title: Educational leadership for international partnerships between New Zealand and east Asian Chinese higher education institutions

authors: Ho, Ai-Hsin

subjects: educational leadership

abstract: This study examines how higher education leaders in different socio-cultural contexts are involved in the practice of distributed leadership in international partnerships. This study employs socio-cultural theorising to help explain the 22 New Zealand, Singaporean, Chinese and Taiwanese higher education leaders' multiple experiences, perceptions and practices in international partnerships. In this study, socio-cultural theorising entails a view of constructivist epistemology and the ontology of constructive realism. Grounded theory methodology and Wallner's strangifications were employed to acquire, analyse, interpret and compare qualitative data across different contexts in this study. Semi-structured interviewing and document collection were the methods used for data generation. 
The findings suggest that distributed leadership in international higher education partnerships should move beyond simply arranging formal leadership roles, responsibilities, and resources. Distributed leadership in such cross-cultural contexts should be conceived as an inclusive approach to multiple leadership practices. Five interrelated key elements of distributed leadership emerged. They are formal arrangements, enhanced leadership opportunities, understanding the context, sustainability and learning. All the key elements entailed certain levels and aspects of learning. Learning and distributed leadership practices are closely intertwined and informing each other.
A conceptual framework for the learning and practice of distributed leadership in international partnership is proposed to theorise the relationship between three sources of learning of distributed leadership, and multiple distributed leadership practices. The three sources of learning identified in this study are understandings of the context (in actuality), prior knowledge (in lifeworlds), and knowledge of leadership capital, issues and factors (in microworlds). This study provides wider implications for education practitioners in other contexts to explore in international partnerships how social, cultural and economic forms leadership capital can be successfully distributed, exchanged and sustained, and how higher education leaders at all levels can actively participate and learn in international partnerships. Recommendations for researchers to conduct cross-cultural studies are provided.

text: Educational leadership for international partnerships between New Zealand and east Asian Chinese higher education institutions This study examines how higher education leaders in different socio-cultural contexts are involved in the practice of distributed leadership in international partnerships. This study employs socio-cultural theorising to help explain the 22 New Zealand, Singaporean, Chinese and Taiwanese higher education leaders' multiple experiences, perceptions and practices in international partnerships. In this study, socio-cultural theorising entails a view of constructivist epistemology and the ontology of constructive realism. Grounded theory methodology and Wallner's strangifications were employed to acquire, analyse, interpret and compare qualitative data across different contexts in this study. Semi-structured interviewing and document collection were the methods used for data generation. 
The findings suggest that distributed leadership in international higher education partnerships should move beyond simply arranging formal leadership roles, responsibilities, and resources. Distributed leadership in such cross-cultural contexts should be conceived as an inclusive approach to multiple leadership practices. Five interrelated key elements of distributed leadership emerged. They are formal arrangements, enhanced leadership opportunities, understanding the context, sustainability and learning. All the key elements entailed certain levels and aspects of learning. Learning and distributed leadership practices are closely intertwined and informing each other.
A conceptual framework for the learning and practice of distributed leadership in international partnership is proposed to theorise the relationship between three sources of learning of distributed leadership, and multiple distributed leadership practices. The three sources of learning identified in this study are understandings of the context (in actuality), prior knowledge (in lifeworlds), and knowledge of leadership capital, issues and factors (in microworlds). This study provides wider implications for education practitioners in other contexts to explore in international partnerships how social, cultural and economic forms leadership capital can be successfully distributed, exchanged and sustained, and how higher education leaders at all levels can actively participate and learn in international partnerships. Recommendations for researchers to conduct cross-cultural studies are provided.

year: 2009

title: Realising Our Best Intentions: Vision, Values and Voice in Community Non-government Organisations of the Aotearoa \New Zealand Mental Health Sector

