How Existing Business Management Concepts Become School Leadership Fashions

Management by Objectives (MBO)

Management by Objectives was initiated in the 1950s and is most associated with the leading business management thinker Peter Drucker. It became a widely influential model in business for organizational rational planning, including the setting of performance goals and objectives (Gibson & Tesone, 2001; Wren, 2005). According to Gibson and Tesone (2001), the discovery phase for MBO persisted from 1954 to 1964 and wild acceptance from 1964 to 1981. Importantly, the Nixon Administration advocated for MBO as a best practice in public sector management. The digestion (or critical evaluation) phase of MBO lasted from 1982 to 1992, and disillusionment (1992–1996) gave way to the hard core follower stage in 1996. Gibson and Tesone (2001) noted that, after an increase in popularity in the 1970s and through the 1980s, the concept was considered moribund by 1996. Despite the apparently long time span of MBO influence, Gibson and Tesone (2001) considered MBO “as being representative of the 1950s” in accordance with their approach determining when fads or fashions “became well established in organizations” (p. 124). Carson et al. (2000) similarly situated MBO as indicative of the 1950s.

A clear connection existed between MBO the business management concept and MBO the school leadership fashion. In 1970, a popular publishing company distributed a book titled Management by Objectives and Results (Morrisey, 1970). Its bibliography cited mostly business management texts, including several Drucker works from the mid-1950s to the mid-1960s. Three years after the publication of Morrisey (1970), the American Association of School Administrators (AASA) published Management by Objectives and Results: A Guidebook for Today’s School Executive (AASA, 1973), a work that arrived nearly two decades after the genesis of MBO in business. Suggesting the connection to business, AASA (1973) cited the Morrisey (1970) book noted above.

Public advocacy kept MBO for K-12 schools in the limelight. Terrell Bell, days after being appointed as United States Commissioner of Education by President Nixon in 1974, made national news when he criticized the current state of United States schooling and advocated for MBO as a proper antidote (Maeroff, 1974). By 1978, MBO was a widely known concept in schooling. Accordingly, an educational leadership graduate student focused his dissertation on the topic of MBO in schools, and he cited both Morrisey (1970) and AASA (1973) in his references (Coble, 1978). The prominence of MBO in school discourse proved relatively brief, however. In a 1985 article that served as an autopsy for the now discarded school leadership fashion, scholars described it as an educational reform “that did not last” (Kirst & Meister, 1985, p. 181).

Total Quality Management (TQM)

Total Quality Management is most often identified with the work of W. E. Deming, who was positioned as a sort of icon of the TQM movement even though he did not develop the term itself. Among the key TQM ideas were customer focus, continuous improvement, and management’s obligation to create effective systems to maximize worker performance (Bonstingl, 1992a; Gibson & Tesone, 2001; Wren, 2005). According to Gibson and Tesone (2001), TQM’s discovery phase in the business sector spanned from 1950 to 1971, and its wild acceptance period from 1971 to 1991. The decline of TQM in business occurred quickly, with critical evaluation occurring from 1992 to 1993, disillusionment from 1993 to 1996, and only hard core believers remaining after 1996. Gibson and Tesone (2001) related that one of the first articles treating TQM as a defunct business fashion appeared in The Washington Post in 1993. Gibson and Tesone (2001) and Carson et al. (2000) considered TQM’s peak period in business as the 1980s.

A decade after TQM enjoyed its most prominent influence in business, and at about the same time that the fashion was entering its final stages of decline in industry (1992-1996), the business management concept emerged as a school leadership innovation. Signaling to educational leaders the importance of the “new” approach, in late 1992 Education Leadership devoted an entire issue to explaining the fundamentals of TQM and showcasing districts and schools that had adopted the management program (see, e.g., Bonstingl, 1992a). Over the next several years TQM became a prevailing school leadership fashion, as a virtual explosion of publications arrived that touted TQM as a promising solution to education problems. Fields (1994) and Murgatroyd and Morgan (1993), for example, offered book-length treatments of the subject. Leithwood and Steinbach (1993) reached out to fellow educational leadership scholars by assessing how TQM principles reconciled with essential tenets of transformational leadership, a then-prevailing trend. A school leadership series edited by Frase translated TQM into “total quality education” or TQE. The series included an English and Hill (1994) text that defined the basic principles of TQE and a Sagor and Barnett (1994) book that described the “TQE principal.” Jay Bonstingl, a self-described educational consultant, published two editions of a book, Schools of Quality: An Introduction to Total Quality Management in Education, devoted to helping educators understand TQM and apply it to schools (1992b, 1996).

