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Structured Observation of Managerial Work: A Replication and Synthesis

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Abstract

This study uses structured observation categories to investigate the relationship between managerial behaviour, performance, and environmental and demographic variables. We found significant differences in managerial behaviour related to environmental and demographic variables but not to performance. Our replication and synthesis of other studies generally supports earlier conclusions regarding the brief, varied, fragmented and interpersonal nature of managerial work. The results also point to the important relationship between the environment and managerial behaviour. Implications for managerial practice and research are discussed.

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... Our review of the recent empirical studies revealed some consistent activity patterns as described below. These patterns were largely similar to what was found in the earlier studies on principal time use (Kmetz and Willower, 1982;Martinko and Gardner, 1990;Martin and Willower, 1981;Morris, 1981;Willis, 1980) and patterns of managerial work in general (Mintzberg, 1973). ...
... Empirical support for this image is plentiful. Martinko and Gardner (1990) found that 40% of principals' activities were unscheduled meetings consuming almost 30% of their time. In contrast, scheduled meetings comprised only 3% of all leadership events and 14% of total principal work time. ...
... Caught in between instructional and managerial leadership demands, principals often succumb to meeting the immediate needs of managerial tasks. For example, in their classic study of principal time use, Martinko and Gardner (1990) found the most prominent purposes of contacts principals had throughout their day were giving and receiving information, each of which consumed 22% of principals' time and 26% of their events, followed by monitoring/touring and review. This observation is generally consistent with other studies conducted in the same period (Martin and Willower, 1981;Morris 1981;Kmetz and Willower, 1982;Willis, 1980) and more recent observations, despite the outcry for instructional leadership. ...
Article
While the significance of principals’ roles is widely recognized, and the impactful behaviors of principals are empirically delineated, little is known about whether principals spend time in an impactful way, whether principals’ time use varies across different school contexts, or whether principals’ time use is related to critical school conditions and outcomes such as school climate and student outcomes. We made an attempt to respond to these questions by conducting a secondary analysis of Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study data. We found that American middle school principals’ job continues to be administration-bound, spontaneous and fragmented. In general, American principals could be classified into two major clusters: Eclectic Principals versus Balanced Principals. Higher school poverty, higher concentration of English language learners and more urbanity were associated with a higher incidence of Eclectic Principals. Nevertheless, except for teacher engagement, schools led by different clusters of principals did not differ in terms of parent/student engagement or student behavior. Although schools led by Balanced Principals tend to outperform those led by Eclectic Principals, this achievement difference was not statistically significant at .05 level. With a large national representative sample, the study fills knowledge gaps associated with small samples and limited attention to situational determinants of principal leadership activity.
... However, when we compared our results to other research, such as time-use studies, a different interpretation emerged. Before the Internet, principals' talk often occurred during informal gatherings and encounters, formal meetings, and phone conversations (Kmetz & Willower, 1982;Martin & Willower, 1981;Martinko & Gardner, 1990); current principals' communication media are now both traditional (e.g., formal and informal meetings, phone calls) and contemporary (e.g., e-mail). An Ontario time-use study conducted in 2013 (see Pollock, 2014; indicated that in a principal's average 59-hour work week, they engaged in a number of different kinds of communication (talk-as-text) media. ...
... This means that Haughey's 2006 prediction-administrators' talk being replaced by text-did not happen. In most structured observation studies over the past 40 years, the percentage of principals' time spent on traditional communication such as meetings (formal/informal, external/internal) has ranged from 4.1% (Bezzina, 1998) to 42.57% (Martinko & Gardner, 1990). Given that our study participants spend approximately 26% of their time in meetings, contemporary Ontario principals fall into the middle of the historical range: It has not decreased. ...
Article
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E-mail is having a profound impact on the workplace; this is particularly true for schools and for those in the position of principal. This article uses data from interviews with 70 school principals to illustrate how e-mail influences their work and workload. Benefits of e-mail use for principals include convenient and efficient communication with stakeholders, the opportunity to better manage workloads, and the ability to document daily communications by creating an accountability trail. Challenges include high volumes of e-mail, extended workdays, increased workload, greater expectations of shorter response time, and a blurring of the boundaries between work and home. The most compelling finding is that e-mail communication has intensified contemporary principals’ work and transformed the principalship into a mobile position with poorly defined work hours.
... conserving assets). In fact, the difference between these categories is not clear in the writings of various authors (see, for example, Hales, 1986;Martinko and Gardner, 1990). However, as mentioned above, in this case we need to address our attention to units of behaviour rather than minute details (Anguera, 1993). ...
... Each category has a certain quintessential nature (which usually underlie the criteria for grouping similar items) and a certain flexibility and open-endedness (i.e. an apparent heterogeneity) (Anguera, 1993). Following earlier published work (Mintzberg, 1973;Martinko and Gardner, 1990), we relied on a final subset of topographic categories, such as contact method, who initiated the observed activity, participants, place, type of document worked on, sender, attention paid, action taken; and also functional categories, including manager's roles such as conceptualiser, monitoring, internal disseminator, external disseminator, direct supervision, etc. ...
Article
A recent trend in public administration studies has been to assess how public management is performed by politicians and top civil servants. Surprisingly, little is known about how these different posts develop their management roles. Following seminal management studies, we focus on core management roles to compare the ways in which politicians and top civil servants develop their management responsibilities within public organisations. Empirical evidence is provided by triangulating three separate studies developed in Spain. Results from the triangulation show that there is unmistakable evidence of differentiations between politicians and top civil servants when performing their managerial roles.
... al. (1979) x 619 P, T Crowson & Porter-Gehrie (1980) x 10 P, T Martin & Willower (1981) x 5 P Kmetz & Willower (1982) x 5 P Hallinger (1983) x x 144 P, S, T Morris, et. al. (1984) x 26 P Hallinger & Murphy x x x 10 P, S, T (1985) x x 87 P Martinko & Gardner (1990) x 41 P Leithwood & Jantzi(1999a) x 110 T, S Leithwood & Jantzi(1999b) x 110 T, S Camburn, et. al.(2003) x 484 P, T Gronn & Hamilton x x x 2 P, S, T, Mintzberg (1973) x 5 CEO Kotter (1982) x x 15 GM,Sub Hales & Tam (1996) x x x x 20 Man Watson (1996) x x 10 Man Grugulis (1997) x x 40 Man Dargie (1998) x : 1970-1989 Some of the first significant work to focus on educational leadership practice came in the 1970's with Wolcott's well-known ethnography of Edward Bell (1973) and ...
... Hallinger and Murphy questioned the ability of structured observations to capture principals' instructional management practices, and they recommended more work to look at the effects of different instructional management styles as well as qualitative efforts to generate thicker descriptions of just how principal manage curriculum and instruction. Martinko and Gardner (1990) continued with Mintzberg's structured observations and studied 41 school principals to examine the nature of principals' managerial behaviors and whether or not they varied according to principals' effectiveness and their environmental and demographic surroundings. They found evidence that supported Mintzberg's earlier work which showed that managerial work is "brief, varied, fragmented, and interpersonal" (p. ...
