Effective School Management

The humanistic model
This model is characterized by respect for the individual and other human
values, job breadth, consultation, consensus, decentralization, loose project
organization, flexible procedures, multidirectional communication,
management by objectives and a participative approach. It comes closer to
describing how the best companies are organized and it is a good deal more
attractive to schools. However, without care, it tends to lead people to
undervalue the achievement of the tasks of the organization and thereby to
detract from the organization’s effectiveness in achieving its aims. It can also
give managers a sense of impotence and loss of control.
Nevertheless, a humanistic model has played a key part in the develop-
ment of thought about organizations, counteracting the rational thinking of
the classical school. Incidentally, the term ‘rational’ is usually misused in the
literature on organizations: it actually means sensible, logical and reasonable.
However, it has come to have a narrow meaning which excludes the messy,
human stuff. Yet there is a great deal of rationality in the humanistic model: it
takes human behaviour into full account, by postulating that human beings
act rationally towards situations as they perceive them. The trick is to find out
how they perceive them, at the level of emotions as well as intellect; then you
can predict how they will respond.
The systems model
This model has been popular in industry for the last few decades and is