Educational Management: Exploring School Organization and Culture

This essay provides an in-depth analysis of schools as organizations, exploring their structure, culture, and the role of leadership in their effective management. It begins by establishing the fundamental characteristics of an organization, referencing the human and task dimensions, before specifically examining schools. The essay then delves into the structural hierarchies within schools, often bureaucratic in nature, detailing how individuals are assigned roles and responsibilities within a hierarchical framework. It further examines the concept of organizational culture within schools, highlighting the significance of rituals, values, and beliefs. The essay also explores the features and functions that shape a school as an organization, such as a focus on learning and teaching, clear roles and responsibilities, and a culture of concern. The essay uses various sources to support its arguments, providing a comprehensive understanding of how schools function as organizations and the challenges and opportunities involved in their management.

Running head: EDUCATIONAL MANAGEMENT
Educational management
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Note

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Justifying that School is an organization
Davis (2013) mentioned that before referring school as an organization, it is quite essential to
understand what an organization is or what are those elements that shape the form; thereby,
the author has mentioned the fact that organization can be of different form including
business, charities, sports clubs, religious groups, government departments and schools. No
surprising that all of these kinds have certain features in common. In general, organizations
consist of group of people who work together in different manners to meet the shared goals
but organizations have two clear aspects namely the human dimension and a task dimension.
DiPaola and Tschannen-Moran (2014) mentioned that a human dimension is referred to
interpersonal relations within an organization, while a task dimension is referred to activities
revolving around tasks of people focussing on a common goals. On the other side, Erdem,
İlğan and Uçar (2014) mentioned that there is a strong tendency in human society for the
unorganized groups to enhance organization and for organizations to enhance even where
there has been no consciousness of an existing group. As the consequence, conflicts tend to
pass over into organizational conflict as well as the growth of organization themselves could
create conflict where no previous consciousness of conflict exist.
School as organization
In most of societies, schools are most significant organizations that are geared
towards the young people (Lindsey et al., 2018). School may consist of a group of people
such as educators, learners, principles and parents who may work together in different ways
such as with the practice of learning, teaching, managing, supporting and leading. Effective
schools are held accountable for passing on knowledge which is significant to society and to
its young people. Effective schools pass on society’s values as well as social practices and
guide people for the world of work. When exploring the base of the context, it has been

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identified that organizations certainly help people to understand how they work and the
challenge for leading and managing them. When it comes to “School as organization”, the
following information in the figure provided by Black (2013), shapes the above discussed
facts.
Figure 1: Structural Hierarchies of School
(Source: Black, 2013),
Structure of organization

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According to Aydin, Sarier and Uysal (2013), organizational structure is what people
do and they relate to each other in the organization and according to the author the most
structured form of organization remains as bureaucracy. According to DiPaola and
Tschannen-Moran (2014) in bureaucracy each individual is appointed to an agency or
position which has clear tasks and related to other office in accordance with the fixed rules.
Reporting structure as well as lines of accountability should be appropriately established. It is
worth stating that organizations tend to have hierarchical structure under which others have
chains of commands and people are quite responsible to those above them. Under such
practice, if an individual holds a higher level, the status could be as the level is. The
following figure demonstrates the activities and position of people in the job. The figure
clearly demonstrates who reports whom.
Figure 2: Bureaucracy in the organizational structure
(Source: Ylimaki & Jacobson, 2013)
Organizational school culture

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As put forward by Davis (2013) organizations have their own culture in a simple
sense, culture of an organization can be summed up as the way things are performed here.
Culture can hold or contain several aspects. For example, different schools have a different
feeling and each of them has its own culture. Hence, culture could involve the tasks or things
people take for granted like how things should be. It is quite similar to the things like the
values, attitudes, beliefs of educators and parents. On the contrary, DiPaola and Tschannen-
Moran (2014) mentioned that rituals are significant elements of school culture and
particularly in a school culture there is a different set of significant rituals that bring people
together such as assembles, ceremonies and school games. On the other side, other rituals
tend to keep people separate like aging groups and grouping by gender. According to the
author the above study, culture and structure can go together in a firm and both should be
addressed if an organization is required to be developed. As it is known that organization
have their own structure and culture and here the major task of managers or the leaders is to
make sure that organizations works effectively. Particularly, in other words, this managers
and leaders should establish direction and assign people to work towards shared goals.
Hence, one particular way of trying to understand why schools observe success or failure is to
analyse them as organization.
Undoubtedly, school organization and culture could make a big difference. Erdem,
İlğan and Uçar (2014) performed a study and found the fact that bad relationship culture of
learning and teaching can be broken down into bad relationship, practice of blaming things,
confusion and lack of focus on learning and teaching. It has particularly identified that
relationship between educators, leaners as well as school management could be bad as they
are often found bad in ineffective dynamics. If the morals are found be to under low, it is
certain that people did not pay much attention to development of things. When it comes to
elements of confusion in cultural aspects, Black (2013) mentioned that there is confusion

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regarding roles and responsibilities and Principals had often not earned the authority to lead
the schools. Likewise, limited focus on learning and teaching coming such as things could
appear like educators, learners and management had lost sight of why they were at school as
well as their daily activities might have lost their education.
Features and functions shaping school as organization
Ylimaki and Jacobson (2013) in their study have found that there are certain features
and elements in school that enable the whole establishment to deal with challenging
circumstances. On the basis of the fact the elements are found to be as focus on learning and
teaching, clear role and responsibilities, culture of concern and some other significant
elements. Particularly, when it comes to culture of concern, the authors mention the fact that
people should care about each other; Lindsey et al., (2018) commented that educators were
concerned about well-being of learners when they are not at school and when they are at
school. Another significant function of school culture is the safety; this means several coping
schools operated in violent surroundings, they are to certainly deal with problems of gang
warfare, faction fighting, sexual abuse as well as drunkenness. However, despite the same,
coping school are able to stop problems from spilling into them from outside and they kept
school at the safest place. Black (2013) mentioned about active leadership; this is referred to
the fact that in some of the schools, the principle seems to be strong as well as visionary
leader. Moreover, principles tend to work together with other in the management
communities.

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References
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Black, G. L. (2013). Correlational analysis of servant leadership and school climate. Journal
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Davis, T. M. (2013). Charter school competition, organization, and achievement in traditional
public schools. education policy analysis archives, 21, 88.
DiPaola, M., & Tschannen-Moran, M. (2014). Organizational citizenship behavior in schools
and its relationship to school climate. Journal of School Leadership, 11(5), 424-447.
DiPaola, M., & Tschannen-Moran, M. (2014). Organizational citizenship behavior in schools
and its relationship to school climate. Journal of School Leadership, 11(5), 424-447.
Erdem, M., İlğan, A., & Uçar, H. İ. (2014). Relationship between Learning Organization and
Job Satisfaction of Primary School Teachers. International Online Journal of
Educational Sciences, 6(1).
Lindsey, R. B., Nuri-Robins, K., Terrell, R. D., & Lindsey, D. B. (2018). Cultural
proficiency: A manual for school leaders. Corwin Press.
Ylimaki, R., & Jacobson, S. (2013). School leadership practice and preparation: Comparative
perspectives on organizational learning (OL), instructional leadership (IL) and
culturally responsive practices (CRP). Journal of Educational Administration, 51(1),
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