General management was at first dominated by the ideas of ‘scientific’ management, which were developed in the first half of this century by theorists such as Taylor (1911) and Fayol (1949). The emphasis was on rationality and control rather than creativity an innovation (Crawford, M, 2003: 64). This is different to the recent Mintzberg management developed a model which consisted of concentric circles or levels since the manager works from the inside out. There are three levels through which management activity can take place – information, people and action. He suggested five roles communicating, controlling, leading, linking and doing – that overlap on to these three circles or levels.
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Information Level – communicating is concerned with the flow of information and the sharing of it, while controlling is using information to control people’s work, either through structures directives or formal systems.
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People Level – leading is encouraging people inside the workplace to take effective action, whether by focusing on the individual, the team or the whole organisation. Linking, on the other hand, relates to the external environment and gaining useful contacts to help drive external impact, or to linking
externally to gain information that is important to the workplace.
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Action Level- doing relates to the taking of action more or less directly. Taking control in crisis would be an extreme example of this.
(Crawford, M, 2003: 66-67)
The levels shown above is a good representation of modern management that includes leadership, that can be representative of a good head teacher.
Flexibility
At a first look people might not think that education adopt a flexible working approach, as they think of a school as may be the head, teachers and the pupils, all working form approximately 9 till 4 in term times. But schools must adopt some flexible approaches, for example if a teacher is off sick, do they pull another one out of the cupboard or do they use a agency to hire in peripheral workers, administration staff behind the scenes, may not be able to work full time so the use of job sharing can come in very useful here.
In education, flexible working arrangements are being developed at some further and higher education institutions (Internet Ref 3).
The University of Southampton currently has the following flexible working practices available to staff:
- Increased opportunities for staff to integrate their working responsibilities with family and domestic responsibilities
- Variation in starting and finishing times to avoid rush-hour traffic
- Provision of better cover for work peaks and troughs
- Women returning from maternity leave
- Staff wishing to take a part-time course
- Staff approaching retirement
- To care for (a) pre-school child(ren)
- To Care for an elderly relative
- During a serious illness of child or close relative
- To study for further qualifications
- To undertake a course of part-time study
- To care for an elderly relative or dependent
- On return from maternity leave or a career break for child care purposes
- To provide care during illness of a child or close relative or partner
Above taken from the University of Southampton Human Resources Department (Internet Ref 4)
The University of Southampton have defiantly shown a wide variety of flexible working options that enables staff to be able to work more effectively with their personal lives. The approaches adopted by the University look very promising, these haven’t just been adopted in the large Universities, schools have also taken on board.
Teachers and head teachers, with experience of part-time or jobsharing, agree that it can work well for schools and the children and has helped to keep staff in the profession that would have otherwise have left. Schools already using more flexible working patterns, including part-time and job share teachers, are reaping the benefits. Some 75% of teachers who are managing flexible teachers, rated them as performing equally, or better than, their full-time colleagues (Internet Ref 9). The benefits seem to work very well according to this quote from Flexecutive Education UK. Jobsharing in education is seen to be a good way for teachers to bounce ideas off their jobshare partners, as well as to ensure teachers are able to teach to their strengths (Internet Ref 9).
The majority of those questioned (84%) see the benefit to the education sector of flexible working as attracting teachers back to the profession. 86% of respondents believe that greater flexibility in schools will help to retain experienced teachers, who would otherwise leave the school and more damagingly, the profession. In addition, two-thirds of those surveyed felt that flexible work would help teachers ease into retirement, with 70% believing that part-time teaching is as suitable for men as it is for women (Internet Ref 9).
The Department for Education and Skills, allow schools flexibility over some elements of teachers’ pay and conditions, for example to provide even greater recruitment and retention incentives, or to allow schools to agree with their staff a more flexible working day or year return for some reward (Internet Ref 6).
