School leadership takes place in a specific context that can be described as a complex multilevel system with public and private stakeholders. Educational governance theory and the associated research perspective provide a framework for studying such complex multilevel systems “by concentrating on the question of how regulation and performance of school systems is achieved, sustained, and transformed under the perspective of action coordination between various social actors” (Altrichter, 2019, p. 56). According to the classification of educational governance systems by Windzio et al. (2005), Switzerland belongs to the group of state-based governance systems, which are characterized by a high share of public schools and high state involvement. Switzerland is a federal state with three tiers: the federal government, 26 states, and more than 2100 local administrations at the municipal level. The federal government delegates regulation and implementation of compulsory education to the states and their municipalities. This means that there are effectively 26 distinct school systems (Fischer, 2008, p. 139).

Our study is concerned with how the governance of the Swiss states shapes school leadership and in particular the tasks related to human resources (HR) management at the school level. The room for maneuver of the actors at the level of individual schools differs from one state to another (Ambühl & Hardmeier, 2009; Criblez, 2008). However, it is unclear how school leaders perceive their room for maneuver in HR management in practice and how this is shaped by state governance, as there are currently very few studies that link HR management with the legal requirements of the education authorities (Steger Vogt & Kansteiner, 2014). The Swiss School Leadership Monitor (Tulowitzki et al., 2022) showed that HR management is the second most time consuming task for school leaders after administrative tasks and that school leaders would like to be better qualified in this area. The possibilities for school leaders to organize HR management in schools depend on the legal framework conditions in the respective school system. Particularly in times of teacher shortages, when understaffing and the need to compensate for lack of qualifications of substitute teachers affect the entire teaching staff, school development processes can be marginalized if suitable staff are not available (Sandmeier & Herzog, 2024). Due to the federalist tradition, the legal requirements vary from state to state and there is no common national view of HR management in schools (Rürup, 2005).

In order to examine the extent to which different governance configurations can be derived from the legal foundations of the states - particularly with regard to HR management - a model of the “governance equalizer” (Altrichter, 2019), adapted for this project is used as an analytical tool, which enables the assessment of the various governance configurations in the states. The governance equalizer was originally developed as an analytical tool to compare different ‘governance regimes’ in the field of higher education (Schimank, 2007). It serves to analyze the interplay of different governance mechanisms and has already been used in several studies in the area of public school governance (e.g. Feldhoff et al., 2012).

To create the data corpus, all laws, ordinances and decrees at state level relating to public schools were searched using a full-text search on the LexFind platform (SSK, (2024) using specific word stems and key terms in the three national languages German, French and Italian (e.g. ‘schul’, ‘scolair’, ‘formazion’, etc.). The documents were then transferred to the MAXQDA analysis software (VERBI Software, 2024). Between two and thirteen documents containing information relevant to the research question were identified for each of the 26 states. In total, 174 documents were coded. The operationalization took place through a qualitative content analysis (Kuckartz, 2016) and the development of a category system that included the five dimensions of the governance equalizer with their subcategories. The categories were defined and refined by the research team and the coding was checked independently by two researchers. HR management was analyzed in depth as a central aspect of the management configuration. The employee cycle (Capaul et al., 2020; Jutzi & Keller-Gerber, 2019) served as the basis for the differentiated recording of the various sub-processes. As part of the analysis, it was systematically recorded which actors are assigned certain tasks at the strategic or operational level. From this, the scope for action of school leaders in certain sub-processes is derived.

The analysis of the legal and regulatory basis shows clear differences in governance between the states. Firstly, the legal significance and the number of documents taken into account vary and secondly, it can be seen that different actors and services are entrusted with certain tasks, both with regards to the legal significance of general management tasks in the education system and with regard to HR management in particular. Thirdly, an analysis of the sub-processes of HR management reveals differences between states, particularly in the dismissal of teaching staff. This article illustrates the complexity of the multi-level school system in which school leaders make decisions and take measures and helps to visualize and relate the different governance configurations of the states.

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