Managing Educational Change

Educational Management
Administration
& Leadership
http://ema.sagepub.com/
Managing the Unmanageable? : Coping with Complex Educational Change

Mike Wallace
Educational Management Administration & Leadership 2003 31: 9
DOI: 10.1177/0263211X030311002
The online version of this article can be found at:
http://ema.sagepub.com/content/31/1/9
Published by:
http://www.sagepublications.com
On behalf of:
British Educational Leadership, Management & Administration Society
Additional services and information for Educational Management Administration & Leadership can be found at:
Email Alerts: http://ema.sagepub.com/cgi/alerts
Subscriptions: http://ema.sagepub.com/subscriptions
Reprints: http://www.sagepub.com/journalsReprints.nav
Permissions: http://www.sagepub.com/journalsPermissions.nav
Citations: http://ema.sagepub.com/content/31/1/9.refs.html
>> Version of Record - Jan 1, 2003

What is This?
Downloaded from ema.sagepub.com at Queens University Belfast on July 12, 2012
10P 02wallace (ds)
7/11/02
1:39 pm
Page 9
Educational Management & Administration 0263-211X (200301) 31:1

SAGE Publications (London, Thousand Oaks and New Delhi)
Copyright 2003 BELMAS Vol 31(1) 929; 029865
Managing the Unmanageable?

Coping with Complex Educational Change
Mike Wallace
Managing the Unmanageable?

Educational change is self-evidently not what it used to be, and there is no shortage of it
around. In wealthy countries especially, time was when educational change included a
focus on the intrinsic worth of being an educated person. But globalization and the
collapse of communism have increased pressure on politicians in governments everywhere
to intervene in state education through major reform programmes involving marketization, multiple mandates and even, in the UK, an attempt to modernize the culture of
teachers and academics. Now the thrust is to realize the instrumental goal of building a
skilled and acquiescent workforce capable of competing in a global marketplace. Accordingly, managers in educational organizations across many western countries have been
recast as central government change agents. Their political masters have become increasingly greedy to turn them into reliable servants in pursuit of this instrumental goal
(Gronn, 2002). Managers are now caught as piggies in the middle between government
politicians, whose education reforms they are now responsible for implementing, and
other members of their organizations and communities.
These piggies are in the middle of an ever-diversifying range of stakeholders, since the
administrative framework of many national educational systems is becoming more
layered. Some 95 percent of democratically governed countries have elected regional or
local governments (World Bank, 2000). Many devolved governments contribute to state
education policies and the changes for practice that flow from them. Educational change
is undoubtedly becoming more complex to manage, and whether it is manageable or not
does matter. For education represents a major investment in our societies future prosperity, a means towards the instrumental end of generating wealth, the basis of capitalism.
In a global economic marketplace, government politicians are increasingly worried that
todays educational failure will herald tomorrows national economic disaster.
So the pressure is on to increase managerial control over educational change on behalf
of government politicians. However the argument will be developed that this ambition is
unrealizable because complex educational change, intrinsically, is relatively unmanageable. It is probably beyond human capacity for any manager to achieve fully predictable,
directive control over the change process. Managing complex educational change effectively is the humble, largely backstage business of coping with complexity over which
control is inherently limited. But there are modest possibilities for maximizing control
within these limits and attempts to improve manageability should focus on them.
10P 02wallace (ds)
7/11/02
1:39 pm
10
Page 10
EDUCATIONAL MANAGEMENT & ADMINISTRATION 31(1)
Unmanageability in Action: A Dispute over Computers

Just how unmanageable complex educational change can be is illustrated by the following example from my recent research (Wallace and Pocklington, 2002) focusing on largescale initiatives to reorganize local provision of state schools in England. These initiatives
were designed to take out surplus capacity resulting from a long-term decline in the local
school-age population. In respect of schools, the state education system consists of three
main administrative levelscentral government, local education authorities (LEAs) and
schools under LEA jurisdiction. Reorganization was an LEA initiative, undertaken in
response to central government pressure, and implemented by closing and merging
schools or changing the age range of students for which they catered. Central government
legislation had been enacted to devolve school budgets from LEA level to schools, so little
money for running schools was retained in the LEA.
A central plank of LEA officials reorganization strategy in one LEA was to replace
their three-tier firstmiddlehigh school system with a two-tier primarysecondary system.
Spare capacity in the first schools and high schools would be filled as they expanded to
become primary and secondary schools respectively. All middle schools would close, their
student capacity being removed from the school system in the LEA. Reorganization of
these schools was scheduled to take place over two years (Figure 1).
In part 1 of reorganization, the oldest students in the first schools stayed on and filled
surplus capacity there. A year later, in part 2, they stayed on again, so that their schools
now catered for the full primary age range. All students in the three year-groups remaining in the middle schools transferred to what had been a high school, now catering for the
full secondary age range. Note that middle schools had lost the youngest year-groupa
quarter of their studentsfor their final year of existence during part 1 of reorganization.
This year-group was housed in the expanding first schools.
Generalist class teachers taught first school students. Each classroom was furnished
with one or occasionally two computers, which only a few students could use at any time.
Teachers in the middle schools were semi-specialists, taking whole or half classes of
students for particular areas of the curriculum. Every middle school featured a computer
suite where a semi-specialist teacher taught half classes. The suite contained enough
age of students
arrangement
3-4
4-5
5-6
6-7
7-8
Pre-
3-9 first school
Part
1
3-10 first school
Part
2
3-11primary school
8-9
9-10
10-11
11-12
12-13
13-14
14-15
15-16
16-17
9-13 middle school
13-18 high school
10-13
middle school
13-18 high school
17-18
11-18 secondary school
Figure 1. Two-part arrangement for reorganizing the firstmiddlehigh school system in one LEA
10P 02wallace (ds)
7/11/02
1:39 pm
Page 11
WALLACE: MANAGING THE UNMANAGEABLE?
11
networked computers for each student. Fundraising among parents of students in both
types of school had enabled many of these computers to be purchased.
The dispute over computers arose during part 1 of reorganization, when the oldest
students in the first schools stayed on. Their headteachers anticipated that a quarter of the
middle school computers would be passed on to them from the middle schools. All the
stakeholders involved had agreed on the principle that resources should follow the
students. So furniture and equipment no longer in use in middle schools would therefore
be redistributed to the first schools where they were now needed.
But middle school headteachers argued that all their computers were still required for
half classes to use their suite, albeit for only three-quarters of the week. They referred
to the principle also agreed by all stakeholders that students educational entitlement
should not be compromised because of reorganization. Most of the computers legally
belonged to the middle schools anyway since they had been purchased through fundraising, not the devolved operating budget. The middle school headteachers initially refused
to hand over any computers, then sent a few of their oldest machines across to the first
schools.
Conflict ensued. The first school headteachers felt they had been unfairly fobbed off
with the lowest quality equipment. Several wrote to the chief education officer (CEO),
complaining that the educational entitlement of their oldest students was being compromised because they were being denied access to up-to-date computers. The first school
operating budgets were insufficiently generous to allow extra computers to be purchased
from this source. Their headteachers expected LEA officials to arbitrate on their behalf.
But central government reforms to reduce LEA authority over schools had left officials
without authority to order middle school headteachers to hand over their computers.
Budgetary devolution had left little money in the LEA for purchasing more machines,
which would be required for only one year before the middle schools closed. Then all the
computers in the middle schools would be redistributed to the primary and secondary
schools created. In the mean time, stalemate.
Before reporting what ensued, I will first consider what rendered this aspect of
reorganization so unmanageable. I suggest that it was far from a freak occurrence, indicative of the management headaches brought by complex educational change. Second, I will
consider why so many popular prescriptions for improving the management of educational
change have limited potential to guide practice. Third, I will suggest that understanding
the extent and limits of human agencythe ability to choose between alternative courses
of actionprovides a strong foundation for realistic prescriptions. This understanding can
help us grasp why complex educational change is rather unmanageable and how we can
cope with it, within limits. Fourth, by conceiving the computer dispute as an instance of
the wider phenomenon of complex educational change that reorganization represents, I
will extrapolate from it to address the fundamental question: what makes such change so
complex to manage? If we can understand the characteristics of this complexity and their
management implications, we will have a platform for considering the practical question
that follows: how can we cope effectively with complex educational change? Fifth, I will
discuss some tentative practical themes for managing complex educational change
emerging from the reorganization study. I will link them to the story of how the computer
dispute turned out. In conclusion, I will put forward an agenda for future research, theory,
policy and practical guidance.
10P 02wallace (ds)
12
7/11/02
1:39 pm
Page 12
Sources of Ambiguity that Constrain Manageability

