Micropolitical Strategies Research Articles

Micropolitics in Participatory Processes: The Impact of Ablism and Other ‘Hidden’ Power Structures on Equitable Participation and Outcomes

Theoretical understandings of micropolitics and ablism provided a framework to analyze power relations and their impacts in a participatory design process. Micropolitics allowed a focus on small scale interactions and relational processes that impact outcomes of participation, and revealed the importance of problem framing and coalition building. We also found resistance to ablism through micropolitical strategies including: the sharing of experiential narratives; the use of expressive communication styles; and the development of alliances. These helped challenge norms of ablism in the deliberative process. Suggested practices for planners and facilitators who want to intervene in status quo ablest practices are identified.

A critical friend or the sword of Damocles: Headteachers’ use of micropolitical strategies in inspection

In England, a new Education Inspection Framework (EIF) was launched in 2019. The Office for Standards in Education, Children's Services and Skills (OfSTED) describes it as evolutionary in bringing out education improvement. Others criticise its methodology and detrimental impact on schools. This study compares the foci, evidence-collecting methods and inspection decision-making processes between the 2015 Common Inspection Framework and the 2019 EIF. Eight headteachers were interviewed about their inspection experiences. Findings show that the headteachers purposefully employed micropolitical strategies such as acquiring the support of others, creating a favourable impression, shaping discussion and decisions, weakening opposition, and hyper-enacting policy to advance organisational interests. Six out of the eight schools in this study were rated ‘Good’ under EIF. However, the EIF left the power imbalance between OfSTED and schools and fear-induced performativity unchallenged. Headteachers and teachers were forced to engage in a new game at the cost of their physical and emotional well-being. This study aims to advance knowledge of the ongoing inspection reform in England. When other countries use OfSTED frameworks as a benchmark for designing their own inspection systems, it is crucial to carefully examine the potential detrimental impact associated with the inspector-school power imbalance and fear-induced performativity.

Micropolitical strategies in student-teacher partnerships: Students’ and teachers’ perspectives on student voice experiences

Due to their transformative potential, student-teacher partnerships offer exceptional opportunities for student participation at school. However, partnering is also found to be troublesome as participants face considerable challenges associated with change processes in complex and hegemonic organizations such as schools. With this study, we aim to understand how students and teachers cope with these challenges by mapping the micropolitical strategies they adopt. Five teachers and 14 students from three cases were interviewed about their experiences with partnering. Three domains were identified in which respondents, based on various interests, adopt more or less constructive micropolitical strategies: (1) common goals that are relevant to both participants and the school, (2) responsibilities to achieve these goals, and (3) emotions. The paper concludes by raising implications for schools, for example, the need for a school-wide approach to clearly position and support future partnership initiatives, and for micropolitical literacy within the partnership to articulate and align unspoken expectations.

Centring micro-politics in system leadership in a multi-academy trust

System leadership has historically been used normatively as a concept to promote and privilege multi-site working across education institutions as part of a so-called self-improving system. In this article, we argue that a consequence of this definition is that any superficially ‘leaderful’ practice in such multi-site institutions is understood and legitimated through a system leadership lens. We argue further that when multi-academy trust (MAT) actors understand what they do as system leadership in this way, they may misdiagnose the role and importance of micro-politics as an explanatory model for their practice and motivations. Accepting a system leadership framing for their practice enables participants to underplay how they engage in careerist micro-political strategies and ploys within a wider framing of collaboration, networking and normal MAT functioning. To make these arguments, we draw on interview and observation data and analysis from a case study investigating literacy policy in a MAT in England. Our analysis contributes to the growing critical literature on system leadership and prompts questions about what organisational and sociological processes its claimed use conceals.

Micro-political strategies in negotiating the role of women's networks in organizations

PurposeThe authors aim to contribute to current knowledge on women's networks in organizations by exploring the strategies employed by members of women's networks, Human Resources (HR) management and senior line management to negotiate the role of these networks in their organizations.Design/methodology/approachThe authors employ the theoretical perspective of micro-politics to analyze qualitative data they collected in an action research project using open-ended interviews and participant observation. The interviews were conducted with network board and active members, and members of their organizations' HR departments and senior management. Participant observation of the interviewees' interactions took place during facilitated workshops.FindingsAdding to the literature, the authors find that members of the different parties employ different micro-political strategies. Many senior HR and management members demand that the networks' activities contribute to the organizations' diversity aims and bottom line. They largely avoid strategic cooperation with the networks. Most network members, in turn, resist the restricted role of the networks as an instrument to realize their organizations' business case. They claim some freedom to independently decide on the networks' strategies and activities. They resist being attributed tasks and responsibilities that they consider to reside with their organizations. Moreover, they try to sustain cooperative relationships with senior HR and management in an advisory role.Originality/valueThe action research approach enabled the authors to contribute to existing knowledge and extend the micro-politics theoretical perspective to include the collective agency of members of organizational groups and cooperation between these groups.

