Eugenie A. Samier

Public Administration Mentorship: Conceptual and Pragmatic Considerations.

This paper explores the value of informal and formal mentoring for the preparation of senior administrative ranks in the public sector. Through the construction of a conceptual framework identifying essential features of mentoring roles, qualifying characteristics, relationships, and stages, and a consideration of the organizational conditions under which it is more likely to succeed, planned mentoring programs and their administrative implications are evaluated.

Weber on Education and its Administration Prospects for Leadership in a Rationalized World

Weber’s contribution of the bureaucratic ideal type to administrative theory, and his delineation of the three authority types are well known. However, these constructs are often not presented accurately as ideal-typical forms devised to study social institutions in theirhistorical development as Weber intended. More importantly, for education, his subjective and valuational approach to social action, necessary to his interpretive social analysis, is neglected. This article traces Weber’s discussion of education through a number of his texts notusually referenced in educational administration, along with the better known Economy and Society. Education, viewed from this broader perspective in Weber’s writings, is seen to beinextricably interconnected with the development of religious, economic and political institutions, most importantly as it contributes to the problem of the ‘iron cage’ of rationalization, or the bureaucratization, of modern society. The possibilities for leadership in education in a rationalized world, that is, for the exercise of individual freedom and charisma, and even democracy, or in value terms, the reassertion of end valuesover rationalized means, appear to be increasingly grim. The consequence for higher education is the loss of autonomy and academic freedom that can currently be seen in the debate over the corporatization and commercialization of education.

Managerial rationalisation and the ethical disenchantment of education: A Weberian perspective on moral theory in modern educational organisations

This paper explores the moral and ethical dimension of indeterminacy in educational administration within the context of the managerialisation of education. Drawing on Max Weber’s seminal work on rationalisation, disenchantment, and the ethic of responsibility and the ethic of conviction, the author discusses the conflict between accountability and educational autonomy. While this conflict constitutes a key dilemma of educational leadership, educational theorists all too often attempt to resolve the conflict in favour of accountability over commitment consistent with managerial principles. By contrast, it is argued that mature educational leadership is characterised by an appreciation that conflicting ethical orientations are irreconcilable and that sound educational policy and practice must reflect practical realities and demands without sacrificing educational ideals.

Educational administration as a historical discipline : An Apologia pro vita historia

This paper discusses the contributions history can make to educational administration and how history needs to be conceptualised as a humanities discipline to serve this purpose, including two aspects of the field of particular relevance to educational administration and leadership, biography and comparative studies. The value of history is presented in its interpretive power, in both investigating the particular through individual cases and how these are related to larger societal forces of change producing explanation, establishing causal relations, and achieving understanding as Verstehen in its full hermeneutic sense.

Administrative Ritual and Ceremony Social Aesthetics, Myth and Language Use in the Rituals of Everyday Organizational Life

The purpose of this paper is to examine the nature and forms of ritual and ceremonial behaviour in the social life of organizations, in order to suggest how administration can be conceptualized systematically in ritual terms. Proposed is a cultural studies intepretive approach to organizational structure, functions and behaviour as ritual systems, derived in part from Max Webers theory of social action. This involves examining organization through developmental and functional aspects of ritual systems as they apply to organizational reality in both constitutive and punitive form.

Preventing and combating administrative narcissism: Implications for professional programmes

Purpose – The paper seeks to examine the problem of destructive narcissism as an aspect of the emotional dimension of educational administration. Positions of power and influence provide motive and opportunity for the damaging character of this personality disorder to negatively affect the work life of colleagues and sabotage organizational effectiveness, ranging in degree from mild annoyance to extreme disabling.Design/methodology/approach – The paper presents a model of narcissism composed of the typical profile and organisational expression in educational settings, drawing on narcissism theory. This includes the narcissists illegitimate sense of entitlement, inappropriate need for admiration and attention, lack of empathy, and projection of negative traits onto others that affect the politics and culture of schools and universities, including social interaction and work styles, that produces an objectified use of people.Findings – Four aspects of graduate professional programs are examined for the eff...

Alienation, servility, and amorality: relating Gogol’s portrayal of bureaupathology to an accountability era

This article explores the insights literature can bring to administrative and bureaucratic critique, focusing on the work of Nikolai Gogol. Gogol’s satire of bureaucracy presages many subsequent social science analyses. These encompass the fundamental ruptures in society caused by a surfeit of bureaucracy in ‘The Nose’ and, on a more psychological level, the effects of bureaucratization on the individual in ‘The Overcoat’. His stories portray the alienation, futile activity and servility caused in lower level functionaries through problems of loss of identity, the absence of meaningful work and a lack of separation between public and private life. This article uses Gogol’s work to intensify and sharpen an exploration of the pathological responses of educational administrators and policy makers to an accountability era of burgeoning bureaucracy that has a profound negative impact on performance.

Towards a postcolonial and decolonising educational administration history

ABSTRACT This article examines the increasing postcolonial and decolonising literature as it relates to non-Western countries and the history of their educational systems undergoing internationalisation and globalisation. The first section reviews a number of historiographical developments in the twentieth century that laid a foundation for a more cultural and global view and to include marginalised populations. The second section examines the critiques of educational history from postcolonial and decolonising perspectives, and the colonisation of mind critiques, including the recent indigenous research methodology movement. The third section explores two main challenges for the field of educational administration history are discussed: developing ways of understanding countries that operate under very different paradigms than Western states, and which are undergoing societal changes and stresses that Western states are not experiencing; and a revised research and methodology that captures problems of recolonisation/neoimperialism, the subaltern personality, and struggles to maintain indigenous cultures and roles. In order to respond to these conditions, educational administration, like other fields has to generate new models, theories, and modes of practice that derive from the conditions that postcolonial developing states face including identity formation, values, role construction and institutional arrangements.

The globalization of higher education as a societal and cultural security problem

In this article, I propose a theory of the globalization of higher education as societal and cultural security problems for many regions of the world. The first section examines the field of security studies for theoretical frameworks appropriate to critiquing globalized higher education, including critical human, societal and cultural security critiques of the Copenhagen, Aberystwyth and Paris schools, and their relationship to the educational sector, with a focus on the university’s role in the security studies field. The second section examines the effect of globalization on education as societal and cultural security problems related to neoliberalism, colonization, internationalization of curriculum and cross-cultural management studies.

Pursuing the administrative avant-garde: an aesthetic critique of change in educational systems

This paper addresses theories of the avant-garde, especially but not exclusively in art and as part of a modernist aesthetic. The paper examines the ways in which avant-garde theory of the creative process can inform educational administration in the change process, as both a critique and an ideal. The argument adopted here is that if administration can be conceptualised as an art, then arts critical and creative traditions also speak to those aspects of professional practice that involve creative activity such as organisational design, leadership vision and strategic analysis. This is a possible way towards rethinking schools and educational systems.