Understanding Management And Organization In The Educational Context

Structural and Organizational Changes as Characteristics of Educational Institutions

Question:

What are the key differences between managing education as opposed to managing other forms of organisations? In responding to this question critically explore which ideas have been most important in challenging or confirming your conception of educational administration and leadership? What changes do you see as important in the practice of educational administration/leadership? How will you use the learning from this unit to inform your own management practices?

Critics have identified that structural and organizational changes are significant characteristics which makes the educational institutions as learners’ community. Management is understood in different manner in different way, by different people at various times. The practical approach to meet the greatest flexibility assists in modifying more sustainability of educational traits and corporate culture. Management includes handling, control, being passive; organize, to change by manipulation and to perform for a principle (Bennett & Savani, 2004).  Corporate and academic factors are dissimilar in their approaches. Cognitive approaches to improve the areas are comprehensive in their approaches.

Management is said to be an art. Management is performing organizational activities and works through people. It engages the use of different applications in public relations and human relations;  sharing and assigning duties and responsibilities, also known as assignment of a power; communication that contains problem solving and decision making and change management (Booth, 2006). Management is also focused in setting up laws, theories, philosophy, practices, processes and principles that can be related in different circumstances including schools.  As an association, management is regarding constructing formal structures and establishment depends on goals, targets, functions, tasks and objectives (Congdon, Baker & Cheesman, 2013). For instance welfare and social organizations in government sectors can refer to health and education services, while the management associated with public security services can refer to military and police. Management can be performed by a group of people or an individual person. In a school a teacher can say that the school administration changed the time schedule during the midterm. This administration could be the principal alone, the senior staff or board of members of the school committee. These two sectors can also be compared in terms of management team (Booth, 2006). For instance with group of senior staff senior management group can be formed that is same as ministers cabinet for the government body.  Attitudes, skills and knowledge in management are acquired through learning and from experiences also. Whatever the management it is, as a whole it is considered as a collection of procedures comprising action planning, problem solving and decision making. The procedures include resource management containing time, financial, human and material. These processes are mainly dealt by the managers.

Academic administration is different from structure of organizational administrative structure. The accountability of academic administration is more consistent in comparison with academic level. Similarly, cultural steadiness and administrative culture within an organization are significant to introduce more dissemination in managing academic structure. Within an academic environment cleverness is the most important factor. But for an organization it appears to be pretty dissatisfying. Academic learning assists organizational improvement of an individual, having intense specification and variety it enters with an enormous variance and intensity for the further development of individual student. Academic sectors are likely to develop organizational basics for individual student. Entirely controlled approaches are most integral factor that assists in the improvement of more sophistication. Application of stability and durability of individual student within academic limits delivers in the cultural development and institutional pretense. Academic practicability of individual student is refined to improve the career of the students and shift them with the power of organizational characteristics. The strength of educational ingenuity of academic sector stands exactly incompatible. Ambiguity within the process leads to a wealthy generalization, which includes significant parameter. Managing educational boundary alternates in contrast with managing organizational stability.

Management and its Practical Approach in the Academic and Corporate World

A principle is said to be a commonly accepted truth that is depend upon available instruction and experiences. The renowned philosopher Henri Fayol (1916) illustrated fourteen management principles in connection with human activities. These are work division, accountability, responsibility, authority, discipline, unity of control, harmony of trend, decentralization, centralization, scalar chain, personnel remuneration, equity, subjection of personal interest to general interest, steadiness of term of employers, pride feeling and shared loyalty divided by the personnel of a group and control span (Cracknell, 2012). Control span means the finest subordinate members notifying to same supervisor. The numbers can be between 5-8and single person cannot efficiently administer above this assumed limit and delegation is appropriate (Khandekar & Sharma, 2005). These principles highlights that efficient organizational action is accomplished when the sources and individuals are given directions and synchronized. This entails purposeful action planned towards the accomplishment of policy objectives or specific goals. The specialization idea in both technical and management is widely supported (Routamaa, Hautala & Tsutzuki, 2010).  For instance in education, people have accountability to offer quality education for the students. The responsibilities at various stages as school head, teacher, education director and school inspector are certainly depend on the work division principles. Usual organizations have few aspects clearly understood and stated by the people, these are: organization name, symbol, logo, address, location, motto and trade mark; the vision and mission of the organization and their objectives, organizational functions, expected products and results.

