Unique characteristics of Educational organization and its commonality with others
Introduction
Organization is defined by different scholars in different ways. For our
consumption we would like to cite the Atchison and Hill, 1978:22) defined as
“Organization is an assemblage of resources particularly human once, that
are arranged and sequenced through technology to achieve an intended
output”. As all organizations have common features, but educational
organizations have some unique characteristics. Therefore, the uniqueness
of educational organization and the common elements of all organizations
are discussed in the following section respectively.
1. Unique characteristics of educational organization and
management
Schools, universities, institutions of adult education and professional training
are different from organizations manufacturing public goods in two senses.
They are providing services and their core activity is educating. Their
peculiarities deriving from these two characteristics determine they way of
management as well.
In most of the countries there are basically three types of educational
organizations:
public institutions (schools and public higher education institutions,
regional training centers),
Commercial organizations (such as limited liability company,
incorporated company),
Non-profit organizations (e.g. foundations).
1.1 Management of Services
Education is a service, therefore to understand the management of
educational organizations one has to be aware of the specialties of the
management of services. The most adequate definition of service is: ”A
service is an activity or performance one offers to another ···
Performance is intangible and it does not entail the ownership of
the resources of the production. Service is a business activity that
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Unique characteristics of Educational organization and its commonality with others
creates value and provides advantages to the customer ··· by
accomplishing the change the client wished.”
Education is a professional service, because it is labor-intensive, interaction
and client-orientation is significant. And it is a mutual service, because it is
not possible without the active cooperation of the client. In the management
of services the priority is the quality perceived by the client. Thus, the
principles of the management of services are the following:
a) Profit is created by the quality perceived by the client, so the
business objective is not external efficiency, productivity or the economies of
scale (in fact, large output – too many students – can be a drawback), but
total efficiency. It is internal efficiency and external efficiency – including for
example customer relations. Due to this, control in services should not focus
only on financial results, but has to take other aspects of organizational
success into consideration. The so called Balanced Scorecard reflects this
attitude. Balanced Scorecard is a performance measurement tool developed
in 1992 by Place Name place Harvard Place Name Business Place Type
School professor Robert S. Kaplan and management consultant David P.
Norton. Kaplan and Norton’s research led them to believe that traditional
financial measures like return on investment, could not provide an accurate
picture of a company’s performance. Balanced Scorecard complements the
financial measures with operational measures on customer satisfaction,
internal processes and the organization’s innovation and improvement
activities. These operational measures are the drivers of future financial
performance.
b) Decision points in the organization have to be close to the client-
organization interfaces. Front staff dealing directly with the clients
(administrators, teachers) must have the authority to make prompt
decisions. Thus, decentralized organizational structures fit better to service
providers than centralized ones. Centralization and decentralization pertain
to the hierarchical level at which decisions are made. Decentralization means
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Unique characteristics of Educational organization and its commonality with others
that the decision authority is pushed downward from the top to lower levels
of the organization.
c) Organizational culture must focus on total efficiency and must
show flexibility in order to mobilize resources for supporting customer
relations. Organizational culture evolves on the norms, values, beliefs,
behavior patterns of the people. Organizational success based on customer
satisfaction must be in the focus of all these in the case of service providers.
d) Quality and performance are less standardized than in industrial
organizations, because individual customers need individual solutions. Thus,
working by guidelines is better than by rigid directives. Consequently, taking
responsibility and making decisions on the part of the employees is more
important than strictly obeying to the protocols. It influences the proper
leadership style as well. The extent of employee participation and
empowerment is the crucial issue in many major leadership models. Kurt
Lewin identified three different styles of leadership: autocratic, democratic
and laissez-faire. Autocratic style leaves little authority to employees, while
democratic involves members in decision-making and laissez-faire leaves
almost everything to them. Rensis Likert distinguishes autocratic,
consultative and participative styles of leadership based on the degree to
which people are involved in the decision making.
Tannenbaum and Schmidt separated five styles of leadership depending on
the involvement and
freedom of employees: telling, selling, consulting, sharing and delegating.
Democratic, participative, delegation-based leadership is proper in
educational organizations where employees are highly educated
professionals.
e) The basis of performance appraisal and compensation must be the
satisfaction of the clients. Performance appraisal is the process of observing
and evaluating an employee’s performance, recording the assessment and
providing feedback to the employee. It plays a major role in accomplishing
organizational goals such as satisfied clients. The term compensation refers
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Unique characteristics of Educational organization and its commonality with others
to monetary payments and goods and commodities used in lieu of money to
reward employees. Pay-for-performance, also called merit-pay or incentive
system ties at least part of the compensation to employee effort and
performance. Thus, it is more suitable to acknowledge and foster good
customer relations than payment based exclusively on the job (like in public
schools or universities).
