CONCEPTUAL MODELS FOR RESEARCH AND PRACTICE IN THE ADMINISTRATION OF CHANGE
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/eb009708 |
| Date | 01 February 1974 |
| Pages | 3-17 |
| Published date | 01 February 1974 |
| Author | ROBERT G. OWENS |
| Subject Matter | Education |
THE JOURNAL OF EDUCATIONAL ADMINISTRATION
VOLUME XII, NUMBER 2 OCTOBER, 1974
CONCEPTUAL MODELS FOR RESEARCH AND
PRACTICE IN THE ADMINISTRATION OF CHANGE
ROBERT G. OWENS
(A paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Educational
Research Association, New Orleans, February 25—March 1, 1973.)
Intensifying efforts to utilize behavioral science concepts and knowledge
in administrative research and practice in education during the past
quarter-century have produced an impressive body of literature, largely
taxonomic in nature. Much of this literature involves system theory and
attempts to identify and classify the various processes by which planned
change may be controlled and directed. It thus gives rise to the concept of
coherent change strategies and tactics: a concept useful to both the
student of organizational change and the administrative practitioner. The
author describes four major attempts to identify and classify strategies of
organizational change and the tactice that "go with them.
In general, these strategies address the problem of how to change
organizations, but it is also necessary to know what to change. Leavitt has
identified and described four crucial organizational variables which are
amenable to administrative control and manipulation: (1) task, (2)
structure, (3) people, and (4) technology. These variables are dynamically
interrelated but are helpful to the researcher and the administrator in
designing and monitoring systemic approaches to organizational change
utilizing any strategy which may have been selected.
INTRODUCTION
In the folk-wisdom of management and administration there are two
principal orientations for improving the performance of the organization in
achieving its goals: improving knowledge utilization, as typified by the R & D
approach, and coercion, commonly expressed through the manipulation of
sanctions by the administrative hierarchy. In the administration of public
schools, the R & D approach has traditionally been a popular organizational
fiction which imparted some patina to claims of scientific rationality while
coercion was often carefully dressed in the trappings of "democratic
administration."
Since the 1950's, efforts to expand the role of behavioral science concepts
and methodology in the practice and teaching of educational administration
have added considerable range and variety to the repertoire of strategies and
ROBERT G. OWENS, Associate Professor at Booklyn College's Department of
Education, is author of
Organizational Behavior
in
Schools
(1970: Prentice-Hall), and
many articles on educational administration. Professor
Owens was a
school principal for
eighteen years before being appointed first to the State University of New York at
Buffalo, and thence to Brooklyn College.
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