The term organization derives from organ, which are living things. Humans are made up of different organs. All these organs have their specific work to perform and to maintain the stability of the human system. Likewise, it can also be compared with the company or business organization. A strong society contains all its organizations performing with regard to each other. Societies construct organizations to perform particular work (Felin, Zenger & Tomsik, 2009). Thus, an organization is a result of the work performed in a group, depending upon the allocation of responsibilities, duties and rights to accomplish particular goals. In case of educational management, it is significant that the head of the schools understand that schools or other educational institutions as organizations have specific purposes. What an organization is seemed to perform to accomplish the goals are the organizational functions. Personnel in different organizational levels have to accomplish the task. These duties and responsibilities are performed from functions: the accountability includes broad job statement, while, tasks are the everyday responsibilities from respective accountabilities within the organization.

If a school is compared with a hospital in terms of organizational management it is noticed that both these are service organizations though with various client groups. Schools or the educational organizations serve strong people to alter their behavior. Hospitals serve ill people to turn out to be healthy. Banks aspire to make profit as banks serve people (Bush, Bell & Middlewood, 2010). Some commercial and private schools function like banks. Other individual educational management characteristics focus o the aims that is hard to characterize and the consequences are rather complicated to determine. While discussing with such issues it is good to mention that a difference is present between management and administration. People commonly use the term management to signify administration. Nevertheless, management within an organization includes designing, planning, monitoring activities, initiating actions and insisting consequences depend on allocated sources. It is policy control, monitoring and policy making. Alternatively, administration includes policy, rules, regulation and procedure implementation as arranged by the management.

Corporate and Academic Factors and their Dissimilarities in Approaches

Educational leadership is said to be the process of guiding and enlisting energies and talents of students, parents and teachers towards accomplishing general educational goals. The term education leadership is commonly applied synonymously with school leadership. Educational leadership illustrated on interdisciplinary literature, commonly but preferably differentiates itself through the focus on human development, epistemology and pedagogy (Bisschoff, 2005). In modern practice it uses from business and political science. Debates are present within these areas of concern. Different educational perspective and leadership theories have been explored and presented, for example: distributed leadership, instructional leadership, social justice leadership and transformational leadership (Caldwell, 2006). Researchers have illustrated how different actions and practices impact the achievement of the students, job satisfaction of the teachers and other factors associated with the improvement of the school. Furthermore, the researchers carry on with their investigation regarding the quality and methodology of main preparation programs.

To understand and illustrate the deep concept of educational leadership standards, scientists Duignan and Hurley (2007) have structured a project for Australian teaching. Their aim was to recognize; critique and map Australian developments in the field of specialized school management standards (Duignan, 2012). They have applied procedures which comprised analysis and collection of pertinent telephone surveys, emails and documents along with face-to-face and telephonic interviews with state, territory and national representatives of systematic employing rights and personal associations. The results show that the leadership standards language is no longer applied by systematic employing rights or profession. The innovative language is that the leadership capabilities and leadership frameworks that are developmental in the orientation and philosophy. These researchers have suggested a national leadership structure which comprises the greatest leadership capabilities and structures and delivered guiding principles for the development (Haydon, 2007). The frame work included different factors: owned by and developed by profession: the structure should be developed for the profession and by the profession through methods which are collaborative and transparent; depend on professional agreement: such agreement should be developed for individual professional for leadership development. It need to be both practical and philosophical, making clear the beliefs, expectations, moral purposes, meaning and values for school leadership, in addition to assisting provide the profession a sense of purpose and identity. Much creative attempt has currently gone into the leadership framework development and abilities by the employing authorities and profession and this need to be admired by any kind of nationalized improvements in this field. The application of abilities in this type of structure need to be strongly supported as the majority of the structures assembled for the framework comprises leadership potential.  Leadership standards need to be informed by different related researches into the purpose, nature and concentrate on highly observed leadership in educational organizations (Dinham, Anderson, Caldwell & Weldon, 2011). The practices associated with the improvement of educational leadership by concentrating on the learning of the students. The capacities and trained school leadership standards need to concentrate on developing the learning quality, leadership and teaching in educational organizations and in case of lack of these arrangements the development will be meaningless exercise (Booth, 2006). Equivalent improvements, for instance nationalized professional standards for highly developed teaching and nationalized curriculum should be considered and their inferences need to be evaluated when nationalized leadership standards are being developed and considered. It is significant to identify that key control challenges and educational contexts, particularly that are associated with the requirements f the students are changing and dynamic. Hence, leadership standards should be referred as an effort in development. Leadership standards should offer main stakeholders and the community that the occupation is dedicated to elevated quality leadership in educational organizations and thus assist raise the expert image and credibility of the vocation at local, state and national levels.

