3. CHAPTER THREE: THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK
3.4 The Systems Theory
3.4.1 Features of the Systems Theory
Deacon and Fiebough (1988); Love and Skitmore (1996); Yuchtman and Seashore (1967) lay down clearly that the system theory analyses the decision maker‟s capability to efficiently distribute resources among various sub-system‟s needs. Sub-systems‟ needs may be classified as: bargaining position – the ability of the organisation to exploit its environment in acquisition of scarce and valued resources; ability of the system to produce a certain output; maintenance of internal day-to-day activities; ability of the organisation to coordinate relationships among the various sub-systems; ability of the organisation to respond to feedback regarding its effectiveness in the environment; and ability of the organisation to accomplish its goals.
Therefore, the school as an organisation has goals to accomplish, an output to produce and resources to maintain for its efficiency and sustainability.
According to Bush (2006) organisations are treated as systems with sub-units such as departments or pastoral units systematically related to each other and to the institution itself.
The system shows the authorised pattern of relationships between members of the institution.
Official structures of the organisation tend to be hierarchical. For example, in secondary school staff is responsible to heads of department who in turn, are answerable to head of school. The
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systems approach typifies schools as goal-seeking organisations; where heads and principals take the leading role in determining the goals of their institutions. They assume that managerial decisions are made through a rational process, that is, all options are considered and evaluated in terms of the goals of the organisation; and the most suitable alternative is then selected to enable organisational goals to be pursued. The systems theory presents authority of leaders as essentially a product of their official position within the organisation. That is, heads of department and principals have authority over other staff because of their formal roles (Bush, 2006). There is emphasis on accountability of the organisation to its sponsoring body. Schools are answerable to their governing body which has enhanced responsibility for finance and staff management; in the case of Swaziland it is the Regional Education Officers (REOs) and MoET. With regard to management, this suggests that these approaches assume that the official leader and the committees are thought to have a major role in goal setting, decision making and policy formulation at school level (Charlton & Andras, 2003). Again, this means that the administration should take a leading role in determining the goal achievements of their schools through strategic planning.
Using an enlarged Input-Process-Output-Feedback (IPOF) Model Deacon and Fiebough (1988), Love and Skitmore (1996), Oyebade (2010); Charlton and Andras (2003); Bush (2006);
Seiler et al., (2007); Castillo (2014) report that a system (including a school) can be looked at as having inputs such as: a) human resources such as students, teachers, administrators, people, and others. b) material resources such as buildings, desks, books, equipment, pencils, raw materials, facilities and equipment, goods and services purchased by the educational system and others. c) financial resources such as money; d) constraints, such as requirements of the law and policy, expectations of parents, values and goals; and e) existing knowledge in the society, context factors as families and community characteristics. The throughput process involves the teaching and learning process, processes of planning, organising, motivating, and controlling; processes such as policies, practices, organisation management, climate and other internal workings of the education system. The output or products of the educational system are learners in the form of educated people now better equipped to serve themselves and society.
These learners have acquired more knowledge, intellectual and manual skills, and powers of reason and analysis. Outputs also include products or services and outcomes including enhanced quality of life or productivity, student test scores, graduation rates, dropout rates.
Some of the outputs go back to the system as new inputs. Systems share feedback among each of these aspects of the system. The feedback process is evaluative because it provides the
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necessary information about the performance of the school so that appropriate modifications can be effected on the objectives and other inputs. Feedback is the process by which self- regulating and self-directing systems adjust themselves. It entails drawing some of the systems output back into the system as information inputs so that possible discrepancies between intended outputs and actual outputs could be compared. Feedback is positive when no discrepancy exists but it is negative when there is discrepancy (Deacon & Fiebough, 1988;
Castillo, 2014).
In this study I sought to explore how a school interacts with the internal and external environment to get inputs (resources) for operation, output as performance and feedback for improvement in the management functions carried out in the school as a system. Figure 3.1 shows the input, process, feedback and output of an organisation.
Input Process Output
External Environment
Feedback
Adapted: Castillo (2014)
Figure 3.1: The I-P-O-F model
In a school set up, this means that when managers make decisions, they must take into account all aspects of the current situation and act on the key aspects to the situation at hand in order to achieve high productivity of the organisation. The basic processes or inputs required by a school to sustain itself within a system are the work processes (teaching and learning, availability of resources), the management process, the monitoring and evaluation processes (maintenance, utilisation, distribution) and the internal feedback process (accountability on the use of resources), (Downes, 2007; Agabi, 2010; Shrifian, 2011; & Olatoun, 2012). Therefore, in this case, all the elements of the environment; internally and externally from which inputs are secured should be collaborated and coordinated to sustain the school operation and management system.
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