Navigating Institutional Cross-Pressures: Swedish Superintendents’ Discretion in Organizing the Compensatory Assignment

This study examines how superintendents (SIs) experience and negotiate governance mechanisms when organizing the compensatory assignment (CA) in Swedish education. Drawing on neo-institutional theory, it analyses how institutional dimensions shape SI discretion within a decentralized context. Using qualitative interviews with eight SIs from diverse municipalities, the study identifies four mechanisms: state grants, regulation, market pressures, and decentralized responsibility. Findings show these mechanisms both enable and constrain CA organization through resources, legitimacy, tensions, and accountability demands. SIs exercise agency by interpreting, negotiating, and adapting external pressures to local conditions. The study conceptualizes superintendent discretion as an institutional phenomenon shaped by governance.