With these benefits and critical factors for success, why is part-time and jobsharing not widely embraced in schools as much as seen in the example of Universities? Head teachers cite the barriers as increased management responsibility, difficulty in timetabling and incremental costs. The research showed that, whilst still sources of concern, the extent of these issues in reality are not reported as strongly by those who have had direct experience of managing part-time and flexible workers as head teachers more generally who have less experience.
According to Teacher Net, supply teachers perform an important role in schools; supply teachers are employed as short term or temporary teachers in schools; usually where vacancies or staff illness means that a replacement teacher needs to be found (Internet Ref 10). These are peripheral workers as they are employed from outside agencies, so they could be considered as another form of flexible working in order to maintain the required number of teachers in school without having to have more teachers sided to a permanent contract.
Globalisation
A Global Organisation according to Rollinson (2005:667), aims to produce standardised products that can be easily adapted to suit the requirements of a wide range of different markets. If you were to adapt this statement to suit the purpose of education, then the products could be replaced by teaching methods and change markets to pupils and staff. Therefore if business statements are slightly adapted they can work well with reference to Education, as within UK institutes there is a vast range of culture.
Organisations can be said to consist of four independent elements, technology, structure, people and culture (or character) (Everard et al, 2004: 156-157). Globalisation is closely linked as you can see with culture, culture (or character) of the organisation 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 (Everard et al, 2004: 157). Culture and Globalisation also take into consideration diversity when looking at groups. Diversity can take many forms, including differences in race, ethnic identity, age, gender, education, socioeconomic level, and sexual orientation (Yukl, Gary, 2002: 418).
It’s not just in the UK were there are cross cultural differences in schools. A US School has taken the step towards effective cross cultural communication within the community. The Rowland Unified School District launched a trilingual Web site Thursday designed to break down language barriers and provide parents with important information (Internet Ref 8). This is a good use of technology to breakdown cross cultural barriers within schools.
People of Jewish faith in Britain, number around three hundred thousand, however, they have their own Jewish schools where, in addition to teaching their own faith they deliver, the highest standards of education. The students of their schools go on to make a powerful contribution to economic and political life of British Society (Internet Ref 11). This is an example a non traditional British religion has globalised, to whereby the school is orientated around the pupils of that religion, this proves how the globalisation of a religion can have effects on Education within the UK. It is not just Jewish schools that have developed in the UK, there are many different religious and foreign culture based schools, for example the Islamia School is probably the best known Muslim school in Britain (Internet Ref 12) and the Cambridge Chinese School that was established in 1985(Internet Ref 13).
All local authority plans and statutory plans specifically reflect the Council’s commitment to promoting choice and diversity. The Education Development Plan 2002-2007 identifies detailed strategies to support schools to ensure the inclusion of all learners.
(Internet Ref 7)
This shows that these schools are not just part of their communities but they are acknowledged by the local authorities.
Commitment theory psychological contracts
Legally the relationship between employer and employee is expressed in the contract of employment (Rollinson, D, 2005:59). Schein (1980) draws attention to the idea that in the employment relationship there are really three types of contract. The formal contract largely reflects the economic aspects of the exchange and is normally embraced by the legal conception of a contract of employment. In addition there is always an informal contract, some of the components of which are derived from wider social norms about how people should treat each other, while others are more specific to particular organisation. The third type of contract, the psychological contract, has contents that are seldom, if ever, explicitly stated. These largely consist of the unvoiced expectations and obligations of the parties, neither of whom could be consciously aware of their expectations until they are not met. Therefore the psychological contract reflects intangible needs, wants and expectations that vary widely. Finally, the psychological contract goes to the very heart of the exchange be expressing emotional aspects of the relationship, and if either organisation or employee views the psychological contract as unacceptable, the exchange is likely to seen as unequal and weighted in favour of the other party (Rollinson, D, 2005:59-60).
