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BRITISH JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY OF EDUCATION, 2017
https://doi.org/10.1080/01425692.2017.1355229
The hybrid professional: an examination of how educational
leaders relate to, with and through managerialism
DenryMachin
School of Social Science and Public Policy, Keele University, Keele, UK
ABSTRACT
This paper examines how one particular class of educational leader –
international school Heads – relate to managerialism. Representing
a novel site of new theorisation, the independence enjoyed by these
leaders allows a ‘purer’ view of managerialism as experienced ‘in here’
(inside the subject), not just as a reaction to what is ‘out there’ (i.e.
to policy). Through analysis of twenty-ve face-to-face interviews,
they were found to have relationships to managerialism that are
not compliant or transgressive, educational or managerial, but
hybridic. Some Heads relate to managerialism pragmatically; they
reluctantly ‘do’ managerialism but avoid, segment and/or moderate
managerial inuences on their identities. Other Heads proactively use
managerialism to discipline their sta and organisations; they draw
power from managerial discourses; and they claim its values as their
own. Seen through the lens of hybridity, educational identications
remain important, indeed they remain paramount, but for some
subjects, they have been conjoined with complimentary managerial
ones.
Introduction
As reported previously in this journal, managerialism has become a dominant theme in
the politics of education (Ball 2015; Beck and Young 2005; Brancaleone and O’Brien 2011;
McGregor 2009). Born of and bound up with neoliberalism, managerialism nds form in
performativity (Ball 2003a; Lyotard 1979), marketisation (Hicks 2015) and corporatisation
(Ball 2007; Meyer 2002); for its critics, occurring ‘at the expense of educational purpose
and values’ (Bush 1999, 240).
However, this extant literature is predominantly focused on the redesign of work, on the
redesign of structures and on the redesign of status and power relationships within state
contexts (Hood 1991; Gewirtz, Ball, and Bowe 1995; Hoyle and Wallace 2005; Ball 2003a,
2012a). e focus in this article on Heads of international schools therefore oers a novel
and important site of new theorisation.
As a mode of educational delivery, international schools are a spectrum of institutions,
serving diverse populations through diverse curriculums and in diverse locations. However,
KEYWORDS
Managerialism;
professionalism; identity;
education; hybrid; hybridity
ARTICLE HISTORY
Received 26 September 2016
Accepted11 July 2017
© 2017 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group
CONTACT Denr y Machin d.machin@keele.ac.uk
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2 D. MA CHIN
as the critical interest of this article is Heads themselves, the nature of international schools
is less relevant. It is enough here that these schools sit largely outside direct government
involvement. Further, and distinguishing them to a degree from private schools, the polit-
ical–educational and country-centric inuences which wash over private schools do not
necessarily aect international schools in the same ways; they are ‘atolls in a coral sea’ (Allen
2002 as quoted in Bunnell 2005, 48). It is argued, therefore, that the independence enjoyed
by these schools allows a ‘purer’ view of how Heads relate to managerialism ‘in here’, not
just as a reaction to what is ‘out there’ (Peck 2003 as quoted in Ball 2012a, 29). Literature
dealing with managerialism as experienced in other (state and private) contexts is an impor-
tant starting point. e interest here, however, is the disciplinary work done by, and done
to, international school Heads not by policy, but through discourse; a focus on discourse,
without the muddying inuence of directives, more clearly revealing the imbrication of the
manager-subject in the processes by which they are governed.
Drawing on a series of in-depth interviews with international school Heads, what emerges
from the analysis is a re-conceptualisation of the relationship of school leaders to manage-
rialism; a relationship presented here not as compliant or transgressive, as educational or
managerial, but as hybridic. From this perspective, managerialism is found to have seductive
potentials. Educational identications remain important, indeed they remain paramount,
but for some subjects they have been conjoined with complementary managerial ones.
Seen through the lens of hybridity, managerialism seems to oer a set of discourses with
the potential to arm and reify a Head’s identication, not just as educationalist but also
as ‘manager’.
Finding recent attention, particularly in health care (Cro, Currie, and Lockett 2015;
Denis, Ferlie, and Van Gestel 2015; McGivern et al. 2015; Spyridonidis, Hendy, and Barlow
2015), the concept of hybridity examines how individuals reconcile the opportunities and
threats of plurality. With little currently known about hybrid identications within educa-
tion, this is where this article makes its most substantive contribution. Extending sociolog-
ical research from other elds, it is established that a Head’s occupational (practice-based)
and ontological (identity-based) relationships with managerialism need not be the same.
Hybridity shows how Heads retain credibility as specialists occupying important class-
room-focused (if not classroom-based) roles while engaging with the practices of mana-
gerialism and, for some, nding empowering identications within its precepts.
Of potential interest to readers of this journal, the exploration of hybridity therefore oers
new ways of thinking about how educational leaders might relate to, and may be formed
by, managerial discourses. International school Heads have some degree of freedom in the
extent to which they ‘do’ managerialism; the focus of this article is how this plays out for
a Head’s sense of self.
