Bernie Grummell

The Selection and Appointment of Senior Managers in Education

While there is extensive research on educational leadership and management (Day et al., 2000; Gunter, 2001; Thrupp and Wilmott, 2003; Bush et al., 2010), the selection of educational leaders has received comparatively little attention. The most substantive body of research on leadership selection emerges from New Zealand and Australia in the wake of the reforms of equality legislation governing appointments (Gronn and Rawlings-Sanaei, 2003; Brooking et al., 2003; Barty et al., 2005; Blackmore et al., 2006; ACER, 2008). As this research indicates, the selection process is crucial as it is at this stage that the definition of a leader is constructed by selection boards and, in turn, interpreted and embodied by candidates as they present themselves as potential leaders. Such research also suggests that selection is a subjective process of decision-making that is strongly bound by the local context. While concerns have been expressed about the falling number of applications for leadership positions internationally (McGuinness, 2005; Gronn and Lucey, 2006; Earley et al., 2002; Blackmore et al., 2006; Fink and Brayman, 2006), the question of how the leadership role is itself constructed and how this is reflected in the processes of selection and appointment has rarely come under scrutiny.

Leading Educators: The Emotional Work of Managing Identities

This chapter explores the experience of being a newly appointed senior manager. Central to the analysis is the construction of identity in the senior management role and how this may be shaped, constrained and facilitated through broader discourses related to new managerial-ism, market ideologies and the incorporation of an enterprise culture in education. Such discourses it is argued increasingly set the context within which senior appointees work, requiring them to modify and adapt their behaviour in line with performative neo-liberal ideals. The chapter draws on data predominantly from interviews with the newly appointed senior appointees, supplemented by data from interviews with assessors, where appropriate. The analysis presents a complex picture of the construction and formation of senior manager identity across education, as newly appointed principals/managers seek to survive and thrive in the educational organizations in which they are positioned as leaders. In this sense the chapter considers the ethical dimension to the everyday life of leaders in education and of how this is intertwined with the construction, performance and management of self and identity.

New Managerialism, Carelessness and Gender

There is a new relationship between the education and the state in an age of educational capitalism. Education is no longer defined as a service or a right; it is regarded as an expensive investment that must deliver ‘returns’ to capital. The State, in the form of government, has the task of ensuring high productivity in these returns. But nation-states are no longer politically autonomous in a post-Westphalian phase of history (Fraser, 2008). Neither are they autonomous economically: the global financial crisis has made visible the way global capital frames national priorities, albeit mediated through nominally ‘democratic’ institutions like national parliaments. Governments, especially in small countries like Ireland, are situated at the nexus of powerful global institutions that not only influence their economic and political policies but also their educational policies. Multilateral agencies such as the (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) OECD and the International Monetary Fund (IMF), political institutions such as the European Union (EU), and the compradors of global and local capital that operate within and without nation-state boundaries’ all exercise degrees of influence over education. Business-oriented organizations are increasingly well placed within globalized networks to dictate the priorities of national education systems.

Assessing Applicants: The Care Rules

The relative absence of women from senior management posts is attributable to a host of complex processes, including the way power circuits operate in organizations and are masculinized in their deployment (Clegg, 1990; Halford and Leonard, 2001). It also arises from gender-based discriminations, both direct and indirect (Knights and Richards, 2003), and from the way in which inequality regimes are institutionalized and legitimated in particular educational contexts (Acker, 2000). The introduction of new public service management has played a significant role in reproducing the gendered order of control within education in the twenty-first century (Acker, 1990, 2000; Bailyn, 2003; Blackmore and Sachs; 2007, Deem, 2002; Drudy, 2005; O’Connor, 2010b; Morley, 2005) despite the fact that it may also open up opportunities for some women for promotion (Newman, 1995; Deem, 2003).

New Managerialism as a Political Project: The Irish Case

The Irish government embraced new public service (NPS) management as a mode of governance to promote neo-liberal economic and social policies from the 1990s onwards (Collins, 2007). The project was framed as one of ‘modernization’, but the practices were not just ‘modernist’; the technical processes involved in new managerialism were distinctly political.

