Managing all quarters of the compass: How school principals moderate the impact of environmental turbulence on school performance

The present study seeks to answer the question how, and to what extent, environmental turbulence—measured as percentage change in the number of pupils—affects organizational performance. We examine how different managerial networking orientations moderate the effect of percentage change in number of pupils on school performance. We hypothesize that percentage change in the number of pupils negatively affects school performance. We further hypothesize that different managerial networking orientations moderate the effect of percentage change in the number of pupils on school performance. The hypotheses are tested on a dataset of Dutch primary schools (n = 546), which includes information about school principals, school characteristics, and school performance. Results of the analyses show that our measure of environmental turbulence negatively affects school performance. Moreover, internally oriented networking activities (team involvement and networking for coproduction), rather than externally oriented networking activities, attenuate the negative effect of environmental turbulence on school performance