Approved by the Board of Directors on the recommendation of the leadership, the original bureaucratic hierarchal structure with defined roles, responsibilities, policies and procedures formed the structure of the school to achieve the objectives of TIS. The Head of school reports to the Board about the academic and non-academic developments of the school and the three academic programme coordinators (Primary Years [ages 3 to 11 years], Middle Years [ages 11 to 16 years] and Diploma Years [ages 16 to 18 years]) report to the Head on their academic findings from the respective department heads and teaching staff. The Business Manager reports on the non-academic issues to the Head on findings from the support staff. The TIS community recognised the existence of ‘legal or statutory right’ or authority associated with each node on the organisational chart (Structural – Hoyle ’96) thus creating a Role Culture (p86, Handy & Aitken86). Contingent to the unfamiliar situation of establishing an IB World School in Pakistan and time-pressure in opening for admissions in a few months, the chosen structure complimented the leadership which at the time of establishing the institute was closer to “leader tells people what to do” on the Tannebaum and Schmidt Continuum (1973) and concerned more about the outcome than people (Blake, 1978). The choice of managerial leadership with top-down decision process from one key leader, the head of the school, is first rationalised by the lack of trust in the founding staff, hired months prior to the opening of the school, for admission. As described by Hersey (1985) this existed primarily due to the uncertainty of the commitment and the absence of any experience in the IB programmes of the founding staff. The collective teaching and administrative experience of the staff was of either the local Pakistani Matriculation or British GCE O- and A-level, both assessed, taught, content through examination only. In contrast TIS adoption of the inquiry based learning and criterion referenced assessment of the innovative IB system meant the previous experiences of the staff was void and they needed to change the manner in which they taught, assessed and administered learning. The lack of trust was further compounded by the lack of opportunities available to the leadership for the development of staff capacity due to constrained time frame and absence of necessary funding. Even if the budget was made available for professional development opportunities, there was no time for sending staff for external training opportunities. The paltry funds made available by the governing body in the preoperational stages of setting up the school body only secured the attendance of the Head of School to IB conferences and workshops. The concentration of the technical know-how and responsibility of training the teaching and administrative support staff, by the founding head, did further alienate the already structurally and culturally distant relation between the led and the leader. It was imperative to educate the staff in the pedagogy of the IB for its visible and effective implementation in school for parents to recognise and value the difference from the status quo, and the entire success for achieving this was central to just one person.

In contrast to Glatter’s ‘Change cannot be bulldozed’, the acceptance of managerial leadership by the initial hired staff to launch the school allowed the leadership in achieving the requisite change in record time for the implementation of the IB programmes: the outcome. This collective behaviour by almost all teaching and non-teaching staff was congruent to Hofstede’s classification of a Pakistani culture. According to Hofstede’s study, low individualism, relatively high power-distance, high masculinity and high uncertainty avoidance index in the national culture of Pakistan would suggest the preference of a more authoritative managerial leadership style by a passive led, who would rather be told what to do than be put in a situation where they could exercise their will or input. Clearly there was an alignment of structure, culture and leadership to be authoritative. However there was tension caused by the friction between the cultural acceptance of doing as the leadership demands and the individual sense of threat associated by the demands for unfamiliar or high-risk change. Thus creating Morrison’s list (1998, p130-1) of emotional negativities amongst members of the staff: “increased workload”, “loss of status and control”, “fear of the unknown”, ” lack of clarity of purpose”, “uncertainty and ambiguity”, “vulnerability”, “reluctance to let go of the present”, “threats to expertise and established skills”, “fear of failure and threats to self-esteem”, “concern about the ability to cope” and “stress” which lead to staff turnover, lack of collaboration, inconsistencies in acceptance of the IB teaching methodologies and finally more importantly sporadic visibility of the IB fundamentals by the parents.

TIS leadership realised “school culture is organic rather than static” (Rick Dufor, 2002, p22) and “change concerns people” (Morrison, 1998). Recognising the intrinsic link between the change in ‘the very people who make a school great or not – the teacher” (Leithwood, 92, p8) and the school. The formation of a volunteer group of teaching staff empowered to participate in deciding the future of the school was a transformational shift from autocratic to participatory leadership. This effort changed the structure by flattening the hierarchy and the culture by increasing interaction for a common goal which helps “staff members develop and maintain a collaborative, professional school culture” (Leithwood, 1992, p9). On this “retroactive” (Levacic et al., 1999) strategic platform there is a sharing and balancing of different thoughts in creating a consensus by a representative group not an individual to decide on the direction of the school. This transformation is indicative of a transition from the isolated transactional culture of a previous Type A organisation (Ouchi,’81) to the participatory and collegial culture of Type Z organisation (Ouchi,’81). The new invigorating energy from a “redefinition of a people’s mission and vision, a renewal of their commitment, and the restructuring of their systems for goal accomplishment” (Leithwood, 1992, p9) has increased “confidence and motivation” (Leithwood, 1992, p9) of staff in their transactional leadership practices. Both transformational and transactional leadership are complimentary with the former leading the change both at an individual and institutional level. ‘The alignment of the leadership, structure and culture’ (Gunter, 2006, p151) to be collaborative and participatory is an initial first in the process of making staff take ownership of the institute for its improvement and effectiveness. The visionary is no longer the founding board members but the collective school community and the change agent is no longer the Head of the school but the members of the teaching staff. Collectively they intend on bringing in improvements to reach their following agreed objectives focusing on the learner, parent and teacher – its people and community.