O BSERVATIONS OF LOOSE COUPLINGS IN SCHOOL ORGANIZATIONS

from the mid 1970s (J. W. Meyer & Rowan, 1977). Loose couplings were consistently found in four areas of school behavior: (1) Inconsistency and

11 Thompson’s (1967) proposition can be seen in Nonaka’s (1994) theory of the knowledge-creating firm. The organizational prototype is built on three organizational layers that are only loosely interconnected. The primary mission of managers is to therefore to fill the gaps between the layers, and to compensate for loose couplings through synthesizing the visions of the top layer, and integrating them into the operating repertoire (Hustad, 1999; Nonaka, 1994; Nonaka &

Takeuchi, 1995)

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unintended variation in work process and outcomes across school units¹², (2) managerial de-emphasis on instruction¹³, (3) inactivity of evaluation and control systems over classroom work and (4) lack of implementation of reform elements¹⁴ (Meyer et al., 1992). Although the loosely coupled perspective aims to capture properties found in most social systems, schools and universities were used as archetypical cases (Mintzberg, 1993; Orton &

Weick, 1990).

2.3.1 Inconsistency and variation

The emerging new institutional theorists grounded their theoretical accounts on evidence of wide variance in practice and inconsistency (J. W. Meyer, 1992a; Rowan, 1982). Units at the same level were permitted to pursue unrelated or even contradictory didactical programs in practice. John W.

Meyer and his colleagues found inconsistency and variation in instructional methods, work processes and learning outcomes across classes within the same school department. Furthermore, the same pattern was detected across departments within the same school and across similar schools within the same district. Eventually, unintended variation was found across districts within the same state, which is the policy formation level of the US public school system. As noted: “In our own research we found a great deal of variation from classroom to classroom in materials and methods, but this was largely independent of the organizational features of the schools and district (J. W. Meyer et al., 1992, p.60). Despite these features, a relatively high level of innovation in individual classrooms was observed. New materials and methods were routinely introduced to classroom work, as individual teachers tried out new didactical components in an experimental trial and error fashion. However, little of this activity is systematically organized at the school level or district level; rather diffusion was found to be random (Scott, 1992). The listed examples show that schools may operate different action programs simultaneously, even though they may be inconsistent. On the other hand, this form of variation may permit schools to be responsive to different pressures from the environments (Orton & Weick, 1990).

12 Based on large-scale research on the US public school system, evidence revealed wide variance in practice and inconsistent learning outcomes across schools within the same district, and across departments and classes within the same school (J. W.

Meyer & Rowan, 1977, 1992; J. W. Meyer & Scott, 1992).

13 This property is a major finding in research on working conditions of Swedish school leaders in the early 1990s (Berg, 1996; Nytell, 1994, 1996)

14 Persistence in teacher practices, paired with ignorance of reform elements, has been recurrent themes in the work of Goodlad (1984), Cuban (1988) and Ball (1987)

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2.3.2 Disconnected classroom work from the administrative structure Besides variation and inconsistency, schools are also described as lacking internal coordination and integration of the content and methods applied in teaching and instruction in the classrooms (J. W. Meyer, 1992b). This pattern co-exists with lack of administrative control over classroom work:

Lack of inspection, monitoring and evaluation. Schools, it seems, are to a large extent characterized by disconnection¹⁵ between the administrative corpus and the work processes in the classrooms (Brunsson, 1989).

Similarly, the reviewed evidence indicates a tendency of managerial de-emphasis on instruction. It seems that school managers rather buffer their technical core, i.e. their teachers’ work, from external evaluation and monitoring (Berg, 1995b; Mintzberg, 1993).

The reviewed literature exposes three forms of administrative disconnection.

The first refers to ignorance of environmental demands, when for example the technical core of instruction is buffered from reform elements, by means of systematic de-implementation, ignorance or symbolically façade erection (J. W. Meyer & Rowan, 1991). The second form of disconnection addresses disconnection of control systems through inactivation. By this is meant that the administrative apparatus is inactive in relation to, and disconnected from, classroom work (J. W. Meyer & Scott, 1983). Disconnection in this form strikingly describes a huge paradox of school management. On one hand, a massive growth in administrative functions, staffing and the most sophisticated managerial systems in most school systems has been observed (Rowan, 1982). On the other hand, this administrative corpus is inactivated when it comes to the core activities of schooling.

