ADMINISTRATION BEHAVIOR OF SCHOOL SUPERINTENDENTS: A DESCRIPTIVE STUDY
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/eb009813 |
| Published date | 01 January 1980 |
| Date | 01 January 1980 |
| Pages | 5-26 |
| Author | PATRICK DUIGNAN |
| Subject Matter | Education |
THE JOURNAL OF EDUCATIONAL ADMINISTRATION
VOLUME XVIII, NUMBER 1 JULY 1980
ADMINISTRATION BEHAVIOR OF SCHOOL
SUPERINTENDENTS: A DESCRIPTIVE STUDY
PATRICK DUIGNAN
What do school administrators do when discharging their administrative respon-
sibilities? How do they spend their days? Their weeks? Their
years?
What constitutes
the basic content of their administrative behavior? Despite decades of research in
educational administration, we are unable to answer these deceptively simple, but fun-
damental questions. This lacuna in the literature provided encouragement for pursuing
this present study as a relatively untapped approach to describing and analysing the
administrative behavior of school superintendents. The central problem of the study
was to observe and describe the actual on-the-job behavior of the superintendent of
schools so as to develop a composite view of his administrative behavior.
INTRODUCTION
The superintendent occupies an important position in the formal
organisation of the educational system. As the executive (usually the
chief executive) of the school board and as the educational leader of his
professional employees he coordinates the interdependent activities of
numerous individuals and groups in achieving a common objective
—
the
education of children.
Because of the importance of the superintendent's position in the
administrative structure of the school system, a greater understanding of
his administrative behavior would contribute to the development or
refinement of concepts and theory in administration in general, and
educational administration in particular. The interdependence of actual
on-the-job behavior and theory in administration was stressed by Simon
when he stated:
The
first
task of administrative theory is to develop
a
set of
concepts
that will
permit the description, in terms relevant to the theory, of administrative situ-
ations.
These concepts, to be scientifically useful, must be operational; that is,
their meanings
must
correspond
to
empirically observable facts
or
situations.1
The observation and description of the administrative behavior of the
school superintendent going about the conduct of his daily work, would
seem, therefore, to be both a legitimate and desirable method for the
further development of definitions, concepts, and theory related to
administrative behavior. Sargent and Belisle advocated increased attention
PATRICK DUIGNAN is Lecturer in the Centre for Administrative Studies, University of
New England. He holds the degrees of B.A. (Dublin), B.Ed., M.Ed.Admin. and ph.D.
(Alberta). Dr. Duignan is interested in participant observation and its application to research
in educational administration.
6 Duignan
to this form of research in educational administration over two decades
ago when they suggested:
All
.
. . efforts to discover, organize, and relate abstract knowledge about
administrative behavior rests ultimately in the depth and adequacy
with
which
they tap into the
real
stuff of administrative behavior, which consists of
a
par-
ticular administrator behaving in a particular situational sequence of interac-
tions .... Checking general ideas or formulations against the reality of situa-
tions both helps to illuminate the concepts and theories and to guard against
losing
contact
with
the
"stuff"
—
the
reality
of administration.2
BACKGROUND
TO THE STUDY
What areas of the literature can we look to for guidance in explaining or
describing the nature of the superintendent's work? Five such areas that
relate to administrative behavior and appear relevant to the focus of this
question are worthy of
note.
These
are:
(1) literature on administration as
a set of princples; (2) literature on the role of the superintendent; (3)
literature on leader behavior; (4) literature on administration as decision-
making; and (5) literature on the content of a chief executive's work.
Much has been written concerning the specific functions, or tasks, that
an executive or manager performs in discharging his duties and respon-
sibilities. The nature of administration and the actual work of administra-
tors have been studied and explained in terms of essential tasks and/or
processes. Descriptive and prescriptive lists have been identified or
developed to explain what managers should
do.
These tasks and processes
were adopted by students of educational administration and used to
describe what educational administrators do, or should do.
Other writers were more concerned with the superintendent's role as
defined by the expectations of significant others. The superintendent's
duties and resonsibilities were identified by asking significant alter groups,
such as school trustees and teachers, what they perceived his role/tasks
were or should be.
Leadership studies, particularly those conducted at Ohio State and the
University of Michigan, tried to isolate various dimensions of leader
behavior and correlate them with group satisfaction and performance. The
decision-school theorists defined administration in terms of a decision-
process cycle and suggested that the administrator spent the major propor-
tion of his time either making decisions, or facilitating the making of
them.
How accurately, therefore, can we describe what constitutes the con-
tent of a superintendent's work from the findings of the writers and
researchers in the
literate re
sources just mentioned? Do these sources tell
us what superintendents of schools actually do? How they spend their
days? Their weeks? Their years? Wilson noted that the popular notions of
the superintendent's duties as obtained from such sources would lead to
the conclusion that:
. . . a superintendent passes the time philosophising upon education and the
To continue reading
Request your trial