A lengthy tradition of research and theorizing underlies the claim that ambiguity is
endemic to organizational life (Hoyle, 1986). People in organizations have to work hard
at making sense (Weick, 2001) of what they live as a disjointed and often confusing experience, marked by uncertainty, unpredictability and dilemmas that will not go away. March
and Olsen (1976) defined internal organizational ambiguity in terms of experienced
opaqueness connected with internal decision-making. Complex educational change
includes but also reaches beyond individual organizations, and it spans different levels of
the education system. So one certainty about such change is that the endemic organizational ambiguity experienced by those who have to manage it will be increased. Change
implies new experiences and new learning. It challenges habitual practices and beliefs of
people in and around the organizations affected. It raises the potential for unintended
consequences of managers actions among stakeholders in different organizations across
different system levels. It increases the unpredictability of achieving intended outcomes
until they have happened.
Three generic sources of ambiguity connected with the complexity of reorganization
constrained its manageability, as illustrated by the computer dispute. The first source is
individuals variable but always limited control over other stakeholders and their
responses. No one can exert absolute control over anyone else. Authority connected with
reorganization was distributed within and between LEA and school system levels. LEA
officials could no more insist that middle school headteachers hand over their computers
than first school headteachers could insist on officials responding to their complaints. Since
reorganization was initiated at LEA level for implementation in schools, officials were
heavily dependent on stakeholders based at school level. The cooperation of all headteachers, and the acquiescence, if not endorsement, of their school staff colleagues, school
governors and parents were essential for implementation.
The second source is individuals equally variable but always limited awareness of what
is happening. No one knew what was happening in every organization caught up in
reorganization. Senior LEA officials had an overview of their initiative across over a
hundred schools, but were far less aware of school-level experiences than those on the
ground. The first they knew about the computer dispute was when the first school headteachers letter of complaint landed on the CEOs desk.
But there was more than the first school headteachers side to the story. Neither first
school nor middle school headteachers were fully aware of each others problem over
delivering students entitlement during part 1 of reorganization. First school headteachers
were preoccupied with the urgent need to procure sufficient resources for their new group
of students. They perceived that the middle school headteachers were insensitive in failing
to acknowledge the priority in first schools of getting the new classes off to a good start.
Middle school headteachers were preoccupied with helping their colleagues to find jobs
in other schools when the middle school closed. They perceived that the first school headteachers were insensitive in putting pressure on them over a few computers. The matter
appeared trivial compared with the urgent need to secure jobs for their staff. Neither first
nor middle school headteachers could see why their counterparts could not resolve the
dispute, by handing over the computers, making do temporarily with old ones or buying
more machines.
The third source of ambiguity is the prevalence of contradictory beliefs and values held
10P 02wallace (ds)
7/11/02
1:39 pm
Page 13
13
by individual stakeholders and distributed among different groups. Actions according to

contradictory beliefs and values often coexist harmoniously by being kept separate. But
the change process may bring actions according to incompatible beliefs and values
together in the same situation, generating conflict.
If reorganization had not entailed the part 1 arrangement, belief among first school staff
that computers should be allocated to classes taught by generalist teachers would have
continued to coexist happily with the belief among middle school staff that they should be
organized in suites, with half classes taught by a semi-specialist. Both first and middle
school headteachers believed in the principles that resources should follow the students
and students educational entitlement should not be compromised because of reorganization. But members of each group applied the same principles to alternative ways of
organizing computers for their students education (Table 1). Beliefs and values clashed
in the novel situation brought by the part 1 arrangement. Their incompatibility was
brought to the surface when first school headteachers tried to apply these principles to
their way of organizing provision of computers for students education, assuming that
computers in the middle schools could and should be made available. Middle school headteachers applied the same principles to their way of organizing computer education,
assuming that all the computers in their suite were still required.
The research that highlighted this conflict, my reading of the management and change
literatures and my professional experience suggest that the more complex the change, the
greater the ambiguity experienced by those caught up in it. Yet very complex changes do
get implemented. Even in extreme cases ambiguity has its limits. These limits are structural, determined by what is not do-able (the first school headteachers would never have
dreamt of raiding the middle schools to grab the computers), and almost unthinkable in
a context of global capitalism (they automatically assumed that additional public sector
funds were not available for purchasing more computers).
Ambiguity sets limits on the manageability of complex educational change, but does
not render it wholly unmanageable. Managers may cope more or less effectively with
ambiguity, but can never eliminate it. Indeed, an unintended consequence of UK central
Table 1. Application of the same principles to alternative arrangements for computer use in
teaching
Reorganization
principles
Headteachers assumptions
First school
classroom-based
individuals and small groups
generalist class teacher
Middle school
suite-based
half classes of students
semi-specialist teacher
resources should
follow the students
computers previously used by 910

year olds in middle schools now
required all week in classrooms for
910 year olds in first schools
computers previously used by 910

year olds in middle schools still
required in suite used by remaining
students for 3/4 of the week
students educational
entitlement should
not be compromised
910 year olds in first schools should

have access to computers, as they
would have had if still being taught
in middle schools
remaining students should still have

same access to computers as they
had prior to part 1 of
reorganization
10P 02wallace (ds)
14
7/11/02
1:39 pm
Page 14
government education policies designed to eliminate ambiguitythrough rational

planning, target setting, performance management, an imposed curriculum, inspection
and the likehas been to increase ambiguity through the change process required for
implementation. Yet ambiguity and the limits of manageability scarcely feature in most
practically orientated research, theory and prescription for those with responsibility for
managing educational change.
Why Popular Prescriptions for Managing Educational Change

