Organizational Linkages: Expanding the Existing Metaphor
| Published date | 01 March 1994 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/09578239410051826 |
| Date | 01 March 1994 |
| Pages | 23-33 |
| Author | Hope‐Arlene Fennell |
| Subject Matter | Education |
Organizational
Linkages
23
Organizational Linkages:
Expanding the Existing
Metaphor
Hope-Arlene Fennell
Lakehead University, Thunder Bay, Ontario, Canada
Introduction
As early as 1965 Bidwell[1] suggested that schools operated from a structural
looseness in which teachers were granted autonomy to carry out instructional
tasks relatively independently of each other and of administrators. He stated
that “…school systems seem to differ from the classical bureaucratic structure”
and that there tended to be a “looseness of articulation among the subunits”[1,
p. 977]. In the following decade Weick[2] used the example of an unconventional
soccer game to illustrate the organizational metaphor of loose coupling as it
pertained to schools and school organizations. He believed that loose or tight
coupling depended on the number of shared variables among the components of
an organization, but added that there were at least 15 definitions of loose
coupling.
The 15 definitions ranged from the idea of slack times or slack control over
organizational resources to decentralization, delegation, and discretion over
such things as the prerequisites for courses in schools or granting employees
the autonomy to designate their own hours and routines of work. Weick[2]
contended that there were advantages to the loose coupling metaphor. School
organizations defined through the use of this metaphor are likely to be more
sensitive to the needs and desires of the surrounding environments, being fertile
ground for local programme adaptations to occur. If there was trouble in one
classroom, the situation could often be isolated from the others until the
problems had been managed. Other advantages were the creation of a strong
sense of personal efficacy, through the allowance of greater flexibility and
autonomy among teaching personnel, and minimized costs because fewer
resources were required for the co-ordination of personnel. The positive
characteristics of the loose coupling metaphor could also, in his view, entail a
negative counterbalance. Loosely coupled schools may respond to the
environment by accepting changes which were not desirable; the looseness
could also forestall the spread of advantageous changes and hinder the repair of
trouble spots, since the heightened autonomy among personnel created the need
to negotiate with each as a separate entity.
Since the work of Bidwell[1] and Weick[2], writers such as Schwartz and
Ogilvy[3] have been advocating a new world view wherein organizations would
not be thought of as mechanical and hierarchical but as multidimensional,
dynamic and heterarchic. In other words, linkages in the form of organizational
Journal of Educational
Administration, Vol. 32 No. 1, 1994,
pp. 23-33. © MCBUniversity Press,
0957-8234
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