Effective School Management

The decision model
This model, which depicts organizations as an assembly of elements for taking
decisions of varying levels of importance, has had its exponents in a number
of firms, such as the Glacier Metal Company. It is not thought to offer much to
schools, except that it does throw light on the different purposes of meetings
and conferences. These are dealt with in Part I of this book.
The contingency model
The central idea in the contingency theory is that organizations are, and should
be, different both from one another and from part to part. The appropriate
structure, management style, etc., are contingent upon what the organization
(or part of it) is there to do. There is no perfect organizational structure: the
choice of structure depends on which set of problems you prefer to live with.
For example, take the ‘generalist–specialist’ argument: is it better to let people
specialize deeply in their subject so that they achieve mastery over it, or should
one encourage the ‘jack of all trades’ who can turn his or her hand to anything?
The compartmentalization of secondary schools by subject discipline may have
contributed to academic excellence, but how effective is it in developing the
whole person?
Contingency theory accepts that, left to themselves, organizations,
departments and individuals tend towards specialization, carving out a more
and more distinctive niche for themselves. In other words, the units tend to
get more and more differentiated from one another, as the expertise builds up
and becomes increasingly specialized. If this process continues, each unit
begins to regard its own excellence as an end in itself, divorced from the
interests of the organization, forgetting that the unit was set up in the first
place to help the whole organization pursue common aims. People then
complain that the organization is becoming fragmented, that departments
are drifting apart, that empire-building is taking place, that overall objectives
are obscured, that there is too much upward delegation and that they are
becoming frustrated. The head of the organization feels that he or she is
dealing with a set of medieval barons in charge of their various departments.
Integration is probably a key issue in many secondary schools, because of
the high commitment of most teachers towards their subject disciplines. It
also becomes more important under conditions of resource constraint, as a
means of making the whole more than the sum of the parts. Somehow
departments and staff have to enhance one another’s contributions to the
achievement of the main purpose of the school.
Effective integration calls for careful attention to relationships, a high
degree of mutual trust, candour and respect, and an insight into
organizational behaviour and complexities. Conflict has to be confronted and
managed constructively: i.e. instead of being avoided altogether, smoothed
over or resolved by the exercise of crude power, it is treated as a matter

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EFFECTIVE SCHOOL MANAGEMENT
susceptible to a systematic problem-solving approach (Chapter 7). If this
fails, there are other devices that can be used to secure a constructive
resolution:
(1) Each unit or individual can report to a manager (e.g. a deputy head) who
is made accountable for ‘synergizing’ the two roles (bringing them
together so that the sum is greater than the parts).
(2) A third unit or individual (e.g. a head of year), seen by the other two as
understanding their roles and as standing midway between them, is
interposed to act as intermediary.
(3) Some kind of training or ‘image exchange’ can be undertaken to help
each unit understand more accurately why the other unit behaves as it
does (see Exercise 6, p. 114).
(4) Interdepartmental groups or task forces, with members selected from the
two departments, can be formed on a temporary or permanent basis to
resolve issues between the two departments.
However, rather than rely solely on formal mechanisms for cross-linking
departments, the best organizations encourage an informal approach. Peters
and Waterman (1995, p. 117) comment on this as follows: ‘All of them [previous
commentators on excellence] fall far, far short of depicting the richness, the
variety of linkages that we observed in the excellent companies.’
PERSONAL APPLICATION
What problems arise in your school which can be attributed to high differentiation
and low integration? How effective are the integrating mechanisms and lateral
processes? What methods are used to get departments to work synergistically?
What else needs to be done?
ELEMENTS OF ORGANIZATIONS
There is a temptation to think of organizations solely in structural terms – as
in an organization chart. However, organizations can be said to consist of
four interdependent elements, of which structure is only one (Figure 9.7). The
elements are as follows:
Technology. The ‘technology’ of an organization is its processes – in the case
of a school, the process of education and the plant (classrooms, workshops,
gymnasia, whiteboards, etc.) that goes with it.
Structure. An organization’s structure embraces the organization chart, the
committees, the departments, the roles, the hierarchical levels and authority,
the procedures in the staff manual, the timetable, etc.
People.
The people in a school organization are the teachers, their pro-
fessionalism, their knowledge, experience, skills and attitudes; also the pupils
and non-teaching staff.

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Culture. The character (or culture) of the organization covers such intangibles
as its tone, its value system, the standards by which merit is judged, personal
relationships, habits, unwritten rules of conduct and the practice of educational
judgement.
The arrows in the diagram indicate that all the elements interact. The
management of organizations involves not only the management of each of
the elements but also of the balance or harmony between them.
Organization managers are apt to under-rate the importance of character
as a formative influence on the people, the technology and the appropriate
structure, and therefore give too little attention to shaping it. Instead, they
constantly tighten up the structure. Goldsmith and Clutterbuck (1984, p. 162)
show from their study of successful British firms that organizations can and
do change their character radically: attitudes and culture are constantly
evolving. Managers seek to build a unity of perception of what the company
stands for, and culture changes take place, not as a result of edict, but as
people observe behaviour and attitudes at work and assimilate them into
their own way of thinking and doing. They conclude (ibid.): ‘One of the
strengths of many of the company leaders we have featured in this book has
been their ability to adapt their own behaviour to stimulate cultural change.’
Rutter  et al. (1979) showed how the ethos of Inner London Education
Authority schools affected the outcome of the pupils’ education. Indeed, in
few organizations is the influence of ethos or culture on the product greater
than in a school, or its consequences for society more profound. Mant, an