A study of organisation in a College of Education

• Main Author: Shaw, K. E.
• Published: University of Bath 1973
• Subjects: 370.711
• Online Access: https://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.472312

This is a study of organisation in a College of Education. From a study of employed professionals in their working environment, an attempt is made to exhibit the diversity of meanings which members of the teaching staff give to the situation in the College; and to relate these meanings to the structural differentiation which has taken place within the organisation, and also to the wider context outside College from which the members derive their values and belief systems as professionals. Changing cultural values and goals in the College since the foundation are reviewed and its present objectives, performance and organisational characteristics considered. I employ a technique of open participant observation over a period of 3 years. All consenting members of the fulltime staff were interviewed and invited to complete an Osgood-type semantic differential instrument. The results were subjected to Factor and Cluster analysis, a technique whereby broad groupings of staff may be identified by multivariate objective characteristics, in the hope that by the use both of statistical-factorial and clinical processual approaches significant groupings could be detected amongst respondents in the light of which processes being observed would be more intelligible. By a study of negotiation at departmental level and an extended analysis of the nature, conditions and processes of decision making on the College Academic Board over a period of eight terms, processes are exhibited which operated to maintain requisite integration and enable overall policy to be decided and the enterprise to be organised to pursue common goals. It is concluded that the management of a requisite working consensus by negotiation is a central task of leadership in such enterprises.