Article

Educational Management
Administration & Leadership
Conceptualizing the role of 1–17
ª The Author(s) 2017

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DOI: 10.1177/1741143217720458
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within schools in Israel

Miri Yemini

Abstract
This article investigates the rationales and activities of nine nonprofit intermediary organizations
operating in Israeli public schools, under similar missions of promoting school entrepreneurship. I
apply a multiple case study qualitative methodology with in-depth interviews and complementary
content analysis to investigate how those intermediaries operate and thrive. I depict how the
concept of school entrepreneurship is formed and facilitated and reveal how state policy and
intermediaries’ activities interact and shape schools’ realm, as shown in three specific paradoxes
emerging from my analysis.

Keywords
Intermediaries, entrepreneurship, agency, privatization

Introduction
The discourse on the crisis of public education has gained visibility in recent decades with a
documented start point that can be traced to the publication of the Nation at Risk (NAR) report
in April 1983 (NCEE, 1983) on the failures of the American education system. According to
Guthrie and Springer (2004: 8), “NAR posited as its principal thesis that downwardly spiraling
pupil performance had rendered the U.S. education system dysfunctional, thereby threatening the
nation’s technological, military, and economic preeminence.” The powerful and ever-expanding
apparatus of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development’s Programme for
International Student Assessment and its accompanied policy advocacy, coupled with increased
accountability demands (Lubienski, 2003), further reinforced the connection between students’
performance and their nations’ strength. This situation drove nations into a hyper-competitive race
to the top of international league tables (Ball, 2016). These processes are global; similar ones arose
in the UK (Ball and Junemann, 2012), Israel (Yemini, Cegla and Sagie, 2017; Feniger et al., 2012)
and many other countries.

Corresponding author:
Miri Yemini, School of Education, Tel Aviv University, Ramat Aviv Tel Aviv 69978, Israel.
Email: miriye@post.tau.ac.il
2 Educational Management Administration & Leadership XX(X)

While the education literature offers various frameworks to examine education systems’ recent
transformations, one increasingly dominant set focuses on the role of market capitalism (Carney,
2009). “One cornerstone of this policyscape is the ideologies of neoliberalism (with its focus on
new economic relations) and liberalism (where the individual is centered in relation to the state)
currently embedded in international education reforms” (Carney, 2009: 68). The diffusion of
economic mindsets and mechanisms reshapes the relations between the existing actors in the field,
changing their respective roles, authority, and autonomy and introducing new actors and new
agendas (Ball, 2016). Among the hallmarks of recent changes in the character of the welfare state
and its practice, one can find the privatization of social services and in particular of the education
system (Kamat, 2004; Katan and Lowenstein, 2009). Such policies result in a situation, whereby
external intermediaries1 including for-profit firms, non-governmental organizations (NGOs),
charitable foundations, and voluntary organizations deliver many services that governments have
been traditionally legally responsible for providing to their citizens. Privatization processes have
taken on a variety of forms in different contexts and countries, but their overall impact is highly
criticized alongside the mounting critique of the involvement of external agents in education
(Reckhow and Snyder, 2014).
Trujillo and Woulfin (2014: 254) claim: “Intermediaries’ ascendance in the school reform arena
can be contextualized within broader national and international trends toward greater reliance on
nonprofit providers of technical assistance and nongovernmental organizations.” Honig (2009)
suggests that representatives of some traditionally external organizations increasingly operate
freely within public education systems either formally (by taking on specific posts within the
educational bureaucracy) or otherwise (by assuming responsibility and authority for key proce-
dures and actions). Burch (2002), Coburn (2005), Honig (2004), and others show how public
interest is being exploited and reshaped by those external agents who claim to bring substantial
innovation and efficiency into public education (McShane and Hess, 2015) but frequently fail to do
so on account of complex market pressures and conflicting power relations (Lubienski, 2003;
Russell et al., 2013; Zeichner and Peña-Sandoval, 2015).
Israel, formally a welfare country, has been undergoing similar processes of privatization
inspired by neoliberalism. In conjunction, its public education system suffers from low perfor-
mance on international exams (Feniger et al., 2012), an outdated organization and structure
(Yemini, Addi Raccah and Katarivas, 2015), and wide acknowledgement for urgent need for
reform (despite several macro-reforms over the years) (Gibton, 2011). NGOs’ involvement in the
Israeli education system is increasing dramatically (Weinheber, 2008), partially as a consequence
of the state’s withdrawal from operating and funding many social services. NGOs provide edu-
cation services in Israel primarily through public schools managed and operated by the state
(Berkovich and Foldes, 2012). NGOs in Israel offer programs focusing largely on student achieve-
ment, curricular enrichment, development of life skills, and education for values (Weinheber,
2008). In light of the patterns of external entities’ role in education in other nations and the specific
rise in activities of intermediary organizations aimed to boost schools’ entrepreneurship in Israel,
this article examines how intermediaries in the Israeli education system operate to foster school
entrepreneurship.
In the next section, I review the fields of research on which this study builds. Following that, I
detail the uniqueness of the Israeli case and present the research settings. I then describe the
methodology of this study, followed by findings and discussion sections. Finally, because this
study is exploratory in nature, I end with preliminary conclusions and identify hypotheses for
further research.
Yemini: Conceptualizing the role of nonprofit intermediaries 3