Underplay Ambiguity
There are at least three reasons behind this conspicuous absence. First, the very notion
of managing change connotes beguilingly the assumption that managers, as change
agents, can and should achieve tight control over the change process. If they have a
control problem, do not know what is happening or cannot resolve their managerial
dilemmas, they must be doing something wrong which they could put right if they only
knew how. Plenty of academics, consultants and trainers are willing to tell them. But the
enduring phenomena of management gurus, improvement consultancies and airport
bookstall handbooks testify to the fact that managerial control problems are perennial.
So managers perennially seek new solutions promising them greater control and the
certainty it implies. Ideas like ambiguity that explain why that quest is futile are unlikely
to sell so well.
Second, which ideas get to be popular prescriptions for practice will depend on what
popular prescription consumers (education managers) want, and who says (government
politicians) what the consumers want. Huczynskis (1993) analogy of a filter funnel helps
to explain why ambiguity and many other potential ideas for managing educational change
in the state sector fail to attain popularity status. To reach training programmes or handbooks, management ideas must survive a series of filters (Figure 2):
managers needsideas must match government politicians perception of education
managers needs (e.g. to ensure smooth implementation of government politicians
education reforms);
idea benefitsideas must possess ingredients consistent with education managers
perception of their immediate need to control the change process so as to implement
imposed reforms (e.g. advice on how to generate staff ownership of them);
timelinessideas must address widely perceived practical problems in this context
(e.g. how to maximize shared capacity in educational organizations to implement
reforms);
promotionideas must be actively disseminated (e.g. through government-commissioned research projects and government-sponsored training programmes, consultancies and websites);
presentationideas must be engagingly presentable (e.g. reducible to one side of
paper or a web-page, implying the quick fix of straightforward application to
managers diverse organizational contexts).
Since education managers and government politicians operate these filters, management
ideas that ill suit their interests are unlikely to become available for popular consumption.
Such unpopular ideas include those that are:
10P 02wallace (ds)
7/11/02
1:39 pm
Page 15
15
All ideas
for managing
educational
change
Managers needs
Idea benefits
Timeliness
Promotion
Presentation
Popular prescriptions for

managing educational change
Figure 2. Filtering out popular prescriptions for managing educational change
unacceptable to government politicians, who will perceive them not to meet

managers needsit is the former who pay for much training and dissemination on
taxpayers behalf (e.g. ideas about ambiguity implying endemic limits to managerial
control);
complex, as managers will not perceive them to give the immediate idea benefits (e.g.
ideas focusing on how to live with the ambiguity of unresolvable dilemmas);
inimical to the capitalist economic thrust of education reformsvery untimely (e.g.
how to offer minimal compliance with enterprise education initiatives);
10P 02wallace (ds)
7/11/02
1:39 pm
16
Page 16
restricted to academic texts, since without further promotion they will not reach
consumers (e.g. this article);
tentative and ungeneralized, because they will not be presentable as guaranteeing
universal success (e.g. hunches whose application to specific contexts managers alone
can judge, offering a slow fix at best).
Third, the production of management ideas depends on what kinds of knowledge
academic producers are trying to generate and why. (See Ribbins and Gunter, 2002;
Gunter and Ribbins, 2002; for a sophisticated map of the field of educational leadership
covering knowledge domains, areas of practice and positions adopted by academic knowledge producers. This large field partially overlaps with my smaller patch encompassing
educational change.) The answers you get in any field of enquiry depend on the questions
you ask through different sorts of intellectual project (Wallace and Poulson, 2003), a
scheme of enquiry to generate the kinds of knowledge that will achieve specified purposes.
Extending Bolams (1999) typology, five intellectual projects may be distinguished (Table
2).
The field of educational change is dominated by two closely associated intellectual
projects generating most popular prescriptions for practice. They attract funding as they
directly support government politicians and managers working at their behest. One is the
knowledge-for-action intellectual project: developing theoretical and research knowledge
with practical application from a positive standpoint towards current practice and policy,
to inform improvement efforts inside the prevailing ideology (or set of assumptions about
good practice). The second, typically informed directly by the first, is the intellectual
project of instrumentalism: imparting practice knowledge and skills through training and
consultancy, directly to improve practice inside the prevailing ideology.
Ideas derived from the other intellectual projects may also inform practice, but are
riskier for government politicians attempt to determine educational managers needs.
The reflexive action intellectual project entails developing and sharing practitioners
knowledge from a constructively self-critical standpoint towards their own work, so as to
Table 2. Five intellectual projects pursued in the field of educational change
Intellectual project
rationale
value stance
typical question
knowledge-forunderstanding
understand through
theory and research
disinterested
what happens and why?
knowledge-forcritical evaluation
evaluate through
theory and research
critical
what is wrong with what

happens?
knowledge-for-action inform policy-makers

through research and
evaluation
positive towards
policy and
improving practice
how effective are actions to

improve practice?
instrumentalism
improve practice
through training and
consultancy
positive towards
how may this programme
policy and improving improve practice?
practice
reflexive action
improve own practice

through evaluation
and action
critical of practice,
positive about
improving
how effective is my
practice, how may I
improve it?
10P 02wallace (ds)
7/11/02
1:39 pm
Page 17
17
improve their practice. It may operate within the prevailing ideology, and so be deemed
fundable by government politicians. But, more threateningly for them, reflexive action
may inform attempts to challenge policy and practice according to an alternative ideology,
as in emancipatory forms of action research.
The intellectual project of developing knowledge-for-understanding is a loose cannon.
Its adherents adopt a relatively disinterested standpoint towards the social world, in order
to understandrather than improvepolicy and practice and their underlying ideologies.
The tradition of organization theory and research has generated ideas on ambiguity and
its sourcesorganizational micropolitics (Hoyle, 1999), cognitive limits of organizational
awareness (March and Simon, 1958) and unresolvable dilemmas born of equally valued
alternatives (Ogawa et al., 1999). In the field of educational change, such ideas have so far
failed to get past the filters determining popularity. They are downbeat, focusing on limits
to manageability and managerial empowerment, and on the unintended contribution to
these limits made by government politicians efforts to enhance managerial control in the
service of their reforms.
Unsurprisingly, government politicians marginalize theoretical and research knowledge
derived from the knowledge-for-critical evaluation intellectual project. It is undertaken
from an explicitly negative standpoint towards existing policy and practice. The aim is to
expose and criticize the prevailing ideology and argue why it should be rejected (e.g. Ball,
1994; Gewirtz et al., 1995), sometimes advocating improvement according to an alternative ideology such as the radical professionality advocated by Gunter (2001).
Equally understandably, many academics in the field wishing to make a difference to
practice are drawn towards the knowledge-for-action and instrumentalism intellectual
projects, bolstered by the prospect of funding from government politicians and
educational managers. But the populist orientation of this movement has led to unrealistic optimism about the manageability of complex educational change. There is heavy
reliance on popular prescriptions originating elsewhere whose application to the field is
rarely questioned. Popularity is bought at the expense of practicality through:
building normative theories that have outstripped empirical research on the
complexity of educational change (e.g. conceiving educational organizations as
learning organizations after Senge (1990), assuming that different interests and
struggles for control can be eliminated and belying the inevitability of limited awareness within and between organizations);
relying on overstretched metaphors drawn from the natural world, such as theories
of chaos and complexity, where constituent concepts originally applied to the natural
world have to be shoehorned to make them fit the social world (e.g. the idea of selforganization [Morrison, 2002], where organizational members are to be freed-up to
take initiatives in conditions of some uncertainty, belying the possibility that they
may take initiatives according to beliefs and values that contradict those of
managers);
embracing an exclusively cultural orientation implying that organizational culture
can be universally shared and directly manipulated by managers (e.g. underplaying
power and different interests, differential levels of awareness and contradictory
beliefs and values);
conceiving organizational activity as distinct from and semi-independent of the
external policy context, rather than viewing organizational activity as an integral part
10P 02wallace (ds)
18
7/11/02
1:39 pm
Page 18
of the policy development and implementation process (e.g. the idea that it is
possible to take charge of change in educational organizations by creating a new
ethos of innovation, thereby pre-empting the imposition of change from outside
(Fullan, 1991: 353), where choices for action would actually remain constrained by
various government policies);
reifying social phenomena, a form of conceptual shorthand where the product of
combined individual human activity is treated as if it was a thing with independent
existence (e.g. conceiving organizations as entities capable of corporate action, so
losing focus on which people are behind this actionSenge (1990: 6) makes the
implausible reificatory claim that whole organizations (not the people in them!) can
learn and enhance their capacity to achieve their highest aspirations);
sloganizingoffering simplistic easy-listening prescriptions (e.g. lessons or
practical tips that promise unrealistic certainty and belie the significance of contingent factors in the diverse contexts where they are to be applied);
overplaying the extent of education managers agency, or choice over their actions
(e.g. implying the potential for high managerial or community control) and underplaying its limits (e.g. pressure from government politicians, and the structural
economic pressures on them).
The verdict has to be that academic producers of management ideas could do better
but how? One way may be to conceive different intellectual projects as complementary
rather than separate and incompatible endeavours. My own effort is directed towards
developing knowledge-for-understanding which acknowledges both the potential and
limits of manageability (what Gunter and Ribbins refer to as academic producers position
of doing intellectual work). The aim is to harness this knowledge-for-understanding as a
starting point for developing knowledge-for-action and instrumentalism. (The position of
intellectual work is therefore the superordinate basis for subsequent subordinate knowledge production within all three of the other positions Gunter and Ribbins propose of
expertise, consultancy and training.) Education managers may then be offered realistic ideas to inform their practice in diverse contexts. The ideas being generated carry a
high risk of being filtered out and so never becoming popular prescriptions. But if we are
to find more effective ways of managing complex educational change, we must surely first
understand in much more depth what makes it so complex to manage and then consider
how to cope effectively with it inside the limits of manageability. Let me illustrate how
this intellectual project is being pursued.
Agency and its Structural Limits as a Foundation for

