The Impact of Principal Attrition and Replacement on Indicators of School Quality

Transitions to a new principal are common, especially within urban public schools, and potentially highly disruptive to a school's culture and operations. We use longitudinal data from New York City to investigate if the effect of principal transitions differs by whether the incoming principal was hired externally or promoted from within the school. We take advantage of variation in the timing of principal transitions within an event-study approach to estimate the causal effect of principal changes. Changing principals has an immediate negative effect on student test scores that is sustained over several years regardless of whether hired internally or externally. However, externally hired principals lead to an increase in teacher turnover and a decline in perceptions of the school's learning environment, whereas transitions to an internally promoted principal have no such effects. This pattern of results raises important questions about leadership transitions and the nature of principal effects on school quality.

Managing self-imposed leadership transitions during unprecedented challenges: Here’s your new office! Don’t ever come here

No one imagines starting a new leadership role, or any role, in the middle of a pandemic. In the summer of 2020, we found ourselves doing exactly that: moving to new states and starting new leadership roles during COVID-19. Starting new leadership roles can be challenging during regular times, but the pandemic added another layer of complexity. Along with worries about moving, housing, and other logistical hurdles, the main questions on our minds were related to leadership. In the spirit of Amanda Clay Power, Martin Garnar, and Dustin Fife’s ACRL articles on leadership and book, we opted to interview each other regarding our experiences.

Winning the Game of Thrones: Leadership Succession in Modern Autocracies

Under what conditions can dictatorships manage peaceful leadership transitions? This article argues that constitutional succession rules are critical for modern dictatorships, contrary to the predominant scholarly focus on hereditary succession or parties. An effective succession rule needs to solve dual problems of peaceful exit and peaceful entry. First, the rule must enable incumbents to exit power peacefully by reducing coup threats. Second, the rule must empower the designated successor to ensure that they can enter power peacefully. Constitutional rules help solve both problems, and are particularly effective when they appoint the vice president as the designated successor. The vice president’s access to material resources deters other factions from challenging the succession procedure, whereas designating successors without a power base is ineffective. Using original data on constitutional rules in African autocracies, I show that regimes that formally designate the vice president as the successor are more likely to undergo peaceful transitions.

Interim Pastoral Skills as a Resource for Library Leadership Transitions

David E. Cox, a veteran pastoral minister specializing in interim ministry and who is now a library leader, and Carisse M. Berryhill, a library science professor, explore how skills used by interim pastors can be applied by interim leaders or new directors to successfully lead libraries making the transition to new leadership. Cox recommends using a system-based strategy that moves through five steps: coming to terms with history, discovering a new identity, allowing for needed leadership change, reaffirming community with stakeholders, and commitment to new directions in programs and services.

Graumlich to Be AGU President-Elect/AGU Leadership Transitions

As new AGU leaders assume their governance roles in 2021, about half of the organization’s current officers will continue to serve and provide leadership continuity.

How mediator leadership transitions influence mediation effectiveness

Little is known about how transitions in the government of mediators affect conflict dynamics and resolution. To address this shortcoming, we study executive turnovers of mediators during ongoing interventions in civil war. Mediation effectiveness is largely driven by (trustworthy) information provision and sharing. Changes in mediators’ leaderships have the potential to undermine this, lowering mediation performance. Using data on civil conflicts in 1946–2017, we find robust support for this argument. This research sheds light on a previously neglected factor in conflict resolution that is of particular interest to practitioners and policymakers.