... O trabalho de Mintzberg (1973) é um exemplo de um estudo sobre a concepção empírica da gestão que constitui uma referência relevante, pois repercutiu (ver McCall & Segrist, 1980;Lau, Newman, & Broedling, 1980;Kurke & Aldrich, 1983;Martinko & Gardner, 1990), entretanto constatou que depois dela foram realizados poucos estudos sistemáticos sobre a gestão, pois há muito material que usa o nome management, mas, em geral, há pouco conteúdo sobre a atividade dos gerentes. Após seu estudo de 1973de , Mintzberg (2010 assinala como os melhores trabalhos empíricos sobre o tema as investigações de Sayles (1979), Kotter (1982) e Hill (1992. ...
... Na década de 1990, os pesquisadores prosseguiram realizando estudos empíricos na mesma linha dos anteriores (Martinko & Gardner, 1990;Hill, 1992;Hales & Tamangani, 1996;Barry, Cramton, & Carroll, 1997;Hales, 1999). É válido destacar o livro de Watson (2001), pois o autor realiza uma pesquisa etnográfica em uma organização e conclui que há uma aproximação entre a gestão e a prática social. ...
Article
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Objetivo: Discutir a ressignificação do imaginário gerencial, recuperando outro sentido para a gestão, que envolve criação e diálogo e representa uma nova dinâmica para a atividade, além de desafios para a formação dos administradores. Originalidade/Lacuna/Relevância/Implicações: Na primeira parte, fazemos um contraponto entre a concepção empírica e a concepção abstrata de gestão, para salientar os aspectos práticos, sociais e políticos da atividade gerencial e colocar em questão a visão tradicional da gestão como planejamento e controle. Na segunda parte, argumentamos que a essência da gestão é a dialética e que o seu desafio é recorrer à dialogicidade para enfrentar as contradições. Principais considerações/conclusões: Sustentamos que a força do imaginário gerencial reforça o mito de que fazer negócios e controlar é sinônimo de gerenciar, apesar das constatações empíricas que contrariam esta visão. Dessa forma, repensar a atividade gerencial significa romper com este imaginário, ressignificando-o e transformando a formação do administrador.
... Another frequently considered school context is the school's geographical location (e.g., city, town, rural areas). The work of Martinko and Gardner (1990) highlighted the importance of urbanization in explaining how principals allocate their time. They found that principals in rural areas are more likely to spend time on touring and unscheduled meetings than urban and suburban principals who tend to engage more in administrative, desk work. ...
... Even regarding the question of whether shadowing is a methodological research approach or a research method, there is no consensus in the current discourse (for a discussion of different understandings in the literature, see Krein, 2023). Thus, the explanations vary between (more) quantitative understandings, which emphasize the quantification or classification of activities (e.g., Martinko & Gardner, 1990), and qualitative understandings. Following the latter, Czarniawska describes shadowing as "observation on the move" (Czarniawska, 2014, p. 43) as the researcher follows the participant as they navigate through their everyday work. ...
Article
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Shadowing has been used for decades in educational leadership and management research. Yet, there appears to be little academic discussion of shadowing and its related forms or analyses of the method itself. This contribution attempts to further a reflection on shadowing by providing insights into its use as well as its pitfalls and merits. For this purpose, relevant studies from 2017 until 2023 making use of shadowing were analyzed. The results indicate that although the use of shadowing in educational leadership research has increased, methodolog-ical discussion and reflection of the method has been only limited.
... However, barring two recent studies which the review found Hauseman, 2015, 2019), estimates of time spent by modern-day principals in UPMs are rare (Chikoko and Mthembu, 2021;De Nobile, 2015;Huang et al., 2020). In contrast, earlier accounts of principal workdays portray UPMs as brief episodes as the largest composition of principal time-cumulatively comprising 20% to 50% of a principal's workday (Kmetz and Willower, 1982;Martin and Willower, 1981;Martinko and Gardner, 1990;. ...
Article
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This article systematically reviews the literature noting unplanned meetings of the principal or unplanned principal meetings (UPMs) from 1970 to 2022. UPMs are understudied though they are considered essential for communication and/or labeled as distractions. The purpose of this review is to examine notations of UPMs in academic literature to estimate how much principal time they comprise and what purposes they serve. The systematic literature search used keyword search, snowballing, and personal network references to yield 31 academic publications. The interpretive findings of the review suggest that UPMs comprise at least 16% of principal workdays and provide information exchange, crisis management, and emotional support. UPMs fulfilled these purposes through their informality, candidness, immediacy, and confidentiality. UPMs epitomize that small does not mean simple. Even though they usually take under 5 min, they shift the school principal time, attention, and space and carry the potential to shift school and school leadership practice. Significantly, the everyday, little-noted UPMs manifest the work tension and work intensity of principalship and may serve as a novel lens to theorize principal practice.
... The decisional role includes four roles relating to the organization's important actions: 'entrepreneur' (being an initiator and designer of much of the controlled change in the organization); 'disturbance handler' (handling important, unexpected disturbances that the organization faces); 'resource allocator' (allocating organizational resources of all kinds for significant organizational decisions); and 'negotiator' (participating in important negotiation sessions). The replicating studies have provided some support for Mintzberg's (1973) model (e.g., Lau, 1983, 1985;Martinko and Gardner, 1990), and it has been used as an important source of reference that has informed management research and education (Gibbs, 1994;Tengblad, 2006). ...
Chapter
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The goal of this chapter is to qualitatively investigate the managerial unlearning process during promotion from senior manager to executive officer, based on the upper echelons perspective and leadership pipeline model, using interview data from 46 executive officers.
... One of the research methods that is known to produce accurate data is structured observation, which is real-time recordings of time spent throughout the workday on individual tasks (Glantz et al., 2019;Bentley et al., 1994;Martinko & Gardner, 1990). Under this method, a trained observer "shadows" the principal during their workday and records, at set time intervals (e.g., 5 minutes), the activity occupying the principal at the moment. ...
Article
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Time management for educational leaders has remained highly relevant to scholars, policymakers and practitioners. We analyzed survey responses from 98 public high school principals to examine the congruency between average total hours they worked per week against the sum total of the average hours worked per week in each of five distinct categories of leadership tasks. The observed congruence was 0.32, while Cohen’s kappa coefficient was 0.10. Female principals tended to underreport, and male principals tended to overreport, total work time. Principals with doctorate degrees exhibited higher congruence than those without, and overreporting was inversely related to highest degree. Principals in charge of large teaching staffs were more likely than their counterparts to be congruent and less likely to overreport total work time. Self-report appears to be an inaccurate method to measure time use among high school principals. If time use is a key component of the quality of principal leadership, more detailed and robust techniques for collecting time use data should be utilized in future studies.
... A school's physical location is also related to principals' time usage. Martinko and Gardner (1990) isolated different patterns of time allocation among principals by level of urbanization. They found that principals in rural schools tended to spend more time participating in unscheduled meetings and "touring" the school, whereas their counterparts in urban and suburban schools tended to spend more time on administration-related desk work. ...
... These ten roles consist of three interpersonal roles (figurehead, leader, and liaison), three informational roles (monitor, disseminator, and spokesperson), and four decisional roles (entrepreneur, disturbance handler, resource allocator, and negotiator). Many other scholars in various academic disciplines replicated, modified, and extended this role classification; generally, their findings confirmed Mintzberg's conceptualization of managerial roles (e.g., [68,83,91,92]). However, in the early 1980s, approximately one decade after Mintzberg's seminal work, the various innovations in the IT domain led to major challenges in IT leadership within organizations. ...
