Summary
Contents
Subject index
This book explores the limits to rational management. The authors develop the idea of organizational irony as a central concept for analyzing and explaining management activity in a managerialist environment. Drawing on international research as well as their own extensive experience in educational organizations, the authors show that effectiveness is not necessarily the result of over-rationalistic approaches to educational management. Focusing on school leadership and management, authors Eric Hoyle and Mike Wallace suggest that major reforms have had limited success because the changes introduced have diverted school staff from their core task of promoting student learning. The result is dissatisfaction, frustration, and stress. The authors use the ironic perspective to show how practitioners respond by mediating the reforms.
The Myth of Transformation
The Myth of Transformation
In Part Three we focus on the rhetoric of transformation that has come to dominate the discourse of educational leadership and management. Ministers of successive governments have set themselves the task of transforming the educational system. They have sought to do this through establishing structures of accountability. But they have also charged school leaders with transforming their own leadership approaches and, as a consequence, with changing the ways in which teachers work, their relationships with each other and ultimately their beliefs. The irony is that the potential for school improvement inherent in the transformational approach has been undermined by excess. In this chapter we examine how potentially valuable developments in three areas – organizational culture, organizational learning, and staff ...
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