Hard and Soft Governance: The Journey from Transnational Agencies to School Leadership

Abstract

The governance and leadership at transnational, national and school level seem to be converging into a number of isomorphic forms as we see a tendency towards substituting ‘hard’ forms of governance, that are legally binding, with ‘soft’ forms based on persuasion and advice. This article analyses and discusses governance forms at several levels. The first layer is the global: the methods of ‘soft governance’ that are being utilised by transnational agencies. The second layer is the national and local: the shift in national and local governance seen in many countries, but here demonstrated in the case of Denmark, and finally the third layer: the leadership used in Danish schools. The use of ‘soft governance’ is shifting the focus of governance and leadership from decisions towards influence and power and thus shifting the focus of the processes from the decision-making itself towards more focus on the premises for decision-making, and towards the follow-up on decision-making, the connecting phase because influence is exerted in all phases. From this new perspective we are interested in analysing new forms of influences like discourses and new social technologies. In order to get an overview and further the understanding of relations and the coherence of processes of influence/power/governance, the article introduces a communications model of decision-making processes as processes of influence.