... Data are then synthesised and analysed. Structured observation has been used to observe a variety of individuals at work including managers (Mintzberg, 1971), health care workers (Arman et al., 2009), high school principles (Martinko & Gardner, 1990) and management consultants (Jong & Eekelen, 2002). Six design engineers were observed following this protocol, each for a oneweek period. ...
Article
Today’s knowledge work environment is one of frequent interruptions, unnecessary distractions, essential interactions and valuable fragments of solitary work. There is an urgent need to better understand how knowledge workers juggle their competing, intertwining activities to get work done. Drawing on complexity theory we conceptualise the workplace as a complex adaptive system where knowledge workers evolve across a mountainous “fitness landscape”, made up of peaks and valleys that represent various levels of “fitness” for productive work. Using a case study design and detailed observation of knowledge workers, we find that they often rely on stable, but sometimes sub-optimal workgroup routines and the search costs of exploring the landscape prevent them from finding and climbing more productive distant peaks. The fitness landscape metaphor is useful for understanding knowledge worker self-management behaviours and provides a new frame to study knowledge worker productivity.
... A number of scholars have investigated managerial effectiveness in terms of job roles and job behaviours (Hamlin and Patel, 2012;Harrow and Willcocks, 1990;Linna et al., 2010;Martinko and Gardner, 1990;Metts, 2007;Pareek, 2008;Rastogi, 2009;Wang, 2011;Willcocks, 2002), whereas others correlate it with the skills and required competencies (Allen et al., 2006;Boyatzis, 1982;Gladson and Ahiauzu, 2008;Harley, 1995;Narayan and Rangnekar, 2009). Shipper et al., (2003); Spencer et al., (1990); Verbeek-Heinsman et al., (2008). ...
Article
Purpose The present study aims to conduct a critical review of an existing set of practices within the Maltese public sector. Design/methodology/approach This study is based on interpretivism (people-centred approach) embedded in a pragmatic research paradigm (the use of mixed methods). Findings Misconceptions about the role and practice of executive coaching in Malta relates to the similar roles ascribed to mentoring, supervision, therapy, consultation, coaching, audit and watchdog under the misnomer of “coaching”. Research limitations/implications The main contribution of this research is to the community of professional practitioners as well as to the Maltese central government to improve managerial effectiveness in the Maltese public sector with several endorsed policy-level recommendations presented in the study. Practical implications The results suggest a restructuring of a well-defined, structures, systems and dynamics within the Maltese public administration, the ability by senior management including senior public officers (SPOs) to recognise high-potential talents, the need to expand leadership capacity, the establishment of a professional coaching body and a national coaching network framework. Originality/value To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study that investigates the role and impact of executive coaching in the Maltese public sector using quantitative and qualitative empirical data.
... Also, the level of urbanization leads principals into different patterns of time allocation to their tasks. Martinko and Gardner (1990) showed that principals in rural schools spent more time in unscheduled meetings and touring the school whereas principals in urban schools spent more time on administration-related deskwork. ...
Article
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Objectives: Working under the constraints of external accountability policy, public school principals are faced with challenges in prioritizing educational goals. Using the Schools and Staffing Survey (SASS) data sets, this study examined the nature and sources of changes in principals’ educational goal priorities in the era of accountability, including the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB). Method: Difference-in-differences method was used to compare the national average trends of educational goal priorities between public and private schools during 1991–2012 period. Comparative interrupted time series method was also used to explore the impact of NCLB accountability policy on those trends across 50 states. At the school level, logistic regression was applied to examine the effect of NCLB Adequate Yearly Progress status on principals’ educational priorities. Results: While academic goals gained traction over the 1991–2012 period, there were setbacks for other goals of education, particularly personal growth and vocational skills. Notably, public schools’ priority changes were more drastic than private schools’ changes. The divergent trends largely persisted after NCLB across the states. On the other hand, public school principals who previously failed to meet NCLB targets gave more emphasis on basic skills and less emphasis on academic excellence and personal growth. Conclusion: Public school principal’s priorities on academic goals have been shaped by test-driven accountability measures, while other equally important goals have been possibly deprioritized. It gives implications for the implementation of the Every Student Succeeds Act, in which educational leaders can redesign accountability systems and incorporate nonacademic measures for whole child education.
... The research methodology involved conducting a structured observation that coded and analysed each fight video according to predetermined characteristics using a coding schedule. This involved collecting both qualitative and quantitative variables relating to each analysed fight video (Martinko 1990;Martinko and Gardner 1985;Given 2008). The quantitative characteristics of fight videos coded included: age and ethnicity of fight participants (where this information was available); the number and ratio of fight participants; what fight participants were wearing, including whether they were wearing makeup or jewellery; and where the fight took place. ...
Article
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How young women engage in physical violence with other young women is an issue that raises specific concerns in both criminological literature and theories. Current theoretical explanations construct young women's violence in one of two ways: young women are not physically violent at all, and adhere to an accepted performance of hegemonic femininity; or young women reject accepted performances of hegemonic femininity in favour of a masculine gendered performance to engage in violence successfully. This article draws on qualitative and quantitative data obtained from a structured observation and thematic analysis of 60 online videos featuring young women's violent altercations. It argues that, contrary to this dichotomous construction, there appears to be a third way young women are performing violence, underpinned by masculine characteristics of aggression but upholding a hegemonic feminine gender performance. In making this argument, this article demonstrates that a more complex exploration and conceptualisation of young women's violence, away from gendered constructs, is required for greater understanding of the issue.
... Within the organization studies field, Mintzberg (1973) has also used shadowing that focused on interviews, mail, and contact records (Mintzberg, 1973). However, Snyder and Glueck (1980) have criticized him for being too qualitative, while Martinko and Gardner (1990) have criticized him for being too quantitative. This criticism notwithstanding, Mintzberg's report on managerial work has become a classic. ...
Article
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The aim of this article is to investigate my experience of shadowing as a method. Since shadowing comes in a wide variety of understandings, the article gives the reader a short overview of research fields and topics connected to shadowing. In my use of the method, I have focused upon shadowing teachers at a multigrade school in rural Norway. Toward this background, I have formulated the research question, “In what ways has shadowing arisen thoughts on challenges as well as contributed to preliminary results?” The investigation of my experiences presents entrance to the field and orientation and use of compass. I present theories that developed during fieldwork and contributed to concepts, interpretation, and preliminary results. The results indicate shadowing gives the researcher challenges in reference to research design, terminology, and techniques. The contribution to the preliminary results indicate you have to be present in the moment to experience organizing work, whereas you can observe organizations after the fact.
... Like other middle managers, principals bear the supervisory and managerial responsibilities associated with running a building (Camburn et al., 2010) and typically face competing internal and external demands for their time and attention (Goldring et al., 2007). However, one comparison study characterized the principalship as more spontaneous and unplanned than other middle management positions, with more than a third of principals' activities initiated by others (Martinko and Gardner, 1990). Consequently, the typical principals' workday consists of responding to requests, problem solving, and navigating crises (Hallinger and Murphy, 2012). ...
Conference Paper
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To better understand how principals successfully practiced instructional leadership in their school contexts, the authors conducted a mixed methods study using Event Sampling Methodology to collect data on how elementary and middle school principals spent their time each day for a month. The findings indicated principals at the highest performing schools differed in their task distribution and in the unique foci that distinguished their time use, rather than the proportion of time they allocated to instructional activities.
