Between Rationalization and Mystification in Public Sector Recruitment: Understanding the Challenges School Managers Face in Promoting Professionals

ABSTRACT This article is about the hard and enduring task for managers within the school sector of selecting professional staff for promotion. The aim is to scrutinize how the promotion process emerges and is sustained. The research question is how the potentially conflict permeated process of selection is handled in practice? The empirical case is promotion of Swedish teachers into a new position: first teachers. The empirical study is qualitative and based on interviews and observations of meetings. In total, 111 interviews were conducted, and 53 meetings were observed. The study contributes in three ways. (1) We illuminate the process by describing three categories of activities: visualization , manipulation , and corroboration . (2) The process of rationalization meant silencing . By bringing up a variety of criteria, different concerns were considered and/or dismissed. The three categories of activities show how this was by no means an easy thing to do and how the heavy “investments” in a rational process also created space for judgment. (3) Furthermore, corroboration illuminates how the processes of selection had to be sustained after the selections had been made. The introduction of a rational model also facilitated the co‐existence of mysticism as a practice in the selection process: The rational process was symbolic, yet functional.