Literature review
Calls to improve and change public education
Throughout the 20th century, public schools in many countries experienced cycles of reform and
innovation (Rowan, 2002). Burch (2007) explains the urge for reform (de-centralized manage-
ment, external governance, and others) in light of institutional theory, claiming that isomorphic
pressures impose prevalent norms on schools and national educational systems. The reform-related
discourse usually encompasses several parallel lines of inquiry, including schools’ inherently
conservative, change-resistant nature (Levin, 2006) and overly frequent policy changes impeding
true implementation of reform (Rowan, 2002). In addition, education usually is being studied
through multidisciplinary (historical, sociological, cultural, economic, and political) perspectives
and occasionally from an ideological stance.
Decentralization-based shifts in the level of decision-making authority – initially from the
central government to local educational authorities (LEAs) and gradually even to individual
schools – are greatly challenging school management. Under a decentralization regime, schools
are supposed to acquire more autonomy (Nir, 2009), afford more diversity in school governance
(Gibton, 2011; Goldring and Schuermann, 2009), and increase their dependency on their local
environment (Addi-Raccah, 2006). In this context, external actors enter the system to import
paradigms and agendas from other industries and sectors and to assist schools in undergoing
change. In the next section, I describe third sector involvement in education and especially in
pursuing and implementing educational reforms. Next, I discuss entrepreneurship within the
education system, followed by a presentation of the Israeli case and current focus of investigation.

NGOs in education
Conceptually, the term ‘civil society organization’ (or alternatively, ‘NGO’ or ‘third sector orga-
nization’) refers to any organization external to both the public and the private sectors, thereby
accounting for a highly diverse range of entities (Unerman and O’Dwyer, 2006). According to
Stromquist (1998), NGOs vary in their aims and performance, but most are (supposedly) less
concerned with their own self-interest than with collective gains. Regarding low-income countries
in particular, Stromquist claims that:

NGOs fulfill at least three major functions: (1) service delivery (e.g., relief, welfare, basic skills); (2)
educational provision (e.g., basic skills and often critical analysis of social environments); and (3)
public policy advocacy (e.g., lobbying for international assistance for specific purposes and monitoring
or promoting pertinent state policies). (Stromquist, 1998: 62)

Generally speaking, third-sector organizations combine both public and private characteristics:
their non-profit status requires reliance on public resources and charitable contributions; therefore,
they are subject to regulation by the public sector. Simultaneously, however, they are private
organizations with high levels of autonomy and self-governance (Berkovich and Foldes, 2012).
Kamat (2004) mentions the common perception of NGOs as organizations that can implement
global commitment to ‘bottom up’ development that is not authorized by the state. DeStefano and
Moore (2010) present an in-depth analysis of the unique characteristics of third sector organiza-
tions. The authors argue that these organizations are able to effectively provide services and fulfill
needs in areas where the state fails to do so, thereby releasing pressure from the public sector.
4 Educational Management Administration & Leadership XX(X)

Furthermore, these organizations claimed to have a better operational understanding of how to

organize and manage the political agenda and local habits of different populations. NGOs tend to
be “less hierarchical, more democratic and flexible” (DeStefano and Moore, 2010: 512), thereby
improving the ratio between the cost of various activities and the benefit that they generate. Indeed,
NGOs have acquired an image of being innovative and adaptive to local communities. On the other
hand, such organizations can be perceived as de-politicizing (Ginsburg, 2008), as foreign agencies
that might be influenced by different agendas (including donors’ priorities and international
organizations’ pressures), and as outsiders that dispossess the local population of its power of
representation.
Eden (2012) presents an interesting in-depth analysis of the relationships between the third
sector, the state, and the education system. She claims that the relationship between civil society
and the state can take on three different forms: (1) relative mutual indifference and minimal
interaction; (2) collaboration, whereby each party depends on the other; and (3) mutual conflict
and resistance. The forms of interactions are shaped according to the NGOs’ missions and activ-
ities – ranging from ‘do-goodery’ complementary to the current hegemony to revolutionary action
that undermines the current order.

