Strategic decision-making in secondary schools: the impact of a principal’s demographic profile

ABSTRACT

Purpose

Building on arguments drawn from Upper Echelons Theory, this study provides insights into how certain demographic characteristics related to principals―gender, age, tenure, and formal education―may facilitate or hinder the adoption of three generic modes of strategic decision-making: autocratic, participative, and collaborative.

Design

Data were collected from a survey of Spanish secondary schools. The final sample consisted of 105 schools. The survey was administered to the principals at each school. A multinomial logistic regression was used to test the relationships between the study’s main variables of interest.

Findings

There is a positive relationship between principals aged 41–50, those with a tenure at the school equal to or less than 10 years and the likelihood of implementing a participative/collaborative mode of strategic decision-making. The lower the principal’s formal education, the lower the likelihood of adopting a collaborative mode. The effect of a principal’s gender is not statistically significant. The adoption of a participative/collaborative mode also depends on other school factors (such as, for example, a lower staff turnover or a higher teacher training).

Practical implications

The measures adopted by the Spanish educational authorities might make access to the position of principal easier for younger candidates and those with a shorter tenure at the school. They might also encourage those with Master’s degree and PhD studies. As there are no significant differences in the way male and female principals make strategic decisions, the educational authorities need “not act as if there really were.” Nevertheless, considering that women are still underrepresented in leadership positions in Spanish secondary schools, our findings could also be interpreted as a further call for the adoption of measures that promote greater parity.

Originality

To the best of our knowledge, there is still a lack of research exploring how certain demographic characteristics and other school factors may influence a principal’s adoption of different modes of strategic decision-making. This study may also clarify how school governance works. Over the past few years, scholars, experts, and policymakers from around the world have been calling for the need to adopt models that are more participative/collaborative regarding decision-making in schools. This study could, therefore, shed light on those factors that most contribute to achieving this aim in a country with high dropout and failure rates.

Notes

1. In general, the strategic actions that principals may adopt refer to those linked to aspects such as the planning of school goals and objectives, the formulation of policies and procedures that inform school operations, curricular development, and teaching and learning processes – choice of materials and methods, design of academic programs, etc.–, staff development, and school budget management.

2. The extant literature normally uses interchangeable terms such as autocratic/hierarchical/independent/directive, participative/consultative, collaborative/consensual/team/group, and delegative/laissez faire.

3. For example, in terms of public spending on education (expressed as a percentage of GDP and of total government spending, divided by primary, primary to post-secondary, non-tertiary and tertiary levels) in 2014 Spain occupied one of the last positions (6%), far behind countries such as New Zealand (13.2%), Korea (11.2%), Ireland and Iceland (10.1%), Australia (9.6%), Israel and the UK (9.5%), Denmark (9.3%), Canada (8.8%), the United States (8.3%), Norway (8.2%), Sweden (7.6%), the Netherlands (7.5%), Poland (7.4%) and Finland (7.0%). In fact, only five countries are behind Spain (Italy, Russia, Hungary, Czech Republic and Austria) with percentages ranging between 5.5% and 5.9% (OECD, 2018a). In terms of expenditure on secondary education (expressed as a percentage of government expenditure on education) Spain recorded the average for OECD members (36.91%), being outperformed by countries such as France (43.68%), Italy (42.70%), Germany (42.53%) and the UK (40.14%) (The World Bank, 2018). Regarding academic outcomes, the dropout rates in Spanish secondary education are among the highest in the European Union (EU). It is also one of the countries with the highest level of school failure in the EU, and one of the developed countries with the lowest graduation rates in upper-secondary education (Eurostat, 2018; OECD, 2018a).

4. For example, most of the decisions that affect secondary education in many OECD countries are taken at school level (e.g., the Netherlands, the UK, Belgium, Estonia, Slovenia, Ireland, Australia and New Zealand) or at local level (e.g., Canada and the United States). Such countries have models of school empowerment or local empowerment. In countries where school empowerment prevails, the teaching staff, parents and community representatives are often formally or informally included in the school-level decision-making process, and school leaders need to continuously negotiate stakeholders’ demands (OCDE, 2018b).

5. We have not used the TALIS database because, at the precise moment of conducting the present study, we had no access to most information in this database.

6. Most prior studies identify four modes: In addition to autocratic, participative and collaborative, they consider a delegative or laissez faire mode ―where the principal gives one or more stakeholders the authority to decide. Because none of the principals mentioned this mode in our study, we have discarded it. On the other hand, our measure does not rule out the likely coexistence of different modes depending on the specific issue/aspect considered, but it is also clear that it reflects the potentially dominant mode adopted by principals to make most strategic decisions.

7. At this point, it is interesting to note there are few principals aged under 40 in Spain ―the average age is 49.4―, given some of the essential requirements for this position (see, for example, OECD, 2020; Pont et al., 2008).