The new managerialism in education management: corporatization or organizational learning?

During the 1990s, many schools and universities had begun to phase out traditional forms of educational governance and adopted forms and practices used in private and corporate management. Yet, the meaning (and implementation) of these changes is contested. Proponents of the new managerialism in education argue that managerial methods are necessary to respond to the demands of a changed environment with dramatically increased degrees of uncertainty in a knowledge‐dependent society. Opponents view the new managerialism in the context of capitalist corporatism penetrating heretofore sacrosanct boundaries of non‐market institutions. In this paper, I argue that the ongoing changes in education management are better understood as instances of organizational learning in response to the limits of bureaucratic organization in turbulent environments.

[1]  Jon Elster,et al.  The Cement Of Society , 1991 .

[2]  H. Sharp.  The Predictable Failure of Educational Reform: Can We Change Course Before It's Too Late? , 1991 .

[3]  J. Dewey,et al.  How We Think , 2009 .

[4]  M. Weber.  From Max Weber: Essays in sociology , 1946 .

[5]  Donald Kennedy,et al.  Another Century's End, Another Revolution for Higher Education , 1995 .

[6]  Lawrence C. Soley.  Leasing the Ivory Tower: The Corporate Takeover of Academia. , 1995 .

[7]  I. Nonaka,et al.  The Knowledge Creating Company , 2008 .

[8]  S. Sarason.  The predictable failure of educational reform : can we change course before it's too late? , 1990 .

[9]  R. H. Waterman,et al.  In search of excellence : lessons from America's best-run companies , 1983 .

[10]  G. Lakoff,et al.  Metaphors We Live By , 1980 .

[11]  O. Williamson.  The Economic Institutions of Capitalism: Firms, Markets, Relational Contracting , 1985 .

[12]  L. Shulman.  Forum: Teaching as Community Property , 1993 .

[13]  K. Weick.  Educational organizations as loosely coupled systems , 1976, Gestión y Estrategia.

[14]  Tomas Gerholm,et al.  On Tacit Knowledge in Academia. , 1990 .

[15]  William F. Massy,et al.  Departmental Cultures and Teaching Quality: Overcoming “Hollowed” Collegiality , 1994 .

[16]  Joseph C. Burke,et al.  Performance Funding and Budgeting for Public Higher Education: Current Status and Future Prospects. , 1997 .

[17]  P. Palmer,et al.  Good Talk about Good Teaching , 1993 .

[18]  Wolfgang J. Mommsen.  The age of bureaucracy;: Perspectives on the political sociology of Max Weber , 1974 .

[19]  Diego Gambetta.  Trust : making and breaking cooperative relations , 1992 .

[20]  S. Wineburg,et al.  Toward a Theory of Teacher Community. , 2001 .

[21]  Martin Ringle,et al.  Is Strategic Planning for Technology an Oxymoron , 1998 .

[22]  Karl E. Weick,et al.  Organizational Learning: Affirming an Oxymoron , 1999 .

[23]  R. Eccles,et al.  Networks and Organizations: Structure, Form, and Action , 1992 .

[24]  Arthur M. Cohen,et al.  The shaping of American higher education : emergence and growth of the contemporary system , 1998 .

[25]  Barbara Benham Tye.  Hard Truths: Uncovering the Deep Structure of Schooling , 2000 .

[26]  C. Kerr.  The uses of the university , 1964 .

[27]  F. Fukuyama.  Trust: The Social Virtues and the Creation of Prosperity Penguin London , 1995 .

[28]  Donald A. Schön.  The reflective practitioner : how professionals think in action , 1986 .

[29]  C. Wright Mills,et al.  From Max Weber , 1991 .

[30]  Clayton M. Christensen,et al.  The Great Disruption , 2001 .

[31]  Bill Readings,et al.  The university in ruins , 1996 .

[32]  Joseph A. Horvath,et al.  Tacit Knowledge in Teaching: Folk Pedagogy and Teacher Education , 1999 .

[33]  Alan T. Seagren.  The Department Chair as Academic Leader , 2000 .

[34]  Dennis A. Gioia,et al.  Identity, Image, and Issue Interpretation: Sensemaking during Strategic Change in Academia. , 1996 .

[35]  Sōgen Hori,et al.  Teaching and learning in Japan: Teaching and learning in the Rinzai Zen monastery , 1994 .

[36]  B. Clark.  Creating entrepreneurial universities : organizational pathways of transformation , 1998 .

[37]  J. Bruner.  The Culture of Education , 1996 .

[38]  S. Marginson,et al.  The Enterprise University: Power, Governance and Reinvention in Australia , 2000 .

[39]  D. Collard,et al.  Trust : making and breaking cooperative relations , 1989 .

[40]  Francis Macdonald Cornford.  Microcosmographia Academica: Being a Guide for the Young Academic Politician , 1980 .

[41]  D. Schoen,et al.  The Reflective Practitioner: How Professionals Think in Action , 1985 .

[42]  J. Bruner.  The Process of Education , 1960 .