Theoretical positioning
Aer Foucault (1977), it is taken that discourse does not just manifest within society, but
rather it is discourse (through language and symbols) which governs society and individuals.
Identities are shaped through the processes of subjectication, the means through which a
subject is formulated, subjugated and authorised, through and by discourses (Butler 1993,
2005, 2015). For example, performance management, increased accountability, data-driven
decision-making and benchmarking (managerial discourse), alongside more traditional
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BRITISH JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY OF EDUCATION 3
rhetoric such as a ‘student rst’ morality (educational discourse), each prescribes a cer-
tain truth to headship and are disciplining and self-forming. Discourse in these terms is
not merely describing, nor is it prescribing meaning; rather, it constructs subjectivities.
Discourses are the means by which individuals come to know themselves, achieving a sense
of continuity, stability and purpose. Contrary, however, to reductionist perspectives that
see individuals as disempowered ‘docile bodies’ (Foucault 1977, 136) dominated, subjected
and controlled by discourses, the literature suggests that those same forces are also avail-
able for appropriation as individuals work at their identities (Ball 2013). It is this play of
dependencies amid dierent discourses – here managerial and educational – which opens
up the possibility for hybrid identications.
The hybrid professional
Hybridity is an enticing idea in current studies of the professional; its allure lying in the
potential to provide a way out of binary thinking, to ascribe agency and even to permit a
restructuring and destabilising of power. In light of these potentials, theories of hybridity
are nding a degree of contemporary traction.
As far back as 1995, Aucoin’s analysis of public-sector organisational reform in Britain,
Australia and New Ze aland in the 1970s and 1980s highlighted the hybridic eects of oppos
-
ing ideas on public-sector design, particularly the primacy of (private-sector) managerial
principles over (public-sector) bureaucracy. e result of this research, and the literature that
has followed, places hybridity within a now well-developed theoretical tradition (for exam-
ple, Alford and Friedland 1985; Kraatz and Block 2008; ornton, Ocasio, and Lounsbury
2012) which understands plurality as leading to hybrid organisational, governance and
management structures.
Less well developed, however, are the implications of hybridity on professionals’ identi-
cations (the plural being signicant). In studies which do address identity – the works of
McGivern et al. (2015), Skelcher and Smith (2015) and Spyridonidis, Hendy, and Barlow
(2015), for example – professionals who occupy management roles have been shown to
take meaning from the normative frames supplied by the profession, using those frames
to reinterpret and reshape managerial demands. For example, in keeping with health care
as a leading site for studies on hybridity, in research by Waring and Currie (2009) British
medical experts supplanted the threat of de-professionalisation by co-opting manageri-
alism in a way which enhanced their status. Seeing the issue through ‘two-way windows’
(Llewellyn 2001, 593), for these professionals’ governance tensions were generative of hybrid
professional-managerial identities.
However, while the literature acknowledges that plural institutional contexts produce
hybrid subjects, it has been less strong in its analysis of the identity work required to achieve
hybrid identications. With hybrid accommodations oering countervailing forces against
the pressures of (new) discourses acting on (traditional) professionalism, in the most recent
research due attention is now being given.
For instance, Cro, Currie, and Lockett (2015) employ the concept of liminal space;
liminality referring to the temporary state associated with identity transitions triggered by
the move into a dierent job role. Individuals who occupy a liminal space are conceptualised
as falling into the ‘gaps’ between social groups rather than being perceived as members of
the group. is space is not entirely governed by the laws of any one set of discourses, and
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4 D. MA CHIN
thus it is here that the hybrid subject is constructed. While an individual cannot conjure new
discourses, they can operate at the fringes of multiple discourses, in essence in the ‘spaces
between’ established and yet-to-be established modes of professionalism.
Liminality also resonates with the notion of ‘cross-cutting’ (Spyridonidis, Hendy, and
Barlow 2015, 396). In arriving at this concept, Spyridonidis, Hendy, and Barlow observed
that the professionals in their study (again focused on health care) continued to identify
themselves as physicians regardless of managerial demands. eorising from this obser-
vation, their conclusions suggest that no matter what role the professional is tasked with,
identication with practice ‘cross-cuts’ any sense of self as manager. Others have found
similarly. Pratt, Rockmann, and Kaufmann (2006), for example, suggest that doctors will
adapt their identities to accommodate managerial demands but maintain a continuing
commitment to professional ideologies.
Common across these studies is the recognition that hybrids can (and do) construct
themselves as a legitimate and professional cadre in their own right, cementing their inu-
ence as a professional-managerial elite (Llewellyn 2001; Noordegraaf and Van der Meulen
2008). Combining the concepts of cross-cutting and salience, Spyridonidis, Hendy, and
Barlow (2015) show how this might be possible. What appears to matter is perception of
purpose and perception of professional worth. If taking on new identities, particularly as a
manager, is seen to threaten association with the profession, it is more likely to be resisted
or adopted only through occupational need. If, however, management tasks and managerial
identication can be reconciled with professional purpose, or if indeed professionalism can
be enhanced, then a more stable base for hybrid association is established.
