The article raises issues about the current direction of the field of educational leadership and management. It argues that we should consider a re-orientation of the field in order to renew its concern with ideas connected with organization, which include viewing organizations as complex adaptive systems and taking an institutional perspective. Some key features of the current context are identified, including the RAE, the growing power of the central state in England and the much more pluralistic supply side for research. Finally some possible ways forward are proposed. (Contains 3 notes.)