School entrepreneurship
Entrepreneurship is considered to be a driving force of change and innovation, introducing oppor-
tunities to achieve efficient and effective performance in both public and private sectors. Since the
early 1980s, scholars have continuously approached this topic from different perspectives in
various disciplines (Baumol, 1990; Covin and Slevin, 1989; Gartner, 1985; Kirzner, 1973; Low
and MacMillan, 1988; Lumpkin and Dess, 1996; Shane and Venkataraman, 2000). The phenom-
enon of entrepreneurship is intertwined with a multifaceted set of overlapping constructs such as
management of change, innovation, and ecological and environmental turbulence (Shane and
Venkataraman, 2000). While debating the definition and core concept of entrepreneurship (e.g.,
Fernald et al., 2005), researchers have indicated that entrepreneurs can be depicted as risk-takers,
high achievers, and creative in their abilities to produce unique goods and services. Entrepreneur-
ship can be regarded as one characteristic of extraordinary leaders who create innovative solutions
to pressing problems (Sheingate, 2003).
Given entrepreneurship’s roots in the for-profit sector, involving market-driven innovations as
discussed above, this notion initially received marginal attention in public educational settings
(Borasi and Finnigan, 2010). Moreover, schools are frequently perceived as resistant to educational
change, grasping on to institutional regulations and norms that leave little room for entrepreneur-
ship (Levin, 2006). Thus, as public education comprises a non-profit setting, approaches to entre-
preneurship found in that context differ from those relating to for-profit settings (Borasi and
Finnigan, 2010; Ruvio et al., 2010).
Indeed, borrowing the concept of entrepreneurship from business and applying it to education
caused a re-shaping of this term. Critics focus on the entrepreneurial nature of usually external and
sometimes for-profit entities, which foster the creation of an education quasi-market where they
could maximize their profit while dismissing public interest and principles of equality and democ-
racy (Lubienski, 2003). While the controversial outcomes of privatization and commercialization
of education are clear, I believe that ‘entrepreneurship’ as a term should be expanded. Specifically,
I argue that entrepreneurship should be re-conceptualized in the education discourse to better
reflect its original meaning of individuals and organizations seeking innovation, working
Yemini: Conceptualizing the role of nonprofit intermediaries 5

proactively in their search for opportunity, according to organizational (i.e., school) goals. I refer to
entrepreneurial behavior of schools and school staff, limiting this discussion to entrepreneurship
within existing organizations, which has been labeled ‘corporate entrepreneurship’ or ‘intrapre-
neurship.’ Thus, I suggest for the sake of the present analysis to interpret entrepreneurship as a
synonym of agency (individual and organizational) within schools. In other words, when policies
or stakeholders aim to promote schools’ entrepreneurship, many times their meaning, at least in
theory, is to allow schools having more choices and freedom to choose from with relation to
reformation, innovation and change (Yemini, Addi Raccah and Katarivas, 2015; Sagie, Yemini
and Bauer, 2016; Yemini, Cegla and Sagie, 2017).
To date, however, only marginal research attempts have been made to understand and con-
ceptualize entrepreneurship in education. Furthermore, few empirical studies have focused on
entrepreneurship at the school level (e.g., Eyal, 2007; Eyal and Inbar, 2003) or among school
principals (Yemini and Addi Raccah, 2014). In addition, the literature provides limited case studies
of entrepreneurial actions in education (e.g., Lelsey and Lavaroni, 2003; Xaba and Malindi, 2010).
Finally, almost no attention was devoted to the role of external organizations that operate within
schools to promote entrepreneurship (Yemini and Addi Raccah, 2014; Yemini, Addi Raccah and
Katarivas, 2015).

The case study in Israel

Israel was founded as a welfare state that combined a market-driven economy with centralized
state provision of basic services (Berkovich and Foldes, 2012). Yet this vision has eroded over the
years, and since the 1980s the Israeli Ministry of Education (MOE) has gradually embraced
neoliberal ideas of decentralization and privatization (Addi-Raccah, 2012). Alongside parallel
trends in many countries, the Israeli third sector has grown substantially in recent decades in
conjunction with the strong governmental tendency to implement privatization involving
market-based and New Management reforms (Katz et al., 2009). Those reforms have been accom-
panied by budget cuts and decentralization and penetrated all public services fields, including the
education system. This shift influenced and pressured the education system to allow more private
funding and entrepreneurship (Berkovich and Foldes, 2012; Dahan and Yona, 2006), leading to
expanded inter-school competition, parental school choice, and school self-management and
autonomy (Resnik, 2011).
Moreover, recent public discourse is challenging the Israeli centralized education system’s
effectiveness and capability to improve given the rise in prominence of educational values such
as diversity, decentralization, and the encouragement of excellence (Oplatka, 2002). Feniger et al.
(2012) note that the Israeli mass media’s emphasis on Israeli pupils’ low ranking in international
assessments relative to those of other industrialized nations prompted the Israeli government to
establish a national task force for school reform. They argue that “in Israel, as elsewhere, the low
international ranking of pupils has encouraged the movement toward enforcing educational stan-
dards aimed at increasing school achievements” (Feniger et al., 2012: 323). Indeed, these trends are
isomorphic to global trends affecting education systems and other public services (Ball and
Junemann, 2012).
Thus, as in other public service sectors, NGOs became dominant actors in the Israeli education
system (Almog-Bar and Zychlinski, 2012). In 2007, between 500 and 1,000 external organizations
were active in the educational system, providing activities accounting for nearly 10% of students’
weekly school-schedule (Shiffer et al., 2010). Weinhaber (2008) claims that organizations external
6 Educational Management Administration & Leadership XX(X)