... The development of this idea has been reflected in a number of studies in the field of managerial effectiveness, although there is so far no consensus on this concept. Managerial effectiveness has been investigated from different perspectives as managerial roles and work behaviours (Martinko & Gardner, 1990;Analoui, 1999;Willcocks, 2002;Rastogi et al., 2004;Metts, 2007;Wang, 2011;Hamlin & Patel, 2012;Bamel et al., 2015), personal characteristics, skills and competencies (Boyatzis, 1982;Shipper et al., 2003;Allen et al., 2006;Narayan & Rangnekar, 2011), person, process and product approach (Campbell et al., 1970). Though there is an agreement that managerial effectiveness depends on a wide range of personal, organizational and environmental factors (Analoui, 2010), nevertheless difficulties occur trying to explain managerial effectiveness concerning its measurability and comparability. ...
Article
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The aim of this study was to analyze the managerial work of Lithuanian managers in terms of managerial roles and their effect on perceived effectiveness of managers’ work in small and medium – sized companies in Lithuania. Literature analysis reveals the concept of managerial work in terms of roles played by managers and discusses the issue of managerial effectiveness. Both concepts are seen as highly complex phenomena where role accomplishing is recognized as an important influential factor in effective managerial work performance. A survey was used as the most appropriate tool for data collection. The respondents at managerial positions were randomly selected in SMEs in Lithuania. Exploratory factor analysis was used to single out managerial roles, and multiple regression analysis was conducted to identify the relationship between managerial roles and perceived managerial effectiveness. The study revealed significant results in terms of performance of managerial roles and questioned the universalistic model of managerial roles by pointing out to their sensitivity to organizational context. The results demonstrate that a part of the activities of managers still fall within the framework of the traditional managerial roles. Yet, findings also suggest that there is a substantial part which can be subsumed under the new separate roles as Analyzer, Representor, and Networker. Regrouped managerial roles revealed a strong positive correlation with perceived managerial effectiveness.
... The decisional role includes four roles relating to the organization's important actions: 'entrepreneur' (being an initiator and designer of much of the controlled change in the organization); 'disturbance handler' (handling important, unexpected disturbances that the organization faces); 'resource allocator' (allocating organizational resources of all kinds for significant organizational decisions); and 'negotiator' (participating in important negotiation sessions). The replicating studies have provided some support for Mintzberg's (1973) model (e.g., Lau, 1983, 1985;Martinko and Gardner, 1990), and it has been used as an important source of reference that has informed management research and education (Gibbs, 1994;Tengblad, 2006). ...
Article
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Although the abilities of executive officers to unlearn may have a significant impact on organizational unlearning, few studies have investigated the individual unlearning transition. The goal of this study was to examine the managerial unlearning process upon promotion from senior manager to executive officer, based on the upper echelons perspective and leadership pipeline model. Analyses of interview data with 46 executive officers at medium and large-sized Japanese firms indicated that they unlearned and learned their managerial skills in relation to ‘decision making’, ‘delegation and motivation’, and ‘collecting information’, and that the unlearning process was discontinuous. Specifically, decision making skills were switched from ‘short-term, analytic, and partial’ to ‘long-term, intuitive, and holistic’. Skills in delegation and motivation were transformed from ‘directive’ to ‘dedicated and entrusting’. Skills in collecting information were switched from ‘direct collection’ to ‘network-based collection’. This study contributes to the literature on managerial skills by showing empirically the discontinuous nature of management transitions with regard to an unlearning perspective.
... As Elmore (2000) argued, the primary task of educational administrators is often to manage the processes surrounding instruction. Likewise, other researchers-including Wolcott (1973), Martinko and Gardner (1990) and Spillane and Hunt (2010)-have also revealed that the majority of principals' time is spent on managerial tasks. Furthermore, Supovitz and Buckley (2008) found that even when principals attempt to function more as instructional leaders than as mangers, the result has very little effect on improving teaching and learning. ...
Article
This case study examined how the Connecticut Association of Schools' (CAS) Executive Coaching program was implemented at five schools. The program was started to improve the instructional leadership capacity of principals via embedded, ongoing professional development. Semi-structured interviews were conducted in person and by telephone. Interview questions explored the effectiveness of the coaching program, as measured by the perceptions of coaches, principals, and other key school personnel (such as teachers and leadership team members). In addition, documents provided by executive coaches and principals were reviewed. This study found that the majority of sites reported changes in principals' leadership practices after engaging in "joint work" with an executive coach for at least two years, Furthermore, differences in implementation of the program at various sites were linked to individual coaches' philosophies about the purpose of coaching.
... Struktureret observation er ofte blevet kritiseret for at se bort fra den kontekst, hvori den observerede adfaerd finder sted (Martinko & Gardner, 1990). Dette kritikpunkt imødekommes ved at lave en kontekstanalyse af Gentofte Hospital og bruge denne til at opstille hypoteser og udarbejde nudges. ...
Thesis
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The reduction of hospital-aquired infections has been on the agenda for some time. Thus far, most initiatives have focused on getting hospital employees to remember to desinfect their hands, and less attention has been paid to the visitors as being a source of infection. Hence, the main purpose of this thesis is to explore how nudging can be used to improve visitors’ use of hand sanitatizers within the scope of medical department F at Gentofte Hospital. Using the insights from behavioral economics, three different interventions were developed and tested for their effectiveness in a real world setting. The preliminary results of the investigation at Gentofte Hospital demonstrated that one of the three interventions had a far greater positive impact on visitors’ usage of hand sanitizer than the other two. This particular intervention contained a new placement of the hand sanitizer and the exposure of a red sign stating a desciptive normative message. We encourage future academics and practitioners to acquire a thorough understanding of the different influences on human behavior along with its ethical implications, when developing interventionens concerned with influencing real people in a real world setting.
... These initial studies were quite simplistic, as they did not take into account either resulting performance or any contingency variables, such as personal or environmental characteristics. A later study by Martinko and Gardner (1990) tried to address these deficiencies and arrived at similar conclusions, confirming the validity of Mintzberg's findings. These authors also found dependencies of managerial behavior on contingency variables, but were not able to confirm the relationship between managerial patterns and performance. ...
Chapter
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Alfirevic, Burusic, Pavicic and Relja draw on the theoretical discussions provided in the previous chapters of the Palgrave Macmillan volume dedicated to school-effectiveness and educational-management research. They identify the weaknesses of the existing knowledge base and identify the challenges for future research and the public-policy agenda in South-East Europe and beyond.
... Most time-use studies of managers have been largely descriptive, without attempting to demonstrate the effectiveness of various managerial communications. One exception is the work of Martinko and Gardner (1990), which did not find a link between the overall time invested in communication activities and team performance. ...
Article
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We examined the impacts of the team listening environment and the frequency of team communication on team coordination in business environments. While there is a long history of examining listening on an individual and interpersonal level in communication research, the construct of a Team Listening Environment (TLE) was only recently developed. We surveyed 233 full-time working professionals, including executives, mid-level managers, and entry-level managers. Using multiple regression analysis, we found that a team listening environment is the single most important contributor to team coordination. We also found that the frequency of unscheduled meetings increased team coordination but that the frequency of scheduled meetings did not increase team coordination. Other factors such as length of employment with current employer, frequency of other forms of communication, age, and gender did not impact team coordination.
Book
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he book concerns the many links and relations between management and performance in organizations.
