GREENFIELD ON EDUCATIONAL ADMINISTRATION This collection is a representative set of ten of the key papers which Thomas Greenfield, arguably the doyen of contemporary theorists of educational administration, has published over the last twenty years. His writings as they appear are eagerly sought after and studied by scholars, students and practitioners in Britain and across the English-speaking world, and increasingly beyond it, but are not always readily available individually. The collection charts the development of Greenfield’s views of social reality as human invention, and explores strands of argument on the nature of knowledge, on administrative theory and research, on values, on the limits of science and the importance of human subjectivity, truth and reality. The volume is concluded by a discussion between Thomas Greenfield and Peter Ribbins, which reflects on Greenfield’s career and elaborates on the range of his complex and often controversial ideas. Thomas Greenfield was formerly Professor at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education. Peter Ribbins is Reader in Educational Management at the University of Birmingham. GREENFIELD ON EDUCATIONAL ADMINISTRATION Towards a Humane Science Thomas Greenfield and Peter Ribbins London and New York First published 1993 by Routledge 11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2005. “To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s collection of thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk.” Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Routledge 29 West 35th Street, New York, NY10001 © 1993 Thomas Greenfield and Peter Ribbins All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. ISBN 0-203-97356-9 Master e-book ISBN ISBN 0-415-08045-2 (hbk) 0-415-08080-0 (pbk) Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Greenfield, Thomas Barr. Greenfield on educational administration: towards a humane science/by Thomas Greenfield and Peter Ribbins; with a foreword by Christopher Hodgkinson. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references. ISBN 0-415-08045-2.—ISBN 0-415-08080-0 (pbk) 1. School management and organization. 2. School management and organization—Social aspects. I. Ribbins, Peter. II. Title. III. Title: On educational administratration LB2805.G695 1993 92–160303 CIP What a piece of work is man, how noble in reason, how infinite in faculties, in form and moving how express and admirable, in action how like an angel, in apprehension how like a god; the beauty of the world, a paragon of animals. Hamlet, William Shakespeare CONTENTS Foreword by Christopher Hodgkinson ix Notes xvi 1 THEORY ABOUT ORGANIZATION: A NEW PERSPECTIVE 1 AND ITS IMPLICATIONS FOR SCHOOLS Organizational science and the profession of administration 2 Two views of social reality 5 Implications 16 Notes 21 References 21 2 RESEARCH IN EDUCATIONAL ADMINISTRATION IN THE 25 UNITED STATES AND CANADA: AN OVERVIEW AND CRITIQUE Theoretical foundations of administrative research 26 Reviewing the reviews 32 The future of research in educational administration 42 Notes 47 References 47 3 ORGANIZATIONS AS TALK, CHANCE, ACTION AND 51 EXPERIENCE A false dichotomy between organization and individual 52 Methodology as an end in itself 56 Validating theory 58 Image, reality and method 60 Can there be one best theory of experience? 62 vi Other images, other theories 65 Chance as truth 66 Conclusion 68 Notes 69 4 ORGANIZATION THEORY AS IDEOLOGY 72 The individual and social reality 74 Social structure in terms of human meanings 76 Values and methodology 78 Logic, will, submission and images of reality 80 Notes 85 References 86 5 THE MAN WHO COMES BACK THROUGH THE DOOR IN THE 88 WALL: DISCOVERING TRUTH, DISCOVERING SELF, DISCOVERING ORGANIZATIONS Interpreting social reality: reasoning with angels and others 92 Prolegomenon for a new study of organization 99 Problematics 107 Conclusion 110 Notes 114 6 AGAINST GROUP MIND: AN ANARCHISTIC THEORY OF 117 ORGANIZATION An anarchistic conclusion 125 Notes 126 References 127 7 THE DECLINE AND FALL OF SCIENCE IN EDUCATIONAL 128 ADMINISTRATION The rise of science in administration 129 Simon and positivism in administrative science 131 The failure of administrative science 132 What Simon omitted: right, responsibility, reflection 134 The infusion of science into educational administration 136 vii The consequences of the new science of organizations 138 The alternative 145 An agenda for the future 148 Notes 151 References 152 8 ON HODGKINSON’S MORAL ART 155 Notes 161 9 RE-FORMING AND RE-VALUING EDUCATIONAL 162 ADMINISTRATION: WHENCE AND WHEN COMETH THE PHOENIX? Looking back 164 Looking forward 177 Notes 187 References 188 1 0 SCIENCE AND SERVICE: THE MAKING OF THE PROFESSION 192 OF EDUCATIONAL ADMINISTRATION A troubling foundation 193 Remembering 205 Prospects for educational administration as a field