Effective School Management

Descriptions
Classical
Behavioural
Systems
Decisions
Technological or
Mechanistic
Organic
Cybernetics
contingency
Bureaucratic
Human relations
Socio-technical
Dominant
Theory X
Theory Y
Situational
Authoritarian
Situational
management
style
Organizational
Formal
Informal
Interlocking
Stratified
Variable
structure
Rigid
Flexible
Long-lived
Transient
Emphasis on
Specialization
Interpersonal
Information flows
Decision bands
Environmental
Rationality
relations
Groups
Authority
Process
technology
Sources of ideas
Army
Psychologists
Instrumentation
Business
Investigational
Mass-production
Sociologists
Control theory
enterprises
field-work
Nervous system
Predominant
British
American
British
British
British
nationality
French
(NTL)
(Tavistock)
American
American
American
Period of main
1900–40
1950–70
1950–72
1960
1950–55
development
Some key names
Urwick
Beckhard
Rice
March
Woodward
Fayol
Argyris
Emery
Cyert
Burns and
Taylor
Likert
Trist
Paterson
Stalker
Blake
Beer
Kepner-
Lawrence and
McGregor
Juran
Tregoe
Lorsch
Crosby
Reddin
Deming
Perrow
Figure 9.5
Classification of schools of thought on organization

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EFFECTIVE SCHOOL MANAGEMENT
Stafford Beer, in his Brain of the Firm (1981), has taken the metaphor of the
living organism a stage further. He has used knowledge of human physi-
ology to develop a theory that has been applied to industrial organizations,
governments and a church. It states that there are five tiers of subsystems in
the human central nervous system, which have their counterparts in all
organizations. The successful survival and development of the human
race are evidence of the effectiveness of such a system. The assumption is
made that organizations can be made more effective by comparing them to
the central nervous system, diagnosing in what respects they fall short and
strengthening the subsystem that seems weakly developed.
Three of the tiers (systems 5, 3 and 1) are easily recognizable (Figure 9.6).
They are associated with the functions of policy-making, managing the
execution of policy and, finally, the actual ‘doing’ operation. In practice, the
‘doing’ can be complex – teachers share pupils, plant and equipment, crises
arise, etc., so there is a cloud of buzzing communication across the ‘doing’
groups: a bit of give and take, borrowing and lending, reciprocal adjustment,
ironing out problems. On the whole this tends to be fairly informal, but it is
nevertheless vital to the smooth operation of the school. Its equivalent in the
human body is the subconscious co-ordination of movement; when the
system fails, this smooth co-ordination is lost.
This system (2 in Figure 9.6), which liaises, harmonizes, smooths and
provides lateral information exchange to avoid imbalance or rocking of the
boat, differs in kind from any of the three main tiers: it has no authority to tell
anyone to do anything. It can, however, feed information upwards to suggest
that plans are impractical and need to be changed.
Someone operating as just plain ‘doing’ often cannot see the need for
liaison, or policy, both of which are apt to seem unnecessarily constraining
because he or she cannot see the whole picture. We are all familiar with the
apparently crass acts of management, yet from the management vantage
point it all seems so obviously sensible. So it is important for organization
managers to develop in staff some understanding of how organizations
work.
Systems 5, 3, 2 and 1 are largely concerned with getting things done now
within the organization. The model needs another function (system 4) which
looks into the outer world and into the future: we need to know the future
trends in pedagogy, educational technology, demography, legislation and so
on. This is not to say that every department needs its own research institute;
but somebody, somewhere, needs to spend some ‘panic-free time’ thinking
about the future. Like the liaison function, it has no authority, except that of
expert knowledge. It influences policy by making proposals for future action.
It does the ‘staff work’ for the policy group. It must be in touch with what is
happening inside as well as outside the organization; indeed, its need for
information is just as vital as its need for panic-free time.
The counterpart of this system in the human body is the five senses which
scan the environment continuously and send messages to the other systems

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about future danger or opportunities, either at conscious ‘policy’ level or at
the unconscious ‘execution’ level, as when we remove a finger from a hot
stove.
Another aspect of the sensing system is the scanning of the internal
environment. We need a system that tells us when we have an abscess in our
Figure 9.6
The systems model (after Beer, 1971)
Adjusting balance of resources
between subsystems
Tying in subsystem
3 information

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gums, by giving us toothache. Organizations likewise need to know where
they hurt. Normally such information comes up through other systems, if the
communication channels are flowing freely, but sometimes it is necessary to
‘poke a thermometer’ or other instrument (an attitude survey, perhaps?) into
the organization from the outside, to sense how it feels in relation to its
environment and its ‘normal state’.
In the model, system 5 – the policy-makers – are shown linked to a larger
organization. The head of a local authority school needs to talk to the LEA,
for example, on school policy. System 5 also has the key function of keeping
the balance between systems 3 and 4. It cannot allow the neglect of scanning
activities by overloading the same people with operational activities.
The theory suggests that all five systems must be present if an
organization is to work. Their form and relative strength will depend on
what the organization is trying to do, on its management style and on its
environment. A one-teacher primary school does not need five people, but to
be successful the one teacher must spend time in all five functions. At the
other end of the scale of complexity, for example in a large comprehensive
school on a divided site, the pattern of Figure 9.6 will be repeated many
times. Thus each subsystem 1 (e.g. the maths department) will itself
contain five subsystems, its subsystem 5 communicating with the larger
organization, i.e. the school’s senior management.
Individuals in such a complex organization may find themselves with a
role in more than one subsystem in different parts of the organization; for
example, a head with teaching duties may operate in a department’s
subsystem 1, and a head of year appointed to a policy-making working party
will be operating in the school’s subsystem 5. It is important to distinguish
between these roles and to know in what capacity one is operating at any
given time.
The model can be used in three main ways. These are to
(1) examine the health or viability of an existing organization;
(2) evaluate proposals for new organization structures; and
(3) clarify the purpose of committees or of roles.
It is not intended as a blueprint for an organization: it is more like a template
to test an organization for fit.
PERSONAL APPLICATION
Apply the model to your school or department. Identify the subsystems in the
organization: of what do they consist? Pay special attention to subsystem 4, because
it is often found to be underdeveloped. Also assess whether vertical communication
links operate as well upwards as downwards. Do you need to improve internal
sensing? Are  any ‘organizational pathologies’ apparent in your school? Which
subsystems most need to be brought into a state of health?

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