to the public educational system operate in at least 89% of Israeli schools. Moreover, the external
programs are implemented mainly at schools serving lower- and middle-class communities:
approximately 14% of the programs are implemented in schools serving higher socioeconomic
classes, 40% in schools serving middle-class students, and 46% in schools serving lower-class
communities (Weinhaber, 2008). Although, several attempts have been made during the recent
years by the political figures to marginalize certain NGOs’ activities in schools (especially with
respect to left-wing related NGOs), the general rise in the prominence of those agents remains
unchanged (Yemini, Cegla and Sagie, 2017).
Several studies focused on the interactions between the education system and various third
sector organizations. Berkovich and Foldes (2012), for example, illustrate the extent of such
organizations’ involvement in the Israeli public educational system and map the two main factors
in the NGOs’ decision-making process that affect their scope of operation and might interfere with
their social mission: the type of financing model they adopted; and the nature of their relationship
with the MOE. Eden (2012) continues this line of inquiry in her analysis of NGO agendas vis-à-vis
MOE policies, showing that organizations seeking to create counter-hegemony were prevented
from operating at early stages of the policy process, but organizations that helped to maintain the
existing order reached the implementation stage and executed MOE policy. Yemini and Sagie
(2015) and Sagie, Yemini and Bauer (2016) assess interactions between schools and NGOs,
highlighting the entrepreneurial, bottom-up nature of such interventions and showing how each
of the involved entities expressed agency to pursue this interaction.
This study contributes to the empirical research by focusing on intermediaries that flourish in
the Israeli education system – seemingly encouraged and supported at least partially by the MOE
(Yemini, Cegla and Sagie, 2017) – and that aim to assist schools in pursuing entrepreneurship and
expressing agency. Such intermediaries are connected to the global phenomenon of external
entities as drivers of school reform and improvement but also constitute unique and intriguing
examples of attempts to empower school staff in fostering entrepreneurship within their schools.

Method and data

Data collection
As of 2013, I noticed the increasing visibility of nonprofit intermediaries within schools and LEAs
(districts) in the particular niche of fostering (institutional) entrepreneurship within public
schools.2 Early in this investigation, I mapped the relevant organizations in two stages. First, I
applied my personal knowledge of the Israeli education system. Next, I employed triangulation
through the participants of a round table discussion initiated by the MOE, comprising members of a
committee aimed at facilitating entrepreneurship within the education system. I used a snow-ball
methodology to gather information on additional organizations from the interviewees and media
searches (as per Creswell, 2007). Ultimately, I choose to focus on the most active and visible
entities. The list originally included six such organizations, and the snow-ball data collection
process yielded an additional three. I employed a purposeful sampling technique (Marshall and
Rossman, 2014) to identify interview subjects.
For the analysis, I applied a multi-case qualitative design (Yin, 2003), allowing me to focus on
the investigated phenomena from multiple perspectives. Data collection lasted six months
(between November 2015 and April 2016). Data for this portion of the analysis stem from 12
interviews that were conducted with the intermediaries’ high-ranking managers, as well as with
Yemini: Conceptualizing the role of nonprofit intermediaries 7

Table 1. Intermediaries in the study.

Intermediary Funding Target population

A Ministry of Education (MOE) and philanthropic School principals

foundations
B MOE Schools
C MOE through non-governmental organizations Teachers and external entrepreneurs
and high technology firms
D MOE and philanthropic foundations Teachers
E Ministry of Finance, high technology firms and Schools, LEAs, teachers, school principals,
philanthropic foundations external entrepreneurs
F MOE Teachers
G Local education authority (LEA) and Schools at this specific LEA and external
philanthropic foundations entrepreneurs
J Philanthropic foundations Teachers and external entrepreneurs
H MOE (specific district) Schools at this specific district and external
entrepreneurs