A Beginning Music Teacher’s Micropolitical Literacy Development

When teachers and school staff work together, it inevitably involves issues of power, influence, diplomacy, and cooperation; this has been termed “micropolitics,” and the ability to read situations with micropolitics in mind has been identified as “micropolitical literacy.” The purpose of this year-long case study was to explore one beginning music teacher’s micropolitical literacy development with explicit connections to the framework put forth by Kelchtermans and Ballet. The research questions were (1) How does the participant describe their micropolitical understanding? (2) How does the participant describe their micropolitical strategies? and (3) How does the participant feel about their micropolitical literacy? Qualitative analysis of interview transcripts suggested themes aligned with the theoretical framework’s aspects of know (understanding), do (strategies), and feel (experiential). The participant’s knowledge development focused on power dynamics, structures, and relationships. Strategies included gaining clout and reframing situations. Furthermore, the participant’s experience of micropolitical literacy development was fraught with negative emotions and uncertainty. Overall, literacy development was stymied by systemic challenges in the district.

Contested gender mainstreaming in the European Parliament: political groups and committees as gatekeepers

This article analyses the implementation of gender mainstreaming in the European Parliament and aims at deciphering the role of its committees and political groups in advancing or hindering the integration of gender perspectives. The article engages with feminist institutionalism and micro-political approaches, and is based on interview and documentary data. It examines how formal and informal institutions and micro-political strategies within committees and political groups affect the abilities of this representative European Union institution to ensure a gender perspective is present in European Union policies. We suggest that although the Committee on Women’s Rights and Gender Equality (the gender-focused parliamentary body) oversees gender mainstreaming, committees and political groups, as the core actors of European Parliament policymaking, are the gatekeepers that determine the outcomes. Our findings advance understandings of the limits of gender mainstreaming in European Union policymaking and shed light on the specific challenges of gender mainstreaming and broader gender equality change in parliaments.

An Exploration of Coaches’ Coordination of Micropolitical Strategies to Gain Access to Teachers’ Classrooms

An Exploration of Coaches’ Coordination of Micropolitical Strategies to Gain Access to Teachers’ Classrooms

General English Part-time Instructors' Micropolitical Strategies and Interests

<p>台灣一般大學及技職校院通識英文課程多仰賴兼任教師授課，而教師回應課程管理制度要求呈現質量化教學成果，所採取之教學因應策略是否能維持專業取向仍少有論述。研究用建制俗民誌設計大綱，訪談六位在十三所大學語言中心任教通識英文兼任教師，藉微觀政治視角分析其回應管理之策略。發現：(1)面對各校差異要求，兼任教師採取「配合」或「力求表現」策略，力求表現指教師利用話術或利益交換，說服學生呈現更多成果。(2)相對專任，兼任教師多保持沉默，不讓管理單位感到困擾。(3)採取力求表現策略之動機，來自文化認同利益與自我專業認同利益：文化認同利益改變師生溝通、班級經營及輔導方式，而自我專業認同利益讓其在多變教學環境中自我強化。</p> <p> </p><p>Teaching of General English courses at universities and at universities of science and technology in Taiwan relies heavily on part-time instructors. The strategies undertaken by part-time instructors of General English in response to course management regulations affect their teaching practice. The study participants were six part-time General English instructors teaching at 13 university language centers. This study applied the institutional ethnography approach to designing interview guidelines and analyzed the interaction strategies applied by the instructors in response to the language centers’ requirements from the micropolitics perspective. The following was discovered: 1) Most of the educators “went along” with distinct requirements, whereas some chose to “be noticed” and used strategies, such as sales talk or quid pro quo negotiation, to improve student outcomes. (2) The part-time instructors tended to “keep silent” and were careful to “not cause any trouble” even when they found the requirements to be unrealistic. 3) The “being noticed” strategy was associated with cultural-ideological and professional identity interests. Cultural-ideological interests influence the instructor–student interactions, class management, and tutoring strategies. Professional identity interests enable them to think positively and help students in alternative ways when they encounter a frequent change in the teaching context.</p> <p> </p>

Police stops in Germany – between legal rules and informal practices

PurposeThis paper analyzes micro-political strategies that police officers use during police stops, mostly based on their professional or personal life experience. Police stops take place in an asymmetric power relationship. Actions of police officers during a stop are backed by strong legal powers, and citizens typically do not negotiate how the stop should be carried out.Design/methodology/approachThe paper is based on ethnographic observation, semi-structured interviews and focus group discussions with German patrol officers.FindingsThe authors demonstrate that micro-political strategies relying on the officers' personal experience, rather than on strategies developed by the police agency based on empirical evidence, are highly problematic. Depending upon the acting officer, micro-political strategies can vary considerably according to the individual officer’s experience and attitudes. This leads to a risk of discrimination in police stops and of potential infringements on the citizens’ fundamental rights.Research limitations/implicationsSee the paper’s methodology section on the limitations of the empirical approach.Practical implicationsThe paper suggests improvements for the practice of police stops.Originality/valueThe article provides new empirical insights in the practice of police stops in Germany and situates the findings in a broader international debate on police stops and shortcomings of the legal rules that govern the police stops.

