1.4 Theories of educational management  (Page 15/29)

Subjective models have the following major features:

• They focus on the beliefs and perceptions of individual members of organizations rather than the institutional level orinterest groups. The focus on individuals rather than the organization is a fundamental difference between subjective andformal models, and creates what Hodgkinson (1993) regards as an unbridgeable divide.“A fact can never entail a value, and an individual can never become a collective”(p. xii).
• Subjective models are concerned with the meanings placed on events by people within organizations. The focus is on theindividual interpretation of behaviour rather than the situations and actions themselves.“Events and meanings are loosely coupled: the same events can have very different meanings for differentpeople because of differences in the schema that they use to interpret their experience”(Bolman&Deal, 1991, p. 244).
• The different meanings placed on situations by the various participants are products of their values, background andexperience. So the interpretation of events depends on the beliefs held by each member of the organization. Greenfield (1979) assertsthat formal theories make the mistake of treating the meanings of leaders as if they were the objective realities of theorganization.“Too frequently in the past, organisation and administrative theory has . . . taken sides in the ideologicalbattles of social process and presented as‘theory’”(p. 103) , the views of a dominating set of values, the views of rulers, elites,and their administrators.
• Subjective models treat structure as a product of human interaction rather than something that is fixed or predetermined.The organization charts, which are characteristic of formal models, are regarded as fictions in that they cannot predict the behaviourof individuals. Subjective approaches move the emphasis away from structure towards a consideration of behaviour and process.Individual behaviour is thought to reflect the personal qualities and aspirations of the participants rather than the formal rolesthey occupy.“Organisations exist to serve human needs, rather than the reverse”(Bolman&Deal, 1991, p. 121).
• Subjective approaches emphasize the significance of individual purposes and deny the existence of organizational goals.Greenfield (1973) asks“What is an organisation that it can have such a thing as a goal?”(p. 553). The view that organizations are simply the product of the interaction of their members leadsnaturally to the assumption that objectives are individual, not organizational (Bush, 2003, p. 114-118).

Subjective models and qualitative research

The theoretical dialectic between formal and subjective models is reflected in the debate about positivism andinterpretivism in educational research. Subjective models relate to a mode of research that is predominantly interpretive orqualitative. This approach to enquiry is based on the subjective experience of individuals. The main aim is to seek understanding ofthe ways in which individuals create, modify and interpret the social world which they inhabit.