high-level officials at the MOE (see Table 1 ). The findings reported in this paper comprise: part of
a larger mixed-methods research project including school events, meetings, and ceremonies’
observations; in-depth interviews with school principals and MOE officials; and quantitative
surveys of school staff. I rely here only on the findings from the direct investigation related to
intermediaries’ chief executive officers (CEOs) but bear in mind additional supportive sources of
information from the broader research undertaking.
The interviews with intermediaries’ CEOs involved open-ended protocols (as per Johnson and
Christensen, 2014). The interviews lasted 45 to 90 minutes, and, with permission, were audio-
recorded and transcribed. All interviews were performed by my MA student under my constant
and direct supervision. I would like to thank Ms. Yana Nacht for assistance in data collection. To
contextualize the interviews, I collected annual reports and other relevant archival documents
from each of the interviewed organizations. During the interviews, the informants were asked
mainly ‘how’ questions in order to understand the rationale and logic of the organizations’
mission and vision, their mode of action, and their interactions with other actors (namely the
MOE, LEA, school principals and staff, and other organizations). I also participated in and
observed over ten conferences, meetings, and events related to different intermediaries’ activ-
ities including regional and national conferences, competitions and occasional staff meetings. In
addition, I utilized internal documents and reports obtained from interviewees to further under-
stand each intermediary’s machinery and logic and to triangulate my findings (as per Creswell,
2007).

Data analysis
I choose to employ constructivist grounded theory (GT) (Charmaz, 2014) in this study,
taking into account the “relativity and subjectivity” (Charmaz, 2014: 14) of the subject and
the research. I selected GT first and foremost due to the preexisting lack of clarity regard-
ing how intermediary organizations promote entrepreneurship, which could suggest a need
for comprehensive assessment of the phenomenon. While not universally generalizable
8 Educational Management Administration & Leadership XX(X)

across all intermediary organizations’ involvement in education, findings from this study
add to existing theory on entrepreneurship promotion at schools through intermediary
organizations.
To analyze the data, I first completed thematic summaries detailing salient themes from each
interview (as per Glaser and Strauss, 1967). I developed inductive codes based on my initial
thematic summaries and deductive codes drawn from the literature. Using matrices and analytic
memos, I conducted cross-case analysis to identify emerging themes across data sources (as per
Miles and Huberman, 1994). The analytic process was iterative and spiral while applying the
central steps of coding the data: reducing the data into meaningful segments; combining the codes
into broader categories; and displaying the core data (as per Creswell, 2007). I conceptualized the
findings through constructivist GT analysis (Charmaz, 2014), adjusting my codes into three dis-
tinctive phases of coding – open, focused (interconnecting the codes and categories), and theore-
tical (“building” the story) (as per Strauss and Corbin, 1990).

Findings and discussion

I present the findings focusing on illuminating the intermediaries’ role in promoting school entre-
preneurship. I then discuss the apparent paradoxes found in intermediaries’ assumed role within
the public education system and its possible implications in policy and practice.

Formation and sustainability of interactions with intermediaries promoting school

entrepreneurship
As discussed above, the discourse of entrepreneurship in education is closely aligned with discus-
sions of the perceived deep crises in public education systems (Lubienski, 2003) – crises that the
systems themselves are considering as incapable of overcoming. The need for substantial change
(even reform, Burch, 2007) comprises isomorphic pressure (Rowan, 2002). All the interviewees
opened their explanation of the need for entrepreneurship with a crisis-based narrative coupled
with their sense of the inherent incapacity of the public system to cure itself. A typical response to
the question of why entrepreneurship is taking place can be seen in the response of Intermediary
A’s representative: “The attempts of the system to improve itself by promoting different reforms –
no! We don’t believe in the capability of the MOE to succeed in that . . . The education system must
be transformed. If anyone doubts that, we don’t.”
This sense of crisis is fueled by the perception of the intermediaries that school entrepreneur-
ship will introduce agency to the outdated and bureaucratic education system, or in other words
“will leverage support and acceptance for new institutional arrangements to serve an interest
they value” (Kalantaridis and Fletcher, 2012: 204). Interviewees perceived the resistance to
change of the education system (discussed by Levin, 2006) as a challenge that the intermediaries
cope with; Intermediary B’s representative stated: “We assist the system to discover and exploit
its natural agency.”
Notably, the organizations’ directors that were interviewed are convinced that the system and
the MOE are interested in such interventions and consider the functional inability of the MOE to
directly pursue entrepreneurship to be the reason for this flourishing market of intermediaries who
assist the MOE. Intermediary C’s CEO explained: “We were the first [to enter the system] a couple
of years ago, no one even talked about the entrepreneurship within the system. No one at the
Ministry was with us.” Intermediary A’s CEO claimed that “we are actually taking part in the
Yemini: Conceptualizing the role of nonprofit intermediaries 9

