The quest for a new hierarchy in education: from loose coupling back to tight?

Abstract

Building on and reconsidering previous research on organizational models of education, the authors argue that while many administrators in education are still trying to manage ambiguous, and occasionally “anarchic” organizations effectively, the ambivalences of both loose and tight structures are today better understood than 25 years ago. In a development paralleling the evolution of organizational thinking in corporate management which no longer posits a “one‐best‐system hierarchy”, developments in education theory and practice point to the emergence of hybrid models of organization that capture the advantages of centralization and coordination produced by hierarchy while attempting to harness the advantages of more decentralized organizational structures.