Organizational Managers in the English School System: Professional Identity and Territory Negotiation

• In Event: 44.028 - Understanding Leader Effects: Preparation, Experience, and Retention

Abstract

This paper reports on emerging empirical data from a research project that employed a multiple case study design to explore the experiences of school business managers in the English school system as a group of ‘outsiders’, negotiating their own professional territory within a landscape traditionally led and managed by trained educationalists. Informed by social identity theory (Tajifel, 1978) and the notion of the ‘third space professional’ (Whitchurch, 2008), the article draws on interview data in which participants discuss their professional narratives and how they perceive their role and the burgeoning profession to which they belong both within their own settings and the wider school system.

Author

• Paul Wilfred Armstrong, University of Manchester