‘If you can’t beat them, join them’: utility, markets and the absent entrepreneur

Abstract

Marketisation and competition within public schooling systems impact the work of principals in varying ways. Previous work on the marketisation of schooling and school autonomy has drawn attention to the ‘entrepreneurial principal’ as an effect of marketisation. In this paper we explore principals’ engagements with marketisation based on 21 interviews with public school principals across two Australian states. Using the work of Christiaens (2020), we highlight a difference between entrepreneurialism and utility-maximisation in marketised systems, evident in how principals engage with leadership within these systems. For most principals in our study, engagements with marketisation were entangled with different orientations toward utility maximisation. Evidence of genuine entrepreneurship was far more scarce. We argue that the need to ensure school survival in a saturated market gives rise to a performative veneer of entrepreneurialism that is largely absent of innovation and the ‘leap of faith’ that lies at the heart of true entrepreneurialism.