Unfortunately it is too difficult to get hold of a teachers contract but it doesn’t leave little to the imagination what extra work the teachers do that isn’t in the contract and they haven’t been told they have to do, they just do it. For example leaving the classroom at the sound of the end of day bell and been first out of the school grounds, even though the teachers are paid extra hours for preparation and marking, it may not mean that they have to do it in school or have to stay till after all the children have left. But most teachers will stay behind make sure all the children leave safely and that the classroom is left in a clean and orderly state. Some teachers go beyond the call of duty and stay to coach or assist in after school clubs; this could be down to the motivation of the teacher.
‘Motivation’ can be defined as ‘getting results through people’ or ‘getting the best out of people’. The second definition is slightly preferable, since ‘the best’ which people can offer is not necessarily synonymous with ‘the results’ which we might initially want from them, through it should be in line with the overall goals and ethos of the school or college (Everard et al 2004:25).
The term commitment describes an out come in which the target person internally agrees with decision or request from the agent and makes a great effort to carry out the request or implement the decision effectively. For a complex, difficult task, commitment is usually the most successful outcome form the perspective of the agent who makes an influence attempt (Yukl, Gary, 2002:143). This could be the teacher been told that they are to run after school club as one of their roles, but the effort that they put in is the level of commitment that they apply, if a teacher is told to run the year 7 girls football team and they sit and watch them kick the ball about while marking homework, then this would be a low commitment level. But if the teacher would get changed into suitable sports gear and get out there and attempt to help coach the team then I would consider this as a high level of commitment, this all comes down to the level of motivation that the teachers have so if they are very de-motivated they my have a low level of commitment to a psychological contract.
Walton (1985) argues that a commitment-based strategy is consistent with recognition of employees as ‘stakeholders’ in an organisation and leads to higher levels of performance. He concludes that organisations must develop cultures of commitment if they are to remain competitive, to meet customer expectations with respect to quality, delivery and responsive to market changes.
From the information presented I am able to conclude that education has adopted many business like changes in the four areas discussed, management versus leadership, flexibility, globalisation and commitment theories of psychological contracts. A balance between management and leadership has been successfully found to the point were a head can still be seen as a leader to pupils and staff and still manage the business side of the school. Flexible working options have been adopted in some schools and universities as shown but are still not accepted by some, who have not yet seen the complete benefits. There was also a larger than expected amount of options for flexible working, including career breaks that enable staff to return therefore keeping good staff that just need a break and not having to retrain new temporary staff. In terms of globalisation, education isn’t like a company that might offer a product, but it was noticed that the number of diversity and cross cultural issues were tackled in schools, and also international schools that adopted there own culture in the UK. This is useful for families that may travel here for a few years on business, but don’t plan on staying or who have problems in normal school with the cross culture. Final the commitment theories of psychological contracts, we have seen how many tasks and roles that teachers undertake that they might not have too but they do it as the psychologically see it as part of their job and the levels of motivation that are need to implement these tasks.
References
Books
BENNETT, N , CRAWFORD, M & CARTWRIGHT, M,. 2003. Effective Educational Leadership. SAGE Publications Company: London
EVERARD, MORRIS & WILSON,. 2004. 4th Ed. Effective School Management. SAGE Publications Company: London
ROLLINSON, DEREK,. 2005, 3rd Ed. Organisational Behaviour and Analysis: An Integrated Approach. FT Prentice Hall: Essex
SCHEIN, E H,. 1980, 3rd Ed. Organisational Psychology. Prentice Hall: Englewood Cliffs, NJ
YUKL, GARY,. 2002, 5th Ed. Leadership in Organizations. Prentice Hall international: New Jersey
Articles
BARON, A,. 1995. Going public with studies on culture management. Personal Management, 1(19), 60
WALTON, R E,.1985, From control to commitment in the workplace. Harvard Business Review, March –April, pp. 7-84
Websites
Internet Ref 1
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Lecture Notes
Frances Rothwell, Semester 1 Year 3, Managing Organisational Change
