Responsibility, authority, and accountability in school-based and non-school-based management: Principals’ coping strategies

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to understand how primary school principals in Israel cope with the gaps between authority and responsibility in their work, deriving from partially implemented decentralization processes, and how this relates to school-based management (SBM) and accountability principles. Design/methodology/approach: Using the qualitative method, 20 semi-structured interviews were conducted with school principals from one district in Israel. Thematic analysis was used in order to identify themes in the interviews that enable creating codes for the characteristics of authority and responsibility and for the principals’ strategies. Findings: Gaps were found between authority and responsibility, with particularly low levels of authority alongside high levels of responsibility. Coupled with the demand for accountability, those gaps led principals to adopt three strategies – active, partly active, and passive – to help reduce the tension resulting from them. The SBM definition has links to the specific strategy that principals used. Originality/value: The results indicate the importance of clear definitions of authority and responsibility in principals’ work. The current study deepens the understanding of the gaps between these concepts as key for understanding accountability at decentralized schools; tensions that principals cope with as a result of those gaps; and the strategies that enable principals to ease the tension for the benefit of all those involved in the principals’ work.