Strategic Leadership Practices and Their Role in Achieving Competitive Advantage in Schools, Future Agendas, Research Gaps, and the Research Needs: Systematic Literature Review

This comprehensive systematic literature review ("SLR") seeks to give innovative information to future researchers about future agendas, research gaps, and the research needs of strategic leadership practises and their role in achieving competitive advantage in schools. Specifically, this comprehensive SLR aims to clarify an SLR that gives future researchers information about future agendas, research gaps, and the research needs of strategic leadership practises. The PRISMA guidelines served as the basis for this research project's framework. The findings suggested that what distinguishes our most recent comprehensive review of the relevant literature is not only the proliferation of strategic leadership practises but also the role that these practises play in giving schools in Europe, the United States of America, the United Kingdom, and Australia an advantage over other educational institutions in their respective regions. Countries in Asia, Africa, and the Middle East should pay more attention to strategic leadership practises and the role that these practises play in acquiring a competitive advantage in the research field of educational institutions. Below, you will find a list of proposals for innovative information that should be offered to future researchers about future agendas, research gaps, and the research needs of strategic leadership practises and their significance in achieving a competitive advantage in schools' research. such as utilising samples that are more extensive and applying quantitative research procedures such as longitudinal, experimental, and time-series design approaches.


Introduction Strategic Leadership Practices
The ability of a leader to foresee, anticipate, and keep their flexibility while yet delegating tasks to others in order to effect strategic change is referred to as "strategic leadership" (Jooste & Fourie, 2009).Leadership that is strategic for inclusive education is about managing and guiding teachers to cope with change, as well as encouraging them to participate in making decisions that would improve a school's long-term performance.This includes encouraging them to make decisions that would improve the academic outcomes for students with disabilities.The leaders of schools are the guardians of change (Fullan, 2014).As a result, the success of their leadership is essential to making progress toward an inclusive educational culture (Gill, 2003).Leaders at educational institutions have an important part to play in encouraging diversity and inclusion, as well as in embracing multiculturalism (Cherkowski, 2010).It is more probable that inclusive school cultures will be fostered by leaders who have a commitment to inclusive principles (Ainscow & Miles, 2008).Leadership is a method of exerting influence (Bounds et al., 2013).Consequently, altering the mindsets of staff members toward the new paradigm of inclusion is required (Gill, 2003), and doing so may be an essential first step.The performance of students is being deemed the responsibility of school authorities all across the globe, including in South Africa.Therefore, leading for inclusion in the direction of the development of learning outcomes (de Villiers & Pretorius, 2011;McGlynn & London, 2013) presents an intriguing challenge for school leadership.To effectively lead an inclusive education movement would involve new ways of thinking about the construction of curriculum, assessment, and instructional development programmes.School administrators all throughout the globe, including in South Africa, are being held responsible for the performance of their students.Therefore, leading for inclusiveness with the goal of improving learning outcomes (de Villiers & Pretorius, 2011;McGlynn & London, 2013) is an intriguing challenge for school leadership.To be a leader in inclusive education, new ways of thinking about things like curriculum creation, assessment, and instructional development programmes are required.
The goal of transformative leadership is to bring about equitable change" in society.This style of leadership is important for education leaders because they have the power to build school environments that are inclusive, courteous, and equitable (Shields & Hesbol, 2019).In order to overcome the inequality that exists inside their own schools, leaders should link the school vision to inclusiveness and diversity (DeMatthews & Mawhinney, 2014).In his insightful article from Portela (2011) made the crucial observation that one must first comprehend diversity in order to comprehend inclusiveness.In order for school leadership and management practise to be effective, a comprehensive understanding and knowledge of diversity are essential (Rayner, 2009).Concerns pertaining to diversity include a wide range of categories, including but not limited to those pertaining to religion, culture, language, ethnicity, race, socioeconomic position, gender, handicap, belief, and sexual orientation.Msila (2008) developed the idea of ubuntu, which might serve as a framework for school administrators to adopt in order to construct inclusiveness in their institutions.Ubuntu is a philosophy that originated in Africa that aims to promote compassion, reciprocity, dignity, peace, and humanity (Letseka, 2014, p. 547).