of study 209 Conclusion 212 Notes 217 11 EDUCATIONAL ADMINISTRATION AS A HUMAN SCIENCE: 221 CONVERSATIONS BETWEEN THOMAS GREENFIELD AND PETER RIBBINS Scene setting 221 Before 1961: towards the scholar’s life 222 1961–1971: objectivist years—from certaintly to you 223 1971–1974: towards an alternative paradigm 229 After 1974: the subjectivist year—from Bristol to Edmonton 237 References 261 viii APPENDIX: PUBLICATIONS AND PAPERS 262 Index 266 FOREWORD It is not possible to properly comprehend the contemporary discipline of educational administration without some familiarity and acquaintanceship with the thought of Thomas Barr Greenfield. That is the main raison d’être for this book and ought to be the chief motivation of its readers. But is this strong assertion truly justified? I shall argue that it is on several grounds. To begin, consider the fact that educational administration is neither unitary nor homogeneous nor monolithic. It is fragmented and factional, obscure in its dimensions, vague in its ends, and contentious in its methodologies. But above all it is divided along a major fault line into two camps or schools of thought, two Weltanschauungen. These outlooks and their infinite ramifications have not only been clarified by Greenfield, their greatest expositor, but in a sense have been initiated by him, a point to which I shall advert later. Which is why this text and its collation is so sorely needed. It deserves and will certainly reward study by graduate students, practitioners, and theorists alike. The content of this book reaches beyond the conventional boundaries of educational administration into that general subset of human behaviour known severally by such deceptive names as administration, management, leadership, policy making, and executive skills. Since all of these activities are real and all of fundamental importance to the quality of human life, not to mention the quality of life in that other set of mysteries called education and schooling, it follows that enlightenment about them is eminently desirable. Greenfield throws such light. But there are, as it happens, two unevenly matched contenders for the role of light-bearer. Science and art. Both lay their claims to the territory of educational administration. To be sure it is not a simple matter of either-or and of course it is a complex bedevilment of both-and. Nevertheless, there is little doubt which is to bear the burden of Lucifer when the author quotes Hoy and Miskel’s text as aspiring to make educational administration ‘more of a science and less of an art’. Hoy and Miskel as standard- bearers of the science-oriented camp do seek, in the best (but somewhat jaded) spirit of American pragmatic empiricism, for an explanatory order of things, for predictabilities, for law-like interpretations of complex social phenomena, perhaps even for a mechanism or quasi-mechanistic x system of interactions which can be managed, directed, planned and, above all, comprehended. It follows inescapably that this project, often unkindly described as scientistic, inclines towards the quantitative in methodology and the realistic in epistemology. It tends to eschew the qualitative, the imponderable, the intractable, and to avow the early Wittgenstein’s, ‘Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must remain silent.’1 Indeed, the philosophical battlefield upon which Greenfield has chosen to fight is very much demarcated by the differences between the earlier and the later Wittgenstein. It is to be noted that the former is associated with the school of logical positivism or logical empiricism and it is also to be noted that these schools of thought are alive and flourishing today and even dominant despite considerable technical discrediting. Notwithstanding protestations to the contrary, their central ideas are to be discovered behind the façades of American pragmatism and realism, in post-structuralism and deconstructionism in the humanities, and in systems thinking and neo-Taylorism in organization and administrative theory. I make the point to show that Greenfield is not tilting at windmills. His chosen enemy on the battlefield of ideas is a real one. A Goliath even. The division which Greenfield explicates goes far beyond the frontiers of educational administration. It represents the central dilemma of our times. George Steiner traces the roots of this problem to the Enlightenment era of European rationalism and goes so far as to assert that we are now living in the period of the Epilogue or Afterword.2 That is, ever since the death of God announced by Nietzsche and confirmed by Freud and ever since the logical positivists rendered triumphant the ascendency of modern science and its handmaiden technology it no longer makes ‘sense’ to claim that ‘in the beginning was the word (logos), and the word was with God, and the word was God’.