Chapter
Aim: This article explores principals’ work: It considers what principals do, why this work is changing, and the consequences of this changing work on principals, such as the impact of work intensification. Main concepts: The conceptual lenses—role, time on task and work—are briefly considered before utilizing the main concept of work to explore what school principals do. Main conclusions: The main conclusion of this article is that many school principals experience work intensification. Conclusion/outlook: If left unchecked, principals’ work intensification can lead to challenges to principals’ health and wellness, reduce principals’ ability to positively influence student success, and inhibit principal recruitment and retention.
Article
Entre le constat d’un travail d’encadrement intemporel et universel et celui d’un phénomène de désaffection pour la fonction de manager, un autre s’opère, celui d’un éloignement des managers de la scène du travail opérationnel. L’« empêchement » du management (Detchessahar, 2011) vient ainsi freiner la capacité du manager à dialoguer avec ses équipes. Cette recherche, réalisée au sein d’une grande entreprise française de l’énergie, sur la base d’une analyse systématique des conversations dans les activités managériales, a ainsi vocation à comprendre comment l’empêchement du management se traduit concrètement dans la capacité du manager à dialoguer au travail. Car si le dialogue constitue l’essence même de l’activité d’encadrement, l’hégémonie de la représentation « gestionnaire » du travail rend cette discussion de plus en plus difficile à réaliser au sein des organisations.
Article
Clinical experiences, including the full-time principal internship, are considered to be one of the most important components in principal preparation. Yet research on the principal internship is limited to surveys and interviews. I use a daily life methodology to explore full-time principal interns’ experiences during an academic school year. I find that interns’ activities approximate the work of a school principal in many aspects of the job, including administrative activities and instructional leadership. I also find that variation between interns’ activities is consistent with the literature, in that their activities vary based on personal background and school context.
Article
The text aims to provide an introduction to the replicability and reproducibility issue in management science while at the same time highlighting possible problems associated with replication research. The study is based on the review of the current literature. Three central issues are highlighted: a) the scarcity of replication attempts is caused by the incentive structure faced by management scholars, b) since the majority of published replications (interstudy and intrastudy) are authored by the researchers who conducted the original study, their results can be affected by the same incentives that affect the results of the original study, c) the popularity of research findings seems to be unaffected by failed attempts to reproduce them. This introductory treatment of the issue suggests that further examination of the relationship between the authorship and replication results is warranted. Increasing the number of replication studies requires a significant change in the incentive structure to which scholars are exposed.
Conference Paper
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The release of the 2014 Social Justice and Native Title Report by the Australian Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Social Justice Commissioner again emphasised the significant overrepresentation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in prison. Shortly after, the latest Australian Bureau of Statistics data on prisoners in Australia showed there were 1494 inmates incarcerated in the Northern Territory (NT) in 2014, of which 85.6 per cent were of Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander origin, the highest proportion of all states and territories. Many of these inmates are thought to originate from small and remote communities and, with significant numbers of Indigenous men and women in prison in the NT, there is a range of potential impacts for individual communities including social, economic and demographic. This research focuses on the demographic impacts for individual remote communities using a variety of secondary data and applying statistical techniques to highlight the range of impacts at community levels. The results demonstrate that with up to 14 per cent of men and 2 per cent of women being away at any given point in time due to incarceration some communities are significantly affected by the absence of residents in jail.
Book
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Enhancing Teacher Education, Development, and Evaluation examines the complex role that recent educational reforms have played in the teaching profession. The failure of programs like Race to the Top to benefit teaching and learning outcomes has yielded many questions about what went wrong and how a research-based plan for true systemic progress could actually work. Covering inaccurate narratives about schools and student achievement, evidence for teacher effectiveness, and the history and repercussions of Race to the Top, this book culminates with a proposal for future research and policy initiatives that more accurately and more equitably prioritize the measurement and improvement of teaching and learning. Five concise yet comprehensive chapters invite teacher and principal educators, teachers and school leaders in training, district administrators, policymakers, and other stakeholders to better understand the implications of and possible paths beyond misguided reform efforts. An overview of the recent past and an inspiration for the immediate future, this definitive analysis offers insights into how more reasonable, empirically derived strategies will ultimately foster more successful schools. The text can be ordered here: https://www.amazon.com/Moving-Beyond-Damage-Race-Top/dp/1138640891/ref=sr_1_fkmr0_2?keywords=Alyson+l.+lavigne&qid=1558132172&s=gateway&sr=8-2-fkmr0 OR here: https://www.routledge.com/Enhancing-Teacher-Education-Development-and-Evaluation-Lessons-Learned/Lavigne-Good/p/book/9781315630892
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This article investigates managerial work in relation to the managerial function ‘coordination’. The work and efforts of managers have been assumed to be central to preparing coordination by both the managerial work and coordination literature; however, none of these have thus far clarified exactly what managers do in coordination as it unfolds. This article adds to the literature by accounting for a study investigating of what the managerial practice of coordination consists. For this purpose, we adopt a practice theory-based approach to managerial work and relate the managerial function ‘coordination’ to the daily doings and sayings of a manager, to the overall activity and context of the organization. We empirically study the instrumental case of the skipper and crew of a racing sailboat. We show that, and how, managerial work is pivotal in situ to coordination as it occurs through sustaining circulation among coordination mechanisms and combinations of these mechanisms. We also contribute to the managerial work literature by putting forward rhythmicity and the temporal engagement of the skipper within the ongoing flow of activity.
Article
In a telework scenario, the lack of informal communications, such as impromptu meetings, is a hard-to-solve problem for those who work at home over the long term. To facilitate informal communication, a system called media space provided an always-on audiovisual connection between distributed workers. Moreover, recent studies suggested that telepresence robots featuring audiovisual capabilities like media space are effective for informal communication. However, in practical use, various problems exist. Therefore, in this paper, we survey the systems of media space and telepresence robots concerning the advantages, problems, and solutions. We also discuss the unresolved issues and required investigations. One of the unresolved issues is that a stationary or desktop robot has a difficulty in initiating informal communication because it cannot move around the office. To tackle the issue, we introduce our experiment suggesting that a robot emulating the social greeting process actually promotes informal communication compared with no emulation. Copyright © 2018 by ITE Transactions on Media Technology and Applications (MTA).
Book
While considerable evidence indicates that school leaders are able to make important contributions to the success of their students, much less is known about how such contributions are made. This book provides a comprehensive account of research aimed at filling this gap in our knowledge, along with guidelines about how school leaders might use this knowledge for their own school improvement work. Leadership practices known to be effective for improving student success are outlined in the first section of the book while the remaining sections identify four “paths” along which the influence of those practices “flow” to exercise an influence on student success. Each of the Rational, Emotional, Organizational and Family paths are populated by conditions or variables known to have relatively direct effects on student success and also open to influence by effective leadership practices. While the Four Path framework narrows the attention of school leaders to a still-considerable number conditions known to contribute to student success, it leaves school leaders the autonomy to select, for improvement efforts, the sub-set of conditions that make the most sense in their own local circumstances. The approach to leadership described in this book provides evidence-based guidance on what to lead and flexibility on how to lead for purposes of improving student learning.
Article
While shadowing as a method has been analysed and discussed, these discussions have often been focused on (business) management research as opposed to school leadership research. Additionally, little attention has so far been paid to the parameters of shadowing. Without knowledge of these matters, the validity, merits and difficulties of shadowing and data collected through shadowing are impossible to assess. This contribution aims at tackling these issues. First, it attempts to offer an overview of shadowing. Next, studies on school principals making use of shadowing are analysed, guided by the following research questions: What are the aims of the studies? How is shadowing defined by the author(s)? What are the parameters of the shadowing activities (duration, observers, observed persons)? What are the categories of observation? In conjunction with what other – if any – methods is shadowing used? What – if any – merits or pitfalls of shadowing are discussed? Finally, implications of the current use of shadowing are discussed and suggestions are offered to address desiderata uncovered during the analysis as well as to further develop the method.
