The formal establishment of school leadership in Switzerland, initiated around three decades ago with the introduction of the principal's role, significantly transformed traditional structures. Currently, leadership and management responsibilities are characterized by a shared mandate, subject to negotiation among school boards, principals, and teachers. Despite its acknowledged importance, empirical findings on the practice of distributed leadership in German-speaking Swiss schools remain limited. This study aims to address this gap by exploring leadership beyond formal positions, focusing on its manifestation through the practices of individuals, interactions, and mediating artefacts (Spillane et al., 2004). Guided by a distributed leadership perspective, the study seeks to uncover the intricate dynamics of leadership as an interaction (Diamond & Spillane, 2016). 

Acknowledging the suggestion for leadership to be understood and studied as „a process that comprises both organizational and individual scopes“ (Tian et al., 2016, p. 156), a comprehensive research design is being used; aiming to capture both the "official" distribution of tasks based on legal regulations and school-specific policies, as well as lived experiences in public schools. Therefore, triangulation serves as an exploration into both the formalized structures and the realities of practices, contributing insights to the discourse on distributed leadership.

The research questions guiding this study are:

1. What is the legal and institutional context for cooperation?

The first dimension explores how responsibilities and competencies are officially regulated among board members, principals, and teachers. Emphasis is placed on investigating the official channels through which responsibilities and competencies are allocated within the school structure, including cantonal legal texts and location-specific regulations. The aim is to extract insights into the formalized structures guiding responsibilities.

1. How is the practical assumption of responsibilities and competencies shaped within the school setting?

The second dimension delves into the practical aspects of how responsibilities and competencies are assumed and negotiated within the dynamic school environment. This involves extensive shadowing-type observations of principals and teachers, as well as interviews with key stakeholders, including principals, teachers, and board members. These qualitative explorations aim to capture the nuanced arrangements and perceptions of leadership practices, decision-making processes, and the lived experiences of assuming leadership responsibilities. Through these interactions, the intricacies of how stakeholders navigate and interpret their roles within the established leadership framework are sought to be uncovered.

3. Why do actors or groups engage in leadership-related collaborative efforts or refrain from doing so?

This dimension sheds light on the expectations, motivations, and barriers that influence actors or groups to assume or relinquish responsibility, collaborate, participate in, or withdraw from distributed leadership practices. Understanding the underlying factors, such as organizational culture, power relations, and perceived benefits, will provide insights into the complex dynamics shaping collaborative endeavours or the lack thereof.

The data collection includes:

1. Examination of official documents detailing the distribution of responsibilities and accountability: This process involves a meticulous review of policies governing leadership roles to extract insights into the formalized structures guiding responsibilities and accountability.
2. Approximately 25 interviews: Conducted with key stakeholders, including school leaders, teachers, and board members, these interviews delve into the nuanced perceptions of leadership practices, decision-making processes, and the lived experiences of assuming leadership responsibilities in the dynamic context of education. The aim of conducting such semi-structured interviews is to gather in-depth insights from participants while allowing flexibility to explore emerging themes and clarify ambiguities during the interview process.
3. Observational data from about 20 weeks of shadowing: Documenting day-to-day school activities of principals, teachers, and other stakeholders to provide contextual insights. This observational component aims to capture the practical execution of leadership, offering a real-time portrayal of how responsibilities and competencies are assumed and negotiated in fast-paced school environments. 

To gain a better understanding of the complex leadership dynamics within and across educational institutions and units, a multifaceted, explorative approach is being used. In line with Grounded Theory Methodology (Corbin & Strauss, 2015), the research process unfolds iteratively, allowing themes and phenomena to emerge successively and guide the ongoing inquiry. As formative elements of the nature, perception and manifestation of leadership-related cooperation can vary between settings and individuals, flexibility and the possibility of adaption play a pivotal role in the research process. Throughout this iterative journey, data is collected using semi-structured guides, facilitating the inductive derivation and refinement of preliminary categories from the data. This systematic refinement of preliminary categories is instrumental in approaching the explanation of phenomena methodically and comprehensively. Memos that are regularly written on practical and theoretical considerations, serve as vital tools to record reflections on preconceptions, insights, and analytic notes throughout the data collection and analysis process. Following Strauss and Corbin's framework, three distinct coding stages for the systematic analysis of qualitative data are involved. Importantly, these stages are not rigidly sequential; instead, they often occur alternately or simultaneously, reflecting the iterative and flexible nature of the research process. In the initial phase of Open Coding, a meticulous examination of the data occurs line by line and serves to “break apart” units, carrying meaning. This process involves the identification of concepts and the assignment of descriptive or interpretive codes without predefined categories. The aim is to allow a broad spectrum of phenomena to surface, permitting the emergence of patterns and relationships organically. Moving into the Axial Coding stage, the focus shifts to establishing connections between the identified categories and phenomena. Ties between categories are explored, and a coding paradigm is developed to understand how these categories relate to central phenomena. Axial coding aims to provide a more structured and interconnected perspective. The final stage, Selective Coding, involves selecting a core phenomenon or category, often identified through axial coding, that encapsulates the central theme or storyline of the research. Other categories are then integrated around this core, creating a cohesive and integrated narrative. Selective coding refines the theory further, concentrating on the most significant phenomena and their interconnections.

The landscape of Swiss education sees principals as a relatively recent professional group. Concurrently, school faculties comprise diverse educators with varying experiences of professional autonomy throughout their careers. The involvement of teachers in shaping and developing schools is now explicitly embedded in the professional responsibilities of educators in some cantons. However, empirical insights into the nature of this collaboration remain limited. This study aims to deepen our understanding of the distribution of responsibilities in the ongoing development of schools. Preliminary findings suggest that the configuration of leadership is influenced not only by factors such as organizational structure and resource availability but also significantly by existing interpersonal relationships, change processes and previous professional experiences. Within the school environment, where taking on additional responsibilities is not incentivized to the same degree as in other professional domains, elements like mutual trust, shared beliefs, and entrenched behavioural norms appear to be accentuated. Ambiguities, such as relationships between proximity and distance, freedom and obligation, collective responsibility based on shared values and individual professional self-conception as well as varying expectations, reveal themselves as intricate aspects in navigating and understanding distributed leadership practices, not as an end in itself, but as a result of continuous mutual influence. This complex interplay underscores the need for a nuanced understanding of how responsibilities are distributed and collaboration is fostered within the evolving landscape of school and leadership development. These insights illuminate a nuanced interplay between different stakeholders, demonstrating relevance not only within the Swiss educational landscape but also in comparable settings such as Germany, Scandinavian countries, and the Netherlands (Ärlestig et al., 2016), where the teaching profession is characterized by a relatively high degree of autonomy. The elucidation of this intricate dynamic prompts significant questions concerning the forthcoming leadership competencies among stakeholders, facilitating successful collaborative shaping and development of schools.

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