There is growing concern in college management about the quality of education in tertiary institutions. For related studies, people normally encounter the problems of developing measurement indicators and identifying components of quality education. Some people use SERVQUAL, a technique making use of the gap between customers’ expectations and perceived experience as indicators of service quality, to measure quality of services offered by professionals such as physicians. Hampton applied the technique to identify and measure the significance of different components of quality education, by using the questionnaire designed by Betz, Klingensmith and Menne. Hampton’s findings sound reasonable but seem to be too simplified and confined to the characteristics of students in the USA. The expectations and perceptions of the students are often shaped and influenced by their cultural orientation and environments. Hong Kong students who are more pragmatic and instrumental may value less the significance of campus life on quality education but put more stress on assessment. This study is designed to apply the modified SERVQUAL skill to examine Hampton’s findings with reference to the students in a different social and cultural context. It is hoped that a list of quality indicators can be identified against which the performance of the higher educational institutes can be measured.

Purpose: Despite occasional claims for the coexistence of transformational leadership and instructional leadership in schools, the literature is dominated by views supporting an “either/or” orientation. This is especially true in the wake of recent findings that instructional leadership has a greater impact on student learning. This study, going beyond simply evaluating whether these two modes of leadership complement or contradict each other, explores how they may intersect in complex and nuanced ways. Specifically, I examine the moderating effect of transformational leadership on the impact of instructional leadership on student outcomes. Research Design: A questionnaire, composed of items to measure instructional and transformational leadership, student outcomes, school background factors, and informant’s demographic variables, was sent to the vice-principals in Hong Kong schools. Hierarchical regression analysis was used to factor out the effect of informants’ personal and school factors on leadership perception and student outcomes in the testing of the moderating effect. Findings: With evidence drawn from 177 aided schools, this study confirms the moderating effect of transformational leadership through the identification of a disparity in the effect of instructional leadership on student outcomes corresponding to disparate levels of transformational leadership enactment in schools. Implications: The effect of instructional behaviors on student outcomes is considered to be situationally contingent on the extent of transformational behavior enactment. Despite its lack of a direct impact on student outcomes, transformational leadership serves as a necessary, although insufficient, condition for the effective implementation of instructional monitoring measures. Limitations of the study are also discussed.

Purpose-The purpose of this paper is to examine first the job responsibilities undertaken by vice-principals and second to investigate the respective contribution of each job responsibility in preparing them for the principalship. Because new principals are drawn predominantly from the ranks of vice-principals in Hong Kong, it is important to examine whether their current experience adequately prepares vice-principals to take up this senior position. Design/methodology/approach-All vice-principals in Hong Kong secondary schools were sent a questionnaire that asked for the extent of their involvement in various activities and their adequacy of preparation for the principalship. A sequential regression analysis was used to examine the effect of various job dimensions on the vice-principals' perceived preparedness, over and above the effect of their demographic variables. Findings-Seven job responsibility dimensions pertaining to the role of vice-principals were identified. It was found that respondents spend most of their time on staff management and the least on resource management. Among the seven job dimensions, only strategic direction and policy environment were found to have an effect on their perceived preparation for the principalship. Research limitations/implications-The findings reflect that vice-principals take their staff management and resource management responsibilities lightly as they do not perceive their extensive experience gained in staff management as an asset or their inadequate experience in resource management as a deficiency in preparing them for the principalship. As these two dimensions are the core elements of school-based management, they deserve the attention of policy-makers. In addition, policy-makers should address the development of vice-principals in the dimension of strategic direction and policy environment. Originality/value-The paper, using a quantitative methodology, is the first to investigate the link between job responsibility dimensions and preparation for the principalship as perceived by vice-principals.

The topic of organizational culture has attracted the attention of numerous researchers from both quantitative and qualitative perspectives. A review of the literature shows that the quantitative assessment of organizational culture has been dominated by studies adopting the competing values framework developed by Quinn and his colleagues. The use of this model embraces the notion that the 4 cultural types depicted by the framework can be used not only to represent the culture of an organization but also to serve as a basis upon which one organization can be differentiated from others. Various attempts have been reported to support the validity of the framework for describing the culture of an organization; however, the claim that one organization can be differentiated from another on the basis of the 4 cultural types is yet to be empirically supported. The study reported here set out to show that the competing values model can be used to differentiate organizations from one another. Based on a survey administered to all academic staff in 7 out of the 8 government‐funded higher education institutions in Hong Kong, the study successfully confirmed the validity of the competing values model as a tool in differentiating organizations.

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