Leadership practices of school principals in collaborative innovation 3 51 principals can be defined as the actions that shape their leadership (Chreim, 2014). A significant discussion in studying leadership is which theoretical framework helps to understand leadership practices. Several researchers (e.g., Aas & Brandmo, 2016; Daniëls et al., 2019; Leithwood et al., 2020) argued that leadership practices should be studied from an integrative perspective, combining theories such as those of instructional, distributed, and transformational leadership, instead of studying solely one fixed leadership theory. For instance, Alqahtani et al. (2020) and Noman et al. (2018) chose the integrative perspective of leadership practices and explored the leadership practices of school principals in Saudi Arabia and Malaysia respectively. In addition to this focus on leadership practices, Leithwood’s et al. (2020) review showed that there is little understanding of how school principals enact leadership practices, and call for further exploration of how school principals enact certain practices. Previous research has established well-known categorizations of leadership practices. The first categorization entails top-down and bottom-up leadership practices. Top-down refers to a leadership practice characterized by a high degree of control, resulting in the restriction of teachers’ views. Bottom-up refers to a practice based on cooperative interactions and efforts to include various views (Draaisma et al., 2018; Fullan, 2016). The second long-standing categorization is task- and relation-oriented leadership practices (Lee & Carpenter, 2018; Leithwood, 1994). The task practices emphasize the achievement of organizational goals, by organizing and directing others’ work. The relation practices emphasize positive interpersonal interactions by showing warmth, help, and giving the appearance of trust and open communication (Lee & Carpenter, 2018). The third categorization is based on a study of Leithwood et al. (2020). They indicated four core categories of leadership practices in relation to student achievement, namely: Setting direction, developing people, redesigning the organization, and managing the instructional program. In the current paper, we empirically explore leadership practices of school principals, with the aim of providing insights into leadership in collaborative innovation within schools. We inductively investigate which leadership practices are enacted by school principals in collaborative innovation and how school principals enact these practices. We focus on the vertical processes, as school principals are argued to have a vital role in leading innovation (e.g., Fullan, 2016). Our study is guided by the following research question: How do school principals enact leadership practices in leading collaborative innovation? Based on previous literature, to which we compare our findings in the discussion section, we expect to encounter the well-known categorizations of leadership practices mentioned in the previous paragraph.
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