Finding space for further contribution amidst this developing literature, it is argued
that how Heads draw on/are governed by and relate to managerialism, and consequently
how professional identity is aected, remains an important area of research with scope for
further engagement.
Management and managerialism
Developing from Cunlie (2009), management is used here to refer to the technical and
functional practices of administering an organisation; that is, the necessary nancial, human
resource and operational requirements of any work organisation (Watson and Harris 1999).
In contrast, managerialism references discursive constructions which sharpen, extend and
prioritise what types of administrative activities are undertaken, who is responsible for
them and for what purpose(s) they are carried out (Deetz 1992). is distinction is neatly
summed up by Hoyle and Wallace:
Eective leadership and management ‘take the strain’ by creating structures and processes
which allow teachers to engage as fully as possible in their key task. Managerialism, on the
other hand, is leadership and management to excess. It transcends the support role of leadership
and, in its extreme manifestation, becomes an end in itself. (2005, 68)
While it may be dicult to determine exactly when necessary management shis from
‘taking the strain’ to becoming the source of strain (managerialism), the two should not be
conated. us, if one is to understand how excessive managerialism aects managers –
that is, those individuals, such as Heads, charged with the task of managing – it must be
separated (as best as possible) from functional management.
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BRITISH JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY OF EDUCATION 5
For Gunter (2008, 263), like Hoyle and Wallace, this separation lies in the identication
of work that is ‘not directly educational e.g. business planning, marketing’ and in:
… the reworking of power relationships where business planning and marketing are given
higher status than teaching and learning, and the conduct of such relationships become busi-
ness like, rather than pedagogic, through using private sector tools such as targets, planning,
and performance appraisal. (Gunter 2008, 263)
Also useful is Ball’s (2006) distinction between professional and market values. Highlighting
the conicted reality with which Heads must deal, Ball sees professional values as bound up
in individual need (schools and students), community, resource allocation to those most in
need and assessment of worth based on academic and social qualities. Market values, in
contrast, privilege individual performance, resource allocation to the more able and assess-
ments of worth based on cost-ecient and marketable outcomes.
Arguably then, it is in a Head’s relationship to these dynamics – to professional and/
or market values, to educational planning and/or business planning, and so forth – where
one might start to see resistance, moderation, accommodation or co-option of managerial
identities. Heads identifying with managerialism might more readily use and celebrate its
language and practice, whereas those identifying against might denounce or bemoan the
same. For the former, managerialism ascribes an identity which carries ‘the right to hire,
re, give orders, control and evaluate the performance of others in the interest of eciency,
productivity [and] prot’ (Cunlie 2009, 17). For the latter, this type of identication is
anathema, their response, to paraphrase Gunter and omson (2007), being ‘where is the
child in all of this’?
Method
Twenty-ve face-to-face interviews were conducted with Heads between January and July
2015. Key to sample selection was Heads currently leading international schools1 and with
sucient tenure at headship level to have engaged with the various discourses governing
the role. e nal sample took in experienced and less experienced Heads, with a mean
of 11.7years since rst appointment to international headship, covered both western (n =
22) and non-western (n = 3) Heads and, although under-represented in the industry itself
(Sims-Pottle 2008), also included female Heads (n = 6). e Heads interviewed worked
at international schools in ailand, Taiwan, Vietnam, Singapore, Cyprus, Japan, China,
Myanmar and Malaysia.
e interviews, rather than probe managerialism directly (which would have been lead-
ing), gave Heads scope to respond to general pressures related to contemporary headship
in ways natural to their sense of self. With lines of enquiry based around marketisation,
performativity and corporatisation, in all cases the focus was how the Heads themselves
responded to these themes, not the practical school-related implications. As each Head
responded, the purity and consistency of their attachments to education and/or manage-
rialism was probed and tested, the intent being to draw out the discourses most salient to
their identity work.
e outcomes of these interviews were then analysed (and coded) against three over-
arching questions:
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6 D. MA CHIN
(1) What discourses (educational and/or managerial) do Heads seem to experience
subjectication through?
(2) Do the Heads defer managerialism to other bodies/other selves?
(3) Do the interviews evidence hybrid identications?
Key to the analysis (and thus to the coding process) was identication of how each Head
referred to his/her relationship with/to managerialism, and the use of personal pronouns
when describing that relationship placing managerialism ‘inside’ the subject.
Exploring hybridity
From the outset, the interviews revealed that Heads do not relate their identities to either
education or managerialism. In keeping with previous research dealing with hybridity
(McGivern et al. 2015), what emerged was a complex interdiscursive mix of identication
with and through both traditional practice and managerialism.