The micro-politics of co-creation: Augmenting analyses of ‘relational agency’ in local education partnerships with the ‘documentary conversation analysis’

This paper outlines and assesses the value of a methodological framework to analyse both the micro-politics and the situated, relational learning of actors co-creating a common strategy in local education partnerships. Thereby, it draws on Edwards' concept of ‘relational agency’ and augments its analytical yield and focus with an amended version of the ‘documentary conversation analysis’ – a reconstructive methodology that is well established in Germany but much less known internationally. To assess its analytical value, the framework is then applied to a piece of micro-discursive data from a strategy-building process in a neighbourhood planning group within a German ‘educational landscapes’ project. Through shedding light onto (1) the co-created interplay of the actors' orientations, (2) the resulting outcomes and (3) the actors' micro-political strategies in gaining legitimacy, a differentiated picture emerges. The analysis yields fine-grained insights beyond commonly held local partnership assumptions, bringing to light how the actors individually and collectively struggle to cope with the contradictory tasks and contexts at hand. The paper concludes with highlighting the need to further address relational agency as a micro-political process, prefigured by the framing contexts and discourses. • Relational agency is useful for analysing co-creation in integrated partnership strategies. • Yet, it lacks tools to look deeper into the micro-politics of co-creation. • Here, the German ‘documentary conversation analysis’ provides helpful tools. • It opens up the analysis of co-creation to prefiguring framing contexts and discourses.

Gender Equality Policy and Universities: Feminist Strategic Alliances to Re-gender the Curriculum

ABSTRACT Reforming the gender-blind higher education curriculum is a crucial intervention for an effective implementation of gender mainstreaming across policy areas. This article examines the policy innovation adopted in Catalonia wherein quality assurance processes have been re-gendered and incentives to engage the professoriate in gender curricular reforms have been introduced. In doing so, it unveils the opportunity structures and institutional settings shaping the micro-political strategies deployed by the feminist strategic alliances that have stirred such policy changes and discuss their potential transferability to other contexts. The article also pinpoints the relevance of a feminist reappropration of evaluation processes.

Muddy Waters: The Micropolitics of Instructional Coaches’ Work in Evaluation

Instructional coaching has emerged as a popular policy lever for improvement efforts in an era of teacher evaluation. In this environment, coaches often face conflicting demands between their educative duties to develop teachers and their reform-oriented responsibilities to implement district policy. Coaches can wield facets of teacher evaluation to promote coherent instructional improvement. Drawing on interview data from 41 coaches across five educational systems, we apply the micropolitics perspective to examine coaches’ work as they navigate the intersection of teacher evaluation and instructional improvement. Our findings elucidate two major micropolitical strategies: convergence and divergence. In particular, coaches frequently converged their work with evaluation around goal setting and observation feedback, facilitating teachers’ and administrators’ understanding of the evaluation system and instructional reform. Conversely, coaches tended to separate issues of teachers’ formal ratings from their coaching. Our analysis reveals details on coaches’ political role and illuminates benefits and limitations of coaches’ involvement in evaluation.

Parent–teacher relationships in school micropolitics: beginning teachers’ stories

ABSTRACT The article discusses parent–teacher relationships in school micropolitics based on beginning teachers’ stories. We employ a narrative approach and investigate how micropolitical conditions and strategies are portrayed in beginning teachers’ stories of parent–teacher relationships. The research material consists of narrative interviews with seven Finnish primary school teachers in the first and second years of their careers. The findings indicate that micropolitical processes play a part in constructing parent–teacher relationships. These micropolitics both enable and limit these relationships and influence how beginning teachers learn to cope with parent relationships. The findings reveal various micropolitical strategies that beginning teachers use to enact and construct parent–teacher relationships. Furthermore, the findings show that parent–teacher relationships do not necessarily include just parents and teachers, but are multidimensional, encompassing several intertwined relationships that micropolitically condition parent–teacher relationships. The implications for pre- and in-service teacher education and school leaders are considered.

