Guest editorial: School leadership, management and governance in complex contexts: perspectives from the Nordic countries

The Nordic education systems have long been regarded as exemplars of equity, quality and strong public governance (Moos et al., 2016; Krejsler, 2024; Prøitz and Aasen, 2017). They are underpinned by comprehensive welfare arrangements, high levels of trust in public institutions and an inclusive ethos that frames education as a public good. At the same time, the governance landscapes across the region have become increasingly complex. Sweden, Norway and Iceland have embraced varying degrees of decentralization and marketization, generating tensions between central steering and local autonomy (Nordholm et al., 2023; Sivesind and Skedsmo, 2020). In contrast, Finland has pursued a more stable trajectory, marked by fewer reforms, greater continuity and limited market adoption (Sahlberg, 2011).

Within this shifting terrain, educational leadership has emerged as both a demanding field of practice and an evolving object of scholarly inquiry (Sivesind and Skedsmo, 2020). Leadership is now widely conceptualized not as a fixed structural role but as a situated practice, constituted through everyday interactions among leaders, teachers and institutions. While common traditions continue to shape Nordic approaches to school governance and educational management, the divergent national trajectories make the region an especially important site for comparative research.

Recent studies also point to unresolved tensions between autonomy, accountability and responsibility (Nordholm et al., 2025; Gunnulfsen et al., 2023), highlighting the need for both theoretical innovation and close empirical scrutiny. Taken together, the Nordic countries present a distinctive and varied institutional terrain: a blend of enduring welfare-state ideals and increasingly fragmented governance arrangements, combined with ongoing experimentation in public service delivery and leadership structures (de la Porte et al., 2023; Esping-Andersen, 1996; Ärlestig and Johansson, 2023). These dynamics raise pressing normative questions about how educational leadership can uphold equitable, democratic and high-quality education (cf. Poekert et al., 2020; Leithwood, 2021; Sahlberg and Cobbold, 2021; Dieude and Prøitz, 2024).

This special issue responds to these developments by gathering 12 contributions that explore how education leaders at different levels navigate competing demands within transformed governance and management systems in the Nordic countries. The contributions include single-country analyses of Denmark, Sweden, Norway and Finland, as well as cross-national comparisons. They employ diverse methods, including case studies, interviews, surveys, comparative designs, review articles and conceptual explorations and cover educational leadership across all levels, from early childhood to adult education, as well as partnerships between schools, municipalities and higher education institutions. Significantly, they extend beyond a vertical state – school perspective to illustrate leadership as a horizontal and relational phenomenon embedded in local practices.

Several contributions to the special issue explore the evolving tensions between autonomy and control in Nordic education. Benner and Thomasson's comparative study of university reforms in Denmark and Sweden highlights how distinct political logics shape hybrid governance: Denmark's contractual and performance-driven model contrasts with Sweden's more decentralized, stewardship-based approach. Their findings challenge assumptions of convergence and underline the contested nature of institutional autonomy in higher education.

At the other end of the educational continuum, Homme, Kvilhaugsvik and Ludvigsen examine Norwegian early childhood education, showing how leadership autonomy depends not only on policy but also on administrative capacity and provider characteristics. Their analysis of center leader–provider relationships demonstrates how marketization and uneven resources condition autonomy in practice, raising concerns about equity and local adaptation.

Other studies highlight the relational dimensions of autonomy in schools. Mausethagen and Tvedten investigate Norwegian school leaders' use of research, showing that access to and application of research-based knowledge relies on partnerships, competencies and knowledge infrastructures. Sjölund, Farrell and Arce-Trigatti, in turn, explore research–practice partnerships in Swedish preschools, illustrating how collaborative autonomy emerges through the interplay of researcher expectations and practitioner needs.

Finally, Qvortrup and colleagues, drawing on self-determination theory and survey data from five Nordic countries, show that autonomy-supportive leadership behaviors are linked to positive teacher attitudes toward classroom practice. Importantly, variation within countries exceeds variation between them, suggesting that leadership practice itself, rather than national context, is the decisive factor shaping teachers' experience of autonomy. This resonates with research emphasizing that the effects of school leadership are mediated through teachers (Persson et al., 2025).

