Exploring the micropolitics of principal staffing advocacy
| Published date | 09 April 2018 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/JEA-02-2017-0014 |
| Date | 09 April 2018 |
| Author | Chad R. Lochmiller |
| Subject Matter | Education,Administration & policy in education,School administration/policy,Educational administration,Leadership in education |
Exploring the micropolitics of
principal staffing advocacy
Chad R. Lochmiller
Department of Educational Leadership and Policy Studies, Indiana University,
Bloomington, Indiana, USA
Abstract
Purpose –The purpose of this paper is to examine the micropolitical strategies principals use to influence
school staffing within an urban school district.
Design/methodology/approach –The author used a qualitative case study approach drawing upon
47 semi-structured participant interviews with 25 individual research participants, 80 hours of observations,
and 36 district artifacts. The author completed an iterative analysis using ATLAS.ti with a coding scheme
informed by the educational leadership, human resource management, and micropolitical literatures.
Findings –The findings illustrate that school principals engaged productively within district staffing
procedures to influence the allocation and composition of teaching staff within their schools. The iterative
analysis identified three micropolitical strategies employed by school principals, including advocacy,
acquiring leverage, and networking. First, principals used advocacy to shape personnel staff’s understanding
of school needs. Second, principals acquired leverage over staffing by enlisting the support of their school
supervisor. Finally, principals networked with colleagues to identify teachers within the district’s transfer
system for possible hire.
Research limitations/implications –The findings have both practical and research significance.
Practically, the findings highlight how principals engage in leadership within the context of district staffing
processes. With respect to research, the findings address an important gap in the literature as it pertains to
principal’s leadership actions in relation to internal district administrative processes.
Originality/value –The findings of this study are unique in that they challenge the conventional view of
district staffing procedures, which has typically framed these procedures as barriers to principal leadership.
The findings suggest district staffing procedures can be a forum for productive leadership actions.
Keywords Principals, Resource allocation, Micropolitics, Classroom teachers
Paper type Research paper
School principals acquire resources for their schools using various district mechanisms.
Some of their efforts to acquire resources involve pursuing additional funding, which enable
them to provide time for classroom teachers to collaborate or to invest in intervention
programs aimed at supporting specific student learning needs. Principals also acquire
resources in the form of additional school staff through the district’s human resource
system. The principal’s role within this system has not been widely described (Odden, 2011),
although most scholars have only examined how principals acquire staff through
recruitment and interviews. Indeed, scholars have invested considerable time describing
how principals make decisions about classroom teachers hired from the district’s applicant
pool and the factors they use to select teachers for open positions (Donaldson, 2013;
Engle and Curran, 2016; Harris et al., 2010; Ingle et al., 2011; Rockoff et al., 2011). Scholars
have spent comparatively less time investigating how principals might use various staffing
procedures, such as district staffing adjustments and internal transfer processes, to acquire
staff for their schools. Recently, scholars have examined how principals might make
strategic decisions about how they use staff in their schools in response to external
accountability pressures (Grissom et al., 2017).
The existing literature has described many district staffing proceduresas impediments to
principal leadership. For example,Ballou (2000) studied staffingprocedures in New York City
and concluded that many of the requirements within these procedures impeded school
principals’work as instructional leaders. Similarly, Odden (2011) has called for revamping
Journal of Educational
Administration
Vol. 56 No. 2, 2018
pp. 183-202
© Emerald PublishingLimited
0957-8234
DOI 10.1108/JEA-02-2017-0014
Received 4 February 2017
Revised 15 August 2017
Accepted 21 August 2017
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at:
www.emeraldinsight.com/0957-8234.htm
183
Micropolitics
of principal
staffing
advocacy
school districtstaffing processes in lightof the need to manage human resources strategically.
Finally, Donaldson (2013) studied the impact of district staffing procedures on principals at
the school leveland found that principals in two statesviewed these procedures asbarriers to
effective human resource practices. Collectively, these studies indicate that district staffing
proceduresoften work at cross-purposes with schoolleaders’efforts to supportimprovements
in teaching and learningby managing human resources. Yet, formost school principals, these
procedures influence their leadership practice. Indeed, understanding how principals work
within these procedures to influence thequantity and composition of staffing in their schools
seems especially important given increasing evidence that teacher quality significantly
influences student achievement (Rivkin et al., 2005).
Within this paper, I consider how district staffing procedures inform and influence
principal leadership. Specifically, instead of assuming that these procedures impede
principals’work, I describe how a sample of principals within a school district in the USA
work throughthese procedures to acquire schoolstaff and support their school’simprovement
needs. This research reflects an increasing understanding within the research literature that
effective managerial practices positively influence schoolsand student achievement (Grissom
and Loeb, 2010). It also reflects other research highlighting the important contribution that
teacher quality has for student achievement (Rivkin et al., 2005). The purpose of this
qualitative case study (Yin, 2014) is thus to examine which strategies principals use to
influence staffing in their school within the context of their district’s staffing process.
In particular, I examine the micropolitical strategies principals use to acquire or retain
teaching staffwhen those staff are subject to leveling or transferaccording to district staffing
procedures. The study draws upon semi-structured interviews, non-participant observations,
and documentscollected during an 18-monthstudy in a large urban schooldistrict in the USA.
The study addresses a single research question:
RQ1. What micropolitical strategies do principals in an urban school district use to
influence staffing within their school building?
Literature review
Much of the existing research about human resource practices, particularly hiring classroom
teachers, has focused on the ways in which principals interact with district human resource
functions. Often housed within the school district central office, human resource functions
include administrative activities related to teacher recruitment, hiring, assignment,
compensation, evaluation, professional development, and employee separation (Odden, 2011).
Scholarshave expressed increasing interest in understanding how these functionsrelate to the
core work of school districts, which encompasses teaching and learning efforts and those
related to its improvement (Donaldson, 2013; Odden, 2011). Case studies of large urban school
districts (e.g. Atlanta, Chicago, Fairfax County, Long Beach, New York City), for example, have
highlighted how districts have undertaken substantial reforms of these processes to support
school principals’leadership needs and to better align this support with the work of
instructional leadership (Archibald, 2008; Goertz and Levin, 2008; Kimball, 2008; Koppich, 2008;
Lochmiller, 2009; Milanowski, 2008). Indeed, scholars assert that principals are the public “face”
of the district’s human resource system and thus serve as an important conduit between
human resource procedures and a school’s instructional processes (Odden et al., 2011, p. 153).
Principals and teacher hiring
Issues related to hiring classroom teachers have received considerable attention in the
research literature. Prior research indicates that principals tend to prioritize certain teacher
characteristics when making hiring decisions for their schools (Abernathy et al., 2001;
Theel and Tallerico, 2004). For example, principals often seek candidates who fit specific
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