Managerial Rhetoric, Accountability, and School Leadership in Contemporary Australia

On an international scale, public administration is undergoing considerable restructuring as principles of private enterprise are becoming the orthodoxy. At the same time, economic instability (or crisis) is gripping both national and global financial markets, suggesting a flaw in the system or even that capitalism has reached it limits. Crises in capitalism are frequently met with shifts in the rhetoric of management. In this article we mobilize an emerging research program (Relational Administration) to argue that contemporary discourses of school leadership in Australia have a hybrid—part normative part rational—management rhetoric as a result of the unique economic conditions compared with many developed nations. With particular attention to the role of accountability in constituting and sustaining this hybrid rhetoric, we craft an argument for greater attention to sociogeographic location and temporality when thinking of, with, and through leadership.