Consistent with Hoyle’s (1975) view of the extended educational professional, all of the
Heads recognised their status as managers – they understood the need to manage. However,
in some cases this was very much seen in functional terms, with managerial tasks framed
as incidental to a preferred sense of self as educator:
I’ve always said, ‘I’m not a marketer here.’ Obviously, I have to market the school, but that’s
not who or what I am, nor what I should be doing. My training was in teaching and my focus
should be on education. (Interviewee C24)
Other Heads saw little or no distinction between their educational and managerial selves.
In several cases, attachments to managerialism extended to Heads retelling stories of how
they encourage sta to think more managerially and to perform accordingly:
ere are lots of good teachers that I have let go, not because they’re not good, it’s just they
don’t t the context. I have to explain that it is clients who are paying your wages, and they will
look at the quality of your marking, how you dress … these things are important, some don’t
get it. (Interviewee C19; emphasis added)
I understand the real world, in the real world if you are part of a team that fails or screws up, you
are red. For some reason, teachers don’t get that – if you’re failing, if you’re under-achieving,
if you’re under-performing, why should I pay your salary? (Interviewee C23)
Key here is how these two Heads position themselves in relation to teachers. e Heads
consciously portray themselves as understanding of managerialism (and comfortable with
it) whereas teachers less so. Identity work here is deliberately intended to mythologise
the power of the market and to valourise Heads as dierent; as managerially exalted and
enlightened.
Analysis of these narratives across the interviews resulted in the proposal of six subject
positions that Heads seem to identify through/with:
Predominantly occupational relationships to
managerialism:
Teacher-Head
Head-Teacher
The Outlier
Pragmatist-Broker
Occupational and ontological relationships with
managerialism:
Educational Manager
Educational Executive
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BRITISH JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY OF EDUCATION 7
Before addressing the detail of each position, it is important to point out that in no sense
are they presented as xed and stable. Although dominant and subordinate discourses do
govern dierent types of identity work, the sheer dynamism and multiplicity of discourses
preclude any nal, total and all-oppressive professional order; there is not and never has
been a ‘pure’ version of educational professionalism that is now being hybridised, and nor
are there pure hybrid forms. us, these types are not intended to suggest singular and
mutually exclusive discursive positions; quite the opposite. ey are presented simply as
the varying manifestations of the dierent hybridities observed, representing the diering
and dynamic relationships Heads have with education and managerialism.
The teacher-head
Resonant of Hoyle’s (1975) restricted professionality, this subject relates to education; at
heart, they remain a practitioner:
I was born an educationalist, bred an educationalist; I knew I was going to be a teacher. I call
myself a teacher, not a Head Teacher. (Interviewee C5)
My happiest days were in the classroom. e happiest year of my life was my rst year of
teaching. (Interviewee C24)
For the teacher-head, the demands of education are described as the more emotionally ful-
lling, with the demands of even functional management reported as incidental to identity:
e way that I want to lead this school is to be out in the classrooms, talking to the kids, talking
to teachers; being out there, not here in the oce. I do that stu [management] if I have to, but
if I wanted to be a manager, I would’ve been a manager. (Interviewee C17).
In this example, Interviewee C17 recognises her management responsibilities, and, reluc-
tantly, she accedes to the requirements. Her heart is clearly in the classroom, however, and
to protect (for her) a source of ontological purchase she privileges that mode of self-iden-
tication, all the while knowing that she must, at times, take on tasks/identities she seems
less than comfortable with (‘if I wanted to be a manager, I would have been a manager’).
Going even further, Interviewee C10 suggested that, as Head, his time is too important
to spend on non-educational tasks:
I have a business manager to manage business, why should I do that? I have more important
things to spend my time on. (Interviewee C10)
Probably sympathetic with Gunter, for Interviewees C10 and C17 the boundary of iden-
tication is very much at the point where (as they perceive it) work becomes ‘not directly
educational’ (Gunter 2008, 263).
For the teacher-head, then, the relationship to managerialism is occupational; they are
hybrid, but only at the level of practice. Management tasks are undertaken because of
functional need rather than, overtly at least, for the rewards of identifying managerially.
e teacher-head is rendered so strongly through educational discourse that alternate iden-
tications are resisted, contested and segmented as Other (and to others). Crucially, this
is not to say that such positioning is not empowering – the teacher-head draws a strong
sense of self (and thus power) through educational discourse. Managerialism is, however,
incidental to their identication as educator.
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8 D. MA CHIN
The head-teacher
In describing the head-teacher, the reversal of the nouns is signicant. Head-teachers, the
interviews suggest, retain their educational identities and privilege educational norms but
they also more willingly recognise the inuences and benets of managerialism, albeit by
obligation and only occupationally. ey recognise and understand that a Head is not only
a teacher but also the Head of the teachers (a manager) and that managerialism is now a
part of the role, if not part of their selves.
