Journal of Educational Administration: Volume 40 Issue 6

From “loose coupling” to “tight management”? Making sense of the changing landscape in management and organization theory

Heinz‐Dieter Meyer

This article briefly considers the changes in organizational thinking about schools and colleges as formal organizations over the past 40 years. While there are signs for a…

The quest for a new hierarchy in education: from loose coupling back to tight?

William Lowe Boyd, Robert L. Crowson

Building on and reconsidering previous research on organizational models of education, the authors argue that while many administrators in education are still trying to manage…

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

Heinz‐Dieter Meyer

During the 1990s, many schools and universities had begun to phase out traditional forms of educational governance and adopted forms and practices used in private and corporate…

Autonomy, accountability, and organizational complexity in higher education: the Goettingen model of university reform

Matthias Kreysing

Managerialist responses to increasing complexity and a heightened need for accountability are not limited to Anglo‐Australian education systems. In traditionally state‐controlled…

Tightly coupled policy in loosely coupled systems: institutional capacity and organizational change

Lance D. Fusarelli

This article examines the loosely coupled nature of the US educational system and explores recent systemic reform initiatives designed to improve education through more tightly…

Leadership: spanning the technical and institutional dimensions of organizations

Rodney T. Ogawa, Samantha Paredes Scribner

This article brings together the issues of leadership and organization. We begin by discussing the concept of leadership, emphasizing the importance of the context in which…

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

Eugenie Samier

This paper explores the moral and ethical dimension of indeterminacy in educational administration within the context of the managerialisation of education. Drawing on Max Weber’s…

Rationality and reality in organizational management: Using the coupling metaphor to understand educational (and other) organizations – a concluding comment

Brian Rowan

In this paper, I argue that ideas about loose coupling can serve a useful purpose in organization theory, but only if they are re‐worked substantially. This re‐working, I argue…