Profiles of multi-level self-management in schools

School-based management (SBM) or school self-management has been an important worldwide school restructuring movement since 1980s. This paper aims to map out how SBM in terms of self-management at the school, group and individual levels is related to school performance at different levels. From a sample of 82 schools, the strength of multi-level self-management in school was found to be strongly related to the quality indicators of organizational performance, moderately correlated to the quality indicators of group social norms of teachers, and individual teacher job performances. The profiles of strong and weak self-management schools were also found to be significantly different in most indicators of school performance at different levels. The findings provide preliminary evidence to support that the success of SBM implementation for achieving school quality depends on the involvement of the school, groups and individual teachers as a whole in continuous self-management and self-learning cycles. Copyright © 2003 Emerald Group Publishing Limited.