Interviewee C18 was the most head-teacher like. e interview took place in a class-
room, a classroom that doubled as her oce. When asked about this choice of location, she
indicated that having the classroom as a base allowed her to ‘manage from the heart of the
school’. She also indicated that she ‘hides’ the management elements of her role by under-
taking them at weekends; she attempts to ‘repair and conceal’ (Lawrence and Suddaby 2006,
248) perceived misalignments between education and the requirements of management,
even where such tasks are functional and necessary.
at said, Interviewee C18 understands that headship requires her to think managerially
(she noted that sta appraisal was ‘not as rigorous as [she] would like’). It was also evident
that she recognises the value (for the school and for herself ) of managerialism:
I like being ‘mum’ [to the sta] but I have had to learn to be ‘dad’ more oen … more obser-
vations, more structures … pushing the teachers harder.2 (Interviewee C18)
Interviewee C18 understands the benets managerialism oers to managers, but she is
cautious about the extent to which she allows these requirements to aect her sense of
self. She still wants to be ‘one of them’ – a Head, but a teacher too. Indeed, where possible,
responsibility for managerial thinking was segmented out to the business manager (her
husband) and she resisted managerial identications:
I am very happy with the separation of Church [herself] and State [business] so to speak. I 100%
just love being in the classroom and I won’t let the job change that. Doing what my husband
does, that’s not me and I don’t want it to be. (Interviewee C18)
Further, and aligned with the work of Spyridonidis, Hendy, and Barlow (2015) regarding
perception of purpose, other head-teachers more proactively disassociated themselves from
non-educational motivations, demonising school owners as a result:
It isn’t acceptable to say it’s a business. I am the Head. I should be the sole and responsible
leader – not some guy sitting in a corporate oce, with his expensive car in the carpark. We
need management, sure, but education comes rst. (Interviewee C6)
As with the teacher-head, this professional experiences subjectication through educational
discourse. e subtle dierence is that head-teachers accept, albeit reluctantly, that the role
is not purely educational. ey may not be willing to give up their educational identication,
but they do recognise the need for occupational exibility; they are willing to engage with
managerialism, at least tentatively.
The pragmatist-broker
Operating in the liminal space between occupational necessity and ontological benet, for
the pragmatist-broker refusal, reluctance and segmentation give way to moderation and,
where there is benet, to accommodation. Pragmatist-brokers may have come to know
themselves through historical identity work related to education, but these professionals
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BRITISH JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY OF EDUCATION 9
strategically adapt their identities in order to deploy managerialism. Seeing managerial-
ism through ‘two-way windows’ (Llewellyn 2001, 593), they are willing to get ‘their hands
dirty’, stretching the boundaries of what they see as legitimate, using managerialism occu-
pationally and, importantly for this article, where it also serves their own sense of self (i.e.
ontologically).
Exemplifying a pragmatic occupational response, while Interviewee C5 described himself
as a ‘teacher not a Head teacher’ (thus announcing his preferred identication), he was also
quite comfortable engaging with managerialism: ‘I see business thinking as a positive thing’.
Asked to elaborate, and evidencing the value of occupational pragmatism, he explained
that he saw managerial thinking as a potentially useful tool, citing an example where he
secured approval for an educational project by using cost savings from sta redeployment
(he reduced teacher headcount through performance-linked timetable reallocations).
Interviewee C5’s positioning appears to be one of moderation, accommodation and
contingent pragmatism. As does Interviewee C13’s:
I would say that I am focused on the educational well-being of the young people in my care,
but the business context provides a really excellent discipline for what I do. (Interviewee C13)
For some pragmatist-brokers, however, this engagement with managerialism starts to cross-
cut their sense of self. For example, despite claiming that any Head working in a corporate
context had ‘sold their souls to the Devil’, it was clear that Interviewee C7’s experience of
headship (and perhaps also that she was studying for an MBA) was aecting her identity
work:
I’m not against business thinking, we must have business systems, we must have – we should
do a business analysis of everything we do. Knowing what is going on, and being comfortable
in both worlds, strengthens my hand in all sorts of ways. But that doesn’t mean we make the
same decision that a business would. (Interviewee C7)
Framing education in this way allows Interviewee C7, and others like her, to undertake iden-
tity work in which managerial subjectivities are blended with/balanced against critique of
traditional educational methods as outdated and inecient. So long as managerial discourse
supports educational purpose, it is comprehended as professionally valid and legitimate and,
thus, these hybrids willingly subject themselves to its governance for pragmatic purpose.
Interviewee C7, for example, despite her erce hailing of a ‘student rst’ narrative (‘if you
don’t know what it means to put the student rst, you’ve got no business being a Head’),
understands the potentials of managerialism for her as manager and, in undertaking an
MBA, has willingly disciplined herself (partially) into managerial subjectivities in order to
‘strengthen [her] hand’.
The educational manager
e educational manager goes one step further. Not only concerned with managerialism
as a pragmatic response to demands for school improvement, these subjects draw on its
practices, precepts and patois to establish their identities as managers. To arm that posi-
tion, they are proactive in their co-option of managerial power:
We a re in a co m pe t i ti v e m ar k e t t ho u gh so I re m i nd [s t a ] of o u r r es p o ns i b il i t ie s . I r e mi n d t he m
about appearance, about marking, about presentation, about corridor displays and such – this
stu matters, especially to parents and especially to the owner. (Interviewee C20)
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10 D. MA CHIN
Interviewee C20’s intention here is clear. He is using the power of marketisation to correct
the action of teachers. Signicantly, reference to education is absent. Teachers are being
disciplined by the market, justied not for underlying educational benet, but because ‘this
stu matters, especially to parents’.