Acquiring Attitudes, Skills, and Knowledge in Management

Decision making process with the help of administration data application assists in healthy development of academic sector. Construction of enduring planning seems to be the most inherent factor that assists in improving the growth of academic sector. Administration takes the decision how to divide resources among different factors. Shaping the market direction and aiming to a classy goal occupies an organization to be constructed well within the market place. Managing academic process along with external factors is also significant that assists in the improvement of organizational strategy. It is considered as a basic factor that assists in the development of organizational collegiality. Aiming to the improvement of organizational strategies assists in improving the practical strategies also. It appears to be the extent that has been intrinsically nurtured and requires to be improving with strong superiority.

Another research paper by scientist Priola (2011) has illustrated the fact that gender is associated in academic circles and how gender factor is built up in academia (Priola, 2007). The gender relation construction in a particular institution was a special interest for Priola, this is because the greater part of the managerial roles were absorbed by female candidates.  To obtain a credible result, the scientist has interviewed all women academic managers, for example: department heads, associate deans and deans along with male academics.  The construction process of gender associations is analyzed through evaluation of the inconsistency between masculine practice of higher education institution and women managers’ supremacy in the particular organization (Dinham, Anderson, Caldwell & Weldon, 2011).  It is also recommended that the statistical dominance of female managers may generate stresses between individual identities as female and the managerial identities, because of the masculine practice predominance and values in the organization. Furthermore, it is also come out that the continuance of practices and masculine ideals is associated with deemphasizing the accomplishments of the women.

The proportion of female in administrative roles, especially at idle and lower level, may augment but it does not essentially find out a modification within institutional practices. The creation of the identities of the employees and the working practices are controlled by the leading culture. The educational career demonstrated opposition to the alterations in culture and the state of women in educational institutions is one of the major proofs of this. Scientist Miller (1995) has suggested that the most understandable management feature of the universities is not merely the male dominance but also the supremacy of manly styles. Reproducing the statistical male dominance of males are masculine conversations, practices and imageries which often encompasses the administrative function and their perceptions. Likewise, scientist Spurling has commented that well-known educational meetings give rise to the imbalance in gender in support of male criteria and experiences in the program, in staffing and working (Meyer, 2002). The gender aspect of managerial life brings about the evaluations of fit that are depend on men rather than women profiles, with depressing outcomes of women’s opinion regarding their suitability for administrative positions.

A paper by the scientist Strike (1997) has elaborated the pressure between inclusion and shared values and also searched for an answer whether schools can be communities. The researcher considers a vital problem related with school communities, the pressure between inclusion and shared values which are constitutive to act as community basis and principles of moderate inclusiveness. Democracy, caring and comprehensive set of guidelines are the three important factors for the school community values (Strike, 1999). The scientist concluded that if value is constitutive then this cannot be reliable with moderate inclusiveness. The scientist suggested a central ground depend upon variations of these assessments, which are vague, thick and more liberty of organization in the public school structure around these assessments. 

The Significance of Principles in Efficient Organizational Action

Critics have also explored the innovative managerialism in the management of education and enquired whether this approach is organizational learning or corporatization. During the year 1990, many educational organizations had started to point out conventional form of instructive governance and accepted the practice sand forms applied in corporate and private management. Nevertheless, the implementation of these alterations is contested (Jaros, 2014). The supporters of the innovative education marginalism argue that the methods associated with decision making are important to answer the needs of an altered circumstance with noticeably augmented extents of improbability in an information dependant society. The challengers see this innovative merginalism in terms of commercial corporatism going through consecrated limitations of non-market organizations. It is also argued that the current alterations in academic management are understood in a better way as cases of managerial learning in reaction to the confines of technical association in unstable circumstances.