Understanding Complexity
The research on large-scale reorganization of schools from which the computer dispute
saga was taken enabled reorganization to be conceptualized inductively as a single case of
complex educational change. The theoretical orientation was pluralistic, based on the
expression of human agency as individuals and members of different groups involved in
educational change interact (e.g. where the first and middle school headteachers sought
respectively to obtain or to retain some of the middle school computers). On the one hand,
they use their own agency to try and channel others agency in their favoured direction by
encouraging them to act in a particular way, the stuff of mutual trust and collaboration
10P 02wallace (ds)
7/11/02
1:39 pm
Page 19
19
(the first and middle school headteachers agreed on the principles governing redistribution of resources and protection of students education while reorganization was being
implemented). On the other hand, they also try to delimit others agency if the latter
threaten to step outside the comfort zone of the former, the stuff of monitoring and
corrective action (first school headteachers wrote to the CEO in the hope that LEA officials would act for them in forcing middle school headteachers to hand over their upto-date computers).
However, informed by early theoretical work by Hargreaves (1983) to reconcile pluralism with neo-Marxism, interaction was viewed as taking place inside very broad structural
limits bounding all human agency. Structural limits are of two kinds: economic, manifested
in resource constraints (the not-do-able); and ideological, manifested in unquestioned
assumptions about the legitimacy of the existing social and economic order (the unthinkable). This orientation provided the conceptual apparatus for sensitivity to the possibility
of structural limits being approached, indicated where agency became directed towards
seeking compromise solutions because of economic constraints that remained very largely
accepted. While endemic ambiguity was a product of human agency, structural limits put
a ceiling on it by ruling out possibilities which were never even entertained. Throughout
reorganization, the legitimacy, inevitability and resource parameters of the process went
virtually unchallenged.
What Makes Complex Educational Change so Complex to

Manage?
Patterns with management implications were identified in the complexity of reorganization. A single case is an inadequate basis for generalization, so my hunch that the
patterns I found may apply to other changes at a high level of abstraction is only a hunch.
I created a typology of five characteristics, each with two or more constituents (Table 3).
Another hunch is that the more complex the change, the more likely it is to feature all
five characteristics. The computer dispute illustrates how these characteristics were
expressed.
First, complex educational change is typically large-scale, impinging on the lives of many
people who will perceive it differently according to their varying circumstances. A multitude of stakeholders with an extensive range of specialist knowledge and priorities will
probably be involved or affected, by design. Staff from the eleven schools in the computer
dispute were among thousands whose work and career were affected by reorganization.
Middle school headteachers priority was to secure jobs for their staff when their schools
closed. First school headteachers priority was to secure computers for their additional
classes of students.
The large number of stakeholders will probably hold allegiance to a plurality of partially
incompatible beliefs and values, within limits of the assumptions they hold about their
entitlement and constraints on alternative courses of action. Middle school headteachers
believed in suite-based computer provision. First school headteachers believed in classbased provision. The two beliefs became incompatible in the exceptional circumstances
of the part 1 reorganization arrangement. Yet both groups of headteachers assumed that
existing resource parameters must be followed. First school budgets could not bear the
cost of more computers, middle school budgets were for middle school students, and there
was no spare cash in the LEA.
10P 02wallace (ds)
20
7/11/02
1:39 pm
Page 20
Table 3. Characteristics of complex educational change with management implications