For educational managers, an ontological shi has occurred that opens up new and
empowering subject positions. As the previous comment attests, Interviewee C20 is clearly
comfortable operating managerially. Indeed, he positioned himself as key to the business–
education nexus:
Without the business perspective on education we are missing huge elements of a school’s
potential. So, you really do need to blend the two. I bring that blend. (Interviewee C20)
us, while the touchstone remains educational purpose, educational managers embrace
the potentials of managerialism. Managerialism is no longer an incidental occupational
demand, it is proactively used by these subjects to arm and empower their manager selves;
managerialism is not just ‘out there’, its governing inuences are nding their way ‘in here’
(Peck, 2003 as quoted in Ball 2012a, 29).
Indicative of the identity work required by this ontological shi, these subjects also
reported that the choices, compromises and concessions demanded by managerialism some-
times detract from values they associate with their educational identities, resulting in feelings
of anxiety. For Interviewee C19, performing hybrid identities does indeed feel like work:
I think it accumulates, each [managerial] decision adds up, each is a little chip away at your
soul. I think you make your stand on certain points because I wouldn’t be true to myself if I
didn’t, but as Head … some of this [managerial] stu is useful. (Interviewee C19)
Interviewee C19 resists managerialism, but only up to a point. He is working through his
relationship with education and managerialism, seeing benet in both and, ‘as Head’, nding
identication with both.
The educational executive
Demonstrating a much greater extent of ontologically ‘blended hybridisation’ (Greenwood,
Raynard, and Kodeih 2011, 352), educational executives do not simply opportunistically use
managerial practice, this being more representative of pragmatism. Nor do they experience
the same ongoing tensions as educational managers. For these Heads, managerialism forms
an important part of their identity. Interviewee C21 neatly summed up his own identi-
cation in this regard:
I don’t think it’s a continuum, because if you do the job right, you’re both. I think if I had just
one or the other, I would get bored and wouldn’t feel fullled – I need both. I want the chalk
dust under my ngernails, and I thrive in that, but if that’s all I was doing, I might not get the
same sort of challenge from driving performance. (Interviewee C21)
A particularly rich example of educational executive identity work was Interviewee C15.
Head of a large and successful school, Interviewee C15 was passionately educational: ‘per-
sonal success for me is still being excited every morning about coming to school, still want-
ing to be amongst the kids, still wanting to drive learning’. At the same time, he proudly
positioned himself as managerial in his thinking:
Well, no better book has been written on school leadership in the last 30years than [Jim Collins’]
‘Good to Great’, as far as I can see. As a result of that book I have brought in performance
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BRITISH JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY OF EDUCATION 11
management criteria that is [sic] very tight. Very tough. It’s not about getting rid of the dead-
wood, it’s replanting the tree; getting the right people on the bus. (Interviewee C15)
With foreboding echoes of Courtney and Gunter’s (2015) paper ‘Get O My Bus!’, a cri-
tique of the popularisation within education of Jim Collins’ (2001) metaphor for aligning
sta to a vision, this exchange is particularly telling in the way Interviewee C15 relates to
managerialism. Performance management is about getting ‘the very best for the students’
(an educational stance) but that was achieved by asking ‘can this teacher do better, can
I get more value out of them?’ (use of the word ‘value’ indicating a managerial stance).
is discursive move constructed a motive based on organisational mission that eschewed
performance for its own sake, enabling an identication with managerialism which works
with not against educational goals.
e educational executive relates, then, to education and managerialism in complement;
their identity is governed by plural discourses. ese Heads identify as managers and are
comfortable drawing power from managerialism, occupationally and ontologically.
The outlier
To demonstrate the non-exclusivity of this typology (as suggested, the view that hybrid
identications are formed as Heads shi contingently between the positions), Interviewee
C10 provides an interesting nal reference point.
As Head of a group of for-prot schools, despite splitting his time between several schools
and despite claiming to have ‘a very good understanding of the corporate side of things’, at
the very outset Interviewee C10 forcefully challenged the relevance of his Chief Executive
Ocer (CEO) job title:
Let’s not mistake what I do, I am the Principal, I don’t use CEO. It might say it on formal
documentation but I use Principal. (Interviewee C10)
At rst glance, Interviewee C10 might appear to be an incidental hybrid, a head-teacher
perhaps. Certainty, his outward identity work was strongly educational; he rejected the
impact of expanded professional obligations and refused the encroachment of managerial
identications:
Name me one [managerial task] that as Principal – to just turn it back around – requires
somebody I can’t have working for me and means that I can’t be the leading educationalist.
