Site‐based decision‐making leadership in American public schools Available to Purchase

This paper explores the increased complexity that school‐based management introduces between schools and their external environments, and considers how principals respond. The two cases reported here reveal that principals rely on different sources of legitimacy in making two kinds of decisions. Factual decisions legitimize principals’ use of legal and bureaucratic control without requiring the investment of much social capital. Values‐based decisions are legitimized by the use of social capital without the benefit of much legal and bureaucratic control.