To lead the best and the rest - Organizational effects on trust and efficacy when using economic incentives as a driving force for development

Author(s):

Björn Ahlström(presenting / submitting)Mats Danell(presenting)

Conference:

ECER 2017

Network:

26. Educational Leadership

Format:

Paper

Session Information

26 SES 04 C, Ethics, Trust and Professional Discretion in the Realm of Educational Leadership

Paper Session

Time:

2017-08-23

09:00-10:30

Room:

K6.07

Chair:

Sigríður Margrét Sigurðardóttir

Contribution

What happens in leader´s professional communities when lacquer of development is corrected with economic incentives? To be able to answer this question is the overall purpose of this paper. The question has its origin in a wide national context where politicians for a long time has tried different actions and reforms in order to improve school outcomes. In Sweden the government has tried to reform the school system in order to counteract the declining results of the students in Swedish schools. These reforms has proved to be non-effective due to the fact that Sweden has a negative trend in relation to the results shown in international surveys such as TIMMS and PISA. In 2015 the Department of Education appointed a committee that had as its primary task to identify the underlying causes for this development. One outcome of the committee was that the reforms imposed on the schools system had caused weaknesses in the system itself and therefor contributed to the decline of school and student outcomes rather than being driving forces for improvement. The committee suggested a number of actions such as developing trust and sustainability within the schools system and principals and teachers were prioritized and highlighted as important actors and resources. In order to change the academic trend in Sweden they suggested actions that were imposed to strengthening the teaching in the classroom as well as the pedagogical leadership. One step in that direction has been that during 2016 the Swedish government has introduced an effort to improve the status of teachers work and their career paths by a “salary-lift”. The Swedish government gives the municipalities a contribution of three billion SEK (about 300 million euro), all together, in order to implement this initiative. This “lift” is directed towards teachers that are perceived as specially skilled and qualified and to identify who these are, in each specific school, is assessed by each principal. The teachers that are perceived as especially skilled will get 2500-3000 SEK in additional salary each month. Another reason for focusing on teacher’s salary is that a study done by the OECD (2014) over teachers ' purchasing power in different countries show that the Swedish teachers ' purchasing power is below average. This initiative has not gained the teacher profession as a whole, rather a minority of teachers has been fortunate enough to benefit from this effort which, in it self, can create a breeding ground for conflicts and disappointments. As a teacher you might have a different approach towards your work if your part of the group that is perceived as the “the best” or if you are part of “the rest”. This development and reforms might therefor effect the collective trust and collective efficacy within the specific organizations (Goddard 2001, Seashore-Louis 2015, Hoy & Tschannen-Moran 1999). Miller (1996) argues that organizations will have difficulty in achieving the goals for the organization when economic incentives based on specific assessment criteria, on the one hand, rewards individuals who is expected to act in the “right way” but, on the other hand, fail to reward those individuals whose not perceived as sufficiently talented. Rewarded employees will continuously try to avoid an unprofitable behavior. Employees placed outside of the reward system will lose trust in the assessment criteria, management's judgement and their own and/or colleague's ability. Miller (1996) argues that economic incentives for the organization's governance create a spiral of mistrust among employees. A growing mistrust in the organization and its governance will undermine the socio-cultural incentives, which is crucial for creating a well-functioning organization.

Method

The data for this study contains of four narratives from principals attending the Swedish national training program for principals. They have all, during the last year, been responsible to implement this reform within their own organization. We asked these principals to write a story of what happened in the implementation process and to reflect upon situations they believe to be significant outcomes of the reforms. This principals “tales of the field” (Van Maanen 1993) where sent to the researchers by e-mail. The researchers read the stories and sent them back with some written comments and in some cases encouraged the writer to develop his or hers narrative by clarifying, exemplifying or respond to open questions. The procedure is similar to an open interview where the researcher is asking follow-up questions to capture the respondent's story. The process of collecting data were completed when the researcher assessed the principals own story as saturated. This could be after two or three times of corresponding between principal and researcher in relation to their narratives. The texts has been read exploratory in order to find narratives where the principals has elaborated on the effects on the organizations trust and/or efficacy (Creswell 2013). By identifying theses significant narratives we can find that, in some cases, these are common and that principals share them as well as we find narratives that are more specific to each individual. In this paper we have focused on the lager and common narratives in the material and which can be identified and conceptualized as themes in the data analysis we found five main themes. The questions formulated to the principals were broad and aimed at getting the principals to reflect on their own experiences, however some of the questions were formulated by using theories of organizational trust and efficacy (Goddard 2001, Seashore-Louis 2015, Hoy & Tschannen-Moran 1999). By writing, and reflecting, about these experiences the informant also creates a meaning in the narrative in relation to the subject of the study (Manning & Cullum-Swan 1994).

Expected Outcomes

The main themes constructed from the narratives are: To be or not to be competent, Weakened trust in the principal, Changed approach to work, Cracks in the foundation of trust and Anxiety within the organization. The principals perceive that the teachers experiences a loss of both collective trust and efficacy. The narratives describes that teachers reacted emotionally, the ones that got a higher salary were happy but could not show it to their colleagues and the ones that did not get they raise were disappointed. As principal a challenge has been to make the teachers that did not get the raise to feel like they are wanted and that their competence is needed within the organization. As responsible for the assessment the principals were in the crosshair on the day of the announcement of which teachers that were judged as more skilled and qualified and therefor eligible for a raise. As a result of the announcement some teachers stopped greeting the principal, some refused doing certain tasks arguing that it is something someone with a higher salary could or should do. The reform has been a great challenge for the principals as well as for the teachers, it has created cracks and black holes in the organizations collective efficacy and trust. In conclusion there is one more theme that emerges from the narratives and that is Principals doubt in reforms were they express their skepticism to the reform and how it would affect the organization, on the other hand they felt forced to follow through. Instead of leading an organization with a clear sense of direction with a vanguard of skilled and qualified teachers the principals has to deal with major cracks and holes in the organizational and collective trust and efficacy before exploring new horizons.

References

Creswell, J. W. (2013) Qualitative Inquiry & Research Design – Choosing Among Five Approaches, Thousand oaks: SAGE Publications Goddard, T (2001) Collective efficacy: A neglected construct in the study of schools and student achievement, Journal of Educational Psychology, Vol 93 (3): 467-476 Hoy, W. & Tschannen-Moran (1999) Five Faces of Trust: An Empirical Confirmation in Urban Elementary Schools, Journal of School Leadership, Vol 9 (3): 184-208 Hoy, W. (2012) School characteristics that make a difference for the achievement of all students, A 40-year odyssey, Journal of Educational Administration, Vol. 50 (1), 76-97 Manning, P. & Cullum-Swan, B. (1994) Narrative, content and semiotic analysis, In Denzin, N. K. & Lincoln, Y. S., Handbook of qualitative analysis, Thousand oaks: SAGE Publications Miller, G. J. (1996) Hierarkins ekonomi - Att styra effektiva organisationer, Stockholm: SNS Förlag OECD (2014) Education at a Glance 2014: OECD Indicators, OECD Publishing. http://dx.doi.org/10.1787/eag-2014-en [20170119] Seashore-Louis, K. (2015) Linking Leadership to Learning - State, District and Local Effects, Nordic Journal of Studies in Educational Policy, Vol 1, 7-17 Van Maanen, J. (1997) Tales of the Field - On Writing Ethnography, Chicago: University of Chicago Press

Author Information

Björn Ahlström (presenting / submitting)

Umeå University

Centre fir Principal Development

Umeå

Mats Danell (presenting)

Centre for Principal Development

Deparment of Political Science

Hortlax

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