As argued educational work seems to take place in the isolated settings of classrooms and landscapes, “removed from organizational evaluations, inspections or controls of a substantive kind” (J. W. Meyer et al., 1992, p.

60). In consequence, the work activities are disconnected from their effects.

Another side of inactivation is manifested in that teachers are infrequently observed or evaluated; and the same is the case for school managers. As stated: “Although pupil achievement data are routinely collected for

15 The observed pattern of disconnecting control systems from classroom work has been wider conceptualized by the term of decoupling in the well-cited article of J.W.

Meyer & Rowan (1977). The concept has some wider implication than the disconnection category as used in this present chapter. For example, decoupling also describes purposeful avoidance of integration of activities. The notion of decoupling has over the years been extended to various forms of organizational behavior, for example in theorizing about public sector reforms. See Brunsson (2002); Brunsson and Olsen (1993); Christensen and Lægreid (2002); Forsell (2001)

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individual students and are used to monitor their progress and determine their opportunities, the same data is rarely aggregated so as to provide a basis for assessing the performance of individual teachers, schools or districts” (J. W. Meyer et al., 1992p.59).

The third form of disconnection is described by the grammar of schooling concept (Rowan & Miskel, 1999). Schools and their managers allocate several resources into formation of local school policies, pedagogical strategies for the future, developmental projects and a series of written declarations. This body of written documents constitutes a local ‘grammar of schooling’(Hanson, 2001). As a rule of thumb, this ‘package’ of school strategies, plans, policies and visions for the future does not govern the technical work of teaching. Rather, it is a collection of local artifacts that conforms to longstanding norms and ideologies within the wider school institution: Norms, beliefs and myths that are socially and ideologically approved as ‘best practice’ in schooling (Rowan, 2002a; Scott, 1995). They constitute what is termed as ‘broad institutional scripts’ (Ogawa, Crowson,

& Goldring, 1999) for what is judged as appropriate schooling in a modern society. And these scripts lend environmental legitimacy to those schools that conform to them by demonstrating follower-ship through their official

‘grammar of schooling’ (DiMaggio & Powell, 1991; Hanson, 2001).

The radical claim from the new institutional school is that the core activities of schooling, teaching, instruction and student learning, are not a part of this

‘grammar of schooling’. What happens in the classrooms is thus quite less coordinated and harmonized than the institutional norms, scripts, ideologies and approved recipes of how schools shall be organized (Hanson, 2001). The crucial point is that this ‘grammar of schooling’ is disconnected from the activities in the classroom. A similar phenomenon is described in Scandinavian new institutional theory (Sahlin-Andersson & Engwall, 2002).

When for example new pedagogical ideas are launched during reforms, it is possible for school managers and teachers to decouple them from classroom practices through using double standards (Brunsson & Olsen, 1997). By inducing new pedagogical ideas and recipes into school documents, organizational structures, developmental projects, declarations and meeting agendas, the school uses the visible part of its organization to show potency (Forsell, 2001). School managers show the environments that it is in line with the contemporary agenda, ongoing reforms or the dominant ideology of the educational sector (Rowan, 2002a). Besides, by separating these artifacts from classroom work, the school avoid disturbance of any kind in the technical core (Brunsson, 2002). By this strategy, the school operates with double standards, one ideology for external use and one set of practices for internal use. The two incompatible standards are separated and isolated from each other, in order not to collide and cause conflicts (Brunsson & Olsen,

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1993). Whereas the technical standard, the ‘tacit curriculum’ (Berg, 1995b) produces teaching and student learning, the official artifacts produce mainly words, i.e. written documents, presentations in seminars and meetings and written accounts for external consumptions (Forsell, 2001, p. 264).

Disconnection through double standard, thus, represents a split between talk and action.

