Some college education courses like to assign popular management books from the business sector for reading and discussion. It's another instance of ITBT at work since reading these books and thinking about good management misses the fundamental assumption that the books must make. It is an assumption that makes these books largely irrelevant to educational administrators. Businesses operate within markets. School districts operate within a government system. Managing a government bureaucracy operating inside a geographical district as the single, protected organization that has the exclusive power to deliver public education is fundamentally different from business management that must develop products and offer them in a competitive market to consumers. Consumers determine the value of the products and therefore the relative success among businesses. For districts, the students and families have no role since revenues do not depend on student learning or parent satisfaction. Districts don’t determine their services; they implement democratically or bureaucratically determined services, and they must comply with standards and processes passed down from legislature, the ODE, the local board, and the feds, not consumers standards or processes of choosing.
The differences between these two sectors create the fundamental differences in the management tasks, values, capabilities, determinants of success and so on that exist between these two sectors. It may be enjoyable for educators to dream about having a district organization that could be managed the way the business books describe organizational management but it is only a dream until education is opened to entrepreneurship and multiple providers. The arrangements in the public school sector for controlling delivery of services using the old public utility model must be changed by the legislatures. Until then, administrative success in education depends on being good at methods of top down management while remaining popular and therefore employable. If a superintendent actually led the way the business management books say to lead, the superintendent’s board and the big ed organizations would work to get rid of him. The public education sector designs static districts. Market sectors produce dynamic organizations.
By law, public education is locked into an old, top-down system that is sustained by the popular myth of democratic governance and the confusion over protecting the institution of public schools districts with protecting public education. This district structure of the institution insures what Ted Kolderie and Virginia Postrel call stasis within a sector. The institutional church needs reformation to preserve the faith in public education. And it is not within the power of the superintendent to change that institutional system. The superintendent’s job is to make it
In the private sector, business freely evolves because it is a dynamic system that allows new providers to start up or to consolidate or to go out of business. There is a constant effort to develop better products that will earn consumers’ approval and purchase. The goal and key of business success is its product development and marketing by making it available for consumer choice. Profits are not the goal, only the economic indicator of this success. Profits are what happen if the fundamentals are done right. They are an outcome that results from good products. To maintain a successful business organization means to marshal the people and resources in the efforts to develop quality products attractive to consumers. Profits follow. The necessary focus on organizational innovation of new products means business writers have long ago understood the importance of the evolution of business management away from top down management to a networking of cooperative relationships. . Michael Barone writing in National Journal (02/25/2005) sees it happening now in politics, another dynamic sector. In business, he says we are evolving
from an industrial command-and-control America to post-industrial, Information Age, network-connected America. In 2004, our politics followed.
Both political parties, by shifting strategies toward networking and grass roots activism, increased turnout (although Kerry only increased Democratic turnout by 7% versus Bush’s 16% increase in Republican turnout). The product and marketing of the Republicans attracted more consumers’ choice on the ballot. In a dynamic sector, management makes a difference. In a sector such as public schooling, which by legal structure is designed to be static, success takes on a different meaning.
Educational administrators must look like they are leading but they must not alter fundamental arrangements or benefits of those with a vested in the system. It means administrative success is essentially about political acceptability, about making the existing dysfunction system appear to work. And to increase "profits," the administrator mujst attempt to trade promises for increase performance for more money. To market this strategy, the superintendent helps the board blame the legislature for lack of revenues. This strategy deflects attention away from the internal design of the organization that is preventing it from controlling its costs.
For school administrators in the public school sector, taking business management books seriously could be dangerous to their careers but college profs never point this out nor do they admit that business management methods really don’t apply to the protected government districts. They foist a delusion on administrators when they should be helping administrators understand these sector differences and the resulting differences in management methods.
So why don’t these profs help administrators understand the sector in which administrators must operate? Are they evil or just stupid for foisting this dream on education administrators? As Sandy says, never underestimate stupidity.