Understanding ‘Vulnerability’ and ‘Political Skill’ in Academy Middle Management During Organisational Change in Professional Youth Football

ABSTRACT The use of political skill to further employees’ self-interests and their ability to cope with ambiguity and employment vulnerability during periods of organizational change is an important yet under researched phenomenon. Taking a middle management perspective, the purpose of this paper is to investigate the experiences of Richard, a newly appointed professional youth football Academy Manager during the process of organizational change. Data were collected through semi-structured interviews, formal academy team meetings, co-worker interviews, and informal observations and conversations, which were analyzed through the process of narrative analysis. Findings highlighted the hierarchical sensemaking challenges of vertically ‘managing up’ (e.g. Chairman, Board of Directors, 1st Team Manager) and ‘managing down’ (e.g. academy employees), and horizontally ‘managing across’ (e.g. Head of Coaching) during the process of organizational change. Importantly, managing expectations and influencing significant others, through skilled micro-political activity, was central to successfully negotiating the ambiguity and vulnerabilities of organizational life during change. MAD statement This study is the first to examine the micro-political actions and behaviours of middle managers as both recipients and deliverers of organizational change. The self-interests of middle-managers tend to influence strategic change; however, we do not understand how middle-managers make sense of the micro-political nature of such interests during change. This study highlights the complexity of coping with employment vulnerability when negotiating and influencing the actions of senior management whilst also supporting subordinate staff with resistance and uncertainty during change. Furthermore, the micro-political actions and strategies of a middle-manager to develop ‘trust’ amongst colleagues, both vertically ‘above’ and ‘below’ them, and horizontally ‘across’ from them in the organizational hierarchy, are evidenced.

The micropolitics of being a head of physical education in a secondary school: insights from an ethnographic study

ABSTRACT In this article, we seek to expand our understanding of the micropolitics of school life by drawing on data generated from a one-year ethnographic study of a physical education (PE) department at a high school in the North of England. Specific attention is given to the structured demands placed upon the Departmental Head in the face of an imminent Ofsted inspection where the school is determined to maintain their ‘Outstanding’ grading. The manner in which these demands coupled with her own teaching perspective, lead her to use power through, with, and over as part of a micropolitical strategy to achieve her desired aims are considered in detail. Likewise, attention is also given to the micropolitical strategies used by the members of the department to challenge her aims and protect their own self and career interests. The superordinate goal of status enhancement is seen to gloss over internal departmental tensions and conflicts leading to a situation of contrived as opposed to authentic collegiality.

Feeling the Vibrations: On the Micropolitics of Climate Change

Climate change is more than a discrete issue demanding political attention and response. A changing climate permeates political life as material processes of planetary change reverberate in our bodies, affecting subterranean processes of attention and evoking bodily responses at and below the register of awareness. By way of example, I explore the register of bodily feeling to raise the possibility that proliferating anomalies in atmospheric, oceanic, and seismic activities are entering into subliminal experiences of time and confounding embodied expectations of how the future is likely to flow from the past. The essay concludes with a preliminary discussion of how micropolitical strategies to amplify visceral experiences of climatic changes might valuably contribute to larger programs for climate action.

The Local Fabrication of School Statistics

Based on 12 months of ethnographic research in a primary school in rural Benin in 2012/13 and 2014, this paper focuses on the “little arrangements” organised around the local fabrication of school statistics which arise from the interaction between demands at international level, and strategies given room for manoeuvre at local level. Based on two key variables central to international policies of Education For All, namely school enrolment and repetition rates, this study shows how the actors involved in the school arena represent, govern and “do the school” through the production of these numbers. The data demonstrates that school statistics reflect the results of micro-political strategies to enhance budget allocation and school reputation, and reflect the bureaucratic (self) control of the actors involved, rather than being reliable instruments that can inform or measure macro policies of development.

Exploring the micropolitics of principal staffing advocacy

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to examine the micropolitical strategies principals use to influence school staffing within an urban school district.Design/methodology/approachThe 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.FindingsThe 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/implicationsThe 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/valueThe 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.

“A Multitude of Wedges:” Neoliberalism and Micro-Political Resistance in British Columbia’s Public Schools 2001-2014

In the wake of this recent chapter in British Columbia’s public education labour history, I revisit key moments in a political narrative that has played out between the BC Liberal government and provincial public school teachers since the Liberals first majority election in 2001. Using a trifocal lens of historical, theoretical and reflective inquiry, I attempt to discern the effects of neoliberal strategies and techniques (Basu, 2004) on unionism, teacher identity and the public education ‘project’ over the past decade. I consider how critically-minded educators might disrupt the prevailing ‘commonsense’ of neoliberal discourse within BC’s public education system (Ross, 2010a, p. 205). The Left, Foucault contended, has been “singularly ill equipped” to respond to neoliberal governance mechanisms, in part because it has “never possessed its own distinctive art of governing” (Gordon, 1991, p. 6). I posit that various micro-political strategies evident in British Columbia teachers’ resistance to neoliberal education policies constitute “fresh acts of inventiveness” (p. 6) in the struggle to preserve public education as a space for emancipatory pedagogy and democratic culture.