Student ID: 10760104

A cases study of Inspira(on for All:

leadership analysis in a Bri5sh educa5onal organisa5on

Introduc5on

As a prominent belief in many industries, leadership is determined as a psychosocial

terminology that works for finding proper solutions to each emerging problem within

organisations (Sergiovanni, 2005; Western, 2019). However, leadership in the

schooling context is more perplexing. In the British state-funded schools, school

management encounters the evolvement of numerous stakeholders ranging from

local authorities, board of governors from Multi-Academy Trusts (MATs), teachers’

qualifications to pupils and parents from distinctive socio-economic backgrounds,

which make its education system more fragmented and competitive (Hughes et al.,

2023). Meanwhile, an empirical study conducted in British schooling identified that

effective school leadership can positively impact pupils’ academic attainment by

leading transformation in teachers’ performance and promoting a favourable

schooling climate (Sammons et al., 2011). In other words, qualified school leadership

can lead to better student performance. However, even school leadership has an

influential impact, approximately 40% of schools with students eligible for free school

meals encountered the challenge of underperformance in GCSE and the shortage of

qualified school leaders (TeachFirst, 2022). Therefore, how to establish effective

leadership for disadvantaged students’ success has become rather essential, as this

can not only helping those disadvantaged reach upper social mobility locally but also

making improvements at a systematic and social stage.

Accordingly, the hardship of school leadership particularly faced by senior leaders

from low socio-economic schools has become my research interest and continuously

drove me to explore how they can achieve professional development to promote

educational equity. With this social justice concern in education, a social enterprise

named Inspiration for All has become the focus of my case study. Aiming to analyse

the leadership of educational organisation, the article mainly consisted of four

sections. Initially, the organisational background and individual leaders will be

introduced. This is then followed by a discussion of leadership presented in this

organisation through the lens of organisational structure and its main operational

purpose. These critical analyses pave the way for the final stage, where the summary

of organisation leadership combined with future recommendations for improvement

will be provided.

Organisa5on background

The characteris2cs as a social enterprise

Initially, Inspiration for All (IFA) is an educational organisation that works on creating

partnerships between school leaders and business leaders to strengthen leadership

and promote social mobility in under-served schools in the U.K. As a business entity

that aims to enclose the socio-economic inequality, IFA provides a collaborative

leadership training programme as its commercial product. Hence, with its hybrid

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features (Battilana & Lee, 2014), IFA can be defined as an educational-social enterprise

that contains both social objectives as well as financial aims. By viewing

entrepreneurship from a social dimension, IFA earns income from selling its leadership

training services to reduce its dependence on donations and grants (Katz & Page,

2010). This makes it surpass other charitable organisations. Likewise, regarding its

socially responsible intentions, it is comparatively easier for IFA to call for meaningful

actions based on a common goal, compared with leadership in other public and

private sectors (Jackson et al., 2018). However, despite the recognised opportunities,

establishing this hybrid organisation can also be challenging. For instance, due to its

sophisticated and pioneering nature for seeking business solutions to social problems,

the financial viability of social enterprises is mainly dependent on its members’ efforts

to acquire adequate resources (Defourny & Nyssens, 2010). Namely, social enterprises

may encounter greater leadership risk if without appropriate profit distribution

support from public authorities.

The founders and leaders of IFA

As a not-for-profit social enterprise that deals with entrenched social inequality by

investing in school leadership, IFA was set up by two former teachers in 2020 (IFA,

2023). Although newly founded, IFA has collaborated with 4 corporate sponsors and

over 20 business partners, who are responsible for coaching senior school leaders

from 79 schools in 43 local authorities and 27 MATs (IFA, 2023). Also, its unique

partnership programme has been rated highly among business and educational senior

leaders. With overall 60 years of combined experience in both business and education

industries, the two co-founders take full responsibility for running the organisation.

Between the two, Sara Caton is the chief executive officer (CEO) and business co-

founder of IFA, who takes the leading role on developing business partnerships within

the company. Possessing working experience both as a math teacher and the director

of strategic partnership at Pearson (Caton, 2023), Sara is acquainted with both

educational transformation as well as business cooperation. Consequently, her

experience has brought her needed skills in creating business partnership efficiently

and has become the accumulated interpersonal network resources for her future

partnership development in her own business. Additionally, as the chief operating

officer (COO) and the other co-founder, Paula Kennedy is mainly responsible for

reaching out to local authorities and MATs to identify potential customers in the

programme. With decades of first-hand experience in managing challenges faced by

school leaders in low-income districts, Paula acquires abundant knowledge and well

comprehension of school leaders’ demands (IFA, 2022). This can thus better facilitate

the participants' selection and partnership allocation process.