authors: Barber, Kirsty Frances Mary

subjects: organising

abstract: This thesis examines the effectiveness of establishing a recovery orientation in community, non-government, mental health organisations in Aotearoa\New Zealand.  It addresses the discursive constructions of key concepts such as madness, recovery and community care.  In addition, it examines the wider, societal and institutional pressures that influence how important features of a recovery discourse, such as empowerment and an ordinary life in community, are articulated and enacted within organisational environments.  It also investigates how institutional hegemonies are contested, and opportunities identified for institutional change and organisational transformation.  
Critical and postmodern perspectives in healthcare provided a rationale for utilising the framework for organisational communication research, developed by Dennis Mumby and Cynthia Stohl (1996, 2007).  The framework addressed the problematics of (1) voice, (2) rationality, (3) the relationship between organisations and the state, as well as (4) the problematic of organising itself.  
Critical Appreciative Inquiry (Grant & Humphries, 2006) was the methodology used for this project.  Focus groups and interviews facilitated dialogue among support workers, team leaders and senior managers from a range of community mental health organisations throughout Aotearoa\New Zealand.  These encounters encouraged conversations about what worked well in organisations, and how to enhance a recovery-orientation, without shying away from a critical analysis of what was impeding best practice.  The dialogues also enabled examination of how these organisations were situated within the larger socio-political and cultural environment.  
The findings of the study showed that organisational stakeholders constructed and translated the discourses of madness, illness and recovery very differently.  Translations reflected the relative power of particular discourse communities, with powerful groups able to control meaning systems through their greater social legitimacy.  Institutionalised discourses of biomedicine and managerialism proved difficult to “deinstitutionalise”, and institutional agents “translated” recovery discourses in ways that ensured little disruption to powerful and privileged interests.  In addition, it was apparent that institutions undertook defensive institutional work when challenged.  Defensive strategies were primarily discursive, e.g. translation, but were important mechanisms through which institutional interests subsumed alternative discourses, and maintained power over an organisational field.
This thesis contributes to the field of organisational communication by demonstrating that perceptions of organisational, and institutional change, are frequently discursive, rather than substantive.  Effective organisational change, therefore, needs to challenge institutional structures and systemic relationships of power.  Sustained, and sustainable, change requires fundamental shifts in the rational bases of institutional logics.  This has important implications for how less powerful actors and organisations can establish alternative discourses in institutionalised fields, such as mental healthcare.

text: Realising Our Best Intentions: Vision, Values and Voice in Community Non-government Organisations of the Aotearoa \New Zealand Mental Health Sector This thesis examines the effectiveness of establishing a recovery orientation in community, non-government, mental health organisations in Aotearoa\New Zealand.  It addresses the discursive constructions of key concepts such as madness, recovery and community care.  In addition, it examines the wider, societal and institutional pressures that influence how important features of a recovery discourse, such as empowerment and an ordinary life in community, are articulated and enacted within organisational environments.  It also investigates how institutional hegemonies are contested, and opportunities identified for institutional change and organisational transformation.  
Critical and postmodern perspectives in healthcare provided a rationale for utilising the framework for organisational communication research, developed by Dennis Mumby and Cynthia Stohl (1996, 2007).  The framework addressed the problematics of (1) voice, (2) rationality, (3) the relationship between organisations and the state, as well as (4) the problematic of organising itself.  
Critical Appreciative Inquiry (Grant & Humphries, 2006) was the methodology used for this project.  Focus groups and interviews facilitated dialogue among support workers, team leaders and senior managers from a range of community mental health organisations throughout Aotearoa\New Zealand.  These encounters encouraged conversations about what worked well in organisations, and how to enhance a recovery-orientation, without shying away from a critical analysis of what was impeding best practice.  The dialogues also enabled examination of how these organisations were situated within the larger socio-political and cultural environment.  
The findings of the study showed that organisational stakeholders constructed and translated the discourses of madness, illness and recovery very differently.  Translations reflected the relative power of particular discourse communities, with powerful groups able to control meaning systems through their greater social legitimacy.  Institutionalised discourses of biomedicine and managerialism proved difficult to “deinstitutionalise”, and institutional agents “translated” recovery discourses in ways that ensured little disruption to powerful and privileged interests.  In addition, it was apparent that institutions undertook defensive institutional work when challenged.  Defensive strategies were primarily discursive, e.g. translation, but were important mechanisms through which institutional interests subsumed alternative discourses, and maintained power over an organisational field.
This thesis contributes to the field of organisational communication by demonstrating that perceptions of organisational, and institutional change, are frequently discursive, rather than substantive.  Effective organisational change, therefore, needs to challenge institutional structures and systemic relationships of power.  Sustained, and sustainable, change requires fundamental shifts in the rational bases of institutional logics.  This has important implications for how less powerful actors and organisations can establish alternative discourses in institutionalised fields, such as mental healthcare.

year: 2015

title: Māori wards in Tauranga Moana and Aotearoa: Liminal local government democracy