Crafting the Elastic Self: Gendered Experiences of Senior Management

Senior management was defined as an all-consuming activity across all sectors of education. It was framed within an individualistic dis-course that placed the burden of impact and change on the shoulders of each of the senior managers. In spite of the differences across the sectors in how new managerialism was being implemented, however, the intensity of reforms required a project of self-realization in which commitment to the organization — be it a school or higher education institution — was paramount. Given that there are gender differences in patterns of recruitment and retention in senior management across the education sectors, in this chapter we consider how the experience of elasticity in management is gendered by the need to ‘do’ and ‘undo’ gender identities in line with organizational cultures.

The Case Studies of Senior Appointments

Education is an increasingly feminized profession, yet research indicates that senior appointments continue to be disproportionately male (Coleman, 2003; Thomson, 2009).While research has been con-ducted in Ireland on the reasons women do not apply for senior posts in schools in particular (Gleeson, 1992; Kellaghan and Fontes, 1985; Warren, 1997), we know little about the culture of senior appointments and the institutional framework within which appointments are made.

The Careless Rules of the Game: Pregnancy, Child Care and Management

As noted in Chapters 1 and 2, there has been a significant shift to corporatization and new managerialism in the Irish public service over the past two decades (Collins et al., 2007). While the pace and intensity of the managerialist movement in education is most visible in the higher education sector, it is operating at all levels and over a long period of time. Under the influence of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), human capital theory replaced the theocentric paradigm as the official ideology of Irish education in the late 1960s, mutating into what O’Sullivan has called ‘mercantilism’ in recent decades (2005: 180–223). This ‘modernist’ development was a global trend (Marginson, 2006). It was represented as egalitarian and gender inclusive, yet it was also a way of reshaping the power of capital and instituting new forms of male power within organizations (Bottomore and Sachs, 2007; Davies, et al., 2006; Whitehead, 2001). The focus on performativity, a core principle of new managerialism, not only created gender exclusions, it also marginalized people on disability, ethnicity, race and social class lines within organizations, something that has often been ignored by organizational studies (Holvino, 2010; Lumby, 2009).

The Culture of Governance in Irish Education

As new managerialism was instituted globally from the 1990s onwards, it was introduced into national educational systems that had histories, philosophies and modes of governance that were culturally specific. This chapter examines the governance structures of Irish education and how these mediated new managerialism. It focuses in particular on the key role played by the Catholic Church prior to and during the managerial era, especially in the primary- and second-level sectors of education where it was and is the single largest provider of education. In mapping the specificity of new managerialism in Ireland, we argue that specific postcolonial and cultural contexts generated different local logics of control across educational settings that framed the Irish experience of new managerialism. New managerial modes of governance were not adopted without dissent and mediation, a dissent and mediation that is ongoing (see Chapter 1). The implementation of new managerialism in Irish education presents an interesting case study, given Ireland’s European status and its history of political and cultural colonization. The Catholic Church was and is a major cultural force in Irish life (Garvin, 2004; Inglis, 1987, 2008). It was a major player in how new managerialism was mediated and managed in Irish education, particularly at primary and secondary levels.

Framing Educational Agendas for Managers: The Role of the News Media

A continual thread that ran throughout the interviews conducted for this project concerned the influence of the media in shaping public perceptions and political pressures about education. Senior leaders in education spoke about the growing influence that media had on their work; both directly through increased pressures to market and publicize their schools, and indirectly through media-driven influence on parents and the wider community (such as league tables, media-generated moral panics about education and media analysis about the politics of education). Despite the persistent presence of media in their world, educators — and students — directly involved in the sphere often remained relatively powerless in the media sphere, lacking a means of direct access or participation in the news process. Those who worked within the education system were subject not only to the professional power and interests of those who represented them politically (such as statutory agencies and teacher unions), but also those who represented them culturally (the media).