An attempt was made to formulate a theoretical framework of leadership forces in school organisations, which includes bureaucratic linkage, cultural linkage, tight coupling and loose coupling. Two instruments, the School Values Inventory (SVI) and the Teachers' School Life Questionnaire (TSLQ), were created and developed for this study to assess the administrative values espoused by principals and teachers' feelings about school life. Based on data collected from 1395 teachers from a randomly selected sample of 39 secondary schools in Hong Kong, the four scales of leadership forces in secondary schools were confirmed. Findings show that cultural linkage and loose coupling were the most effective leadership forces to bind people together within schools, tight coupling the next, but the use of bureaucratic linkage was controversial. (Contains 6 tables.)