Abstract
In many Western countries, including The Netherlands, the presumed ‘clash’ between managers and professionals in public domains has grown into a societal problem. Relations between professionals and managers have become contested and contrasts between managers and professionals are sharply marked. In fierce public and political debates, especially in secondary education,
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managers have been criticized of being alienated from work floor professionals. Instead of focusing on dichotomous public and political debates about managers versus professionals, this study empirically questions two popular assumptions about public managers. First, it is generally assumed that management reforms (especially new public management) have harmed managerial loyalties to professionals. Public managers represent management reforms and therefore propagate efficiency logics, performance models and organisational change. This would be at odds with professional logics. It ‘drives’ managers ‘away’ from service delivery, destroys professional autonomies and affects the intrinsic ‘goodness’ of professionals. A second popular assumption about public managers refers to a rise of a homogeneous caste of executives and managers who identify themselves primarily with managerialism. These assumptions are hardly analysed in solid empirical research, which is striking given the fierceness of political and public debates, as well as their far-reaching implications. Public and political discomfort has led to many policy measures and organizational actions; as a consequence professional autonomies are enlarged, managerial levels are eliminated and organizational change is halted. Academically, the lack of empirical research limits our understanding of public managers as active agents. Based on an empirical mixed method study to school principals’ loyalty to teachers in Dutch secondary education, this study shows that popular assumptions are not tenable. School principals experience loyalty conflicts; they manoeuvre between external changes and the internal care and efforts for teachers. As stakeholders’ expectations intensify, many principals feel torn between teachers and other stakeholders’ demands. In general, executives, school directors and middle managers in education are loyal leaders. This is not only a matter of attitude; loyalty manifests itself in the behaviour of principals as well. This study rejects the assumption that management reforms in education have harmed managerial loyalties to professionals, and that principals do not feel emotional attachments to teachers. School principals are not alienated from teachers. Principals see their relationship with teachers as ‘meaningful’. In addition, school principals bear teachers and teachers’ interests in mind when they lead their schools; they take (potential) consequences of their actions for their relationship with teachers into account. Moreover, school principals regularly put teachers’ interests first when they make choices, even though these choices are costly or involve making sacrifices. Finally, this study rejects the assumption that ‘the manager’ has become a member of a homogenous caste of executives and managers who identify themselves primarily with managerialism. This study emphasizes that ‘school principals in secondary education’ are in fact a heterogeneous group of people with various backgrounds and varied managerial positions.
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