Leading From the Middle - How Principals Rely on District Guidance and Organizational Conditions in Times of Crisis - Article

Oct 15, 2026

Uploaded by Adam

COVID-19 forced schools to shift teaching and learning rapidly while principals led organizational change with limited district guidance and support. Based on interviews with 20 principals from four major urban districts—Boston, Denver, New York, and San Diego—this study analyzes how principals use district guidance alongside preexisting school structures and conditions. Findings show principals responded to guidance from abiding, to challenging, to subverting, depending on internal capacity and guidance received, supporting an emergent typology of principals as middle managers during crisis.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryResearch & Report

FormatPDF

Pages17

Reading Time43 min

AccessFree to download

Introduction

Principals as middle managers during crisis

School structures, conditions, and organizational resilience

Research design and research question

Guidance and organizational resources during the pandemic

Key findings and emergent typology

Spectrum of responses to district guidance

Conceptual framework and prior research

Organizational learning and school working conditions

AERA Open January-December 2022, Vol. 8, No. 1, pp. 1–17 DOI: 10. 1177/23328584221077303 Article reuse guidelines: [sagepub.com/journals-permissions](sagepub.com/journals-permissions)[ ](sagepub.com/journals-permissions)© The Author(s) 2022. [https://journals.sagepub.com/home/ero](https://journals.sagepub.com/home/ero) Leading From the Middle: How Principals Rely on District Guidance and Organizational Conditions in Times of Crisis Maya Kaul Meghan Comstock University of Pennsylvania Nicole S. Simon The City University of New York COVID-19 has presented unprecedented challenges to schools, leaving principals to lead rapid organizational change with limited guidance or support. Drawing on interviews from a larger, national study of principals at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, we analyzed the experiences of 20 principals in four large, urban school districts—Boston, Denver, New York, and San Diego. We found that principals relied on both district guidance and preexisting school structures and conditions as they led through the crisis. Although no principals were satisfied with district guidance, principals responded to guidance on a spectrum—from abiding, to challenging, to subverting guidance. Principals’responses were associated with their perceptions of the internal capacities of their schools, as well as the district guidance. Our findings support an emergent typology of principals as middle managers during crisis, which sheds light on how principals act as middle managers and how districts can support their work. Keywords: leadership, organization theory/change, principals, decision making, qualitative research, middle management, organizational learning, COVID-19 Introduction The COVID-19 pandemic has tested schools’ abilities to rapidly pivot their modes of teaching and learning in an unprecedented way—revealing how resilient schools are to crisis and organizational change more generally. Navigating the often-competing demands of district guidance and their schools’ growing needs, principals have been tasked with leading organizational change under historically challenging conditions. As middle managers (Spillane et al., 2002), principals are both proximate to the“frontline” and aware of the “big picture,” so they are uniquely positioned to identify organizational problems (Huy, 2001, p. 73) . Simultaneously, principals work in resource-constrained environments and are frequently tasked with competing demands—for example,“maintaining stability while delivering change” and “operating through existing routines and processes while developing new ones”(McKenzie & Varney, 2018, p. 384) . Principals lead change within their schools by leveraging preexisting school structures and conditions, such as relationships, shared decision making, and professional community (Bryk & Schneider, 2002; Fink & Resnick, 2001; Fullan, 2002) . Organizational conditions can supersede other environmental factors, such as economic disadvantage, in shaping schools’capacity (Kraft et al., 2015; Simon & Johnson, 2015) . Theory suggests that key organizational features, such as clearly defined role systems and norms of respectful interaction, are critical to organizations being resilient in times of crisis (Weick, 1993, p. 628). Less is known about how principals’ reliance on these conditions varies as they lead through crises, when school leadership looks fundamentally different (L. Smith & Riley, 2012) . Drawing on interviews with 20 principals conducted atthe onset of the pandemic in four large, urban districts—Boston, Denver, New York City, and San Diego—we explore how principals respond to external guidance in times of crisis, with attention to the ways they lean on preexisting structures and conditions in their schools. We build on organizational learning (OL) theory and scholarship on the role of school structures and conditions to examine how principals operate as middle managers during periods of organizationa

FAQs

What external challenge does the study focus on for schools and principals?

The study focuses on the unprecedented challenges posed by COVID-19, which required rapid organizational change in schools.

How did principals respond to district guidance during the pandemic?

Principals’ responses fell on a spectrum: abiding with guidance, challenging district decisions, and actively subverting guidance.

What influences principals’ responses to guidance?

Responses were shaped by both the nature of the district support and the internal capacities of their schools, including preexisting structures and conditions.

Oct 15, 2026

Uploaded by Adam