Management Organizations for Elementary Schools, Term Paper Example

Introduction

Management styles are to a large extent dictated by the situation, needs and personalities of the people involved as well as the culture of the organization. In an elementary school for instance, different management styles can be employed to bring about desired results and realization of objectives (Robert, 1999). Some managerial styles focus on managers as the technical experts of the organization who coordinate, direct and control the work of others while other styles focus on managers and organizational leaders as coaches, counselors, team leaders and facilitators.

Successful management of an elementary school involves building of teams and networks of relationships as well as developing and motivating others. This goes hand on hand with participative management and also people management skills. Management of elementary schools can be effected by applying the following two organizational theories;

1. Participative Management

Participative management in its basic application entails sharing information with employees and involving them in decision making. This management style encourages employees to run their own departments and make decisions regarding policies and processes to be adopted. Applied properly n elementary schools, participative management can be a quick remedy for poor employee morale and poor productivity. It requires that employees possess the necessary skills and the ability to participate as well as the technical background, communication skills and the intelligence to make logic decisions and communicate those decisions appropriately (Manfred & Kets, 2003).

Representative participation can be applied in managing elementary schools. The technique allows employees to be represented by a small group that actually participates in the decision making process. The aim of representative participation is to ensure that there is redistribution of power within an organization. As such, employee interests become as important as those of the management and other stakeholders. Accordingly, representative participation can improve morale and performance in elementary schools where the overall influence of representative participation is quite large (Kleiman, 2010).

2. Total Quality Management

This is another management style that integrates all functions of an organization to achieve a high quality of the services offered. The main hallmarks of total quality management are quality as the responsibility of the employees, customer satisfaction and team work. Incidentally, these are the qualities yearned for in elementary schools. As an integrated management approach, it involves every aspect of the day to day running of an elementary school. An organization’s entire workforce, right from the top manager to the line workers must be involved in shared commitment to improving quality services offered (Robert, 1999).

A good management style, total quality management encourages employees to learn, grow and participate in service improvement and as such, it encourages an ever-changing process that emphasizes the ideas of working constantly towards attaining improved quality. Total quality management provides a systematic method for assuring that workgroups and employees set goals and objectives that are in line with achievement of the organization’s goals. For instance, if an elementary school’s goals are to be the best performing school in its locality, total quality management can be engaged to ensure that this goal is achieved (Manfred & Kets, 2003).

With total quality management, the overall organizational goals are converted into specific objectives for each class of employees. In this manner, if each individual achieves their goals, then the entire department will achieve its goals and the organizational objectives will in turn be achieved. An organization can only be effective in adapting to these theories if it puts in place the right leadership and management strategies (Luis et al, 2008).

Management of Elementary Schools as Open Systems: The Environment of the Organization

An elementary school as an organization is a productive system. The system interacts with its immediate environment drawing some inputs from the environment and converts these inputs to outputs that are offered to the environment (Kleiman, 2010). The attainment of an elementary school’s preferred organizational state is dependent on the efficiency with which it carries out its production process. In order to analyze the management of an elementary schools, it is important to understand the relationship between the school as a production system and its environment. The main subsystems within an elementary school’s environment are;

1. The economic environment;
2. The technological environment;
3. The socio-cultural environment;
4. The politico-legal environment.

These subsystems are in turn the members of an elementary school’s environment. They dictate or determine what the school can and cannot do and qualify the essence of its existence. Each of them provides certain inputs into the organization and expects certain outputs from it. The legal environment for instance sets standards and guidelines to be adhered to by an organization and expects the organization to conform to these guidelines.

As a productive system, an elementary school will largely depend on its environment to provide required inputs which it transforms to outputs. The school will in turn depend on the environment to accept these outputs (Luis et al, 2008). The realization of all these depends on the kind of management style adopted. It is the management that interacts with all sectors of an organization’s environment and concentrates on the most important influences which the environment may have on the future of the organization, in this case an elementary school.

The management also considers and deals with the organizational environment as a whole or a total system. On the basis of these interactions, the management determines the preferred state of the organization. Once this overall preferred state is determined, it can be transmitted to other sectors and departments of the organization which must then adjust their preferred states and structures to adapt to it (Manfred & Kets, 2003).

 Managing Change

Change Management’s precise focus is on sustaining employees in the change from present procedures to new innovative procedures. Clear deliberations require to be done to the management of change in elementary schools just as is the case in any organization. These deliberations comprise the scale of the change, how change is received by employees, the impact of the change to the prime business and how frequently change transpires at the work place. There is need for effective communication on why change is necessary as well as availing the necessary information on the advantages of the change (Michael F. 1985). It is requisite that any complexities that may be met in the course of the transition to the new procedures be addressed amicably.

Change in elementary schools is usually managed in an unofficial and implicit approach. Whereas this may be suitable in an elementary school, to guarantee that change is well managed and the transformation is successful, an analysis of existing practices in the elementary school will require to be embarked on. A gap analysis will make out the discrepancy between the present and future procedures and the school will require appraising and making out those gaps which require to be managed before implementation. The Change Management Plan will illustrate how and when the gaps require to be managed and the person responsible for making certain employees understand the procedural changes (Michael F. 1985).

Reference

Robert L. Flood Rethinking the Fifth Discipline: Learning within the unknowable.  London: Routledge, 1999.

Manfred F. R. Kets de Vries The Dark Side of Leadership – Business Strategy Review 14(3), 26, 2003.

Michael F. Change Processes and Strategies at the Local Level. The Elementary School Journal, Vol 85, No 3. The University Of Chicago, 1985.

Kleiman, Lawrence S. “Management and Executive Development.” Reference for Business: Encyclopedia of Business, 2011.

Gomez-Mejia, Luis R.; David B. Balkin & Robert L. Cardy Management: People, Performance, Change, 3^rd Ed. N Y: McGraw-Hill, 2008.