Circular organization
ABSTRACT - Ackoff's circular structure
has been successfully utilised to combine hierarchy and democracy in various
industries. This paper argues that
this structure is the most appropriate
democratic structure for the internal governance of public schools. It concludes
that a circularity of power relations
between administrators and teachers
would create genuinely empowering teacher participation, improve co-ordination,
foster teacher self-actualisation and
expressiveness, alleviate teacher shortages,
help attract high quality persons to teaching careers, ensure appropriate
(service oriented) teacher supervision,
and increase the number of successful
school improvement projects.
Although teacher participation programs
have become increasingly common, such participation programs have occurred
in the context of school organisations
that are not internally democratic.
Current texts on school administration,
moreover, have almost invariably assumed that internally democratic school
organisations would be inviable (e.g.
Campbell et al., 1985). Internal democracy,
such texts assume, would lead schools down the path of chaos, disorder, disintegration,
and inefficiency. The
assumption that internal democracy
is infeasible, moreover, is apparently strong enough to cause its virtual
absence from the entire literature on educational
administration. I view this as being
highly unfortunate, since I am convinced that internal democracy, when it
is appropriately defined, is a feasible structural
alternative to non-democratic internal
school governance.
