<p>This research explores and compares two leadership behavioural styles – relations- and task-oriented behavioural styles – of school leaders in Finland. This study aimed to explore and understand the behavioural style of school leaders, specifically related to relations-oriented and task-oriented behaviour. Three schools in Finland were selected. In-depth interviews were conducted with school principals, as school leaders, and other school actors, such as vice<br />principals, teachers, special-education teachers, and administrative staff members. The results suggest that leadership behavioural styles in terms of relations-oriented and task-oriented behaviour are equally important for accommodating changes and development in schools. The results suggest that relations-oriented behaviour was preferred by those who had been in the organisation for a longer time. The task-oriented behavioural style was found to be adopted when changes were required by the municipality (school district), which needed to be urgently addressed to meet the current requirements for school infrastructural development and changes in the educational system. In addition, the school leaders with task-oriented behaviour were more effective, while leaders with relations-oriented behaviour were efficient and generated social harmony. These findings suggest that contextual variations enabled flexibility in leadership behavioural style.</p>

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Abstract. This research explores the behavioural leadership style of community schools in Nepal under the New Public Management (NPM) initiative of decentralisation of the educational management system. The theoretical background derives from the leadership behavioural theory of Ohio State and Michigan Universities. Case studies were conducted in three primary community schools located in Kathmandu. Interviews were conducted with school stakeholders and members of the school management committee in order to triangulate the data analysis with a view to validating the dominant leadership behavioural style. The result suggests that all the participating schools adopted relations-oriented leadership behaviour as the dominant leadership behavioural style. The decentralisation of educational management by using NPM in community schools enabled the appointment of leaders from the community. It was also revealed that school leaders contributed to the social welfare of the schools for the sake of prestige and political recognition. The school leaders made available lesser time to understand the school's organisational behavioural pattern of the teachers, parents, students and academic programmes. This enabled the school leaders to demonstrate relations-oriented behaviour. Due to the lack of academic expertise, the effective approach of leadership was to adapt chiefly on relations-oriented behaviour. Adopting the dominant leadership relations-oriented behavioural style enabled less flexibility to switch to task-oriented behaviour as determined by the contested environment. The politically contested school context enabled leadership approaches to implement political solutions.

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This study explores the leadership actions-oriented behavior of school principals in Finland. Actions-orientated behavior enables the leader to appropriately articulate relations and task orientation to meet the immediate contextual demands and to accommodate followership toward change and development. The leadership actions-orientated behavior of Finnish school principals were studied in three schools. In-depth interviews with school actors (principals, vice principals, teachers, special educators, and nonteaching staff) were conducted to triangulate the analyzed data. It was found that leadership actions-oriented behavior enabled school leaders to articulate appropriate behavioral patterns to generate motivation and commitment. The results suggest that actions orientations toward high-on relations enabled leaders to achieve leadership success, while actions orientations toward high-on task enabled leadership effectiveness. Actions-oriented behavior toward high-on task enables leadership flexibility with greater leadership elasticity. The results suggest that school actors anticipated a relational approach, whose actions orientations were high-on task. The results also suggest that relations-oriented behavior is rationally applied by school leaders who have remained in the organization for a longer time to strengthen the systematic approach. It was found that leaders’ actions orientation with high-on task were more effective, while leadership actions orientation with high-on relations generated social harmony. The results suggest that leadership actions-oriented behavioral flexibility and mobility can be maintained by articulating high relations to low relations and high task to low task, not necessarily from task to relations or relations to task alone. In doing so, a leader’s personality is prevented from distortions and behavior dysfunction.