Organisational change: an element of system redesign

In transforming education by redesigning systems, David Hargreaves identifies decision-making methods as one means to affect change. Such change can impact the management of a district or school, which can be explained by organisational theories to extend organisational learning and promote further successful change. The controversial chaos theory is one such theory which shifts the lens from thinking in terms of linearity and certainty to non-linear dynamics and entropy, or disorder, giving it greater explanative power.

This case study examines the process of changing technology and the creation of a management information system in a school district in the state of Florida. For confidentiality reasons, all references will be made to the latter as the District while the two main departments in this case are referred to as the Accountability and Assessment (AA) and the Information Systems (IS) departments. The method of investigation involved observations at meetings, document examination and interviews with representatives from each of two departments. After a brief treatment of events, an analysis follows to show how a series of commonly occurring sequence of events can be viewed quite differently through the lens of the chaos theory. This theory adds meaning to the unstable and aperiodic (Sardar and Abrams, 1999) behavior occurring during the tumultuous change process.

The Case

During the 1970s. The District used a management information system based on a mainframe computer. This sufficed all the reporting and data analysis needs of administrators, at both the district and schools. However, it was labor intensive, partially decentralised and inflexible for schools requiring the conversion of data into a meaningful form that was uniquely relevant to them.

During the 1980s.The District’s AA department recognised the system’s restrictions. For a decade, they attempted to discuss the problem and pose possible solutions with the IS department, which remained unresponsive due to:

• a tremendous workload
• their considering the issue a low priority.

A difference of perception existed between departments. The IS specialists regarded data processing as only dealing with transactional systems, in which queries and reports pertained to the daily operations and goals of the District and its schools. The AA department additionally perceived data processing as managing information to have an impact on future decision-making and inter-district comparisons. Hence, their priority included serving schools, families, business and the community by establishing and supporting measurement of performance standards and providing instant access of data to inform decision making about school improvement.

During the 1990s.The AA department proactively bought a Microsoft Server, which enabled them significantly faster and more flexible data analysis than the older mainframe system. The system was more efficient but unable to provide both transactional data to schools and executive information management to the District.

There were four additional forces that had an effect of the system.

• The Accountability movement and the use of the state test, Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test, required more data management at both the school and district levels to track school progress and to make decisions about their rewards, sanctions and improvements - a very high priority.
• Over a decade the district’s population and diversity grew. This increased complexity in making the aforementioned school-based decisions.
• The appointment of a new Superintendent to head the District, whose priority it was to make all decisions more data-driven.
• The proactive director of AA who had been, and continued to, promote data-based decision making since the 1980s.

During 1999.All forces culminated at the same time as the Y2K preparations at the turn of the millennium which consumed the IS department. Hence, the need for an Educational Data Warehousing (EDW) project was placed at a low priority. The EDW was to provide both transactional data to schools and executive information management to the District.

During the 2000s.The IS department contracted an external corporate consultants to build a model of technological tools to meet the EDW goals.A system was created for the District but a merger among consulting firms resulted in contract cancellation due to concerns over cost effectiveness.The decision was then taken to combine the resources of both AA and IS and build an in-house system. This was the first joint venture between the two departments and while AA was headed by a visionary leader, IS was led by a more conservative thinker. This juxtaposition created cognitive discrepancies which fuelled disagreement.

• The time restraint of one academic year created additional pressures in the choice of systems.
• Choosing between the newer Windows database system and the older mainframe database system was very controversial and polarized since AA had worked with and preferred the former while IS preferred the latter.
• Both departments held strongly passionate views on the favored choice and resolution seemed impossible to attain.
• After several joint meetings, however, an analytical comparison of each system was done. For most of the test criteria, one of which was response time, the two systems showed very little differences which did not help clarify a choice.
• Eventually a compromise was reached where the IS department would build an engine and tools for the mainframe system to decrease the response time. The AA representatives placed a condition that the database would be moved to the Windows system if further decreases in response time were required.
• This decision and others were made using the process of shared decision making and joint partnership that became the hallmark of the EDW team.

Conceptual Framework and Analysis

The events at the District to procure an appropriate management information system will now be viewed through Fullan’s Eight Complex Change Lessons (1999).

Lesson 1.The complex and problematic nature of moral purpose. AA’s mission statement to promote data understanding and utilisation for school improvement signifies its moral purpose and that of the district in attaining better management of information. The superintendent and the AA director exemplified Fullan’s change agents.

Lesson 2.Fullan states that the ‘theories of education and theories of change need each other’ (p. 20). In this situation, the underlying theory was to provide data analysis to guide school improvement but this required a comprehensive understanding of the local context first recognised by AA. Then the priority to build local capacity to use the data drove the theory of change.

Lesson 3.The positive effect of conflict and diversity when embraced builds a collaborative culture. This is illustrated in the joint venture between AA and IS which resulted in a team with various types of expertise. The dissonance produced also created new learning which forged ‘new more complex agreements and capabilities’ between the two departments (Fullan, 1999, p. 23).

Lesson 4. The managers of both AA and IS leading the EDW team appeared to understand the meaning of operating on the edge of chaos and living with a certain degree of uncertainty. They trusted the process until experimentation and learning resulted in a structural set of criteria to judge the two systems.

Lesson 5. The uncertainty associated with change produces anxiety. Each team member had to undergo frustration and resolve conflicts in this process to attain the higher goal. It is through this that learning to successfully manage emotions and still be motivated to contribute to the process results. Further, the managers of the process were able to contain the team’s anxiety by providing a loose enough structure of criteria and deadlines to place boundaries around the process.

Lesson 6. Staying on the edge of chaos to be innovative must be maintained by an emotionally supportive network when the necessary dissonance occurs. By controlling anxiety, AA underwent two reinventions successfully:

• the procurement of their own system
• being a collaborative partner with the IS department.

Lesson 7.To ‘attack incoherence: connectedness and knowledge creation are critical’ (Fullan, 1999, p. 27). As AA mapped its external environment it made meaning and connections which resulted in the creation of knowledge. This was ultimately shared and translated into success by the joint team.

Lesson 8. Crafting a unique set of actions can be done by being a critical consumer. This was forced on the EDW team when they had to build the system instead of choosing an off-the-shelf model.

Ultimately, the powerful combination of Fullan’s eight lessons for dealing with complex change aptly describes the decisions involved in redesigning a more efficient system. This resulted in the success of a joint venture to build an Educational Data Warehouse.

Conclusion

The No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 is a US federal government mandate accelerating the Accountability movement. Such a mandate is referred to as ‘power coercive planned change’ (Marion, 1999, p. 222). Since this data-driven accountability of schools and districts to perform does not involve co-optation, it can generate resentment in its implementation. If properly managed using couplings of interdisciplinary teams that find the balance between independence and interdependency, the use of organisational slack in mapping, interacting and adapting to internal and external environments, while operating on the edge of chaos, success can prevail. Such practices were exemplified in this case which eventually resulted in increased organisational learning in addition to a more suitable management information system in the District.

ReferencesFullan, M (1999). Change forces: the sequel. Philadelphia, PA: Falmer Press.
Marion, R (1999). The edge of organization: Chaos and complexity theories of formal social systems. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.
No Child Left Behind Act of 2001, Pub. L. No. 107-110.
Sardar, Z & Abrams, I (1999). Introducing chaos. Cambridge, UK: Icon Books.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Dr Shereeza Mohammed is a researcher and instructor at Florida Atlantic University, in the United States. She teaches education courses on research and educational leadership. Her research includes work with stakeholders in both districts and schools implementing and evaluating reading and science programs.

 

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