1.4 Theories of educational management  (Page 7/29)

Organizations with large numbers of professional staff tend to exhibit signs of tension between theconflicting demands of professionalism and the hierarchy. Formal models assume that leaders, because they are appointed on merit,have the competence to issue appropriate instructions to subordinates. Professional organizations have a different ethoswith expertise distributed widely within the institution. This may come into conflict with professional authority.

5.Formal approaches are based on the implicit assumption that organizations are relatively stable. Individualsmay come and go but they slot into predetermined positions in a static structure.“Organisations operating in simpler and more stable environments are likely to employ less complex and morecentralised structures, with authority, rules and policies as the primary vehicles for co-ordinating the work”(Bolman&Deal, 1997, p. 77).

Assumptions of stability are unrealistic in contemporary schools. March and Olsen (1976, p.21) are right toclaim that“Individuals find themselves in a more complex, less stable and less understood world than that described by standardtheories of organisational choice.”

Are formal models still valid?

These criticisms of formal models suggest that they have serious limitations. The dominance of the hierarchy iscompromised by the expertise possessed by professional staff. The supposed rationality of the decision-making process requiresmodification to allow for the pace and complexity of change. The concept of organizational goals is challenged by those who point tothe existence of multiple objectives in education and the possible conflict between goals held at individual, departmental andinstitutional levels.“Rationalistic-bureaucratic notions . . . have largely proven to be sterile and to have little application toadministrative practice in the“real world”(Owens&Shakeshaft, 1992, p. 4)

Despite these limitations, it would be inappropriate to dismiss formal approaches as irrelevant to schoolsand colleges. The other models discussed in this chapter were all developed as a reaction to the perceived weaknesses of formaltheories. However, these alternative perspectives have not succeeded in dislodging the formal models, which remain valid aspartial descriptions of organization and management in education. Owens and Shakeshaft (1992)refer to a reduction of confidence inbureaucratic models, and a“paradigm shift”to a more sophisticated analysis, but formal models still have much to contribute to ourunderstanding of schools as organisations.

Collegial Models

Central features of collegial models

Collegial models include all those theories that emphasize that power and decision-making should be sharedamong some or all members of the organization (Bush, 2003):

Collegial models assume that organizations determine policy and make decisions through a process of discussionleading to consensus. Power is shared among some or all members of the organization who are thought to have a shared understandingabout the aims of the institution. (p. 64)