1.2 Management of Education
Education management has become an independent discipline due to a new
approach: management training can improve the efficiency and quality of
educational organizations. There is a debate whether the management of
educational organizations differs from that of other types of organizations.
There are two approaches. One considers the management of educational
organizations as one field of general management; the other regards it as an
individual discipline.
Theory of common principles: Management has general principles
appropriate in every organization.
Theory of special case: The management of educational organizations
is special enough to train their leaders specifically.
Seven features can be listed that make the management of educational
organizations definitely different from that of others’:
a) Defining the objectives in educational organizations is more difficult
than in business enterprises. Non-profit educational organizations do not
have the clear objectives of the commercial organizations: maximizing
output and profit. Plus, they are expected to develop individual skills, while
they should educate people to meet the norms of the society. In for-profit
educational organizations educational objectives may confront with business
objectives.
b) It is difficult to tell whether education has attained its objectives
or not. Success cannot be measured in financial terms: sales, profit or
dividend.
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Unique characteristics of Educational organization and its commonality with others
c) The fact that ’the student’ is in the center of an educational
organization causes some difficulties. Students can be regarded as clients,
but also as the raw material of production. But students are different from
industrial raw materials. They cannot be processed, and teaching and
learning are based on personal relationships, they are loaded with individual
characteristics and the result is impossible to predict. This human volatility
makes the evaluation of performance even more complex.
d) Teachers also have characteristics that cause difficulties for
management. Leaders and teachers of schools have common education,
professional roots, values, experiences. Plus, teachers demand a certain
amount of autonomy in the teaching process, and it is difficult to define or to
control their relationship with the students.
e) The agent-client relationship of teacher and student is different from
that of other agents and clients. Student-clients have only limited
opportunity to choose their teacher-agents. And satisfying students’
expectations does not always serve their true interests.
f) External actors strongly influence the decisions of educational
organizations. And in large organizations the different training programs,
locations and semesters are all decision points. These two factors make
decision-making and allocation of responsibility difficult.
g) Many top and middle managers in educational organizations do
not have enough time to deal with leadership issues. They often have
lectures and other education-related tasks. So their time spent on managing
the organization is limited and it has serious consequences.
When appreciating the extent an educational organization differs from a
typical business organization we can rely on Carlson’s categories (1975). He
describes domesticated and savage organizations. If pupils are automatically
sent to the local school the institution is a domesticated organization. The
society it serves protects it from the negative factors of the environment.
Thus, it does not have to fight for its survival. Like a domesticated animal it
is fed and cared for, its existence is guaranteed. Although it has to compete
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Unique characteristics of Educational organization and its commonality with others
for its resources its funding is not connected to the quality of its services.
Savage organizations on the other hand are permanently fighting for
survival. Their existence is not guaranteed, they may close down any time.
Their funding depends on the quality of their services and there is no
guarantee for new clients.
As Adane Tessera cited in nature of organization and management module,
Campbell et.al (1962:80-85) developed six continua to suggest what may
be unique about administration in educational organizations. They thus,
compared education with a other organization on these continua.
1. Crucially to the society
Educational institutions are unique in the range of their functions and the
centrality of relationships to the other social institutions. Social services as
health, constriction water supply and other economic sectors requires
qualified man power the training of which is carried out by educational
institutions. Educational institutions are changed with the responsibility for
the socialization, politicization and acculturations of learning in a society.
Thus, the educational administrator should pay greater attention and act
efficiently to satisfy the need of other organization and a society at large.
2. Public visibility and sensitivity
The peculiar feature of educational administration may be vied from the
extent of public consideration to the service of educational systems and their
internal operations. Since the school and its functions are highly visible to
the public at all times, it must be sensitive to the many members of the
community. Thus, the administrator is required to create intimate
relationship with individuals and groups in the community.
3. Complexity of function
In order to serve the purpose of teaching and learning, the educational
administrator should primarily deal with a variety of people such as teachers,
non-teaching personnel, students and members of the community. These
people have different individual and group needs and interests that they
wants to be addressed by the school. Addressing diversified needs and
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Unique characteristics of Educational organization and its commonality with others
interests of different people makes the function the educational
administrator very difficult and complex.
4. Intimacy of necessary relationship
Personnel relationship that is necessary to achieve organizational goals
varies in intimacy from organization to organization. School organizations
involve intimate relationship among school personnel and community. These
greater degrees of intimacy between people in the school and, with the
surrounding community maximize behavioral problems which demand
efficiency in administration to achieve educational goal.