1. Large-scale
a multitude of stakeholders with an extensive range of specialist knowledge and priorities
the allegiance of stakeholders to partially incompatible beliefs and values, within limits
2. Componential
a diversity of sequential and overlapping components affecting different stakeholders at
particular times
a multiplicity of differentiated but interrelated management tasks
3. Systemic
a multidirectional flow of direct and mediated interaction within and between system levels
an unequal distribution of power between stakeholders within and between system levels
who are nevertheless interdependent
the centrality of cross-level management tasks
4. Differentially Impacting
a variable shift in practice and learning required
variable congruence with perceived interests and its associated emotive force, altering with
time
a variable reciprocal effect on other ongoing activities
variable awareness of the totality beyond those parts of immediate concern
5. Contextually Dependent
interaction with an evolving profile of other planned and unplanned changes
impact of the accretion of past changes affecting resource parameters
Second, complex educational change is componential, an entity consisting of interrelated and differentiated parts that vary over time. The content of the change will
probably consist of a diversity of sequential and overlapping components affecting different
stakeholders at particular times, a striking feature of the LEA reorganization initiative.
The schools in the computer dispute were among 21 being reorganized in the last of five
annual phases for reorganizing schools in different areas of the LEA. Until recently, LEA
officials supported other schools that had now been reorganized. Now they concentrated
on implementing the final phase in the remaining 21 schools.
The variety of components, and their cumulative impact over time, will dictate a multiplicity of differentiated but interrelated management tasks. The two-part reorganization
arrangement for the first and middle schools in the computer dispute necessitated reallocating staff and redistributing equipment associated with one year-group of students
during part 1. Reallocation of staff and equipment associated with three more year-groups
had to take place a year later.
Third, complex educational change tends to be systemic, spanning administrative levels
of an education system, which both shapes and constrains stakeholders interaction. A
cross-level change process will embody a multidirectional flow of direct and mediated interaction within and between system levels. Interaction over the computer dispute took place
both inside and across school and LEA levels. The CEO mediated the LEA response to
the first school headteachers letter, passing it to an official with pastoral responsibility for
the schools involved, together with a request that he resolve the dispute. The many people
caught up in complex educational change form an extensive network, ambiguity tending
to result from the unintended consequences of actions of which their perpetrators may be
unaware. The officials and headteachers who had agreed on the two-part reorganization
arrangement never predicted that it could trigger the computer dispute.
10P 02wallace (ds)
7/11/02
1:39 pm
Page 21
21
There will be an unequal distribution of power between stakeholders within and between
system levels, who are nevertheless interdependent. LEA officials depended on headteachers to cooperate in implementing reorganization. Headteachers in the computer
dispute depended on officials to resolve it, in a situation where no party possessed
sufficient authority to dictate what must happen. They all depended on each other to
ensure that the reallocation of staff and transfer of equipment was completed on time.
The centrality of management tasks across system levels follows from the aspiration of
policy-makers and their agents at one level to change education practice at another. LEA
officials were responsible for many management tasks that necessitated action in schools,
including reallocating staff and redistributing equipment.
Fourth, complex educational change is differentially impacting on the people involved or
affected, contributing to the diversity of management tasks. There will be a variable shift
in practice and learning required of different individuals and groups according to the
novelty of what they have to do. The headteachers experienced a steep learning curve in
having to make an unprecedented variety of arrangements to implement reorganization.
While some of the main protagonists in the computer dispute had experienced a previous
reorganization (ironically, to create the middle schools!), the present situation was new for
them all. Last time, LEA officials held the budget for school equipment. Since then, central
government policies reducing LEA authority had devolved much of this budget to schools.
Shifts in practice will have variable congruence with perceived interests and associated
emotive force, altering with time. Officials interest in promoting LEA-wide reorganization
might or might not coincide with the narrower interest of headteachers in protecting
educational provision in their school. First school headteachers were pleased that their
schools were expanding (as were their salaries). Middle school headteachers unanimously
condemned the demise of middle schools. When the computer dispute arose, they
expressed indignation at first school headteachers pressuring them over a few computers
when middle school staff stood to lose their job. Once reorganization was over, the
computer dispute would lose its emotive force for everyone affected. Meanwhile, for LEA
officials involved, this conflict was just one of many challenges. Yet they were concerned
that a resolution be found to pre-empt either group of headteachers lobbying parents or
going to the press, which would be contrary to officials interest in promoting reorganization across the LEA.
The change will have a variable reciprocal effect on other ongoing activities. Reorganization tasks were a minor concern for some officials and school staff while, for others, such
tasks consumed most working hours over many months. When the computer dispute arose
the first school headteachers were concerned with expansion, affecting a minority of staff
and students, alongside the normal business of running their school. Middle school headteachers were concerned with closing their school, helping their staff to find jobs, and
running the institution with a reduced staff and complement of students for its final year.
There will be variable awareness of the totality of the change beyond those parts of
immediate concern to particular individuals and groups. Senior LEA officials had an
overview of the entire reorganization initiative, but little knowledge of the computer
dispute. The first and middle school staff concerned were acutely aware of this dispute,
but had only a sketchy understanding of what was happening in other schools and the
LEA.
Fifth, complex educational change is contextually dependent, facilitated and constrained
by aspects of the wider political and historical milieu to which it relates. The change will
10P 02wallace (ds)
22
7/11/02
1:39 pm
Page 22
interact with an evolving profile of other planned and unplanned changes. We have seen
how central government reforms to reduce LEA authority over schools delimited officials
agency, constraining their response over the computer dispute. Officials and school staff
had to implement reorganization alongside all the education reforms of the day.
The impact of the accretion of past changes affecting resource parameters for the change
may be facilitative or inhibitory. Pressure to downsize provision in the LEAs was an unintended consequence of past expansion when the school-age population was growing.
Surplus student capacity following population decline since the 1980s had contributed to
a level of public expenditure that, in the harsher economic climate of global competition,
was now deemed excessive. Central government ministers had even passed legislation
entitling them to take over reorganizing LEA provision of schools if officials failed to
undertake initiatives of their own.
Given that the reorganization initiative was completed, it was evidently not wholly
unmanageable, even if ambiguity reigned while it was happening. So how is it possible to
cope with complex educational change? And what did happen to the computer dispute?
Unpopular Ideas for Coping: Complex Educational Change

Management Themes
In moving towards knowledge-for-action, I identified four hierarchically ordered practical
themes for managing complex educational change. Topping the hierarchy is the metatask
of orchestration, narrowly distributed among senior formal leaders within and between the
different administrative levels of large education systems. The term is used figuratively
(hopefully as an under-stretched metaphor), consistent with the dictionary definition to
organise a situation or event unobtrusively so that a desired effect or outcome is achieved
(Encarta, 2001: 1023). Orchestration implies steering the complex change process, often
at some distance from the sharp end of implementation in organizations at the periphery
of an education system. It entails instigating, organizing and maintaining oversight of an
intricate array of coordinated tasks as the change process unfolds, and coping with this
change alongside other work. Orchestration is unobtrusive, characterized by behind-thescenes string pulling. It is evolutionary, and it includes attention to detail. Orchestration
contrasts starkly with the public, visionary and charismatic behaviour widely popularized
as hallmarks of leadership (Leithwood et al., 1999).
The current orthodoxy that visionary leadership of a transformational kind provides a key
to managing educational change (Day et al., 2000) seems misplaced, at least for the UK. The
emphasis on leadership overplays the extent of designated leaders agency and underplays
factors that set limits on what leaders can do. As piggies in the middle of other stakeholders, leaders agency is channelled most significantly by government politicians in their
favoured direction. Leaders agency is also delimited by accountability mechanisms to
ensure compliance which entail extensive surveillance and the possibility of tough corrective action. However, some agency remains because government politicians ultimately
depend on those they hold responsible for implementing their education policies. A shift of
conceptual emphasis from leadership to orchestration has greater potential for realistic
practical guidance; empowering practitioners make the most of their limited agency.
This conception of orchestration means both more and less than leadership. The distinction to be drawn between orchestration, leadership and management has two dimensions
(Figure 3):
10P 02wallace (ds)
7/11/02
1:39 pm
Page 23
Making new things happen
23
Keeping new things going
(broad focus:
choosing direction for change,
promoting organizational
transformation)
(detailed focus:
implementing
change decisions,
routinized activity)
widely
distributed
leadership
management
recent focus on
distribution
restricted to
incumbents
of formal
leadership
positions
orchestration
established
focus on top
managers
Figure 3. The contribution of leadership, management and orchestration to the change process
the extent to which activity includes deciding the direction of change rather than
implementing others decisions;
the extent to which activity is distributed within and between organizations.
Advocates of transformational leadership as a popular prescription increasingly distinguish it from management, reinforced in the UK by government politicians preference
for the term. Leadership is taken to imply making new things happen by transforming the
staff culture through:
articulating an altruistic vision of a desirable future state for the organization that
reaches beyond any individuals self-interest;
garnering colleagues support for it;
empowering colleagues to realize this shared vision through developing management
structures and procedures emphasizing professional dialogue, team-working,
continuing professional development and mutual support.
Management is confined to keeping things going, getting routine tasks done inside the
parameters set by leadership. The distinction is well captured in Bennis and Nanuss
(1985) epithet managers do things right; leaders do the right things. It is implicit in the
definitions offered by Louis and Miles (1990: 1920):
Leaders set the course for the organisation; managers make sure the course is followed.
Leaders make strategic plans; managers design operational systems for carrying out the
plans. Leaders stimulate and inspire; managers use their interpersonal influence and
authority to translate that energy into productive work.
10P 02wallace (ds)
24
7/11/02
1:39 pm
Page 24
Orchestration means more than leadership. The unobtrusive aspect of orchestration