policy development process with all different agents [intermediaries] and the Ministry to promote
entrepreneurship. Everybody understands that this is important and this is what should be done.”
I explored how the relationships between the intermediaries and schools were formed. More-
over, in light of the mounting criticism regarding such involvements (Honig, 2004; Lubienski
et al., 2014; Trujillo, 2014; Trujillo and Woulfin, 2014), I seek to reveal how the socio-economic
and educational context influences the formation and the development of such interactions. In a
previous study (Yemini, Cegla and Sagie, 2017), I have showed that schools serving less affluent
communities have a much more restricted choice regarding their engagement with the NGOs. They
face pressure from the LEA and find themselves unable to forgo the promise of additional
resources that NGO programs offer. Thus, de-facto, they are pushed into the interaction. Indeed,
since LEAs facilitate and partially fund NGO programs, and given that different schools need such
additional funding to varying extents, the LEA has differing degrees of leverage over schools in its
quest to engage them in any particular NGO program.
During the interviews, all intermediaries’ representatives paid lip service to equality and
the need to promote marginalized populations and less affluent communities. Nevertheless,
when asked specifically about how they decide where to engage, most interviewees
explained the selection processes they perform in terms of their own vision and interests.
In general, their selection processes seem to depend on self-selection (of school leadership)
from among the most affluent schools. Intermediary A’s representative explained: “We are
looking for a school where we can work with the principal. If the school is in a deep crisis
and the school staff is changing all the time, this is not a place to perform our highly
demanding process.” Intermediary B’s representative confirmed this notion: “One of our
aims is to engage with schools of the Arab sector, but we will not compromise on simply
having Arab schools in the program . . . first and foremost we are looking for excellent and
innovative ideas as a start.”
Moreover, many of the intermediaries publish a public call to submit proposals, which is widely
distributed to schools. Naturally, as the representative of Intermediary D directly stated, the
bureaucratic and demanding process of filling out their application forms can also act as a gate-
keeper for certain populations: “If you succeed in [filling out our forms], you can compete to get
our support in your entrepreneurial venture.”
Apparently, intermediaries contributed to the creation of a quasi-market in this arena, whereby
schools are competing over the resources that the intermediaries provide. These NGOs’ agendas
and visions shape this market and may ultimately contribute to inequality within the system.
Moreover, the NGO resources that the schools are competing for are frequently funded by the
government, which in principle should not allow such unfair (external) redistribution of the
resources. Under such circumstances, school entrepreneurship is facilitated and promoted only
by schools of a specific nature with the capacity to participate in this venture. Ironically perhaps,
the self-selection mechanism required in competing for these programs demonstrates the same
agency that such programs supposedly develop.
During the research process, I mapped out the different kinds of relations between various
actors working in this field to capture their existence, extent, and nature. Figure 1 offers a sche-
matic representation of several types of such relations, namely: funding; collaboration; and com-
petition. While I initially aimed to conceptualize the different type of relations among the
participants in this interaction, the most striking finding that emerged through the mapping pro-
cess, is that MOE funding is given to each one of these intermediaries. Indeed, most of the
intermediaries clearly stated that one of their goals was “to create a stable and sustainable
10 Educational Management Administration & Leadership XX(X)

Figure 1. Schematic representation of the relationship between different entities in the study.

partnership with the MOE based on joint funding” (in the words of Intermediary A’s representa-
tive). Thus, this scheme presents the paths through which public money funds semi-private and
private goals in certain educational contexts.
The map in Figure 1 shows the funding/cooperation/competition paths among the various
bodies involved in this interaction. In addition to their funding by the MOE, some intermediaries
attain funding from philanthropic foundations and high-technology firms in Israel as well as
various Jewish organizations abroad. The intermediaries, especially those not formally connected
to the MOE, cooperate and compete over different projects and loci. Ultimately, given their similar
goals of promoting agency and entrepreneurship within the public education system, they share a
certain degree of partnership in each other’s’ successes and failures. As Intermediary D’s repre-
sentative explained: “‘entrepreneurship in education’ was our brand initially. We were the only one
who did this. Now you have many others doing the same thing.”
As stated in the literature review above, the Israeli education system is tightly controlled,
centralized machinery, with detailed national curricula and legislation. Nevertheless, at the time
of data collection the MOE has no defined and published policy regarding promotion of entrepre-
neurship and the MOE was found to act not as a single agency but rather as a highly bureaucratic
body comprising multiple arms. Each of the intermediaries apparently creates supported partner-
ships with different entities within the MOE. The outcome of this situation is the high level of
discrepancy and inconsistency in the MOE’s policy and funding, with each of the intermediaries
funded offering different agendas and means to promote entrepreneurship in schools. Such varia-
bility and diversity within the system is not necessarily a bad thing, but absent any clear policy or
supervision procedures, such a process may yield outcomes that are totally different from the
declared goals. For example, such a system fosters inequality and allows the service performed and
led by the intermediaries to be made available only to certain schools in particular contexts.
Yemini: Conceptualizing the role of nonprofit intermediaries 11

