Korean Educational Development Institute(KEDI)

This paper analyzes the policy process within the creation of the Open Recruitment System of Principals (ORSP) in Korea, considering the policy actors and the policy environment. As a result, the national policy environment and external elements such as social, economic, and political change resulted in a radical policy initiative. The policy process of the ORSP showed dynamic interactions among policy actors over time, and policy actors interacted with the national policy environment in the process. However, the ORSP process has been short of deep consideration and discourse respecting different perspectives and interests of other stakeholders in policy making. There could be several reasons for this: (1) with a closed policymaking environment sponsored by the government, formal players demonstrated a strong will to introduce and implement the ORSP, forcing stakeholders to accept the ORSP this has served as a powerful policy trajectory as well as the ethical framework in the policy discourse (2) the government compromised politically with unofficial actors, making accommodations such as a public hearing regulated by the Administrative Procedure Act and (3) most interest groups, either opposing or proponent groups, did not compromise but competed with other policy actors only for their own interests in the policy process of the ORSP.