Principal workload. Components, determinants and coping strategies in an era of standardization and accountability
| Pages | 552-568 |
| Published date | 07 August 2017 |
| Date | 07 August 2017 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/JEA-06-2016-0071 |
| Author | Izhar Oplatka |
| Subject Matter | Education,Administration & policy in education,School administration/policy,Educational administration,Leadership in education |
Principal workload
Components, determinants and coping
strategies in an era of standardization
and accountability
Izhar Oplatka
School of Education, Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv, Israel
Abstract
Purpose –In order to fill the gap in theoretical and empirical knowledge about the characteristics of
principal workload, the purpose of this paper is to explore the components of principal workload as well as its
determinants and the coping strategies commonly used by principals to face this personal state.
Design/methodology/approach –Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 50 principals, all from
the elementary and secondary educational systems of Israel. The analysis followed the principles of
qualitative research.
Findings –Four subjectively held constructs of principal workload, main sources of this workload, and the
key strategies used by principals to face this workload were found in this study.
Practical implications –It is recommended to strengthen school autonomy, increase the number of
positions of middle management, prepare future principals for the heavy workload, and encourage supportive
superiors who are sensitive to this issue.
Originality/value –This study fills the gap in theoretical knowledge concerning principal workload,
assuming that the particular characteristics of the school organization have some unique impact on this
personal state. It also enables us to identify the types of this personal state occurring in educational
organizations from the subjective perspectives of school members and stakeholders, thereby broadening the
understanding of employee workload in various settings, including educational arenas.
Keywords Principals, Shared leadership, Workload, Role tasks
Paper type Research paper
Introduction
Since the 1990s many educational systems in western countries have experienced
large-scale reforms such as school-based management, standardization, and school choice
whose aims included the restructuring of the schooling process and the introduction of
accountability into the context of school organization. This has led, in turn, to the
proliferation and diversification of principals’tasks and spheres of responsibility (Oplatka
and Hemsley-Brown, 2012; Starr, 2011).
It is not surprising that the multiple and diverse expectations from schools have brought
about much workload, high pressures, tension, stress, and intensification of the principal’s
role (Dimmock, 1996; Gilbert, 2012; Gronn, 2003). According to Philips et al. (2007), school
principals in England have experienced heavy administrative workloads and long working
hours resulting in both stress and an imbalance between working life and private life.
Similarly, Saidun et al. (2015) found that novice principals in Malaysia coping with
workloads and many responsibilities. In New Zealand, principal workloads increased an
average of ten hours per week after reforms leading to an exodus of elementary school
principals (Wylie, 1997). Thus, many principals worldwide now face increased workloads
through meetings, deputations, paperwork, and externally imposed changes.
Employee workload, the focus of the current study, is considered to be one of the most
stressful factors among professionals (Fong and Kleiner, 2004; Jex, 1998). It is generally
Journal of Educational
Administration
Vol. 55 No. 5, 2017
pp. 552-568
© Emerald PublishingLimited
0957-8234
DOI 10.1108/JEA-06-2016-0071
Received 28 June 2016
Revised 25 September 2016
30 December 2016
Accepted 7 January 2017
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at:
www.emeraldinsight.com/0957-8234.htm
The research reported in this paper was funded by the Israeli Ministry of Education,
The Chief Scientist.
552
JEA
55,5
defined as “a job demand or stressor that represents a consumption of energy in terms of
time and psychological resources”(Goh et al., 2015, p. 67). An increase in such demands
translates into additional resources being required or consumed by stakeholders and
constituencies. Due to its salient role in organizational performance, therefore, employee
workload has gained most attention in the management and organization literatures, and
many definitions, factors, and outcomes of this personal state in the workplace have been
suggested, mainly by American scholars (e.g. Brown and Benson, 2005; Deery, 2008;
Duffield et al., 2011; Geurts et al., 2003; Zunker, 2008).
While there has been considerable interest in the subject of employee workload in
management, health administration, and organizational behavior, there remains a paucity of
direct research into this personal state among school principals. In fact, with the exception
of Leithwood and Azah’s (2014) large-scale study, most of the quantitative studies used
“workload”as one of many dependent or independent variables to examine potential
influences of school reforms or educational change (e.g. Cheung and Wong, 2012;
Poirel et al., 2012). They measured the principal’s levels of workload based on scales
developed in non-education sectors. Similarly, “workload”appeared in qualitative accounts
mostly as a “finding”rather than the research focus (e.g. Derrington and Campbell, 2015;
Gurr, 2000; Taole, 2013).
This paper is based on a qualitative study of the perceived components of principal
workload from the subjective perspectives of Israeli principals. More specifically, the study
posed three questions:
RQ1. What are the perceived characteristics of principal workload?
RQ2. What are the personal and contextual determinants of principal workload?
RQ3. What are the major strategies principals use to cope with overloads in their work?
This study fills the gap in theoretical knowledge concerning principal workload, assuming
that the particular characteristics of the school organization have some unique impact on
this workload. It also enables us to identify the types of this workload from the subjective
perspectives of school members and stakeholders, thereby broadening our understanding of
employee workload in various settings, including educational arenas.
Principal workload: a conceptual and empirical review
Employee workload has been constructed and explored in terms of pressure, stress, and
amount of work (Geurts et al., 2003). Basically, it was defined as the employee’s belief that he
has much more work to do than he can perform in a certain period of time ( Jex, 1998).
More broadly, however, workload refers to “having high amounts of work, having to work
fast, and working under time pressure”(Ilies et al., 2015, pp. 2-3). Similarly, work overload is
defined as “the perceived magnitude of work-role demands, and the feeling that there are too
many things to do and not enough time to do them”(Parasuraman et al., 1996, p. 280).
Examples of work overload are longer working hours, pressure to work overtime, doing
tasks in addition to the regular work and a faster pace (Fong and Kleiner, 2004). Overload is
usually used in the literature to refer to heavy workload.
Employee workload might be objective or subjective (French and Caplan, 1972).
Whereas, the former refers to the quantity of work an employee is requested to perform in a
given unit of time (e.g. how many cars he has to clean per hour), the latter refers to an
employee’s feeling that his work is too much or too difficult to perform. Thus, the quantity of
work tasks might be identical to all employees, yet each one of them might feel a different
sense of workload. In fact, quantitative job demands are often operationalized in terms of
perceived workload (see Van der Doef and Maes, 1999). Hart and Staveland (1988) defined
workload as human-centered rather than task-centered, claiming that workload emerges
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