Leadership through individual: policy entrepreneurs

According to Mintrom (2019), policy entrepreneurs are those who detect a social

problem, actively participate in collaborative activities around government, and are

willing to promote policy innovations. Indeed, the outstanding capability and

exceptional experience of policy entrepreneurs and their policy entrepreneurship

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were examined as key contributors to policy innovation (Mintrom & Norman, 2009),

which highlights the necessity of analysing organisational leadership from a personal

perspective. In the same vein, Grint (2005) also suggested the necessity to analyse

leadership as an individual activity, particularly from the personal characteristic as well

as superior knowledge and life experience of leaders. Accordingly, regarding the

career path and professional acquisition of IFA founders, both women leaders

acknowledged the disadvantaged gap in underserved schools, taking initiatives to set

up coalitions between business and education and using their network to enlarge their

social influence. Casting light on the underlying motivational drivers and networking

skills of these founders, they actively work as policy entrepreneurs who collaborate

with stakeholders to complement the education policy gap. Moreover, this effective

public-private partnerships (PPPs) between education and business sectors act as new

policy alternatives, which can help to deal with unsolved educational affairs (Verger,

2012). Controversially, although possessing the capability to promote policy

prescription and encourage practice communities to take actions, the PPPs advocated

by policy entrepreneur are also problematic due to its feasibility and empirical

dependability (Verger, 2012). Indeed, since business leaders take a decisive role in

providing sponsorship and voluntary leadership coaching, the partnership may not

work ideally in a predicted way.

Leadership through organisa5onal structure

The organisational structure of IFA

Due to the intricacy of educational leadership and the interconnected world we live

in, solely interpreting leadership from individual aspects is rather limited. As such,

despite examine the governance from people who are positioned at the top, another

key dimension of how leadership is created is through their followers within

organisational structure (Kennedy et al., 2012). As a small-scale social enterprise, IFA’s

structure mainly consists of two core members who are responsible for school and

business partnership development respectively as well as other three key

stakeholders. These stakeholders are also followers, knowing as the advisory panel,

local authorities and MATs as well as business partners. Mainly, the advisory panel

includes a panel chair to take charge of stakeholder engagement, along with six-panel

members who constantly provide collective support and supervision towards the

programme operation (IFA, 2022). Likewise, the panel contains professionals and

leaders from both business and education sectors, which contributes to receiving

suggestions from those with complementary expertise. Meanwhile, the local

authorities and schools are key participants and customers in the programme. They

buy the leadership coaching service from IFA and are allocated a suitable business

leader to develop reciprocal learning. Regarding to business partners, some of whom

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take the sponsorship role while others work voluntarily to support leadership

development in disadvantaged schools (See figure 1).

Relational leadership: distributed responsibility and messianic traits

Hence, instead of relying exclusively on one leader at the top, IFA recognises the

importance of distributing responsibility for leadership functions and the involvement

of multiple leaders in a dispersed format. From the structural analysis of IFA, the

leadership function is spread across a number of persons’ labour (i.e. cofounders,

panel chairs and partners) who can work separately yet interdependently. Also, the

leadership training project is achieved via interactions among diverse stakeholders,

which is consistent with this social distribution of leadership (Harris, 2007). According

to Spillane (2005), distributed leadership can also be interpreted as ‘team leadership’,

which emphasise the interactions between leaders and followers, and put leadership

practice instead of the leader’s role at the centre stage. Consequently, this distributed

responsibility and identified interdependency among key stakeholders in IFA is

beneficial to construct relational dynamics within organisation, which underscore the

relational leadership applied by IFA in its leadership process. In general, relational

leadership advocates for the social aspect of leadership from the entity and

constructionist perspectives (Crevani, 2015). Instead of defining leaders and followers

as stable entities, IFA emphasises the co-construction of relations among two co-

founders, the advisory panel and the mutual communication between business and

school leaders. Mainly through recognising the followers’ need of being connected

with successful leaders outside of education, positioning stakeholders based on their

expertise and bringing senior leaders from business and education altogether in a

shared space, the leadership process in IFA reveals the constructivist aspects of

relational leadership. This framing, positioning and bridging within IFA can further lead

to mutual learning and win-win situations, thus creating an engaging context to reach

its pursuit.