Article
Part I of this paper (Fox, 1994) sketched an initial definition of management learning and offered a framework for research in the field. Addressed in part II are (a) the research on the nature of managerial work as a species of formal learning about the occupational activity of formal management; and (b) the research on the management and organization of management studies, with the purpose of opening up and problematizing a wider issue—the relationship between social studies/science and management studies/science. Part II briefly examines the sociological critique of the nature of managerial work literature and discusses the organization and internal management of sociology and economics as they have influenced management studies. The paper is exploratory, aiming to draw connections between disparate literatures and to raise fundamental questions about university management studies and the balance between what could be called technicism and critique.
Chapter
The work of contemporary school principals is intensifying in terms of its complexity and volume. Many factors moderate and drive such work intensification. This chapter aims to identify what and how such factors interact to complicate principals’ work. Focus groups and an online survey were used for data collection. Three focus group sessions with eight principals were conducted to help develop and refine the online survey. The survey covers 12 key areas in principals’ work and was distributed among the members of Ontario Principals’ Council. Descriptive statistics, correlation and factor analysis were conducted on survey results. The study showed that there are many key areas that moderate principals’ work, such as administrative duties and responsibilities, jurisdictional policies, external influences, partnerships, and challenges and possibilities. School principals are experiencing increased expectations at work in terms of the number of tasks they are expected to undertake, the duration of time they are required to complete those tasks, and the many challenges they face at their work. Principals’ choice of leadership approaches and practices is subject to factors that exist within and beyond schools. Such factors moderate the way that principals carry out their work and limit their choices in exercising their professional autonomy.
Chapter
The effectiveness of the chief information officer (CIO) in organizations is an important topic in the information systems literature because it affects IT success. Recent research is in agreement that an accurate understanding of CIO effectiveness is not possible without considering the organizational roles in which the CIO can operate. Despite the emerging research efforts in this field of study, an integrative perspective on CIO role effectiveness does not exist. To close this research gap, we review the literature in order to develop a set of organizational roles in which the contemporary CIO can act. These CIO roles are termed technology provider, strategic supporter, business thinker, innovation driver, integration advisor, and relationship manager. In consideration of these six CIO roles, we develop a model that comprises four antecedents of role effectiveness, which emerged from analysis of literature on CIO role effectiveness, namely (1) CIO personal competence, (2) CIO hierarchical position, (3) the management environment, and (4) the IT infrastructure of the organization in which the CIO operates. Altogether, our literature review synthesizes the results of highly fragmented work related to CIO role effectiveness reported in 98 studies published during the past three decades. Thereby, we contribute to the information systems literature. First, we integrate what is known about the scope and responsibilities of CIO organizational roles in the present management context. Second, based on our model, we guide research and practice by revealing how and why CIOs can achieve effectiveness in the six roles. Finally, we discuss limitations and potential avenues for future research.
Chapter
This chapter, like the others in this book, is designed as a resource for instructors and students studying education research methods. It provides an example of how one research team worked through social, political, economic, and research issues to problematize and eventually utilize observations as a data collection method to study principals' work. The contribution of this chapter lies in the area of research method, specifically the use of and the structuring of observation, rather than in the area of research paradigms. Nevertheless, given the charter of the book, the opportunity is taken to reflect on the research paradigm that applies and its implications. The chapter is about the study of principals' work and compares two different observation approaches.
Chapter
Vican, Alfirevic and Relja present the history and an overview of educational management/administration as a separate and applicative field addressing the specific issues of managing an educational institution. This is contextualized in terms of educational objectives to be realized, as well as boundaries set by educational policies and the ‘educational market’, either explicit or implicit. From the pragmatic point of view, the field is explicated by referring to principals’ activities and roles, as well as their influence to the ‘fit’ achieved by the school and its environment. The Anglo-American roots and the emerging ‘regional knowledge-bases’ and practices of educational management are discussed.
Chapter
When group interaction takes place via computers (e.g. in organizations), then it is worth considering the effect of the computers on managers and on the environment in which they work. It is expected that proper information systems can be used to communicate effectively to the manager (as well as to the user generally) the information that is generated. Studies performed by members of our group have indicated that distributed group work requires new technologies that complement existing ones while maintaining the support that face-to-face provides by means of group meetings. Groupware is such a technology as it aims to support communication (information sharing and exchange) so that decision-making can be more informed and to assist with the coordination of collaborative group work to enhance cooperation. The provision of systems that make the management processes easier for organizations is one of the goals of groupware.
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Purpose – The purpose of this paper it to report the findings of an empirical study into managers’ job performance. A new measure was developed from the literature to test and establish the multidimensional structure of managers’ contextual and task performance. Design/methodology/approach – Field ratings by executives explicitly and simultaneously measured both managers’ contextual and task performance. A cross-sectional questionnaire was administered to a variety of public and third sector managers from a range of private, public and third sector occupations residing in (Western) Australia. A purposive sample yielded a response rate of 32 percent. Factor analysis was used to determine the items that constitute executives’ perceptions of managers’ performance using downward appraisal (i.e. by the person to whom a manager reports). Findings – The construct “managers’ job performance” was found to be multidimensional; consisting of four distinct contextual factors (Following, Persisting, Helping, Endorsing) and a further four distinct task factors (Delegating, Monitoring, Technical, Influencing). Originality/value – Performance appraisals of managers represent new items and factors that more accurately reflect the nature of the broader roles undertaken by managers, including transformative and ethical leadership. Findings from this study assist in establishing the structure for the subsequent appraisal of managers’ contextual and task performance. Future researchers could test the applicability and replicability of this new instrument in more diverse industry contexts using confirmatory statistical analysis.
Article
Although top managers must project an image of professionalism and strength, they still require networks of individuals they can trust. The development of trust depends on the degree to which the executives perceive the presence of three critical attributes - ability, benevolence and integrity - within their support networks, and on their ability to match these qualities with the type of support they are seeking in any particular situation. We model the support being sought as having high or low informational complexity and high or low emotional demand. The combinations correspond to four types of support requested: raw information (low, low), actionable advice (high, low), emotional support (low, high), and strategic or political help (high, high). Meanwhile, the three critical attributes (each with either a high or low rating) translate into eight kinds of support providers: Trustworthy Partner, Harsh Truthteller, Moral Compass, Loyal Supporter, Star Player, Average Joe, Dealmaker and Cheerleader. Executives in need of actionable advice will most often turn to Trustworthy Partners or Harsh Truth- tellers, given their high levels of ability and integrity. For strategic or political help, Trustworthy Partners will be sought because of their high levels of ability, benevolence and integrity. Seekers of emotional support will look to Loyal Supporters and Trustworthy Partners because they offer high levels of benevolence and integrity. And when the three facets of trust are less critical, executives will be willing to go to virtually any of their contacts for raw information, though most often they seek out Average Joes. These and other matches were observed, useful data was gathered and valuable insights were obtained when we tested our model on vice presidents, directors, general managers and other executives at a Fortune 50 technology firm. Copyright © Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2009. All rights reserved.