entails delving into management territory through oversight of the multifarious activities
and administrative minutiae necessary to keep new things going by continuing to do new
things right during the long haul of the change process. Orchestrators attend to maintaining momentum and making sure the set course is followed. Many novel management
tasks embodied in the change soon become routinized. They must be sustained as the
change is gradually built into normal practice, often over several years. Orchestration
involves monitoring others practice relating to the change, channelling their agency in the
desired direction through encouragement and incentives, and attempting to delimit their
agency through the threat of corrective action where their practice is deemed unacceptable.
Orchestration means less than leadership. In Bolman and Deals (1991: 408) apposite
phrase, things make leaders happen. Scope for selecting the content of a vision is more
restricted in the state education sphere than advocates of transformational leadership tend
to assume. Question: whose vision is it anyway? Answer, in the UK: government politicians, and woe betide any formal leader whose vision does not comply. Consequently
there is also limited scope for charisma. Given the predictable government-sponsored
content of their vision, leaders who behave like inspirational visionaries stand to be
received with cynicism either for promoting a party-political agenda or for being inauthentic. But the need for stimulating and steering a coherent change effort remains even
where visionary content is externally supplied. So significant, though delimited, scope
remains for doing the right things by setting the course for organizationsas long as it
aligns with government politicians vision.
Second, orchestration also means less than the increasingly popular prescription of
distributed or shared leadership inside educational organizations. Making new things
happen, especially in large organizations, is seen to be unequally but widely shared
(Gronn, 2000) among senior and middle managers, and by individual teachers in their
classrooms. Normatively, it is advocated that leadership should be widely distributed, not
restricted to a privileged few in formal leadership positions. But orchestration is the
exclusive province of a small number of senior managers in hierarchically ordered organizations who are in a position to steer the work of organization members. It is more narrowly
dispersed inside any organization than distributed leadership implies. With complex
educational change, orchestration entails a coordinated thrust not only inside organizations but also between them, including those at different administrative levels. The
conceptual and explanatory power of orchestration as a concept derives from its compass
spanning part of leadership and management, avoiding the distinction they imply between
making new things happen and keeping new things on track, but not reaching to either of
their extremes. Orchestration excludes some choice over the content of a vision that
leadership implies, and is less potentially distributive. It also excludes the attention to very
specific and detailed tasks that management implies.
The orchestrators embroiled in the computer dispute were the headteachers and the
CEO. The headteachers instigated action on behalf of their staff to protect their incompatible interests. The CEO steered the LEA response by delegating the task of responding to a colleague official. It was he who actually attempted to break the stalemate.
Orchestration frames activity grouped under three themes. The first is flexible planning
and coordination. It covers planning what needs to be done by managers at different
system levels, retaining short-term flexibility through incremental planning and coherence
10P 02wallace (ds)
7/11/02
1:39 pm
Page 25
25
through longer planning cycles. Plans are coordinated and frequently updated informally
(and occasionally formally) as the change process evolves.
The official with pastoral responsibility for the first and middle schools adjusted his
programme of work, prioritizing a swift response. He checked out the overall budgetary
situation in each school and in the LEA, and planned his response accordingly. The headteachers had minimal knowledge either of other school budgets or of what was in the LEA
coffers. He made his move in a coordinated manner by seeking the opportunity to speak
in public to all headteachers concerned simultaneously, during a regular headteachers
meeting that officials facilitated.
The second theme is culture building and communication. Since managers depend on
other stakeholders to accept and implement change, they must attempt to forge a culture
of acceptance for their vision (ultimately derived from that of government politicians).
While culture is not predictably and reliably amenable to deliberate efforts at shaping it,
managers cannot afford not to try. Forcing through a change by overcoming resistance
as opposed to trying to head off negative reactions by nurturing a culture of acceptance
can never bring more than minimal compliance. Expensive surveillance and sanctions are
required to police compliance under such conditions where resistance must be suppressed.
Communication implies giving consistent messages, and gathering feedback to assist
coordination and to pre-empt any resistance.
The fact that the first school headteachers complained to the CEO, with no authority
to intervene, testifies that officials had done their culture-building work well. Here it had
worked. Several officials, including the one who stood up to address the headteachers
involved in the computer dispute, had served in the LEA for many years. They had long
established a reputation for even-handedness. Officials had worked together to communicate a consistent vision of the benefits of reorganization over almost a decade. By this final
phase, most school staff and parents were positively disposed towards officials, convinced
that officials had their own diverse interests at heart. The legacy of the recently eroded
structure of LEA authority lived on, headteachers continuing to assume subliminally that
officials were authority figures, despite simultaneously being aware that central government policies had put headteachers in the driving seat. When the official attending the
headteachers meeting started to speak, they were ready to listen.
The third theme is differentiated support. It entails carefully planned but also responsive provision of whatever different people need, when they need it. Needs identification
procedures must be ongoing. Support to meet diverse needs may take equally diverse
formswhether expertise, time, finance, training, counselling, the offer of a job, an early
retirement arrangement, or opportunities to observe practice elsewhere.
Here, the need was for new computers and therefore the money to buy them. What
happened? The official attempted to channel the agency of the headteachers towards
accepting a resolution that all would perceive to be in their best interests. He thought the
hitherto unthinkable. He proposed that middle school headteachers should relinquish the
number of up-to-date computers requested by the first school headteachers. The middle
school headteachers should also purchase new machines to replace them, financed
through their devolved budget. He knew this proposal was do-able. All the computers
would be needed after reorganization in a years time, and he judged that the inroad the
purchases would make into the middle schools budgets would be minimal. He knew their
budgets were healthy and LEA resources were sufficient to underwrite any shortfall when
the middle schools closed. It was a negligible price to pay for restoring harmonious
10P 02wallace (ds)
26
7/11/02
1:39 pm
Page 26
relationships between first and middle school staff during the stressful year leading up to
the part 2 reorganization arrangement. The official therefore resolved the computer
dispute by empowering members of both factions to continue separately with their
alternative traditions until the end of the year, in line with their existing professional
cultures.
Reorganization had directly generated ambiguity arising from lack of authoritative
control at school or LEA levels over the redistribution of computers, from limited awareness of the possibilities for alternative courses of action, and from contradictory beliefs
and values about the fairness of alternative redistribution arrangements. The change
management themes indicate how the CEO possessed sufficient agency to delegate the
LEA response. The official possessed sufficient agency to broker a solution that ameliorated these sources of ambiguity. The computer dispute proved to be only relatively
unmanageable, thanks to stakeholders capacity to find a way of coping with it.
Implications for Research and Theory, Policy and Practice