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Besides, even though the leadership of IFA possesses a relational format, it indeed

possesses a messianic nature. As suggested by Western (2019), messianic leaders are

equipped with persuasive visions and exceptional charisma to attain commitment

from followers. As a social enterprise with a certain social mission to enhance the

social mobility of those disadvantaged students, IFA has offered this compelling vision

to develop its influential culture and pursuit within organisation. On the positive side,

the blueprint depicted by the CEO and the innovative partnership programme reveal

the social responsibility and vision of IFA, which attracts loyal participants and

substantial investment (IFA, 2022). Nevertheless, aside from their charismatic

features, messianic leaders may expel voices that go against their tenets and become

cult-like. Hence, Sara who takes the role of both CEO and business co-founder may

have higher authority in IFA, and she may only select business leaders with similar

intentions but avoid those deviants. Since the business partnership selection and

decision made by Sara is significantly vital for company’s operation, it may engender

a homogeneous culture that stifles creativity and innovation for IFA’s development.

Eco-leadership: interpretation from organisational structure

Regarding the dispersed responsibility and the relational dynamic among stakeholders,

it can be concluded that IFA strategically follows the eco-leadership discourse.

According to Western (2019, p271), eco-leadership sees organisations as “ecosystems

within ecosystems” with key qualities represented by connectivity and

interdependence, systemic ethics, leadership spirit and organisational belonging.

From a micro dimension, it stresses the distributed and networked types of leadership

in the internal eco-system of organisation to ensure the interconnection between

related entities. For IFA, this interrelated network can be revealed as a closed loop

(see figure2). Initially, school leaders reach out to IFA for participating in the

leadership training and aim to promote their senior leadership. With this demand as

a driving force, IFA gets the sponsorship and qualified business partners as an

assurance to operate the programme. Moreover, the selected business partners will

then provide valuable leadership practice to entrench effective senior leadership in

under-serving schools.

In addition, aside from the leading organisation like an eco-system internally, eco-

leaders are also concerned with environmental and ethical issues that is beyond

organisational level (Western, 2018). Concerning the external eco-system of IFA, the

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advocation for enclosing the disadvantaged gap takes initiatives on policy regulations

and usage of technology (i.e. online coaching) to facilitate partnership construction.

This can also create a reciprocal impact on partners and participants within the

organisation and adapt to the changeable education landscape. Therefore, with both

internal connectivity and ethical consideration externally, IFA adopts eco-leadership

to realise the organisational belonging by creating interdependency between

company pursuit and societal interest. Yet, the messianic nature embedded in this

ecosystem leads to a paradoxical concern, as leaders may stick to what they are

familiar with rather than take the risk of making radical reformations (Western, 2018).

Leadership through operational purpose

Despite analysing leadership from the organisational structure, the importance of

leadership for operational purposes is also worth noticing. As indicated by Jackson et

al. (2018), the purpose plays a vital role in understanding leadership motivations and

values, especially in the social enterprise context. This highlights the necessity of

communicating the purpose of a venture to a variety of different stakeholders within

the social enterprise.

IPP programme: responsible leadership and neo-liberal features

By recognising the less accumulated cultural capital in disadvantaged students’ homes

and communities, the agreed-upon purpose of IFA is to enable effective leadership to

act as a catalyst, which can improve outcomes of disadvantaged young people and

provide them with better educational opportunities. Practically, they launched an

Inspiring Partnership Programme (IPP) for school leader mentoring (IFA, 2022). With

the participation of business leaders, the programme includes nine sessions mainly

consisting of a self-reflection part towards personal value and confidence, the team

leading courses for effective communication and delegation, and leading change

sections to set up a whole school vision and collaboration (IFA, 2023). On the one hand,

both founders tend to reveal their credibility through social morality as their

compelling and enduring purpose in leading IFA. For instance, the IPP programme

encourages school leaders to design a new curriculum that can better prepare

disadvantaged children for future career development or guide them to find

applicable strategies for senior leader recruitment under a tight budget. Aside from

strategic interventions, school leaders themselves also learn to build up their

confidence and work efficiently as new leaders (Kennedy, 2022). With this practical

facilitation from business partners, school leaders can develop responsible leadership

and emotional resilience in challenge management. This attempt is not only beneficial

to tackle specific leadership challenges in disadvantaged schools but can release the

school leadership stress under the high-accountability education system in the U.K.

(Steward, 2014). This can ultimately fulfill the social purpose of IFA leadership.

