Within the school sector, the development towards a market paradigm has put measurement of performance and accountability in a new context. During the last two decades, this development has been especially apparent in Sweden where substantial reforms have transformed the entire school system and opened up the educational market to for profit organizations and competition between schools. Such reforms have placed an increased stress on performance in schools, for instance through benchmarking and open statistics on grades. Based on such premises, it might be argued that reputation management strategies - i.e. creating an appealing image and coherent brand to consumers on the educational market - become an important practice of the management of educational organizations.
Empirical Research on reputation management in the public sector is a growing field (c.f. Wæraas, 2020) and reputation management as a practice appears to be increasingly institutionalized in the public sector (Salomonsen et al., 2016). Previous studies have covered a range of topics such as hospitals (Blomgren et al., 2016), place branding (Wæraas et al., 2015), for-profit schools (Gustrén, 2021). Therefore, we consider this paper as an important contribution to the literature on reputation management and public sector communication in general. The empirical data on which this study is based consists of 15 semi-structured qualitative interviews with public servants responsible for communication/pubiic relations in upper secondary school at the municipal/administrative level. Topics covered in the interviews included media relations and social media use. Furthermore, problems associated with the work of reputation management and potential conflicts between organizational self-interest and public good.
Results from the study shows how reputation management in the Swedish school sector is both enabled and constrained by specific institutional conditions inherent to the public sector. The results also underline the importance of the market-driven Swedish school system to produce these specific conditions.