authors: Des Forges, Sandra

subjects: Māori wards

abstract: This thesis focuses on Māori representation within the highly contested arena of local government democracy in Aotearoa New Zealand. Limitations of the current Eurocentric model of local government democracy are considered at various spatial scales. Legislative changes to enable councils to establish Māori wards were launched in the early 2000s. Māori wards are defined locations where those on the Māori electoral roll vote for Māori ward candidates, resulting in dedicated Māori representation at elected member level. Until 2021 when the legislation was amended to remove the ability for public referenda to challenge council decisions on establishing Māori wards, however, little change occurred. Since then, 35 councils have established Māori wards for the 2022 local body elections.
The research asks how, and in what ways, do Māori wards decolonise local government and encourage greater Māori representation? To explore this question, the empirical chapters are framed around three key aspects of liminality; the in-between positioning of Māori wards reflecting a time of change; this liminal space being a time where unease and discomfort is experienced by some as Indigenous disparity is addressed; and the threshold positioning of Māori wards as a place of opportunity and creativity, where new ideas and practices may be considered. Geographical concepts of (un)belonging, exclusion and deep colonising reveal challenges for Māori participation at the level of local government decision-making. 
The research uses an Indigenous methodological framework, Te Ara Tika, based on a framework of Kaupapa Māori, and developed specifically for non-Māori researchers. Māori wards have been widely debated in the media, particularly at the time of changes to the Māori ward legislation in 2021. Thematic analysis of 122 media representations of the Māori ward debate constitutes part of the empirical evidence. Fourteen individual interviews with local government representatives, including elected Council members from Tauranga Moana and members of Te Rangapū Mana Whenua o Tauranga Moana Partnership, were conducted. Additionally, participant observations took place at three public meetings on Māori wards.
The way the current form of local government representative democracy impacts Māori representation is identified. The research demonstrates how local government continues to act as a tool of colonialism by privileging Western worldviews, institutions, and systems. The research finds that Māori wards are liminal democratic options that are both decolonising and deep colonising. Evidence shows that the liminal space of Māori wards is an opportunity to consider options for a way forward to reimagine local government as a place of belonging underpinned by Te Tiriti o Waitangi and Te Ao Māori principles. 
The research builds on decolonisation literatures that seek to unsettle the hegemony of Eurocentric institutions and systems within colonised countries such as Aotearoa. Providing a critical spatial perspective on the intersection of democracy, colonisation and Indigeneity, this thesis advances decolonising geographical knowledges. In particular, this research advances debates about democratic processes, exposing ways in which colonially-based local authority democratic mechanisms contribute to under-representation issues. A reimagined local government allows current hegemonic approaches to be rethought and provides insights for a shift towards genuine decolonising processes.

text: Māori wards in Tauranga Moana and Aotearoa: Liminal local government democracy This thesis focuses on Māori representation within the highly contested arena of local government democracy in Aotearoa New Zealand. Limitations of the current Eurocentric model of local government democracy are considered at various spatial scales. Legislative changes to enable councils to establish Māori wards were launched in the early 2000s. Māori wards are defined locations where those on the Māori electoral roll vote for Māori ward candidates, resulting in dedicated Māori representation at elected member level. Until 2021 when the legislation was amended to remove the ability for public referenda to challenge council decisions on establishing Māori wards, however, little change occurred. Since then, 35 councils have established Māori wards for the 2022 local body elections.
The research asks how, and in what ways, do Māori wards decolonise local government and encourage greater Māori representation? To explore this question, the empirical chapters are framed around three key aspects of liminality; the in-between positioning of Māori wards reflecting a time of change; this liminal space being a time where unease and discomfort is experienced by some as Indigenous disparity is addressed; and the threshold positioning of Māori wards as a place of opportunity and creativity, where new ideas and practices may be considered. Geographical concepts of (un)belonging, exclusion and deep colonising reveal challenges for Māori participation at the level of local government decision-making. 
The research uses an Indigenous methodological framework, Te Ara Tika, based on a framework of Kaupapa Māori, and developed specifically for non-Māori researchers. Māori wards have been widely debated in the media, particularly at the time of changes to the Māori ward legislation in 2021. Thematic analysis of 122 media representations of the Māori ward debate constitutes part of the empirical evidence. Fourteen individual interviews with local government representatives, including elected Council members from Tauranga Moana and members of Te Rangapū Mana Whenua o Tauranga Moana Partnership, were conducted. Additionally, participant observations took place at three public meetings on Māori wards.
The way the current form of local government representative democracy impacts Māori representation is identified. The research demonstrates how local government continues to act as a tool of colonialism by privileging Western worldviews, institutions, and systems. The research finds that Māori wards are liminal democratic options that are both decolonising and deep colonising. Evidence shows that the liminal space of Māori wards is an opportunity to consider options for a way forward to reimagine local government as a place of belonging underpinned by Te Tiriti o Waitangi and Te Ao Māori principles. 
The research builds on decolonisation literatures that seek to unsettle the hegemony of Eurocentric institutions and systems within colonised countries such as Aotearoa. Providing a critical spatial perspective on the intersection of democracy, colonisation and Indigeneity, this thesis advances decolonising geographical knowledges. In particular, this research advances debates about democratic processes, exposing ways in which colonially-based local authority democratic mechanisms contribute to under-representation issues. A reimagined local government allows current hegemonic approaches to be rethought and provides insights for a shift towards genuine decolonising processes.

year: 2023