Samenvatting

Since the 1980s, there has been a rise of managers and executives in public domains. Especially in domains like education, this development was accompanied by sharp controversies and 'clashes' between managers and professionals, who would be 'alienated' from each other. The classic nature of professional and managerial loyalties would seem to strengthen this alienation. Professionals would primarily be loyal to their profession, whereas managerial loyalties would mainly focus on organisations. Although research has criticized the one-sidedness of professional loyalty, managerial loyalty has hardly been studied up till now. In this article, managerial loyalties are analyzed theoretically as well as empirically. The article rests upon a qualitative study among school leaders in Dutch secondary education. It shows that management reforms in education did not result in the adoption of a new, primary loyalty to organizations, management or performance by school leaders. Instead, long-standing relations, for example with teachers, remain meaningful, also because most school leaders have a professional background as teacher. Consequently, assumptions about managers who alienate from professionals, and managers who do not value their relationships with professionals must be criticized, at least in (secondary) education.