(Interviewee C10)
Interviewee C10 wanted to be seen as an educator and, as the rejection of his CEO job title
attests, was passionate in his assertion of this position. At the same time, however, he was
very aware of the power (particularly over sta) managerial discourse aords him:
Not-for-prot schools can be very inecient; they waste money on facilities they don’t need,
they pay their sta more than they need; they waste money. Here things are more ecient, I
make sure they are – and I make sure sta know that. (Interviewee C10)
e type of hybridity being performed here is very dierent, then, to any one of the subject
positions described earlier. Interviewee C10 is undoubtedly a hybrid, arguably demonstrat-
ing strong tendencies towards ‘Executive’ positioning. is is not, however, a position he
self-identies in/as. Neither, however, is his positioning incidental. It was very clear that
Interviewee C10 willingly and knowingly drew power from his ability to converse and
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12 D. MA CHIN
perform across discourses; he draws power from multiple professional identities, presenting
hybrid versions of himself contingently.
Discussion
is analysis has been shown that, on the one hand, educational discourses sit as a strong
counter to the power eects of managerialism; recourse to discourses which articulate the
subject dierently over and against ‘determinations of measurement’ (Ball 2015, 6) seek-
ing to loosen the connection between managerial subjugation and a (preferred) sense of
self as educator. As repeated assertions of the inherent importance of education indicate,
these school leaders have been formed by and attempt to capture discursive power through
claims regarding the moral superiority of education. e governance eects of educational
discourse fuels identity work which oers a range of powerfully validating educationally
orientated subject positions, protects against self-doubt and limits managerial encroach-
ment. Education, for all of the Heads studied, remained an important identier.
On the other hand, while it may be axiomatic that Heads identify as educationalists
(classroom-based teaching is, aer all, the genesis of most Heads’ careers), it was also clear
that the international school is an active site of evolution in the identity work undertaken by
these professionals. e discourses Ball (2015) suggests are recasting educational identities
in state contexts – neoliberalism, managerialism and performativity – are an inuence.
However, the removal in this article of policy as an excuse, justication or rationalisation
for managerial identications allows for a sharper view of how managerialism imbricates
the manager-subject. International school Heads may be largely free from state-derived
managerial policy but they are not immune to managerial discourse. ese Heads have
been shown to undertake identity work within the grain of educational discourses and
subjectivities, but to also have available to them a variety of managerial discourses and
subjectivities that while, at times, going against the grain, can also be empowering. at
is, identifying with/through managerialism oers a privileged and powerful ontological
location – it ‘strengthens their hands’, and in all sorts of ways. e Head, as manager, is
existentialised, authorised and validated through the managerial discourses which give
advantage to that identity position, even if that involves occupational tasks and ontological
identications that (sometimes) sit in tension with an individual’s sense of educational self.
us, rather than prescribing a wholesale move away from one form of subjectivity to its
opposite (e.g. from educational identities to managerial ones), theories of hybridity oer a
more balanced view where, for the manager, some value is recognised in both poles and,
likewise, at points between. Hybridity, as observed here, allows for an understanding of how
professionals nd legitimacy amidst plurality. It hints at the agentic possibilities of hybrid
professionals who nd the ability to maintain a sense of professional identity not only in
response to the demands of a dominant discourse (education), but also through reexive
processes that provide a sense of security in the company of other collective audiences with
whom they might wish to professionally identify (as ‘manager’). rough hybridity, Heads
gain power, status and authority in terms of how headship, and their enactment of it, is
experienced. Hybridity helps Heads to navigate the inherent uncertainty and ambiguity
of what headship (now) is and what Heads (now) must be able to do. ey can maintain
traditional (educational) authorisation and legitimacy in their own eyes and in the eyes of
others while also taking on new (managerial) identications.
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BRITISH JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY OF EDUCATION 13
ere is the possibility, of course, as the outlier demonstrates, that hybridity may merely
be a strategic ploy:
I walk the walk, but there are dierent walks you know. I talk to my teachers dierently than
I talk to my Board, and dierently than I talk to the owner. (Interviewee C10)
ese kinds of ‘facework’ (Goman 1959, 1967), where compliance is demonstrated by
the adoption of languages, behaviours and practices complicit with contingently dominate
discourses, are not inauthentic; rather, they are methods of performing identity that leverage
power. Crudely, teachers might more readily accept managerial demands if they are ‘sold’
to them through educational underpinnings. Notably, however, the technologies through
which discourses give power also construct that subject’s reality through their own partici-
pation (Ball 2013; Foucault 1980). e adoption and repetition of the behaviours, language
and material gestures of managerialism, even if inwardly resisted, disciplines particular
subjectivities. rough repeated performance the self slips into new professional modes
and into acceptance. Hybridity in these terms is more than just an occupational tool, one
to be deployed agentically and contingently. As in the case of the educational executive,
managerialism can become part of the subject – the actor becomes the act.
