Paradigms and Promises

Introduction:

The science of administration demonstrates an insensitivity to culture and politics and has really been a science of management.

School is  a living statement of culture and values that forms a part of the consciousness of every social member.

Reports and studies point to the alarming inadequacies of our educational system.

Educational and other administrators are distinguished by their commitment to practice.

Human action occurs in a historical context that is ever being formed anew.

We use theory to mean a way of seeing a perspective on the world.  When we refer to practice we mean the activities and actions of the theoretician.

Administrators who have more ways of seeing -- more theories -- accessible to them also have more available options and choices for practical action.

A critical theory encourages us to view events in historical perspective, to doubt the validity of received truth and to continue our search for more adequate solutions to our problems.

The management of small groups (implementation of strategies designed to improve group cohesion of group productivity) deals with managerial functions, NOT leadership.

Educational systems are fundamentally different from business enterprises.

Administration is leadership - the communication of possibilities -- Leadership in communicating a vision and an empowerment of others.

Critical Reflections on the History of Administrative Theory:

Administration depended on a theoretical framework informed largely by a version of science derived from the tenets of logical positivism.

Logical positivism asserted that only scientific verifiable knowledge was true knowledge.

The only system that could provide true, verifiable knowledge was science.  Administrative theory was built on this foundation and remains the dominant way of approaching administration today.

Administration is not just a technical skill.  It is a way of ordering the world according to a set of values and beliefs.  Administration exists within various contexts:  the managerial context (running the organization), the political context (the distribution and acquisition of resources), the leadership context (development and change of the institution and people within it), and the social and cultural context (the nature of administration and the institution within our social and cultural systems).

The Development of Theory

Scientific Management:

Frederick Winslow Taylor is considered to be the father of scientific management which is a body of concepts that continues to structure the field of administration.

Taylorism is a science of management informed by hard data and real facts.  Taylor claimed that every job has one best way of being accomplished.

The role of management lay in researching the most efficient way of doing tasks and providing the most minute and detailed training so that workers had no latitude in their chores.

Increased efficiency would lead to higher production, more profits, and consequently, the argument went, higher salaries for workers.

Taylor suggested scientific management rested on thirteen major principles.  These are condensed into five major elements:

1. Time and motion study
2. The standardization of the job
3. The setting of particular tasks to be itemized, accomplished, and recorded during the day
4. The development of "functional foremanship"
5. The addition of planning departments to analyze jobs in the organization and develop them in conformity to the principles of scientific management

Taylorism remains the foundation for much of modern management theory and practice.

What tabor once owned (skills, techniques, knowledge) became a management possession.

The Human Relations Movement:

This movement was intended to extend Taylor's work by investigating industrial conditions that led to increased production.  Studies dealt with the illumination provided for workers.

Researchers concluded the fact of being the subject of attention by researchers and social relation that emerged among the test group influenced the output of the group.

The Hawthorne research argued that a simple economic approach to work was inadequate.

The human relations movement stressed the importance of informal organization, the cultural system among the organization, and the importance of the human factor in organizations.

Contemporary Social Science Accounts:

Chester Barnard

Barnard examined the total organization as a complex system made up of interdependent parts.

An organization comes into being when:

1. there are persons able to communicate with each other
2. who are willing to contribute action
3. to accomplish a common purpose

The elements of an organization:

1. communication
2. willingness to serve
3. common purpose

Barnard's work contains the seeds of the current emphasis on organizational culture

Herbert Simon

Simon's Administrative Behavior critiqued the previous behaviorally based, scientific description of organization.

Simon's influence on the field is summarized in these statements:

• Administration can be a science equivalent to any natural science.
• An administrative science is based in logical positivism.
• An administrative science is value free and objective.
• An administrative science is concerned with the study of correct decisions and the process of making correct decisions.
• For an administrative science, rationality is defined as the selection of means toward achieving ends.
• The ends to be achieved are not a matter of concern for the administrative scientist but are set by policy-making bodies

Current Approaches

Contemporary approaches to educational administration are a composite of Taylorism, human relations, and modern social science perspectives.

By the late 1950s research in educational administration became less oriented to solving the day-to-day problems than accumulating data that would lead to the development of explanative theories of administration.

Core ideas at the foundation of the theory movement:

1. Statements about what administrators and organizations should do cannot be encompassed in science or theory.
2. Scientific theories treat phenomena as they are.
3. Effective research has its origins in theory and is guided by theory.
4. Hypothetico-deductive systems are the best exemplars of theory.
5. The use of the social sciences is essential in theory development and training.
6. Administration is best viewed as a generic concept applicable to all types of organization.

In abstracting and attempting to develop the equivalent of a social physics, the theory movement failed to ask why, what, and who.

Kuhn's research suggested that science is governed by paradigms shared by a community of researchers.

Dr. Cline's division of organizational theory:

1. Orthodox Theory (classicism)
2. Neo orthodox thought (Simon, Barnard, ...)
3. Non orthodox view of organizational studies (Carol White(?), Morgan)

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New Approaches to Educational Administration.  Copyright 1986 by William Foster All Rights Reserved.