Leadership for Solidarity? Examining Catholic School Leaders' Organizational Decision-Making in the COVID Era

• In Event: AERA Roundtable Session 13
  In Roundtable Session: COVID-19 and Alternative Learning Environments

Abstract

Catholic schools in most cities exist in hyper-competitive school choice marketplaces. During the COVID era, the things Catholic school leaders did to allow their organizations to thrive in this marketplace led some Catholic schools to survive and others to close. Yet a narrative emerged in the popular press that the organizational response of Catholic schools to the COVID era was superior to that of the public sector. In this paper, we investigate Catholic school leaders’ organizational responses to the global pandemic and assess these responses in light of institutional logics and organizational identities. We find that Catholic school leaders were more aligned with market competition in their actions than with the definitions of solidarity central to their organizational identity.

Authors

• Andrew F. Miller, Boston College

• Charles Tower Cownie, Boston College

• Myra Rosen-Reynoso, Boston College