Perhaps it is implicit recognition of this which explains why all of the Heads studied
worked hard to retain their educational identications. Consistent with extant literature
(Harding, Lee, and For 2014; Sveningsson and Alvesson 2003), the hybrid subject can
undergo identity conict arising from fragile identity constructions and negative emo-
tional experiences with managerial subjectivities. e more ontologically orientated per-
formances of hybridity are potentially risky undertakings, and maintaining strong salience
with education mitigates the risks of failed or less successful excursions into managerial
identities. What seems to matter here, as with the health care professionals in the work of
Spyridonidis, Hendy, and Barlow (2015), is perception of purpose. Where managerialism
is seen to threaten association with the profession, it is more likely to be resisted or adopted
only through occupational need (‘I think you make your stand on certain points because I
wouldn’t be true to myself if I didn’t’; Interviewee C19). If, however, managerial identication
can be reconciled with professional purpose, or if indeed professionalism can be enhanced,
then a more stable base for ontological hybridity is established (‘being comfortable in both
worlds, strengthens my hand in all sorts of ways’; Interviewee C7). In other words, the
vulnerabilities of identifying ontologically with/through managerialism can be mitigated
by retaining identication with educational practice.
Conclusion
If such a thing as the pure educationalist ever existed (a doubtful claim), then those days
are long gone; the discourses which subject Heads are multiple. International school Heads
are governed by both educational and managerial discourses, and not least of all by their
own identity needs. Educational discourse remains highly salient but, aer Peck (2003 as
quoted in Ball 2012a, 29), present ‘out there’, managerialism can also be found ‘in here’,
inside the hearts and minds of these professionals. However, in contrast to earlier research
where school leaders are seen to be subjugated by managerialism (Ball 2003b; Bush 1999;
Gewirtz, Ball, and Bowe 1995), this article suggests that it is possible for Heads to adopt and
adapt to plural discourses – for them to successfully enact identities as hybrids.
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14 D. MA CHIN
Some Heads are hybridic occupationally. eir relationship to managerialism is a practi-
cal one; they ‘do’ managerialism but avoid, segment and/or moderate managerial inuences
on their identities. is is not to say that the teacher-heads and head-teachers do not manage,
they would not survive long in post if they did not. Rather, for these Heads their identity
as manager is bound up with functional requirements – aer Hoyle and Wallace, they are
willing to ‘take the strain’ (2007, 68). In contrast, other Heads have an occupational and
ontological relationship with managerialism; they use its precepts to discipline their sta
and organisations, they draw power from managerial discourses and they claim its values as
their own. While none of the Heads had abandoned their educational subjectivities entirely
in favour of managerial ones (had they done this would have represented a shi of identity
and not hybridity), some do embrace managerial thinking and, through the governance
properties of managerial discourse, arm their sense of self, not just as educators, but as
managers too. For the educational manager and the educational executive, their identities
are governed to a much greater extent by managerialism; for these subjects, the ‘reworking
of power relationships’ (Gunter 2008, 263) oered by managerialism has authorising and
arming potentials.
Critically, neither occupational nor ontological responses to managerialism are presented
here as the ‘better’ mode of being – and nor is managerialism itself celebrated. e focus is
how international school Heads relate to managerialism. In this regard, rather than man-
agerial identication (and the doing of managerialism) necessarily being ‘at the expense of
educational purpose and values’ (Bush 1999, 240; emphasis added), through hybridity there
is the potential to congure non-exclusive, blended and shiing, yet entirely legitimate,
identities which cross-cut multiple discourses. For some, occupational hybridity, under-
pinned by salient educational identication, allows access to the functions of management
and tentative, cautious and moderate access to managerialism without the perception of
‘selling one’s soul’. e occupational demands of managerialism can be carried out just as
eectively, regardless of underlying ontology. For others, strong salience with education
can be retained while also harnessing the assumed virtues of being managerial which make
that notion so compelling. at is, a Head can retain credibility as an educational specialist
occupying an important classroom-focused (if not classroom-based) role while also being
empowered by managerialism; he/she can enjoy spreadsheets, metrics and data, identifying
with performativity, while still being a passionate pedagogue.
e primary contribution of this article, then, is to oer a view of how Heads reconcile
the tensions and potentials of educational and managerial identities. Instead of professional
exclusivity and protection being degraded by performativity, and instead of the education-
alist losing autonomy to managerialism, what has been observed are forms of professional
practice which are not compliant or transgressive, educational or managerial, but hybridic.
Notes
1. For the purposes here, taken to be schools declaring themselves as international, outside state
control, oering an education wholly or partially in English and using a programme of study
other than the country’s national curriculum.
2. It is evident that ‘being dad’ is associated with being a manager whereas being mum is
associated, by implication, with something less managerial and more pastoral. ese gender
associations, although beyond the scope of this article, are obviously contentious (and are
not shared by the author).
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BRITISH JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY OF EDUCATION 15
Disclosure statement
No potential conict of interest was reported by the author.
ORCID
Denry Machinhttp://orcid.org/0000-0002-8779-7117
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