Effective School Management

Figure 9.7
Elements of organizations
The
structure
The
character
The
technology
The
people

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EFFECTIVE SCHOOL MANAGEMENT
experienced management consultant, devotes a whole chapter (‘School for
scoundrels’) to this (Mant, 1983). He writes that the problem about school
goes to its very heart: what’s it for?  The good school keeps asking this
question. If we don’t really know, the school and its functionaries are without
clear authority. The good school is an authority structure rather than a power
system where survival is all.
In too many schools all that children learn is to survive in a naughty world.
They explicitly reject the basis of the school’s authority and the teachers begin
to see schools as anti-educational child-minding institutions, in which the
children’s peer groups determine attitudes for life more effectively than do
the teachers. By contrast, the good schools are sculpted with a respect for the
intrinsic value of ideas and materials and not simply because they will help
you  ‘get on’. With good schools you can almost smell the calm and quiet
purposefulness when you walk in the door. Their heads reflect some higher
purpose than the ‘getting ahead’ mentality. They confront their staff as to
standards, notwithstanding ‘academic freedom’, and are highly intolerant of
the irredeemably incapable teacher.
In a well-known independent school that we visited, a teacher who had
spent much of his career in industry was as critical of the culture of his
present school as Mant is of some state schools. He was shocked by the
school’s organization structure and culture, because they depended so much
on command and the wielding of power. The head exerted more coercive
power than company chairpersons, and this characteristic ran right through
the organization. As a result, the boys, who were given very little respon-
sibility, even as prefects, modelled their view of how organizations are run on
an unrealistic concept. Thus the school was still preparing boys to work in or
manage in organizations in which people did as they were told. What was
needed, the teacher said, was a major cultural shift in the school regime to
prepare boys for entering tomorrow’s real world, in which management is by
consent that is earned. Needless to say, his colleagues thought him eccentric!
Evidently this school was an example of the ‘power’ culture identified as
one of four organizational stereotypes by Harrison (1972) and discussed by
Handy (1993). The others are ‘role’ culture, ‘task’ culture and ‘person’
culture. Power-culture organizations are proud and strong; their managers
are power oriented, politically minded and risk-taking. They put a lot of faith
in the individual manager, and judge by results. They may or may not be
successful: so much depends on the person at the top.
In the task culture, influence is more widely dispersed; individuals
identify with the objectives of the organization; and they often work in
transient teams. It is the culture most in tune with current approaches to
change and adaptation, individual freedom and low status differentials
(Peters and Waterman, 1995). But it is not always the appropriate culture for
the technology of the organization. It would not be appropriate for schools
that see their basic purpose as primarily custodial, for example.

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ORGANIZATIONS
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PERSONAL APPLICATION
How would you characterize the culture of your school? What effect does it have on
the behaviour of the people in it, including the pupils? Does it influence the
educational process? Does the structure reflect it? Are the four elements in harmony,
and consistent with the raison d’être of the school?
INTERLOCKING SYSTEMS
One aspect of systems theory deserving a brief mention is the way in which
systems interlock. The pioneer work of the Tavistock Institute for Human
Relations on organizations (Trist, 1960; Rice, 1971) distinguished between two
systems, the social and the technical, which together constituted the
arrangements for getting tasks performed. We prefer to add a third system,
the economic system, overlapping with the other two as in Figure 9.8. The
idea is to show that where the groups in the social system overlap with the
plant (buildings, etc.) in the technical system, there is work; where the technical
system (say, a factory) overlaps with the economic system, wealth is generated;
and at the remaining interface, between the economic and the social system,
we find reward.
The manager has to operate in all three systems, and solutions to problems
in one of them which ignore the effect on the other two are no solutions at all.
The systems interlock. Failure to recognize this, e.g. trying to save money
without allowing for the effect of this on people’s livelihoods, or settling
disputes by paying people more money without asking where it is to come
from, is simply to transfer the locus of the problem without solving it.
It may be objected that schools are not factories generating wealth by
making goods and therefore this is irrelevant. We do not think so. Although
the bulk of a school’s resources are invested in people, the ‘plant’ is worth a
tidy sum and is costly to maintain. It is important to turn these physical assets
to account as fully and efficiently as possible. A school is of economic value to
the community, too, because it adds economic worth to children by educating
them. Those who see schools simply as drains into which taxpayers’ money
is poured ignore the investment element in such expenditure. Heads,
however, should be very aware of the economic contribution that schools
make to society, albeit indirectly, and should be able to defend their use of
resources within the economic system.
Such an argument becomes more convincing, and applications for funds
become more likely to succeed, if it can be shown that money is being used
cost-effectively, i.e. good value is being obtained from the resources used by
the school. The government has recently been emphasizing this in the ‘best
value’ requirements imposed on local government and the health service,
which aim to direct funds to wherever they are most effectively used. We do
not suggest that the drive to improve the productivity of capital and labour

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EFFECTIVE SCHOOL MANAGEMENT
should be as central a concern as in a factory, but good stewardship in any
organization requires attention to the effectiveness with which all resources
are used.
Stakeholders in the school who are more familiar with the economic
system than are some teachers are more likely to be impressed by pleas for
additional resources if they sense that the school appreciates and cares about
good economic and technical management, as well as good management of
the people in the social system.
We are sometimes shocked by the waste in schools which is caused by
failure to spend money. An antiquated telephone system, a dilapidated
photocopier, operated not by clerical staff but by professionals trained at
great public expense to teach, are not efficient uses of resources. A transfer of
resources from the economic to the technical system can greatly enhance the
effectiveness of resource utilization in the social system. The good steward
(organizational manager) keeps the three systems in balance.
In those schools that have bursars with experience in commerce or
industry, we have encountered particularly good stewardship of resources in
the three interlocking systems, to the benefit of all the organization’s
stakeholders. Not all schools need bursars, but heads without them can
usefully take note of what good bursars do.