Villkor och förutsättningar för rektorers beslut kring nyanlända elever. : En fallstudie om beslutsfattande och organisatoriskt lärande i tre kommuner

Sammanfattning: During the 2010s Swedish principals received an increased responsibility to make decisions regarding the schooling for individual students. Simultaneously the influx of immigrants to Sweden was high and the responsibility of sorting out housing and schools for the migrants was split between the municipalities. This meant more schools received responsibility for newly arrived students. Laws and regulations regarding newly arrived was changed gradually after 2015 and principals were given increased responsibility of the decision-making. In the light of this a case study was designed to increase knowledge about decision making and influencing process relating to newly arrived students schooling. A partial purpose was to deepen the understanding around principals’ conditions and prerequisites to make decisions in line with the education act. Principals and representatives of the administration in the form of unit managers for mother tongue or reception units were interviewed. The study’s theoretical perspective emanates from theories of bounded rationality, institutional logics and a framework on organizational learning that describes how routines are developed. The result showed that decision-making was influenced by the frames and organizational conditions which existed in the context of each municipality and school. The decision-making usually happened with the hallmark of bounded rationality; the decision makers used solutions which had worked prior to achieve a result that they regarded as sufficient. This meant that the organizational solutions that were available in the organization prior were used to incorporate the new students in the school. Decision-making could be understood from several competing institutional logics: to realize political goals and comply with legislation (bureaucratic logic), to be an attractive school (market logic), to provide students with a good education (professional logic) and to use resources efficiently (organizational logic). The three cases showed major differences regarding the development of routines in the organisation. In one of the municipalities there were routines in place for a few important areas of decisions such as school placement processes and home multilingual classroom assistance. This led to a quick reception and school start for the newly arrived students while the lack of a functional routine in another municipality led to long school placement processes and frustration among the decision-makers. The results of the study points to the importance of having discussions on individual, group and organizational levels to develop routines which reduces the need of repeated decision-making. The result deepens the understanding of the complex context principals and unit managers must deal with in decision-making and underlines the importance of having discussions at the individual, group and organizational level to develop routines that reduce the need for repeated decision-making.