Competitive Advantage
The concept of "competitive advantage" as it is understood in the fields of both business and education Ansoff (1965) was the first person to develop the notion of competitive advantage, which serves as the fundamental component of competitiveness.Ansoff defined competitive advantage as the "features of specific goods or markets that would provide the business a strong competitive position."Because of the work that Michael Porter did in the 1980s of the previous centuries, the concept of "competitive advantage" has become more well-known, particularly in the private sector (Mooney, 2007).
The "five forces model" that Porter (1980) developed is based on the central tenet that the structure of an industry is the primary determinant of the level of competition that exists within the business.The danger of new entrants, the negotiating power of suppliers and buyers, the threat of alternative goods, and competitive rivalry within an industry are the five elements that make up structural forces.These factors, when considered as a whole, are what define the eventual profit potential of a company as well as the competitive position the company has within a certain industry.Porter did not provide a definition of the phrase "competitive advantage," but he did relate it with the idea of "value" by suggesting that the method to acquire competitive advantages is to provide value for consumers.Therefore, a firm has an advantage over its competitors if it creates more economic value than the other companies with which it competes.Because of the significant advantages this business has over its competitors, it will be able to produce economic value that is far higher than that of its competitors.When "added value" to a corporation is linked with "competitive advantage," the meaning of "competitive advantage" is brought into sharper focus.This is because there is a correlation between an increase in the contributed value of a firm and an increase in the chance that the company will continue to exist (Adner and Zemsky, 2006).The high performance of an organisation is the source of the added value; hence, there is a relationship that can be formed between high performance and the competitive advantage of a company (Greve, 2009).
The idea of "competitive advantage" and the theories that are related to it have expanded their application so that they can now be applied to services as well as products; from the generation of profits to the creation of value; and from the quality of a particular product or service to the overall performance of an organization.Theories regarding competitive advantages are becoming increasingly prevalent in the public education sector.Terms such as "competitive advantage," "competitive position," and "competitive strategy" are appearing more frequently in policy papers, promotional materials, and on the websites of universities.There is a possibility that internal forces contributed to the widespread adoption of this idea in the educational system.Higher education institutions have always had the "gene" of being competitive in their attempts to meet high academic standards, acquire academic excellence, and gain worldwide recognition and prestige.This competitive "gene" has been present from the institution's inception.In addition, the participation of students in a learning community and the achievement of their goals regarding their future careers are becoming an increasingly important part of the growth strategy at many PHEIs.This, in turn, necessitates the implementation of new strategies, such as internationalization, marketing, and promotion, with the goal of enhancing the institution's competitive advantages (Chan and Dimmock, 2008;Naidoo, 2010).
Accordingly, the objective of this work is to undertake a SLR that gives innovative information to future researchers about, future agendas, research gaps, and the research needs of Strategic leadership practices and their role in achieving competitive advantage in schools.Following this logic, the following questions have been developed for further study: 1. What variables were examined in the preceding studies? 2. What kinds of samples were used in the preceding studies? 3.Where geographically were the preceding studies conducted?4. What is the future agenda recommended by preceding studies?

Methodology
This comprehensive SLR seeks to clarify a SLR that gives innovative information to future researchers about, future agendas, research gaps, and the research needs of Strategic leadership practices and their role in achieving competitive advantage in schools.PRISMA, which stands for "Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses" is a well-known standard for systematic reviews in many fields (McKenzie et al., 2021).

Exclusion and Inclusion Criteria
This study formulated a number of inclusion and exclusion criteria to ensure that the chosen articles came within its scope, based on research questions obtained from previously identified research gaps.Establishing the inclusion and exclusion criteria is so necessary.The inclusion and exclusion criteria for this study were derived from exhaustive prior literature studies.Table 1 outlines the inclusion and exclusion criteria for this SLR.Any other languages.

