This book is intended for students, leaders and managers who wish to explore the personal relevance and conceptual bases of educational leadership and organizational management and to develop their expertise in this field. It is a book written for both scholars and practitioners. The general public will also appreciate the accessible language in…

It is well documented that the application of business models to the higher education sector has precipitated a managerialistic approach to organisational structures (Preston, 2001). Less well documented is the impact of this business ideal on the student-teacher encounter. It is argued that this age-old relation is now being configured…

There is little doubt about it: Colleges and universities are reluctant to change. They are large and diffuse organizations with few clear lines of control. Yet the external environment in which colleges and universities operate is changing quickly. The changes make it essential for institutions to implement at least some aspects of strategic…

Summarizes the "Theory Z" characteristics of supervisors whereby they serve as coordinators rather than as buffers or information blocks. (MLF)

This paper proposes a methodology for selecting organizational decision strategies, including a new "heuristic" decision-making model. References included. (MD)

Like the bestselling first edition, this introductory textbook succinctly presents concepts and theories of educational leadership and organizational behavior and immediately applies them to problems of practice. It includes practical case studies, real-world scenarios and analyses, reflection questions, and straightforward explanations of…

Organizational patterns can be examined from two major perspectives. The formal structure of an organization consists of those relationships among the organizational components that are the result of deliberate planning. This formal structure tends to be static and is the primary focus of management theory. The informal structure of an…

Clarifies the meaning of organizational decline by delimiting it from related constructs (turbulence, stagnation, and environmental decline). Investigates certain organizational attributes associated with turbulence and decline in 334 higher education institutions over a six-year period. Results suggest that organizational attributes associated…

Organizational theorists have been constrained by the overuse of dichotomies. Complex social phenomena cannot adequately be represented through these simplifications of reality. This propensity of theorists to dichotomize is investigated and countered by the advocacy of disciplined naivete in the study of educational organizations. (MLF)

Schools are managed with the wrong organizational model in mind. They are unique and cannot be governed by conventional management theory. This article describes schools as loosely coupled systems and describes what school administrators should be doing to be effective in such a situation. (Author/WD)

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to set out an argument for a way to design, implement and manage IS with an emphasis on first, the learning that can be created through undertaking the approach, and second, the learning that may be created through using the IS that was implemented. The paper proposes joining two areas of research namely,…

While career movement in bureaucratic organizations ideally occurs along formally defined job ladders, scholars recognize that actual career trajectories often proceed quite differently. Analyzing vacancy filling in four federal government bureaus, this paper argues that career paths are dependent on certain occupational and organizational…

The ideology of community college leadership dominant in the professional literature is examined using discourse analysis techniques. It is concluded that strong, often militaristic description perpetuates an image of leadership that is exclusionary, narrow, and inappropriate for community colleges, which serve diverse constituencies. Development…

Although scholars have developed and applied various explicit conceptualizations of leadership to the study of educational administration, far less attention has been given to implicit or informal conceptions of leadership. Some recent studies claim that leadership impact on organizational performance is minimal or illusory; others argue that more…

Defines the concept of the synergistic model of organizational structure. The primary components of the model are cooperative action and job integration, which have as a direct result the increased energy in staff members using the model. (MD)