Introduction 13 1 Therefore, teachers and school principals need opportunities tomaintain their professional knowledge and skills and must be encouraged to professionalize – i.e., to develop their knowledge and skills, as well as ways of working, standards, and routines. They will have to be supported by the organization – i.e., by school principals and HR-officials (e.g., Knies, 2019; Knies et al., 2018). Supported by the organization, teacher professionalism might be enacted (Evans, 2008). Instead of prescribing what teachers should do, how, why, and when, teachers can shape professional work (Van Tartwijk, 2022). Teachers will then have more autonomy, beyond individual autonomy in the classroom. 1.3.2. Collaborative innovation Innovation in the public sector can be defined as an effort to respond to challenges, develop new ideas that disrupt established practices, and transform the way that things are usually done (Torfing, 2019). Collaborative innovation is a relatively new organizational notion that is based on a combination of recent research on collaborative governance (Ansell & Torfing, 2014; Emerson et al., 2012) and new theories of innovation (Hartley et al., 2013; Sørensen & Torfing, 2011). Roberts (2000) conceptually compared collaborative, hierarchical, and competitive approaches, concluding that a collaborative approach to innovation is superior when it comes to developing and implementing innovative solutions. A problem with the hierarchical approach is that solutions devised by formally appointed leaders fail to benefit from the knowledge sharing and mutual learning that arise from interaction with relevant and affected actors inside or outside the organization. A problem with the competitive approach is that competing innovators tend to waste valuable resources on bitter conflicts and on duplicating their efforts to develop and test new products and technologies (Roberts, 2000). The major strength of the collaborative approach is the broad inclusion of relevant and affected actors who possess significant expertise for the challenge at hand (Bommert, 2010).Acollaborative innovation approach facilitates the exchange of knowledge, competences, and ideas between relevant actors. It stimulates processes of mutual learning that may improve understanding of the challenge at hand and extend the range of creative ideas about how to solve it (Roberts, 2000). Underlying this argument is the idea that collaboration involves the constructive management of differences in order to find joint solutions (e.g., Gray, 1989). Educational literature also states that collaboration brings school organizations the opportunity to benefit from the capacities and resources, knowledge, and ideas of multiple members, referring to social exchange (Sinnema et al., 2020). Social exchange tends to disturb the established practices and their cognitive and normative underpinnings, thereby building joint ownership and shared responsibility for solutions (Fullan, 2016; Sinnema et al.,
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