LITERATURE REVIEW AND THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK
3.8 Strategic Management
has been in academic and political debate for some time now (Hoffman, 2003). In its extreme forms, the principal as CEO has responsibility for the total school budget and programmes, including the apportionment of the budget and the selection, hiring and firing of staff. The implications for such a move are enormous for principals, schools and unions, and the very concept of a 'school'.
It appears that Godden, (1996) was exaggerating to suggest that through the South African Schools Act (SASA) principals had become CEOs. It is not clear whether the concept of principals as 'CEOs' is an ideal that the department of education is striving to achieve or just a metaphor being used lightly.
Nevertheless, the popularisation of the concept of Self-Reliant Schools has contributed to uneasiness among principals who fear the apparent privatisation drive of public schools, and that some schools (as it happens in business) may collapse if they are not competitive enough or well managed.
The notions of principals as CEOs, principals as transformational leaders, and schools as learning organisations can be closely linked. The following section explores further the concept of learning organisations with special emphasis on schools as 'learning organisations'.
course, including adjustments, as the internal and external contexts change, (Wendling, 1997, in Preedy, Glatter and Levacic, 1997: 219).
Strategic management requires a balance between maintenance and development, stability and change. School principals are continuously engaged in ensuring that the core function of the school, (namely educative teaching), takes place, while at the same time marketing the school to all stakeholders and shifting as required to be at the forefront. But the two functions are interlinked:
the survival (maintenance) of the school is strongly connected to the school's adaptation to changing environments, as it uses that outside environment to pursue its core function.
One of the assumptions of this study is that strategic management is a sine qua non for schools improvement (Knight, 1997; Wong, Sharpe and McCormick, 1998; Cheng and Cheung, 1998). Kaufman, cited in Preedy, Glatter and Levacic (1997) succinctly summed it thus: "Being strategic is knowing what to achieve, being able to justify the direction and then finding the best way to get there".
Some scholars have questioned the application of strategic management models in education and other non-profit sectors. Browns (1990) for instance, points out that there is a wide range of stakeholders in the school, and no "bottom line" like profit measure. This absence of "bottom lines", Bowmans (1990) contends, means that the school managers cannot act with clarity and certainty in making decisions. Notwithstanding these doubts, people and organisations usually desire to improve their service and do things better than they have been doing before.
Strategic management is not only about curriculum delivery or policy implementation, but also about anticipating the future in a more systematic way, perceiving with acumen a complex environment and negotiating a way through that environment.
Central to strategic management models is the view that the school cannot and should not be understood, and/or be removed from, the context within which it is located. Now more than ever before schools are open systems that interact, and are influenced by the context. The saying, 'ignore the context to your peril' holds true for schools. Part of the rationale for devolution in education is the realisation that centralised planning cannot know or respond to local conditions in which a school operates: at least some strategic planning has to occur at the school level.
Bryson's Strategic Leadership Model
Bryson (1988) developed the model below with a view to demonstrating how planning could take into account factors outside of the organisation. It seeks to demonstrate how strategic planning can be, and has been, practical(ised) in educational management. There are many models like this one, but most if not all of them have similar characteristics. Schools are not isolated entities.
Bryson's model comprises of the following steps:
• ENVIRONMENTAL ANALYSIS:
This process involves monitoring the present and future opportunities and threats both inside and outside the organisation that can influence the attainment of organisational goals. SWOT analyses (identifying strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats) can be done at this stage.
Typically, opportunities and threats are sought in the external environment, while strengths and weaknesses are sought within the organisation itself.
• ESTABLISHING ORGANISATIONAL DIRECTION (Thrust of the organisation)
• There are two indicators of the direction of the organisation movement, namely, organisational mission and organisational objectives.
Organisational mission refers to the purpose for which the organisation exists and the reasons for its existence. Organisational objectives refer to targets that the organisation chooses for itself to achieve at given times.
The mission and objectives grow out of the environmental analysis discussed above.
• STRATEGIC FORMULATION:
This refers to the processes of designing and selecting strategies that will lead to the attainment of organisational goals and objectives.
• IMPLEMENT ORGANISATIONAL STRATEGY:
The actual plan is drawn up. Performance indicators are specified.
'SMART' principles (in terms of their specificity) can be observed at this stage. 'SMART' stands for 'Specific; Measurable; Achievable; Realistic and Time-bound". It means that action plans should be specific about what exactly one will do; how one will assess achievement; and whether the indicators can reasonably be achieved given the capabilities, logistics and time at the disposal of the organisation. Organisational culture must be taken cognisance of, as well as, the amount of change that is to accompany the new strategy. This should be part of the analysis in Step 1, above.
• STRATEGIC CONTROL:
This focuses on monitoring and evaluating the planning processes;
implementation and achievement in order to improve and revise the plan (should it become necessary) and ensure that the strategy is functioning smoothly (Bryson, 1988).
It is clear from the above account that strategic management assumes and advocates a highly systematic and rational approach to planning and management. This remains so even when the step-wise outline above is softened, acknowledging that the different steps are strongly interactive, and need not occur specifically in this order. It also assumes that the organisation is
already 'functional' and reasonably managed: if there is no respect for the plan, no matter how it was developed, it will amount to nothing. Further, the quality of outcomes depends on the quality of each step above - whether the analysis saw the 'important' things, whether the mission and objectives are appropriate, the plan is creative and workable, and so on. In these ways, success depends on the resources available, and the capacities and willingness of the staff.