Data Sources and Search Strategies
The month of February 2023 was chosen to perform the search for articles.The year 2023 has been removed from this study since it is not yet finished and this research will analyse all of the publications that have been discovered in the relevant databases.As a result, the term "excluding PUBYEAR 2023" was used in order to provide access to the relevant publications in light of the period of this evaluation.It was decided to use Scopus as a data source given that it is the indexing organisation that is recognised all over the globe as being the one that is used the most.In order to ensure that This SLR covers substantial coverage of the academic literature on the subject at hand, a highly specific and exhaustive list of keywords and search terms were utilised.The phrases "Strategic leadership techniques in schools" and "Competitive advantage in schools" were both used as keywords throughout the research process.It paved the way for the acquisition of new information.In addition to TITLE-ABS-KEY (competitive AND advantage AND in AND schools), this entry includes the terms TITLE-ABS-KEY (strategic AND leadership AND practises AND in AND schools).In addition, additional criteria were used in both searches.These criteria were (LIMIT-TO (SUBJAREA, "SOCI" ) OR LIMIT-TO (SUBJAREA, "BUSI" ) OR LIMIT-TO (SUBJAREA, "ARTS" )) AND (LIMIT-TO (DOCTYPE, "ar" )) AND (LIMIT-TO (LANGUAGE, "English" )) AND (LIMIT-TO ( Providing information about the topic area, the language of the articles, and the kind of source. The first search, which was conducted using the phrase "Strategic leadership approaches in schools," produced 158 items.The phrase "Competitive advantage in schools" was used for the second search, which produced 66 items.There were 224 items discovered in all.On the other hand, when the researcher downloaded the publications for further investigation, there were just 37 documents to be discovered.This research looked at a total of 37 publications that were published in the scoups database on the topics of "Strategic leadership techniques in schools" and "Competitive advantage in schools."In order to include it into this investigation, the researcher went back and obtained the article data that Scopus had previously generated.Analysis based on human review (manual evaluation) and specified inclusion and exclusion criteria decreased the number of papers to 18.These papers included research that incorporated varied samples, statistical methodologies, geographical locations, and diverse viewpoints on topics such as "Strategic leadership practises in schools" and "Competitive advantage in schools."The researchers were satisfied with both the number of publications and the breadth of topics covered.

Results and Discussion
The 37 papers that had been located, examined, and included in line with PRISMA in order to achieve the goals of the research that had been established beforehand (McKenzie et al., 2021).were subjected to a critical and analytical examination in order to determine the path and trends of innovative information that will be provided to future researchers about future agendas, research gaps, and the research requirements of Strategic leadership practises and their role in achieving a competitive advantage in schools.You can find a list of the papers that were looked at and included into this systematic review in the appendix.
The variables were examined in the preceding studies Table 2 The variables that were examined in the preceding studies Study Variables (Clarke & Winslade, 2019) Teaching profession, contemporary teacher practice, leadership opportunities for schoolteachers (Liddle, 2016) Collaborative leadership Lebrón et al (2020) Strategic management, case competition, experiential learning, (Haidar, 2018) Gender leadership Chennatuserry et al (2022) Competing value, leadership, strategic emphases Ramango et al (2022) School management teams, school leaders, screening identification assessment and support policy, school-based support team Dudley et al (2020) School-led improvement, system leadership Cohen et al (2011) Development of their leadership capacity (Frost & Roberts, 2004) Teacher Leadership Paletta et al (2020) Principal  (Arend, 2020) Competitive advantage; critical assessments (Haijing, 2015) Competitive advantage, Educational competition, Educational marketing, Public higher education (Krause, 2015) Competitive advantage; resource-based approach (Shawn & Roshini, 2017) Network effect; competitive advantage  2015) investigated competitive advantage, educational competition, educational marketing, and public higher education.Moreover, Krause (2015) studied competitive advantage through a resourcebased approach.a study by Shawn & Roshini (2017) that investigated the network effect and competitive advantage.
The samples were used in the preceding studies Table 3 The samples that were examined in the preceding studies Study Samples (Clarke & Winslade, 2019) Stakeholders (Liddle, 2016) Stakeholders Lebrón et al ( 2020) Stakeholders (Haidar, 2018) School deans Chennatuserry et al (2022) School teachers Ramango et al (2022) School leaders Dudley et al (2020) Schools system Cohen et al (2011) Students (Frost & Roberts, 2004) School teachers Paletta et al (2020) School principals Gonçalves et al (2021) School Management Müller et al (2020) School principals Moore et al (2018) Students Ismail et al (2018) School teachers (Arend, 2020) Schools system (Haijing, 2015) Education practitioners (Krause, 2015) Students (Shawn & Roshini, 2017) Students The samples that were utilised in earlier studies are presented in Table 3.In the course of our investigation, we have found that many types of samples have been utilised.For instance, three separate research projects have used "stakeholders" as a research sample (Lebrón et al., 2020;Clarke & Winslade, 2019;Liddle, 2016).In addition, three more studies used "school instructors" as the subjects of their research and samples for their studies (Chennatuserry et al., 2022;Ismail et al., 2018;Frost & Roberts, 2004).On the other hand, the population of interest in four different research was referred to as "students" (Moore et al., 2018;Shawn & Roshini, 2017;Krause, 2015;Cohen et al., 2011).In addition, two additional research groups chose "school principals" as the population of interest for their studies (Paletta et al., 2020;Müller et al., 2020).In one study, "school deans" served as the sample for the researcher's study (Haidar, 2018).In addition to this, Dudley et al (2020); Goncalves et al (2021) referred to the "schools system" and "school management," respectively.Arend (2020) also referred to "the educational system" in his research.Last but not least, Haijing (2015) conducted his research using "education practitioners" as his sample.
Figure 3: The location that were examined in the preceding studies

