Off Script

Human Capital, Scripted Curriculum, and Leadership at the Edge of Control

Abstract

Scripted and highly structured curricula are increasingly implemented as institutional strategies to ensure consistency, scalability, and alignment with organizational goals. From a human capital perspective, such approaches are designed to optimize instructional delivery and workforce effectiveness. However, these same structures may constrain faculty agency, creativity, and professional identity. This article employs currere, as conceptualized by Pinar (1994, 2019), alongside Poetter’s (2025) curriculum fragment methodology, moving through regressive, progressive, analytical, and synthetical moments, tracing how scripted curriculum is remembered, imagined, experienced, and reconstructed into a narrative inquiry of leadership practice to examine the tension between human capital optimization and lived educational experience. This work situates leadership practice within the intersection of institutional strategy and faculty experience. The article explores how scripted curriculum operates as both a tool of organizational alignment and a mechanism of control. Ultimately, the paper argues for a reimagined human capital framework grounded in reflective leadership practice, where structure and agency coexist in generative tension. This study contributes to curriculum theory by extending it into the domain of organizational leadership and human capital strategy, demonstrating how institutional practices function as lived curriculum that shapes professional identity and agency.