2.3.3 Invisible contracts and professional myths

Evidence from studies of Scandinavian school management in the 1990s¹⁶ adds some specificity to the disconnected classroom phenomenon. Based on large-scale evidence of work conditions among school managers, the researchers found consistent evidence of managerial de-emphasis on instruction. School managers systematically buffered their teachers from monitoring and evaluation of the work in the classroom. A tendency that school managers preferred to buffer their teachers from parent influence was also observed. The Swedish educationalist Gunnar Berg conceptualizes the professional relationship between principals and their teachers by the metaphor of the ‘invisible contract’ (Berg, 1991, 1993, 1996). The term denotes a social organization of teachers and the school principal, where the main ingredient is a systematic pattern of mutual non-interference. (1) On one hand, the school manager accepts that the classroom is the sole territory of the teaching corps, and that no administrative mechanism shall interfere in this domain. (2) On the other, the administrative sphere is the domain of the school manager, including labor division among administrators and coordinators. (3) The demarcation line of the invisible contract is the door into the classroom. The underlying norm claims that no school manager should break the contract.

The invisible contract phenomenon describes loose coupling from a cultural and normative stance. The evidence shows that the typical isolated classroom phenomenon found in Scandinavian schools is supported and protected by professional norms of individual teacher autonomy (Berg, 1995b). Beliefs and norms then constitute a protective belt, by which the classroom work is surrounded. The notion of the invisible contract, thus, specifies norms, professional myths and group interests in the maintenance of an isolated classroom technology (J. W. Meyer & Rowan, 1991).

16 The research project investigated working conditions for primary school managers in Sweden, and data was collected from the late 1980s to the early 1990s. The project was labeled ‘School Leaders’ Working Conditions in Sweden’ (Berg, 1991, 1993, 1995b, 1996; Nytell, 1996)

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2.3.4 Disconnected classroom understood as agency problem

The administrative paradox of disconnected classrooms can also be understood as a classical agency problem. As noted by theorists, teaching is largely a private activity that is seldom or never coordinated from the administrative corpus of the organization (Mintzberg, 1993). More important, the distribution of information and knowledge about teaching is asymmetric: Neither the administrative hierarchy nor the environments know very much about what kind of knowledge is constructed in the classrooms, and how the construction is processed (Brunsson, 2002, p.4). School managers on the top of the hierarchy systematically lack knowledge about the work processes carried out by the agent, i.e. the teacher. Besides, the labor division between the principal and the agent is characterized by a systematic lack of specified contracts. The distribution is therefore extremely asymmetric. Moreover, the available pool of solutions available for recurrent practical problems is, largely, the agents’ own knowledge asset. The knowledge base of the core technology is, thus, controlled by the professionals, and the managerial system will typically depend on this kind expert knowledge in their planning routines (Mintzberg, 1979).

The analytical point is that even if it is socially appropriate and legitimate to control the work process in the classroom, it would be an extremely difficult project. Controlling the teacher’s work in the classroom is extremely difficult from the top of the hierarchy, and not least extremely costly (J. W.

Meyer, 1992a). Effective control under such circumstances would require enormous human investments, because it is difficult to assess the precise effects of the streams of shifting situations that constitute classroom work.

There is also a substantial causation problem involved in classroom work, especially when it comes to validation of cause and effects, due to the abstract and uncertain technology of teaching (Thompson, 1967). Validation becomes furthermore blurred by the substantial time lag between the actual work process and assessable student achievements. In common language, whether the quality of teaching is high or low, it takes some time before the effects are measurable in valid terms¹⁷.

Teachers are therefore favorably positioned to buffer their professional domain from uncertainty, interference and monitoring imposed from the

17 The validity problem when it comes to the measurement of effects of the teacher’s work is significant, not at least because a reliable system would have to take into account that most causal factors are exogenous. A large group of causal factors is found on the outside of the school boundaries, in terms of the students’ socio-economic status (Hallinger & Heck, 1996; Leithwood, Louis, Andersen, &

Wahlstrom, 2004).

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managerial sphere¹⁸. Asymmetric distribution of resources and power is therefore a stable feature of the internal structure of the school organization.

As noted in theorizing about professional bureaucracies, of which universities, colleges and upper secondary schools are archetypical cases, the administrative pattern follows a rather asymmetric pattern (Mintzberg, 1993). The administrative structure seldom takes control over the operating core of the professionals, rather the opposite occurs. As stated: “Not only do the professionals control their own work, but they also tend to maintain collective control of the administrative apparatus of the organization”

(Mintzberg, 1979, p. 334). The thesis therefore argues that the agency problem embedded in the disconnected classroom phenomenon should explicitly be taken into account, in order to construct the full picture of the loosely coupled school.