Together, these studies demonstrate that autonomy is not a monolithic concept but assumes different meanings across educational settings. Leadership autonomy emerges as relational, systemic and contingent on institutional and local conditions.

Moving beyond formal structures, several contributions offer new insights into the enactment of leadership. Mäkiharju and Smeds-Nylund develop a non-affirmative approach that conceptualizes leadership as pedagogical mediation, emphasizing the normative task of negotiating value tensions in decentralized contexts. Similarly, Hyrkkö and Kajamaa's Finnish intervention study reconceptualizes distributed leadership as an emergent and dialectical practice, shaped by organizational contradictions and collective learning.

Crises provide further perspective on governance dynamics. Storgaard and colleagues, in a multi-country review, analyze patterns of governance and support in Nordic schools during the COVID-19 pandemic. Their findings reveal an increase in top-down control and a heavy burden placed on school leaders, who were often left to mediate competing demands with limited support. These insights raise essential questions about resilience and capacity-building, while aligning with previous findings from Iceland on the continuing importance of government support in decentralized and marketized systems (Sigurðardóttir et al., 2020).

The pressures of workload and stress are also highlighted in Tvedten and Hovdhaugen's survey of Norwegian school leaders, which identifies blurred boundaries between principals and middle leaders. Overlapping responsibilities generate uncertainty and strain, echoing broader patterns in the public sector where managers, particularly women, bear disproportionate personal responsibility in roles marked by unclear boundaries and inadequate support (Cregård and Corin, 2019).

Taken together, these studies show how governance contexts amplify the mediating and negotiating work of leaders, who must balance structural expectations with the lived realities of organizational contradictions, crises and workload pressures.

A third set of contributions provides fine-grained insights into local enactments of leadership under decentralized and competitive conditions. Liljenberg and Samuelsson's study of six Swedish municipalities demonstrates divergent enactments of local educational authority (LEA) responsibility. While some municipalities promote co-creation with principals, others rely on top-down provision of preconditions. These contrasting approaches shape the mandate and capacity for school improvement, especially in contexts of external pressure.

Mufic's study of adult education in Sweden similarly shows how principals interpret and enact systematic quality work amid fragmentation and policy ambiguity. In such conditions, professional networks emerge as vital spaces for reflection and support. These findings resonate with research on school improvement in Sweden, which suggests that while both principal and LEA leadership are essential, they need not always be combined; rather, multiple situated pathways may be required to balance control, trust and adaptability (Arora-Jonsson et al., 2024).

Edlund and Westergren offer an alternative perspective by examining how Swedish upper secondary principals construct educational “menus” in competitive settings. They show how creating educational offers has become a balancing act between innovation and standardization, but also a distressing exercise shaped by uncertainty and peer effects. Their findings underscore how market mechanisms reshape leadership practice at the local level.

Collectively, these studies highlight how local leaders navigate competing logics by engaging in interpretive work that mediates between policy intentions and institutional realities.

In summary, the contributions to this special issue reveal the complexity and variation of educational leadership across the Nordic region. They map how autonomy is conceptualized and enacted in different institutions, contexts and national settings, while exposing the tensions leaders must navigate. At the same time, the varied uses of “autonomy” in the field raise questions about its analytical clarity: when autonomy is constrained, what does it truly signify for leadership, governance and practice today?

The studies demonstrate that leadership is simultaneously positioned within vertical state–school relationships and embedded in local contexts where horizontal logics, competing priorities and relational demands prevail. Leadership thus emerges not as a function of formal authority but as a situated practice shaped by systemic, relational and contextual dynamics.

Despite a strong Nordic knowledge base, recent developments, including intensified decentralization, accountability pressures and broader societal disruptions, amplify the urgency to revisit core commitments to democracy, equity and educational quality. Notably, despite the Nordic tradition of inclusion, inequities in educational outcomes are on the rise (Frønes et al., 2020). These challenges call for renewed and sustained research that can critically engage with the distinctive governance features of Nordic education systems while also addressing the everyday practices of educational leadership.