Why the leadership of change is especially difficult for Chinese principals: A macro-institutional explanation

Purpose – There is research evidence emerging to show that Chinese principal leadership appears to have a limited effect on the large-scale and deep school changes, but reasons for this have not been well explored. The purpose of this paper is to offer a conceptually framed explanation. By using China as an illustrative case, the authors propose using a macro-institutional framework to examine how principal leadership is mediated institutionally and why the leadership of change is especially difficult for Chinese principals. Design/methodology/approach – In order to facilitate a contextualized understanding, the three institutional pillars developed by Scott’s (2001) were used as a macro-institutional framework to explain difficulties confronting principal leadership in China when making deep and sustainable school changes from regulative, normative and cognitive perspectives. Findings – The appeared change inertia and school changes on surface can partially be attributed to the cultural and institutional contexts of Chinese principal leadership. For principals, professional incentives and their change initiatives are institutionally and culturally constrained. Consequently, Chinese principals are left with very limited professional space to focus on making visible and endurable student-centered school changes. Originality/value – This is a first macro-institutional application to address principal leadership of change from the context of China. The regulative, normative and cognitive aspects are analytically useful to differentiate and manifest the institutional complexity and intricacy which are mediating principal leadership impact on school changes. This also illuminates the exploration of context sensitive leadership research to capture context features and understand context-embedded logics.