Article
School principals have important jobs. To achieve a better understanding of their working lives, this chapter uses the professional diary and timetabling data of all the secondary School Principals, from schools in the Sant Cugat area of Catalonia, Spain. It begins by describing the context of the Catalonian educational system, its leadership and managerial model from a double perspective: on the one hand, the normative requirements; and on the other, the "day-to-day" tasks. The authors adopt a qualitative methodology. The analysis of the school principals' diaries and timetables was conducted over the course of one month (November 2013). The results permit us to relate the day-to-day tasks of the school principal to those tasks identified in the local and national school regulations and in the Education Law. This examination will lead to a better understanding of how the distribution of their activities and their time management is related to these requirements.
Article
PurposeIn this chapter, I proposed the use of structured behavioral analysis (SBA) as a methodological approach to address critical questions in organizational behavior research in sub-Saharan Africa. Methodology/approachThe chapter is a conceptual paper that reviews the extant literature on research tools aimed at coding and analyzing behavior, with a particular focus on employee behavior in African organizations. FindingsSBA requires the researcher to act as both an organizational scholar and an anthropologist. As an organizational scholar, the researcher will identify predetermined behaviors that he/she intends to study. Thus, the observation and analysis will be geared toward such behaviors. As an anthropologist, the organizational researcher will observe behaviors that are displayed by employees and managers and use them as the basis for explanation and theory building. Research limitations/implications (if applicable)SBA can be used to study behaviors that often occur in African organizations, such as nepotism, corruption, the role of tribal status, and the impact of family generosity, the forced solidarity tax, and obligations on employee behavior. Practical implications (if applicable)Findings from SBA could help design interventions to address the detrimental effects of negative behaviors while reinforcing positive behaviors in African organizations. Originality/value of chapterAs a research methodology, SBA is relatively new in the African context although some versions of the method are used in industrial/organizational psychology and ergonomics.
Chapter
This chapter highlights both the distinctiveness and the commonality of managerial work in a Research and Development (R&D) setting. Four Norwegian R&D managers are shadowed. In a comparison with the executives in Henry Mintzberg's The Nature of Managerial Work (1973), this research shows that these four R&D managers have more fragmented work, more contact with subordinates, fewer office meetings, and more interactive contact patterns. Pragmatically, they also spend more time displaying care for personnel. Such care, expressed in the everyday work activities of listening and chatting, may exert an influence on others through the social processes of reciprocation, liking, and authority. The conclusion is that R&D managers, as well as other leaders, need to acknowledge their own and others' emotions more strongly in the workplace.
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Literature pertaining to the structural influence of size, technology, and environment is reviewed. Results indicate similar structural predictions are offered by each of the three contingency variables. The roles of measurement, unit and level of analysis, variable and effect independence, and variable dominance in research inconsistencies and future research directions are considered.
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Research in developmental and educational psychology has come to rely less on conventional psychometric tests and more on records of behavior made by human observers in natural and quasi-natural settings. Three coefficients that purport to reflect the quality of data collected in these observational studies are discussed: the interobserver agreement percentage, the reliability coefficient, and the generalizability coefficient. Three-facet generalizability studies that parallel intraobserver–interobserver, split-half, and test–retest reliability studies are described as examples. It is concluded that although high interobserver agreement is desirable in observational studies, high agreement alone is not sufficient to insure the quality of the data that are collected. Evidence of the reliability or generalizability of the data should also be reported. Other uses for generalizability theory (e.g., attribution of variance, single-S studies) are suggested, and further advantages of generalizability designs are discussed. (27 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
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This paper reports a replication of Mintzberg (McCall M. W., Jr. A. M. Morrison, R. L. Hannan. 1978. Studies of managerial work: results and methods. Technical Report #9, Center for Creative Leadership.). Structured observation with supplemental unstructured interviewing was used to study four top managers for one week each. Mintzberg's field study was supported by our replication in all important dimensions. Explanations for similarities and differences between organizations and industries are briefly discussed.
Article
The abstract for this document is available on CSA Illumina.To view the Abstract, click the Abstract button above the document title.
Article
This paper provides a test of the usefulness of a formal organizational model in studying the structure of universities. Nondenominational universities in the United States were researched by sending mail questionnaires to administrators and faculty members. The findings reported here concern goals, their relation to the power structure, and to other characteristics of universities. There is consensus on the part of administration and faculty on what the goals are and on what they should be. According to both faculty and administration, the highest goal is and should be protecting the faculty's right to academic freedom. Most of the top goals are support goals rather than output goals, and only one of them involves students. In contrast, three of the four bottom goals refer to students. Protecting academic freedom is more emphasized as a goal in private than in state universities. In the former, the goals revolve around student-expressive matters, but the latter are more likely to emphasize preparing students for useful careers, assisting citizens through extension, and doing applied research. Student expressive goals are also related positively to the prestige of the institution, whereas emphasis on student instrumental goals and undergraduate instruction are related negatively to prestige. The biggest difference in goal structures arises where legislatures and state governments are perceived as having greater power, relative to administrators and faculty.
Article
Article
This study applied the structured observation technique developed by Mintzberg to the high school principalship. Observation of the activities performed by five principals resulted in a characterization of school administration that paralleled private sector management in many respects. Principals exercised building-level authority over such matters as organi zational maintainance, the administration of the instructional program, pupil control, and extra-curricular activities. They spent comparatively little time on affairs external to the school organization. Although their work pace was hectic, there were certain cyclic features which could be identified.
Article
The work behavior of five elementary school principals was examined using Mintzberg's structured observation technique. The principals' activities exhibited the intensity, variety, and fragmentation typical of administrator work. Compared with secondary principals in an earlier study, the elementary principals' pace was less hectic, and they spent more time on the instructional program. They also exhibited many individual differences. The authors conclude with a consideration of the limitations of structured observation. The article is an expanded version of a paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Educational Research Association, New York Citv, March 1982.
Article
This paper analyzes the positions of Mintzberg and planning experts on the extent to which managers plan and the importance of planning to management. Mintzberg contends that managers do not plan. The ‘planning literature’ contends that planning leads to effective management. In a replication of Mintzberg's study, the authors found support for the planning literature's position. The discrepancy between Mintzberg and the planning literature is explained by the shortcomings of the observational method used by Mintzberg. A suggested modification of Mintzberg's method is given.
Article
To exert leadership in schools, principals need to understand how to influence teachers. Using established bases of social power, this study examined how principals in "effective" and in other schools gained influence over their teachers. Principal-as-expert emerged as the most important influence-gaining behavior.
Article
The effects of organizational size on school processes are studied in this article through the use of a resource allocation model. The model stresses the importance of including nonpurchased resources provided outside of school in the calculation of educational costs. Distinctions are drawn among various conceptions of school district size, and resource allocation implications for each are derived. Empirical evidence from New York State is used to test the proposition that the consequences of differences in size are distributed unequally among categories of students. This within district inequality could be viewed as a potentially serious denial of equal educational opportunity.
Article
This study examines the concept of organizational effectiveness in institutions of higher education. Some obstacles to the assessment of organizational effectiveness in higher education are discussed, namely criteria problems and the unique organizational attributes of colleges and universities, and criteria choices addressing these issues are outlined. Criteria were generated from dominant coalition members in six institutions, and nine dimensions of organizational effectiveness were derived. Reliability and validity of the dimensions were tested, and evidence was found for certain patterns of effectiveness across the nine dimensions.
