THE SCHOOL AS AN ORGANIZATION

Organization theory is the body of thinking and writing which addresses itself to the problem of how to organize. It encompasses the study of the structure, functioning and performance of organizations and the behaviour of groups and individuals within them. It is worth noting that organizations thrive to adapt continuously to external conditions as well emphasize on internal hierarchical decisions for change. Hence, organizations persistently tend to balance the learning process between equilibrium and evolution. The goal in this paper is to engage in these topics for a theoretical discourse and to describe several issues related to the behavioral aspects of educational organization and hence, understand the employee-management behavior cycle in terms of organizational evolution.

This article is structured into three centralized sections followed by a conclusion. In the first section, we provide a background review of settings to be based on informative analysis to understand why and how school is looked at as an organisation. In continuum under this section, we foresee the school organisation structure with a deeper understanding that underlies hierarchy arrangement of managing a school system. Following this, we underline the description of behavioral aspect of education organisation. During this discourse, we try to delineate how organisation can associate and extract meaningful representational formation from the motivation theory at work place. In significance, we provide a short description of our communication to narrate all the findings followed by a concluding remark.

A school being a place where formal education takes place, it can be said to be an organisation. This means that as a social system comprising of group of people that interact together to achieve both school and individual goals. In this regard, a school must be a safe and organized place where clear set of general rules and school discipline are in order. The school must be supportive where learners and teachers can focus on learning and teaching respectively. For example, teachers must have a staff room where they can prepare their work before a lesson and pupils must have good chairs and desks for setting and writing.

The school is one of the most important institutions that human beings have brought. School involves cooperation, participation, involvement and delegation of activities. However, the larger the institution the more formal it is or the more hierarchical it becomes. A hierarchy exemplifies an arrangement with a leader who leads other individual members of the organization (Peter, 1969). This arrangement is often associated with bureaucracy. Bureaucracy is a chain of administration in an organisation with well defined line of authority that ensures order and facilitates a chain of command (Max Weber, 1947). In a hierarchy, every employee tends to rise to his level of incompetence. A good school looks like a pyramid as illustrated below and has also departments, committees and subcommittees.

Head Teacher

Deputy Head

Departmental Heads

Teachers

Pupil/Student

Source: Scott, (2008)

Peter (1969) adds that, structures are formed on the basis that there are enough people under the leader to give him support. He further illustrated that, this form of structure can be seen in a real pyramid. But, if there are no enough stone blocks to hold up the higher ones, gravity would irrevocably bring down the monumental structure. So, if the leader in the school organisation does not have the support of his subordinates, the entire structure can collapse. Scott (2008) highlights that structure of the schools can be divided into internal and external. The internal includes class grouping, subject grouping, departments, committees, working parties, timetables and room allocation. On the other hand, the external comprises of number of pupils in class, budget, age limit, appraisals, governing body such as boards, Parent Teacher Association (PTA) and salary scales, fringe benefits and incentives.

POSITIVE AND RESPECTFUL OUTCOME

Establishing behavioral expectations for students, staff, and visitors that encourage a positive and respectful outcome, culture and school climate are essential to creating and maintaining a safe and supportive school community.

Culture organisation

Organisation culture emphasizes the culture of organisation itself. This approach presumes that organisation can be characterized by culture such as beliefs, values, rituals, symbols and so forth. Within this approach generally consist of either developing models for understanding organisation culture or developing typologies of organizational culture. Edgar Schein developed a model for understanding culture and identified three levels of organisation culture: Artifacts and behavior; Espoused values and Shared based assumption.

Schein argued that if any of these levels were divergent tensions would result: if, for example, espoused value or desired behavior were not consistent with the basic assumption of an organisation it is likely that these values or behavior would be rejected. Typologies of organizational culture identified specific organizational culture and related these to performance or effectiveness of an organisation.

School climate

According to Elias (1979), school climate is a stable set of organizational characteristics that capture the distinctive tone or atmosphere of a school. School climate may be defined as the quality and character of school life. This therefore, should be based on patterns of student, parent, and school personnel experiences within the school and reflects norms, goals, values, interpersonal relationships, teaching and learning practices, and organizational structures.

Additionally, Feldman (2000) emphasizes that the school must embrace open climate which promotes interaction among all the factors in the school. Openness of the school climate has been primarily to the expressive characteristics in schools For instance, the more open climate, the more committed, and loyal and satisfied the teachers are. Furthermore, the open the climate the school, the less alienated student tend to be. This implies that openness of the school climate will discourage unfriendly or unsympathetic behavior towards students. As a result, students actively participate in the learning process. A school with open, health and collegial professional interactions and strong academic ethics empowers teachers (Cayla, 2008). Meaning, teachers can organize and execute their teaching in ways that are successful in helping to learn, and when the school climate support them, teachers plan more, accept responsibility for the student performance and are not deterred by temporary setbacks to enhance student learning.

A part from that, positive student, teacher and head interrelationship characterize a health school climate. This enables many teachers always to like their colleagues, their schools, their jobs and their students. They are always driven by a quest for academic excellence. The empirical evidence has liked school climate with achievement. Organizational climate makes teachers to believe in themselves and their students, and set high achievable goals. It also makes the school heads behaviour to be positive, such that he or she is always friendly, open minded and supportive. The end result of all these efforts is that students in the school perform quite well in their work and this relates to positive school effectiveness.

To gain an overall understanding of the depth and breadth of this subject matter which is educational organization, it may require going beyond the established routes of entangling the comparative aspects of motivation theories and behavioral aspects in a school as an organization

It has been established that some form of motivations are needed at work place for employees or management from time immemorial (Lorenz 1950) which has undergone little alterations on the behavior of employees. For example, the Maslow`s hierarchy of needs.

Organizational behavior (OB) is a term related to the study of individual and group dynamics in an organizational setting, as well as the nature of the organizations themselves. Whenever people interact in organizations, many factors come into play. The subject of Organizational Studies attempts to understand and model these factors. This subject is becoming more important as people with diverse backgrounds and cultural values have to work together effectively and efficiently. OB seeks to emphasize them understanding of behavior in organizations so as to develop competencies in foreseeing how people are likely to behave. This knowledge may then help in controlling those behaviors that are not befitting the objectives of the organizations

REFERENCES

Elias, M., Zins, J., Weissberg, P., Frey, K., Haynes, N., Kessler, R.Schwabstone, M., Shriver, T., (1997) Learning:Guidelines for Educators. Alexandria.
Scott, William Richard (2008). Institutions and Organizations (3rd Ed.)London: Sage Publications Ltd.
Reddin, W.J. (1971). Managerial effectiveness. New York: McGraw-Hill
Elias, M., Zins, (1979) The U.S. Department of Education Office of Safe and Healthy Students (http://safesupportiveschools.ed.gov)
Bateson, P.P.G. 1976. Specificity and the origins of behavior. Advances in the Study of Behavior,
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Cayla, David. 2008 Organizational Learning: A process between equilibrium and evolution. Journal of Economics Issues 42, 2, 553-560.
Feldman, Martha, S. (2000): “Organizational Routines as a Source of Continuous Change.”Organization Science 11, 6, 611-629.