The characteristics of complexity and these themes for managing complex educational
change are tentative. The contextual dependence of complex educational change implies
that any characteristic or theme could apply elsewhere only at some level of abstraction
from the concrete circumstances of any change. But the characteristics and themes have
enough face-validity to suggest that they do have potential as a basis for further research
and theory development within a knowledge-for-understanding to inform knowledge-foraction intellectual project. The next item on the research and theory agenda is to investigate other complex changes in education and elsewhere.
The characteristics and themes also offer a framework for planning practical action. But
it is doubtful that these ideas will become popular prescriptions, in the UK at least. They
are likely to be trapped by the first filter (managers needs), since central government politicians now comprehensively define the needs of education managers and fund the means
of meeting them. These politicians have already sunk too much investment in popular
prescriptions like transformational, visionary leadership. For education managers to
believe they possess more agency than they do may even be in government ministers
interest. An explicit aim of their endeavour to modernize the education profession is to
modernize the culture of educational professionals (DfEE, 1998). A knowledge-forcritical evaluation conspiracy theorist might perceive the underlying aim as being to create
a self-regulating profession, where teachers, lecturers and managers delimit their agency
for themselves. Envisioning courses of action lying outside government politicians
comfort zone would become unthinkable, so taking them would become simply not doable.
But I subscribe to a cocked-up conspiracy theory of history. We probably cannot get
round the structural limits imposed on agency by global capitalism. But ambiguity cannot
be eliminated either. The three sources of organizational ambiguity apply equally to the
wider policy process of which organizational activity is an integral part. Despite their best
efforts, central government politicians do have only limited control over education
professionals. Witness the chronic teacher recruitment and retention crisis in this country
triggered in part by innovation overkill and a lasting increase in teachers workloadunintended consequences of the well-intentioned reform efforts of politicians from successive
governments. Yet politicians agency to express their reformist zeal is demonstrably
10P 02wallace (ds)
7/11/02
1:39 pm
Page 27
27
delimited by their dependence for implementation on the expertise and energy of the very
people who still possess enough agency to vote with their feet by avoiding or getting out
of the education profession.
Given the widely accepted legitimacy of pursuing an ideologically driven reform
agenda, government politicians understandably tend to marginalize and so have limited
awareness of educational research that does not support their ideology, indicates that
other approaches might work better or expresses alternative educational values. Even the
current evidence-informed policy and practice initiative rests on a narrowly delimited
range of evidence. Funding is not likely to be forthcoming for politically sensitive but practically informative topics for systematic reviews, such as the unintended contribution of
central government policies to perpetuating the problem of low standards they are
designed to ameliorate. The amount of government-commissioned research is thankfully
on the increase, but the specification of topics and approaches is tightly focused on
immediate policy implementation concerns. Not much room for researchers to think the
unthinkable here. Government-sponsored evaluations tend to be equally restricted in
scope. The current external evaluation of the national literacy and numeracy strategies
(Earl et al., 2002) is confined to the change process adopted by government politicians.
They have thus avoided raising their awareness of whether the educationally contentious
content of the strategies (running counter to a considerable body of research) has proved
as educationally effective as the architects of the strategies claimed it would be.
Government politicians hold contradictory beliefs and values, seeking hyper-control
through education reforms that exacerbate endemic ambiguity through the change
process they entail and promote conservative management and teaching to the test in a
changing world. At the same time they wish to encourage the very experimentation they
inhibit, to develop new managerial coping strategies and learning and teaching approaches
that will be more effective in this evolving context.
If politicians would only get real about the futility of trying to eliminate ambiguity
through hyper-control, then by easing back on their multiple control mechanisms the
agency of education professionals could be channelled towards more risk-taking and
experimentation. Being realistic about complex educational change implies accepting that
it is beyond the agency of government politicians, their change agent managers or other
education professionals to eliminate ambiguity from the change process. Some amelioration is certainly possible at the edges, and strategies like orchestration of complex change
may help to reduce ambiguitybut only up to a point. So politicians would have to accept
the risk of some loss of control for the sake of encouraging education professionals to
think the unthinkable and make the presently not-do-able more do-able. Unfortunately,
the nature of politics and the structural economic conditions and assumptions driving politicians to act as they do both militate against greater acceptance of ambiguity. We are
probably not on the threshold of a new age of political enlightenment.
Finally, reaching across to other academic producers positions by pursuing the knowledge-for-action and instrumentalism intellectual projects means seeking more realistic
ways of supporting practitioners with managing complex educational change inside the
limits of human agency. The most promising direction for knowledge-for-action that will
work lies in the humble realm of coping strategies, headed by orchestration, rather than
more grandiose notions like transformational leadership which treat agency as potentially
unlimited. Effective coping implies ameliorating ambiguity where both feasible and desirable. It also implies accepting a significant measure of ambiguity as a fact of managerial
10P 02wallace (ds)
7/11/02
28
1:39 pm
Page 28
life, not an aberration. An important goal for the allied intellectual project of instrumentalism is to find ways of helping practitioners to cope with the relatively unmanageable by
learning to live with ambiguity, and so rendering it relatively manageable.
My hope is that the professional culture of academics and practitioners in the UK (and
elsewhere) remains sufficiently unmodernized for us to employ our agency in working
together on this mildly subversive practical agenda, making such unpopular prescriptions
more thinkable and so potentially more do-able. It surely promises to contribute more
than todays hopeless political quest for hyper-control ever can towards tomorrows
educational success. But who knows what will happen?
Dedication
This is a slightly revised text of an inaugural lecture given at the University of Bath on 23 May
2002. It is dedicated to the memory of Dr Valerie Hall, who died of cancer two days earlier.
Valerie was my mentor, research collaborator, good friend and a key formative influence on my
whole approach to research. We worked together on a study of secondary school senior
management teams (Wallace and Hall, 1994) when I was just starting out as an academic
researcher. I was very unsure whether I was up to the task. Valerie already possessed extensive
qualitative research experience, but she never traded on it. Instead she built up my confidence,
and through her example she taught me the art of rigorous and probing interview and
observation. She helped me learn how to build towards a deeply contextualized understanding of
social phenomena. The intellectual debt I owe Valerie pervades the topic of this lecture and my
approach to it.
References
Ball, S. (1994) Educational Reform: A Critical and Post-Structural Approach. Buckingham: Open
University Press.
Bennis, W. and Nanus, B. (1985) Leaders: The Strategies for Taking Charge. New York: Harper &
Row.
Bolam, R. (1999) Educational Administration, Leadership and Management: Towards a Research
Agenda, in T. Bush, L. Bell, R. Bolam, R. Glatter and P. Ribbins (eds) Educational
Management: Redefining Theory, Policy and Practice, pp. 193205. London: Paul Chapman.
Bolman, L. and Deal, T. (1991) Reframing Organisations: Artistry, Choice and Leadership. San
Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
Day, C., Harris, A., Hadfield, M., Tolley, H. and Beresford, J. (2000) Leading Schools in Times of
Change. Buckingham: Open University Press.
Department for Education and Employment (1998) Teachers Meeting the Challenge of Change.
London: DfEE.
Earl, L., Levin, B., Leithwood, K., Fullan, M. and Watson, N. with Torrance, N., Jantzi, D. and
Mascall, B. (2002) Watching and Learning 2: OISE/UT Evaluation of the Implementation of the
National Literacy and National Numeracy Strategies. Second Annual Report. Toronto: Ontario
Institute for Studies in Education and University of Toronto.
Encarta (2001) Encarta Concise English Dictionary. London: Bloomsbury.
Fullan, M. with Stiegelbauer, S. (1991) The New Meaning of Educational Change. London: Cassell.
Gewirtz, S., Ball, S. and Bowe, R. (1995) Markets, Choice and Equity in Education. Buckingham:
Open University Press.
Gronn, P. (2000) Distributed Properties: A New Architecture for Leadership, Educational
Management & Administration 28(3): 31738.
10P 02wallace (ds)
7/11/02
1:39 pm
Page 29
29
Gronn, P. (2002) The New Work of Educational Leaders: Changing Leadership Practice in an Age
of School Reform. London: Paul Chapman.
Gunter, H. (2001) Leaders and Leadership in Education. London: Paul Chapman.
Gunter, H. and Ribbins, P. (2002) Leadership Studies in Education: Towards a Map of the Field,
Educational Management & Administration 30(4): 387417.
Hargreaves, A. (1983) The Politics of Administrative Convenience: The Case of Middle Schools,
in J. Ahier and M. Flude (eds) Contemporary Education Policy, pp. 2357. London: Croom
Helm.
Hoyle, E. (1986) The Politics of School Management. London: Hodder & Stoughton.
Hoyle, E. (1999) The Two Faces of Micropolitics, School Leadership and Management 19(2):
21322.
Huczynski, A. (1993) Management Gurus: What Makes Them and How to Become One. London:
Routledge.
Leithwood, K., Jantzi, D. and Steinbach, R. (1999) Changing Leadership for Changing Times.
Buckingham: Open University Press.
Louis, K.S. and Miles, M. (1990) Improving the Urban High School: What Works and Why. New
York: Teachers College Press.
March, J. and Olsen, P. (1976) Ambiguity and Choice in Organisations. Bergen:
Universitetsforlaget.
March, J. and Simon, H. (1958) Organisations. New York: John Wiley.
Morrison, K. (2002) School Leadership and Complexity Theory. London: RoutledgeFalmer.
Ogawa, R., Crowson, R. and Goldring, E. (1999) Enduring Dilemmas of School Organisation, in
J. Murphy and K. Seashore Louis (eds) Handbook of Research on Educational Administration,
pp. 27795. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
Ribbins, P. and Gunter, H. (2002) Mapping Leadership Studies in Education: Towards a Typology
of Knowledge Domains, Educational Management & Administration 30(4): 35986.
Senge, P. (1990) The Fifth Discipline: The Art and Practice of the Learning Organisation. New
York: Doubleday.
Wallace, M. and Hall, V. (1994) Inside the SMT: Teamwork in Secondary School Management.
London: Paul Chapman.
Wallace, M. and Pocklington, K. (2002) Managing Complex Educational Change: Large-Scale
Reorganisation of Schools. London: RoutledgeFalmer.
Wallace, M. and Poulson, L., eds (2003) Learning to Read Critically in Educational Leadership and
Management. London: Sage.
Weick, K. (2001) Making Sense of the Organisation. Oxford: Blackwell.
World Bank (2000) Entering the 21st Century: World Development Report 1999/2000. Washington,
DC: Oxford University Press.
Correspondence to:
PROFESSOR MIKE WALLACE,
Department of Education, University of Bath, Bath BA2 7AY, UK.
[a.m.Wallace@bath.ac.uk]

