An investigation into a Chief Executive Officer of a Multi-academy Trust in England

Abstract

This dissertation reports on a qualitative study entitled The Leadership of the Lawrence Trust Project which investigates the practice and position of the emerging role of the Chief Executive Officer of a multi-academy trust (MAT) told from the incumbent’s position. Using the key tools of ethnography: observation, shadowing, semi-structured interviews and analysis of primary source material the researcher gained access for a period of twelve months to KT Edwards, the CEO of the Lawrence Trust (all anonymised names) a middle-sized MAT located across a wide geographical region in England. The project has three aims. Firstly, it aims to investigate the working life of how one CEO operates as a MAT leader and, in doing so to produce new types of data to enable new understandings of the role. Secondly, the study aims to investigate the emerging position and leadership practices of the CEO as the embodiment of the reconstruction of the public education system in England. I therefore pose the question: how do people become CEOs of MATs? Thirdly, I aim to map the structure and dynamics of the network of power relationships between the CEO and their professionals and in so doing identify the nature of such connections to determine what the exchange relationships are. The third research question then is: what forms of leadership are practised in a MAT and why? Using the lens of critical policy scholarship, I examine the interplay between structure, power and agency locating the CEO position at the interface of the politics of education and education politics (Dale 1989). In reading the data conceptually the study deploys Arendtian thinking primarily on the vita activa: work, labour and action, and ideas on assimilation and the public/private. The empirical findings are reported in one conference paper and four journal articles. Firstly, I analyse Edwards’ practices as CEO through the creation of leadership vignettes which I analyse using Arendtian thinking. I argue that his practice as leader is limited to labour and work. The second output utilises Foucault’s genealogy to understand and problematise the MAT. I conclude that the MAT as an apparatus of the state is a totalising institution. Thirdly I typologise the space the CEO inhabits as ‘the street’ identifying his entrepreneurial positioning. The fourth output I define and analyse Edwards’ professional networks as realist which are sites of reciprocity and power. In the final output I argue with Gunter and Courtney that Edwards whilst rooted in public education assimilates into the corporate, private world as a parvenu repudiating his past in order to be fully accepted. Collectively the outputs demonstrate the plurality of the role of the CEO as a corporate leader and entrepreneur in the hierarchised education market of MATs.

Date of Award	1 Aug 2020
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	The University of Manchester
Supervisor	Helen Gunter (Supervisor) & Steven Courtney (Supervisor)