Problematizing the contemporary discourse on school entrepreneurship

Indeed, entrepreneurship and agency as founding values have been instilled into the education
system in Israel in the last few years, and discussion of the need to promote the agency, autonomy,
and the individual spirit of the school staff is not new to the Israeli system. Public committees to
promote entrepreneurship operated as early as 1971 (Yemini and Sagie, 2017). What is especially
interesting in the current discourse is its basis in three profound paradoxes that fuel it.
The first paradox refers to the aim and essence of entrepreneurship. Despite the growing interest
in the phenomenon of entrepreneurship in education, the lack of a clear conceptual understanding
of this phenomenon among scholars, policy-makers, and educators challenges implementation of
entrepreneurial changes in the educational system and the development of a critical discourse. As
I found previously within the discourse of policymakers (Yemini and Sagie, 2017), the interviews
with intermediaries’ representatives revealed disagreement regarding the definition of entrepre-
neurship in education. Nevertheless, most of the informants shared in common an overall positive
reference to entrepreneurship in education, even considering it a necessity. In the current study, I
found also among the intermediaries the need for entrepreneurship to be explained by two contra-
dicting rationales.
On one hand, the justification for promoting entrepreneurship among school staff was found be
perceived as an emotional, almost spiritual issue, connected to self-development and to feeling
good about “the most demanding job on the planet” (Intermediary A). This discourse was also
dominant among several other interviewees. For example, the representative of Intermediary E
explained: “Our approach is to be connected to the teachers. We want the teachers to flourish, to
pursue their dreams . . . we are just there to enable that.” The definitions such interviewees offered
regarding entrepreneurship in education took an emotional turn, referring to something obscure
and intuitive that focuses on abstract notions such as “passion” and “energy” (Intermediary A) and
metaphors such as a “spark in the eyes” (Intermediary E).
On the other hand, some interviewees rationalized the discourse of entrepreneurship as a mere
policy-borrowing issue, whereby values and ways of action that were found to be effective in
the business sector are transmitted to the tired, bureaucratic public sector and in particular to the
education system. Those taking this approach seek to promote entrepreneurship to improve the
education system and to link the entrepreneurial actions (such as proactivity and risk-taking) to
school outcomes. For example, Intermediary C’s representative explained:

There seems to be a gap between the business arena where entrepreneurship takes place, bringing
innovation and pushing the economy forward, and the public sector – especially education – where
nothing is happening. We want to bring that [agency] to the public sector, to schools.

All intermediaries acted to promote and to develop school entrepreneurship. All of them, as I
showed earlier, relied on governmental funding and resources. Nevertheless, they approach the
field with contradicting rationales, namely emotionally based discourse implying adding value to
the teachers’ and schools’ wellbeing versus business type logic of proven solutions that are being
borrowed from the business sector. This logic many times accuses the teachers for the failure of the
education system, suggesting a reform by external parties as a solution to such failure (Lubienski,
2003). Those two contradicting logics were not exclusive among different intermediaries and many
times appeared together, interwoven one in other. For example, Intermediary F’s CEO claimed:
“We are working here to allow teachers to express themselves, their wishes and desires . . . we are
12 Educational Management Administration & Leadership XX(X)