The mutual values, which educational organizations are being advised to accept, frequently by the trustees that come by them pretty naturally, frequently fit awkwardly into the academic environment. The customs of the conservatory powerfully favor heterodoxy, creativity and individuality. The autonomy of achievement is extremely valued. Responsibility is observed as less significant than autonomy. The beginning of norms which illustrates hierarchy, discipline and team loyalty is complicated not because these do not have meaningful standards but because these values are supposed as unimportant for teaching or scholarship (Drysdale & Gurr, 2011). They can construct a harsh kind of confusion. It is said that language is the main learning medium within the organization culture. As the language applied by the employees of the organization augments in specificity and variety, their capacity to identify, distinguish and label increases together with the flexibility of framing. If complicated organizations leaders in the present day fail to afford to anticipate random appealing transformation, their single alternative is to generate integral mechanisms of modernization (Campbell-Evans, Gray & Leggett, 2014). This requires balance between culture and structure, institution and organization, loose and tight coupling. Organizational improvement relies on the capacity to direct and steer while setting free the creative energies of every individuals.

As knowledge demanding services and products represent an augmenting share of financial growth, a state’s education and training system supposes a vital role in its nationalized innovation system. While education should continue to create learning and scholarship in the areas of the traditional strengths for example: pure science, humanities, it is becoming more directly pertinent than before (Congdon, Baker & Cheesman, 2013). The writer Balderston has explained that the conventional leisurely progression for new knowledge creation was delivering approach to a compressed series where routes between the stages was lost or blurred. Balderston also expressed that innovative research might be gradually more prompted by realistic complications necessitating interdisciplinary cooperation. Economists have indicated that the higher education can produce constructive externalities, which make this an economic engine and societal growth through the function in business research, software engineering and education (Lynn Boscardin & Jacobson, 1997). This can also produce the improvement of innovative legalized instruments which offer better motivations to innovation and essentially formation of minds are capable to work together in the discovery and creation of original knowledge in all areas of society.

Academic Administration’s Role in Promoting Individual Student Development

Education may take a higher place on any political agenda and that can vary country wise. As for example, it can be said that education takes a higher place on a political agenda in England. However, the government’s public statement have done very little to elevate teachers’ spirits during the phase while applications for retirement are going up and employment to occupation is falling. In this context different arguments are present. The present dissatisfaction has various reasons. These are: the failure to understand the teachers’ psychology by the ministers and the teachers’ unwillingness to increase above the historical disparities and come together in sole structure. To accomplish the goal of raining standards of the teachers there is a vital requirement to develop association among those people who are charged by electorate to offer political control in education and those people whose function is to execute policies and without whose support the inspirational leadership will come to a ‘no’.

With the apparent belief that management and leadership matters, many factors are present that people yet do not clearly understand regarding efficient educational leadership. On the other hand, the understanding depend on leadership is continuously growing. In this certainty, this article has nicely presented a précis and well documented understandings regarding management and leadership in schools and other organizational levels. This understanding can be applied with self-assurance to direct the practices associated with leadership, reach and policy (Dinham, Anderson, Caldwell & Weldon, 2011). This can assist address concerns regarding the leaders of the school and their performance and preparation. This also offers a well structured starting point for discussion with different audiences regarding the prospect of leadership associated with academia and other organizational aspects.

When I was doing my bachelor’s degree, I was unaware of the administrative factors. This is because in high school I have never understood well what exactly administration means. But as I have started learning different subjects and I have started interacting with different professors and started getting what actually it means by educational management practices. I have started focusing on it since I have got interest in this administrative matter. Leadership qualities are the most significant factors, which according to me is an immensely supportive component for the improvement of my inherent qualities. I have joined as a senior academic coordinator and managed different tasks in the administrative section. These experiences have guided me to understand additional management related approaches. Administrative attributes and application of management skills are the most significant factors, which assisted me to improve my management and administrative capabilities. I have also understood that this should be applied within organizational boundary. The knowledge about administration and management that I have obtained from my working sector are the definite approaches that assist me to initiate my management qualities. The planning approaches are in fact fundamental that gives me strength and knowledge to develop my working capacity.  

Conclusion

The leaders should direct their students and subordinated through opportunities created by progressively more complicated environment. Achievement benchmarks, curriculum standards and pragmatic needs and other associated policy instructions from different sources produce unpredictable and complex needs for schools and other organizations. In case of schools, principals should respond to the increasing variety in the characteristics of the students, comprising immigration status, cultural background, mental and physical disabilities, income disparities and differences in learning capabilities (Congdon, Baker & Cheesman, 2013). The leaders should manage fresh collaborations along with other societal agencies which serve the students and other employees in the context of organizations. Quick improvements in technologies for communication and teaching need adjustments in internal functions. Therefore, it can be accepted as few conditions, which make schooling and other organizational aspects more demanding and management more crucial.

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