Future Agenda and Recommendations
In our past experiences, evaluations of forthcoming works have been conducted with less care and consideration.The recommendations for future novel information to be provided to future researchers concerning, future agendas, research gaps, and the research requirements of Strategic leadership practises and their role in gaining a competitive edge in schools' research are presented below.such as employing samples that are more comprehensive and quantitative research methodologies such as longitudinal, experimental, and time-series designs.Consequently, this provides confidence to our assumption that quantitative analysis, such as the SEM, would come to dominant in the area.Specifically, this lends credence to our claim that the SEM would come to predominate.It is instructive to note that a comparable amount of weight is assigned to the concept that future study should concentrate on a variety of cultural and geographical situations.

Limitation
One of the limits of this assessment was that only publications written in English were chosen; another constraint was the kind of publication that was chosen, since only articles were chosen and other types of publications like books and blogs were not considered.It is the rise of Strategic leadership practises and their role in gaining a competitive edge in schools in Europe countries, the United States of America, the United Kingdom, and Australia that makes our recent systematic evaluation of the literature unique.More attention to Strategic leadership practises and their role in gaining a competitive edge in schools' research area should be done in Asia, Africa, and middle east countries.

Figure 2 :
Figure 2: The PRISMA Framework of the current review

Table 1
The inclusion and exclusion criteria

Table 2
Frost and Roberts (2004)2)examined in the preceding studies.For instance,Clarke & Winslade (2019)studied the teaching profession, contemporary teacher practice, and leadership opportunities for schoolteachers.Another study by Liddle (2016) investigated collaborative leadership, moreover.Lebrón et al (2020) investigated strategic management, case competition, experiential learning, morover, Haidar (2018) studied A study byChennatuserry et al (2022)investigated competing values, leadership, and strategic emphases; on the other hand, a study byRamango et al (2022)investigated school management teams, school leaders, screening, identification, assessment, and support policies, and a school-based support team.More recently, a study byDudley et al (2020)explored school-led improvement, system leadership.A study byCohen et al (2011)investigated the development of their leadership capacity.In addition,Frost and Roberts (2004)studied teacher leadership.Paletta et al., (2020) studied principal leadership, teacher leadership, distributed leadership, school improvement, and accountability.A study by Gonçalves et al (2021) investigated knowledge management, school management, and political-pedagogical projects.In addition, Müller et al (2020) investigated leadership, schools, and management strategies.Moore et al (2018) investigated strategic engagement, development, leadership, research scholarship, service learning, professional education, and service initiatives.Additionally, Ismail et al (2018) studied strategic leadership, teacher collaboration, teaching quality, prestige secondary schools, strategic leadership, and mediation.In addition, a study by Arend (2020) investigated competitive advantage and critical assessments.A study by Haijing (

Table 4
The geographical locations that were examined in the preceding studies are just a few examples of the different countries where research was carried out that was analysed in our study.In total, we looked at nine different articles and discovered that research was carried out in a number