Article
This article discusses a number of recent observational studies of school administrators' work patterns. These studies are criticized for the inadequacy of the Tayloristic "time and motion" assumptions exhibited in their discourse. An alternate approach is outlined for analyzing the administrative life-world. It is derivedfrom Boswell's "intimate acquaintance" with Dr. Johnson.
Article
Two dimensions of the leadership of educational organizations are explored: (1) the day to day behavior of superintendents and (2) the meanings superintendents attach to their work. The work stems from related studies by the authors. Two clusters of patterns emerged from this analysis. First, superintending is communicating. Second, superintendents are constrained by social and organizational structures and, yet, control a major part of their day-to-day work and exert an important organizational influence. Questions are raised concerning the adequacy of the dominant notions about leadership.
Article
What do school administrators do when discharging their administrative responsibilities? How do they spend their days? Their weeks? Their years? What constitutes the basic content of their administrative behavior? Despite decades of research in educational administration, we are unable to answer these deceptively simple, but fundamental questions. This lacuna in the literature provided encouragement for pursuing this present study as a relatively untapped approach to describing and analysing the administrative behavior of school superintendents. The central problem of the study was to observe and describe the actual on-the-job behavior of the superintendent of schools so as to develop a composite view of his administrative behavior.
Article
Despite the focal position of school principals in Australian education, there exist hardly any data on the work that they actually do. This study reports on continuous observations — for three weeks each — of the principals of a State High School, an Independent College and a Catholic College in Melbourne. The variables of their work during the school day were recorded by the researcher, who attempted non-participant observation, and the principals kept a diary of their “after-hours” work. The content and characteristics of their work are described with the Findings expressed in a set of propositions about the principalship.
Article
This ethnographic study of 16 Chicago school principals explores the principal's effect on students and teachers within the school; on parents and laymen in the community; on their superiors in the administrative hierarchy; and on themselves as career-oriented professionals. A brief literature review relates studies examining the principalship of elements of the current study. Both elementary and secondary principals were found to spend most of their time in principal-initiated contacts with staff, faculty, and students. These principals affected their schools by balancing stabilization and enhancement, transforming attitudes that opposed school policy, and controlling the climate to foster uninterrupted learning. In the community, the principals had to diplomatically shape parent expectations of the schools' capabilities. Principals' responses to their superiors ranged from ignoring orders to overt disobedience in order to protect staff morale. The principals often short-circuited the system and used superiors' indecision to their schools' advantage. They shaped their jobs to suit their personal preferences and work styles. They relied more on one-to-one, face-to-face communications in contrast to businessmen who depend more on group meetings and written memoranda. This study also describes ways principals obtained and utilized professional information. (MMJ)
Article
Four executives were assigned the task of daily recording their own activities over a five week period. A schedule of ten general categories, which were further subdivided, covered the various episodes in which the executives engaged. Time spent on production problems was over-estimated while time spent on personnel was under-estimated. The distributions for individuals occupying the same position varied widely in a number of systematic ways. These are treated in terms of various causal problems. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Article
Argues that demography, the length of service distribution of the work force, is an important explanatory variable in organizational research. Demography is largely a function of factors such as the growth and structure of the organization, employment practices related to compensation and turnover, and unionization. In turn, organizational demography is hypothesized to have effects on (1) the frequency and type of administrator succession; (2) performance, adaptability, and innovation; (3) the form of control employed; (4) the amount and form of interorganizational linkages and transaction patterns across organizations; (5) cohort identity and intercohort conflict; (6) the distribution of power across cohorts; and (7) mobility aspirations and expectations resulting from different career processes. Issues related to the measurement of demography and implications for research in organizational behavior are discussed. (5 p ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Article
This review examines management studies which utilizedstructured observation as the research method. It includes works prior toMintzberg, Mintzberg's major studies of managers published in 1968 and 1973,and subsequent research. In the five studies completed prior to Mintzberg'swork, large sample size, measurement of managerial effectiveness, and a focuson behaviors of production foremen in industrial firms were identified asstrengths. These studies conclude that supervisory and managerial work ischaracterized by variety, brevity, fragmentation, and high frequencyinterpersonal interactions. Taking a different approach, Mintzberg studied chief executive officers (CEOs).This work helped to identify the fact that activity levels decrease as onemoves up the hierarchy. Further, the variety, brevity, and fragmentationexperienced by the foremen in the earlier studies is more pronounced than thatexperienced by CEOs. Research completed after Mintzberg had similar findings,but some differences were discovered. Studies that focused on 10 policeexecutives and 6 school superintendents found that these managers did notprefer verbal media and that their time was more evenly distributed betweendesk work and meetings. From these studies, nine problems with structured observation are identified,including failure to differentiate among levels of performance, small samplesizes, failure to capture cognitive processes, failure to check reliability,and mutually exclusive coding systems. This review of studies of managersconcludes that structured observation is a strong method for examiningeffective managerial behavior. (SRD)
Article
Incl. bibl., index.
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Incl. bibl. These four papers and an introduction discuss the problem of regional disparities in educational development from several different perspectives. Varying points of view are presented on the relationship between regional educational disparities and socioeconomic, political, and cultural development; the pertinence of regional frameworks to analyses of educational disparities; and the problems associated with policies to reduce regional disparities. The introduction by the editors summarizes the papers' arguments about ways to reduce disparities. Philip Foster draws on data from Africa to examine regional inequalities in educational and economic development and to argue for the free play of supply and demand in reducing disparities. Using European countries as examples, Pierre Furter questions whether regional equalization can be reconciled with inter-regional cultural diversity. The paper by Stephen P. Heyneman reviews the problems involved in planning the reduction of regional disparities. The final paper, by Zsuzsa Ferge, Eva Havasi, and Julia Szalai, describes Hungary's use of state planning to reduce regional educational disparities. (from ERIC data base).Cette étude regroupe quatre monographies d'ordre général et conceptuel; elles traitent des trois thèmes suivants: -les rapports entre les disparités régionales en éducation et le processus de développement économique, social, culturel et politique -la pertinence du cadre régional pour une analyse des inégalités en éducation et enfin -les possibilités et les implications d'une politique de réduction des disparités régionales en éducation. Dans l'étude de P. Foster inspirée de la situation africaine, l'auteur plaide en faveur d'une large décentralisation et du renforcement du pouvoir de décision local. L'étude de Z. Ferge, E. Havasi et J. Szalai analyse la situation en Hongrie et présente trois aspects importants de la planification régionale: l'approche globale, l'allègement progressif des régulations centrales au profit d'un plus grand pouvoir de décision de la base, la révision constante des concepts de planification régionale. La contribution de P. Furter, inspirée de la situation européenne, remet en question la notion même d'égalisation régionale et pose le problème de la réduction des disparités sous un angle culturel. L'approche de S. Heyneman est plus pragmatique: comment traduire une politique de réduction des inégalités en termes opérationnels. L'auteur met l'accent sur certains facteurs qui peuvent avoir une influence considérable sur la scolarisation des enfants : les conditions de nutrition et de santé par exemple.
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Microfiche. Ann Arbor, Mich. : University Microfilms International, 1980. 3 microfiches ; 11 x 15 cm. Thesis (Ph. D.)--Pennsylvania State University, 1980. Includes vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves [264]-271). "80-24472."
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Thesis (Ph. D)--Michigan State University, 1978. Includes bibliographical references (p. 220-228). Photocopy.