Rechsteiner Beat, Compagnoni Miriam, Maag Merki Katharina, Wullschleger Andrea
Institute of Education, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, University of Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland.
Front Psychol. 2022 Jul 19;13:885616. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2022.885616. eCollection 2022.
Individuals in brokerage positions are vital when further developing complex organizations with multiple subgroups only loosely coupled to each other. Network theorists have conceptualized an individual's brokerage as the degree to which a person occupies a bridging position between disconnected others. Research outside the school context has indicated for quite some time that an individual's social capital in the form of brokerage is positively associated with professional development-not only on a collective but also on an individual level. Schools are without any doubt complex organizations with multiple loosely connected stakeholders involved when further developing their educational practice. Thus, it is not surprising that in recent years, the concept of brokerage has gained interest in research on school improvement as well. Up to now, in school improvement research brokerage has been operationalized in different ways: as individuals' formal entitlement to act as intermediaries (formal brokerage), their position within a social network (structural brokerage), or their behavior when linking disconnected groups of staff members (behavioral brokerage). As these perspectives have often been examined separately, this study, as a first step, aimed to simultaneously assess school staff members' formal, structural, and behavioral brokerage, and examine their degree of interrelatedness. In a second step, associations of brokerage with professional well-being were analyzed. Even though there is evidence for the positive impact of brokerage on professional development, only little is known about its associations with professional well-being. In a third step, interaction effects were examined when formal brokerage is congruent or incongruent with other facets of brokerage. Based on a sample of 1,316 school staff members at 51 primary schools in the German-speaking part of Switzerland, we conducted both bivariate correlational and multiple-group structural equation modeling analyses. The findings revealed that formal, structural, and behavioral brokerage are interrelated facets. However, formal entitlement did not determine either structural position or behavior. Moreover, brokerage within schools was only partially related to professional well-being. In the discussion section, the study's key contributions and practical implications are presented in detail.
在进一步发展由多个彼此联系松散的子群体构成的复杂组织时，处于中介位置的个体至关重要。网络理论家将个体的中介作用概念化为一个人在相互不联系的其他人之间占据桥梁位置的程度。校外研究表明，一段时间以来，以中介形式存在的个体社会资本与职业发展呈正相关——不仅在集体层面，而且在个体层面。毫无疑问，学校是复杂的组织，在进一步发展其教育实践时涉及多个联系松散的利益相关者。因此，近年来中介概念在学校改进研究中也受到关注也就不足为奇了。到目前为止，在学校改进研究中，中介作用已通过不同方式进行操作化：作为个体作为中介的正式权利（正式中介）、他们在社会网络中的位置（结构中介），或他们在联系不相关的教职工群体时的行为（行为中介）。由于这些视角常常被分开研究，本研究作为第一步，旨在同时评估学校教职工的正式、结构和行为中介作用，并考察它们的相互关联程度。第二步，分析中介作用与职业幸福感的关联。尽管有证据表明中介作用对职业发展有积极影响，但关于它与职业幸福感的关联却知之甚少。第三步，考察当正式中介与中介作用的其他方面一致或不一致时的交互作用。基于瑞士德语区51所小学的1316名学校教职工样本，我们进行了双变量相关分析和多组结构方程建模分析。研究结果表明，正式、结构和行为中介作用是相互关联的方面。然而，正式权利并不能决定结构位置或行为。此外，学校内部的中介作用仅部分与职业幸福感相关。在讨论部分，详细阐述了该研究的主要贡献和实际意义。