On the other hand, operating as a social enterprise, IFA possesses the vision for

enhancing social mobility with its market-based programme as solution. Precisely, the

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programme enables leaders in private business sectors to provide insights for public

school leaders. During this process, neo-liberal ideas ranging from the advocation of

working efficiency, standardised performance to the construction of a competitive

environment within organisation may be brought forward and embedded in the

school management process. Consequently, professional knowledge may undermine

the importance of educational values or innovative pedagogy but overemphasise the

outcome delivery (Hughes et al., 2023). It is thus difficult for IFA to sustain its social

purpose along the way, while the commercial imperative may replace the responsible

leadership and become an end rather than a means. As supported by Mason et al.

(2007), this sequence is mainly dependent on the major concerns of the stakeholders.

Leadership analysis and recommendations: a practice of transformational leadership

With dedicated effort, the IFA impact report (2022) reveals that all school leaders

value the chance of being connected with a professional leader outside of education,

while 98% of business leaders can reflect positively on their leadership process.

Moreover, school leaders’ retention rate has become higher after setting up the

partnership with business leaders and those business leaders reported being more

engaged in work. These identified that mutual benefits can indeed better support

those disadvantaged students to reach IFA’s vision.

Based on the leadership analysis, the founders of IFA practice leadership in a

transformational manner, particularly by seeking to unite diverse stakeholders with

common interests and spread a compelling vision to change the status quo of

education for disadvantaged students (Lussier & Achua, 2015). It can thus be

concluded that these distinct values are embedded in its organisational structure and

operational purposes collectively, which endeavour to create transformational

leadership within IFA. By reviewing this transformational practice from the whole

picture, leadership has been discussed individually through its policy

entrepreneurship. Mainly, the co-founders’ intellectual leadership with adequate

knowledge acquisition and policy entrepreneurship demonstrates the priority of

intellectual engagement and the importance of continuous learning in leadership

practice. Also, the eco-leadership and relational dynamics applied by the two founders

demonstrate their concentration on interpersonal influence and stakeholders’

engagement at a moral level. Meanwhile, this moral authority has also been

embedded into its partnership programme, which makes IFA more like a community

rather than an organisation (Sergiovanni, 2005).

However, several weaknesses have also been discussed and advised for future

improvement. Initially, regarding the messiah discourse and its cult-like features, IFA

may face long-term stability issues when the current leaders are no longer in charge.

IFA leaders may consider whether they can include the absorptive capacity as strategic

leaders by institutionalising their organisation and become more inclusive to diverse

voices (Davies & Davies, 2004; Young & Kim, 2015). They can thus become more viable

and know where to direct their company, especially when encountering unpredictable

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leadership changes. Also, IFA reveals the ideology of neoliberalism both within its

structure and leadership purpose. As a social enterprise with multiple stakeholders,

implementing the IPP as its private-public partnership may lead to a high cost (Verger,

2012). Due to the budgetary constraints in the not-for-profits and the key position of

business partners, it is difficult for IFA leaders to maintain their social and moral

leadership due to the need for funding. From this perspective, the leadership in IFA

may become coercive. Meanwhile, for business partners, their participation in the

project is not limited to taking cooperate social responsibility but more to attaining

good reputations in the market intentionally. Considering the debate of privatisation

in education, IFA can constantly find new customers and get new sponsors to avoid

the latent enforcement from certain business partners, while a strong alignment of

values and motives can be created between co-founders and followers to better

implement values-based leadership (Jackson et al., 2017)

Conclusion

To conclude, this case study critically analyses the leadership discourses in Inspiration

for All, presented its leadership strengths and weaknesses, and provided relevant

suggestions for improvement. Through the lens of individual leaders, organisational

structure as well as operational purpose in this social educational enterprise, two co-

founders in IFA actively play the role of policy entrepreneurs and are dedicated to

setting up relational leadership with messianic traits under an eco-leading structure.

Meanwhile, the IPP programme at IFA reveals both the social responsibility and neo-

liberal features in its leadership practice. From the discussion, it can be summarised

that the key strength for IFA to lead its followers and stakeholders is the advocation

of moral leadership through a public-private partnership, which is based on taking

social responsibility and the intention for all children’s success. But within this

blueprint, the manifestation of neoliberal and profit-driven features may also impede

its progress. Regarding the strength of existing leadership and the intention to avoid

toxic leadership under the influence of messianic and neoliberal tactics, it is vital for

IFA to wisely maintain both social and commercial viability.

Reviewing the sharing faith of IFA, leadership in social educational enterprise and its

following impact in local MATs appears to be another form of capital that become key

to disadvantaged students’ success. Hence, due to the complexity of leading

educational institutions, leadership is not only about assisting people in understanding

the challenges they confront, assisting individuals to possess the ability on how to

tackle these problems, but learning how to live with them (Sergiovanni, 2005).

Word count: 3286 words

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