to offer leadership fields? PART III: Select Issues in Leadership Theory and Practice 9. (Re)positioning the distributed 'turn' in leadership 10. Leadership standards and the discursive repositioning of leadership, leaders, and non-leaders: A critical examination 11. Reflections on successful school leadership from the International Successful School Principalship Project 12. The future of leadership: New directions for leading and learning Commentary: Silos, bunkers, and their voices