Managing Educational Change

Încărcat de

Informații document

Drepturi de autor

Formate disponibile

Partajați acest document

Partajați sau inserați document

Opțiuni de partajare

Vi se pare util acest document?

Este necorespunzător acest conținut?

Drepturi de autor:

Formate disponibile

Managing Educational Change

Încărcat de

Drepturi de autor:

Formate disponibile

Educational Management

Managing the Unmanageable? : Coping with Complex Educational Change

British Educational Leadership, Management & Administration Society

>> Version of Record - Jan 1, 2003

Downloaded from ema.sagepub.com at Queens University Belfast on July 12, 2012

10P 02wallace (ds)

Educational Management & Administration 0263-211X (200301) 31:1

Managing the Unmanageable?

Managing the Unmanageable?

Downloaded from ema.sagepub.com at Queens University Belfast on July 12, 2012

10P 02wallace (ds)

EDUCATIONAL MANAGEMENT & ADMINISTRATION 31(1)

Unmanageability in Action: A Dispute over Computers

3-9 first school

3-10 first school

9-13 middle school

13-18 high school

13-18 high school

11-18 secondary school

Downloaded from ema.sagepub.com at Queens University Belfast on July 12, 2012

10P 02wallace (ds)

WALLACE: MANAGING THE UNMANAGEABLE?

Downloaded from ema.sagepub.com at Queens University Belfast on July 12, 2012

10P 02wallace (ds)

EDUCATIONAL MANAGEMENT & ADMINISTRATION 31(1)

Sources of Ambiguity that Constrain Manageability

Downloaded from ema.sagepub.com at Queens University Belfast on July 12, 2012

10P 02wallace (ds)

WALLACE: MANAGING THE UNMANAGEABLE?

by individual stakeholders and distributed among different groups. Actions according to

computers previously used by 910

computers previously used by 910

910 year olds in first schools should

remaining students should still have

Downloaded from ema.sagepub.com at Queens University Belfast on July 12, 2012

10P 02wallace (ds)

EDUCATIONAL MANAGEMENT & ADMINISTRATION 31(1)

government education policies designed to eliminate ambiguitythrough rational

Why Popular Prescriptions for Managing Educational Change

Downloaded from ema.sagepub.com at Queens University Belfast on July 12, 2012

10P 02wallace (ds)

WALLACE: MANAGING THE UNMANAGEABLE?

Popular prescriptions for

unacceptable to government politicians, who will perceive them not to meet

Downloaded from ema.sagepub.com at Queens University Belfast on July 12, 2012

10P 02wallace (ds)

EDUCATIONAL MANAGEMENT & ADMINISTRATION 31(1)

what happens and why?

what is wrong with what

knowledge-for-action inform policy-makers

how effective are actions to

improve own practice

Downloaded from ema.sagepub.com at Queens University Belfast on July 12, 2012

10P 02wallace (ds)

WALLACE: MANAGING THE UNMANAGEABLE?

Downloaded from ema.sagepub.com at Queens University Belfast on July 12, 2012

10P 02wallace (ds)

EDUCATIONAL MANAGEMENT & ADMINISTRATION 31(1)

Agency and its Structural Limits as a Foundation for

Downloaded from ema.sagepub.com at Queens University Belfast on July 12, 2012

10P 02wallace (ds)

WALLACE: MANAGING THE UNMANAGEABLE?

What Makes Complex Educational Change so Complex to

Downloaded from ema.sagepub.com at Queens University Belfast on July 12, 2012