5. Staff professionalization
More than other service giving organizations, schools are constituents of
professionally trained man power. In school where most of the employees
tend to be professional in education and outlook, personal dispositions of the
staff are affected by professional values, superior intelligence and
communication. In such a situation, it seems clear that administrators in
schools must pay greater attention to personnel dispositions than
administrators in factories and other service giving organizations.
6. Difficulty in Appraisal
The school is changed with the responsibility of bringing about a desirable
behavior in the learner. The change involves knowledge, skill or attitudes all
of which influence behavior. But these changes are not immediately or easily
attainable or perceptible. Since behavioral changes may not be manifested
in a short period of time, the educational administrator is in a difficulty to
apprise or measure the degree of performance even if special measuring
instruments or procedures are devised.
2. Common Elements of Organization
Organizational psychologist Edgar Schein proposes four common element of
an organization’s structure;
1. Common purpose
2. Coordinated effort
3. Division of labor
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Unique characteristics of Educational organization and its commonality with others
4. Hierarchy of authority
From manager’s point of view , operation are made successful by instilling a
common purpose to create coordinated effort across the organization and
organizing resource based on tasks and decision making. Each of the four
elements is relatively straightforward. In theory but represents a critical
component of an effective structure.
2.1. Common purpose
An organization without a clear purpose or mission soon begins to drift and
become disorganized. A common purpose unifies employees or members
and gives everyone an understanding of the organization’s direction.
Ensuring that the common purpose is effectively communicated across
organizations (particularly large organization with many moving parts) is a
central task for managers. Managers communicate this purpose by
educating all employees on the general strategy, mission statement, values,
and short-and long –term objectives of the organization.
2.2. Coordinated effort
Coordinated effort involves working together in a way that maximizes
resources. The common purpose is achieved through the coordinated effort
of all individuals and groups within an organization. The broader group’s
diverse skill sets and personalities must be leveraged in a way that adds
value. The act of coordinating organizational effort is perhaps the most
important responsibility of managers because it motivates and distributes
human resource to capture value.
2.3. Division of labor
Division of labor is also known as work specification for greater efficiency. It
involves delegating specific parts of broader task to different people which
the organization based up on their particular abilities and skills. Using
division of labor, an organization can parcel out a complex work effort for
specialist to perform. By systematically dividing complex tasks in specialized
jobs, an organization uses its human resource more efficiently.
2.3. Hierarchy of authority
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Unique characteristics of Educational organization and its commonality with others
Hierarchy of authority is essentially the chain of command- a control
mechanism for making sure the right people do the right things at the right
time. While there are a wide variety of organizational structure- some with
more centralization of authority than others- hierarchy in decision making is
critical factor for success. Knowing who will make decision under what
circumstances enables organizations to be agile. While ambiguity of
authority can often slow the decision making process. Authority enables
organization to set directions and select strategies, which can in turn enable
a common purpose. https. // www.Boudless.com/management/text
Discussion:
Educational institutions differ from the rest organization in terms of its
centrality; which means any organization does not satisfy the need of the
society by providing educated man power. The other uniqueness of
educational organization is its visibility to the public in sense of the society
more interested to the education than the others organization. Educational
organization also deals with complex activities like teaching learning,
administrative issues and other human factor tasks. On other hand
educational organizations have more relationship with school community,
such as students, teachers and parents are strong in its nature than others.
Concerning professionalism of educational institution the most appropriate
setting of authority is staffed by professional in collegial authority that needs
great attention than managers in that of other organizations. Moreover, the
alikeness of educational organization in difficulty of appraisal is that since
the outcome of the education takes long time when it compared with other
factories.
Although, educational organization is unique to the other organizations, it is
common by some points such as common purpose, coordinated effort,
division of labor and hierarchy of authority.
Source:
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Unique characteristics of Educational organization and its commonality with others
Adane Tessera, The Nature Of Organization And Management In Education Bahir
Dara University
Boundless.” Schein’s common elements of an organization.” Boundless
management. Boundless, 17 August, 2016 reviewed 18 August 2016 from https. //
www.Boudless.com/management/text books/Boundless
management-textbook/organizational structure-2/components of an organization-
24/Schein-s-common-elements-of –an-organization-144-1878
EDUCATION PRACTICE AND INNOVATION ISSN (Print): 2372-3092 ISSN
(Online): 2372-3106 VOLUME 1, NUMBER 2, JUNE 2014
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