This article presents a study of five schools with shared principalship. It contributes knowledge about how shared principalship is experienced by people who work closely (“close subordinates”) with the shared principalship constellations. Data consists of 20 semi-structured interviews. Close subordinates describe that the shared principalship meant a reasonable workload for their principals and welcomed their level of accessibility. Confidence in the leader collaboration was heightened if close subordinates were able to witness that collaboration in action with their own eyes. The findings are discussed in relation to the conditions introduced by current school legislation in Sweden. © 2017 Marianne Döös, Lena Wilhelmson, Jenny Madestam, and Åsa Örnberg.

A school principal’s workload is recognised as being heavy, with an imbalance between demands and resources. This paper contributes to the development of collective leadership. The principalship constellations of six schools in Sweden were studied with the aim of strengthening the current knowledge about structures and experiences of shared principalship. The empirical basis is qualitative data from interviews with principals and vice-principals. The analytical focus was on how the sharing structures were organised and how the shared principalship was experienced. The results point to a considerable variation in the organisational structures of shared principalship. Despite the type of model, form and constellation, the principals and vice-principals voiced a striking sense of relief in not feeling alone in their duties, as problems and troubles became manageable. An intensified interaction level in the principalship constellation created opportunities to develop competence. Theoretically, this study broadens the invited leadership concept to include horizontal invitations across unit boundaries between principals in different units within the same school. The knowledge contribution of this study is useful in discussing the legal possibilities for shared principalship, which may be especially relevant in times when the Swedish school system is being criticised for not delivering good student outcomes.

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to analyze how political leaders can rhetorically use social media to construct their leadership, with a special focus on character – rhetorical ethos. Design/methodology/approach: The authors used a qualitative case study which consisted of two political leaders’ activities on Twitter. The leaders were chosen on the basis of similarity – both foreign ministers in Scandinavian countries and early adapters to ICT. All tweets, including photos, for selected period were analyzed qualitatively with the classical rhetorical concept of ethos. Findings: Social media is the virtual square for political leadership. The two political leaders studied use social media similarly for rhetorical means and aims, with ethos as rhetorical strategy. The rhetorical ethos they constructed differs radically though: busy diplomat vs a super-social Iron man. There is no single constructed ethos that political leaders aim for. Research limitations/implications: Even though this is just one qualitative case study, it shows a variety of rhetorical means and constructs of ethos in political leadership. Practical implications: The study shows a possibility for political leaders to construct their own image and character through social media, for a potentially large audience of voters, without being filtered by political parties or media. Originality/value: This study contributes to the evolving area of rhetoric in leadership/management and it adds to knowledge about how political leaders use social media.

Politicians’ clear separation between their professional and private lives has been challenged by a growing need to be seen as personable, especially on social media where this is the norm. Little, however, is known about the effect on a political party when its politicians reveal aspects of their private lives on social media. The present study addresses this question. Through the lens of self-presentation theory, we are the first to test the effect of a balanced presentation strategy on Twitter (i.e., tweets that involve both professional and private aspects of their lives) as opposed to a strictly professional one. A longitudinal design was adopted with 265 Twitter users as participants. The results showed that a balanced strategy increased both interest in the politician’s party and intention to vote for that party, irrespective of a user’s political interest, social media usage intensity, or age, or the gender of either the user or the communicating politician. Furthermore, liking the tweets emerged as a crucial mediator. This study contributes valuable knowledge on self-presentation strategies of politicians specifically, and more broadly regarding self-presentation in the face of context collapse. However we call for future research to validate our experimental findings in a real-life setting. Implications are provided for political parties and others.