very much like a business hub. We own the know-how in all those fields and we can scale-up their
innovation.” This paradox between the desired emotional experience on one hand and stable
‘evidence-based’ policy borrowing underlies the urge to promote entrepreneurship at schools. The
interviewees used the interplay between these narratives to support this agenda.
The second paradox that was revealed involves the intermediaries’ desire to empower teachers
and principals – enabling the existing workforce to take their schools’ destiny into their own hands
and to improve the system from within – while nevertheless maintaining ownership themselves as
external organizations over that agency in the system. All the intermediaries claimed that they
empower teachers and the school principals to develop school entrepreneurship, but in fact the
reforms and innovations are usually developed in accordance with the intermediaries’ terms and
needs, thus reducing the power of the teachers and the school staff in the system. For example,
Intermediary A’s representative said: “I have no agenda . . . I want the school principal to develop
[his/her] own agenda, we are there only to allow him/her to succeed in implementing it.” The
interviewees tended to overlook this paradox; most of them discussed teachers’ agency in terms
that indirectly reveal how it is being channeled by the agency of intermediaries themselves. The
paradox is thus between the idea of school staffs’ internal and autonomic agency versus heavy
reliance on intermediaries to pursue and materialize such agency.
The third paradox relates to the intermediaries’ mode of action. The intermediaries promote
entrepreneurship as a counter-action contrasting with top-down governmental reforms, which none
of the interviewees claimed to believe in. Nevertheless, all intermediaries aim to collaborate with
the state, to become funded by the government, and to form a sustainable and stable partnership
that will foster those reforms (of the type their representatives claim not to believe in). Entrepre-
neurship which traditionally is believed to be a bottom-up alternative to the existent regime, in this
case is found to be viable only when heavily supported by the same regime. Seemingly in this case,
the intermediaries (all of which are NGOs) chose the collaborative mode of action (as per Eden,
2012), creating a realm whereby each party depends on the other; yet they consider themselves
engaged in revolutionary action that actually resists the current status quo. They explain their
choice to work for and with the government as a strategic one that allows them to achieve their
goals more easily and fosters the entrepreneurship discourse within the education system. It might
be that in case of intermediaries and NGOs who aim to work in schools on more politicized issues,
especially burnable in a conflict-ridden society such as the Israeli one, they would encounter direct
MOE opposition and will not be able to create partnerships with the government (Yemini, Cegla
and Sagie, 2017). In this case, since entrepreneurship might be perceived as neutral politically,
collaboration with the MOE at different levels flourishes.

Conclusions
Clearly, the discourse about entrepreneurship is expanding in education systems worldwide. Yet
despite this mounting discourse, only minimal scholarly attention has been paid to the role of
intermediary organizations that aim to promote entrepreneurship in education systems, and little is
known about the means, rationales, and attitudes of such actions in public education. This study
intends to address this lacuna by presenting an analysis of interviews with CEOs and management
teams of nine major intermediaries working within the Israeli education system, all aiming to
promote entrepreneurship and agency “from within”. This study, like other strategic case studies, is
limited in its potential for generalization. Nonetheless, this study raises a number of issues and
questions that education professionals and policy-makers might productively engage with in the
Yemini: Conceptualizing the role of nonprofit intermediaries 13

contemporary environment in which the importance of entrepreneurship is constantly increasing

and the role of external agencies in education is growing (Trujillo, 2014).
In particular, I show how school entrepreneurship is conceptualized in the interplay between
three different paradoxes: neoliberal business-like measures versus emotional advancements;
internal empowerment as a stated goal that is promoted in practice by external agents; and
skepticism regarding top-down entrepreneurship-promoting policies vis-à-vis a method of action
that involves precisely the same policies. Moreover, I show how inequality may be reproduced and
reinforced – usually unintentionally – through the mode of action that these intermediaries adopt.
Thus, a certain level of hypocrisy can be detected in the discourse of the intermediaries’ repre-
sentatives: they refer to neoliberalism and privatization as the consequences of actions of other
actors, while claiming that their own actions are natural extensions of the public system, that they
are helping the system help itself; yet in their choice on working only in schools with a certain
capacity, they actually act to preserve or even intensify systemic inequalities. While participation
at most of those programs grants certain resources and capabilities to schools through channeling
of public funding, this participation is conditioned and defined by the intermediaries according to
their own context-specific agenda.
The global policyscape of neoliberal business-like policy advocacy is what makes the discourse
surrounding entrepreneurship in education viable (Carney, 2009). While school entrepreneurship
and agency comprise powerful tools to transform and improve schools, I show how intermediaries’
mitigation of such agency somewhat removes it from the schools to these external agents, enabling
private agendas, conflicting values, and systemic inequality to penetrate public education.

Acknowledgements
The author would like to thank Ms. Yana Nacht for her assistance in data collection.

Author’s note
I use pseudonyms (letters) to protect confidentiality of all participants, programs, and the intermediary
agencies.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publi-
cation of this article.

Funding
The author received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Notes
1. Honig defines intermediaries as “Organizations that occupy the space in between at least two other parties.
Intermediary organizations primarily function to mediate or to manage change in both those parties.
Intermediary organizations operate independently of these two parties and provide distinct value beyond
what the parties alone would be able to develop or to amass by themselves. At the same time, intermediary
organizations depend on those parties to perform their essential functions” (Honig, 2004: 67). I follow this
definition and address the organizations that foster entrepreneurship and agency in schools as ‘intermedi-
ary organizations.’
14 Educational Management Administration & Leadership XX(X)

2. This phenomenon spread in conjunction with a parallel flourishing of non-governmental organization-led

programs targeted at teaching pupils about entrepreneurship (a very interesting issue that is not addressed
directly in this study).

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Author biography
Dr. Miri Yemini is a Lecturer at Tel Aviv University and Honorary Visiting Lecturer at UCL,
Institute of Education. Her research interests include education policy and external involvement in
public education systems.