Not all educational researchers welcomed the onset of TQM in education, suggesting that critical evaluation in education occurred relatively soon after the business management concept rose as a school leadership fashion. Capper and Jamison (1993), for instance, critiqued the rapid adoption of the business-influenced practice. Nonetheless, attention to TQM in education continued well after its apparent demise in business, as in an AASA book published in 1998 (Schwahn & Spady, 1998). By the end of the 1990s, however, TQM was in decline as a fashion in educational leadership. A 2001 article in School Administrator served, if not as an autopsy, at least as a grim medical prognosis, asking in regard to TQM, “a promising idea for K-12 education is now a train wreck . . . can it be saved?” (Baim & Dimperio, 2001, p. 51). Suggestive of the diminishing power of the TQM brand in education, in the third edition of his text introducing educators to TQM principles, Bonstingl (2001) was titled simply Schools of Quality without the phrase An Introduction to Total Quality Management in Education that had appeared in previous editions.

Turnaround

Turnaround emerged as a leading business management concept in the second half of the 20^th century. Unlike MBO and TQM, Turnaround has not been examined as a fad or fashion in the organizational management literature we reviewed. However, based on our investigation, Turnaround has exhibited some features that characterize business fads and fashions, including a bell-shaped curve life cycle that included a spike in attention in related documents during the 1980s and 1990s. Indicative of “turnaround” as a predominant trend in the 1980s and 1990s, education scholars Murphy and Meyers (2008) relied almost exclusively on texts from those decades in their examination of turnaround scholarship in the organizational sciences research literature.

Toward Turnaround emerging as a high-profile concept in business, in 1980, Hofer published a defining and heavily cited contribution to the field of organizational management that included a section on “Turnaround Strategies.” Importantly, Hofer’s text described three cases of corporate recoveries that had occurred in the 1950s and 1960s, suggesting that the specific term “turnaround” may have been, in effect, a semantic codification of a long-existing organizational management trend. By the 1980s, Turnaround had achieved prominence in the business-related academic literature with hundreds of subject-related texts emerging as evidenced in database searches limited to that decade. As importantly, Turnaround appeared in literature intended for broader dissemination. McGraw-Hill published a text in 1982 that carried the trend to a public audience (Bibeault, 1982), while Prentice Hall released an examination of the apparent turnaround at Ford Motor Company (Shook, 1990). By the 1990s, the study of corporate Turnaround was a well-established line of inquiry in business studies and well-known concept to the broader public. Nonetheless, criticism of the fashion emerged within the business world. Billionaire Warren Buffett explained, “Both our operating and investment experience cause us to conclude that ‘turnarounds’ seldom turn, and that the same energies and talent are much better employed in a good business purchased at a fair price than in a poor business purchased at a bargain price” (Buffett, 1979, p. 5).

Early, isolated indicators of the Turnaround concept arising in education emerged before 2000, such as a WestEd research study on state interventions with failing schools (McRobbie, 1998). The article suggested that state accountability systems (via standardized testing) may have, in fact, created a quantitative, consequence-bearing climate that made business-style Turnarounds an appropriate school improvement strategy. Indeed, after 2002, with the increasing influence on schools of No Child Left Behind accountability mechanisms, Turnaround steadily gained increasing attention as an important new management concept. Principal, a publication of the National Association of Elementary School Principals (NAESP), presented a special section on Turnaround, including an article by Duke (2004) that described strategies of turnaround principals. Other major educational leadership scholars (Fullan, 2006; Leithwood, Harris, & Strauss, 2010; Murphy & Meyers, 2008) served as translators and fashion setters by publishing books about how the business concept could be applied to schools. In terms of policy, in 2009, U.S. President Obama’s Secretary of Education Arne Duncan announced “a plan to turn around the 5,000 lowest-performing schools over the next five years,” in part through $3.5 billion in School Improvement Grants (U.S. DOE, 2009, p. 1).

In recent years, critical evaluation of Turnaround as a school improvement strategy also emerged, including from actors most concerned with the business sector. A Wall Street Journal opinion article opposed “throwing billions more at turnaround schemes that fail as consistently as the schools they target” (2010, p. 2). Push-back also arrived in the pages of Principal, with the NAESP Executive Director wondering “why so many people seem to think turnaround principals are a brand new species who have suddenly sprung up, like mushrooms after a rain,” and offering her concern that under new policies such individuals face “automatic or likely dismissal if their school is closed and reopened as a charter school” (Connelly, 2010, p. 72). Given the increased attention that has emerged in the last few years regarding Turnaround, this business-inspired school leadership fashion may be currently in ascendancy towards its peak of influence.

In sum, reviewing the data in regard to MBO, TQM, and Turnaround, it is clear that distinct lines of influence extended between business and education. Though public pronouncements, publications, and policies, policy makers and political figures (including political appointees and elected officials), educational leadership scholars and consultants (including university-based professors, foundation-related thinkers, or independent consultants), and professional school administrator associations, such as AASA, NAESP, and the National Association of Secondary School Principals (NASSP), helped to translate and disseminate business management concepts to K-12 school leadership stakeholders.

One possible explanation for the existence of this phenomenon follows the interpretive view of Tyack and Cuban (1995) regarding the power that business elites hold to shape educational policy. Under this construct, business elites occupy strategic positions (e.g., school boards, civic forums, etc.) that afford them immense influence to ensure that ideas developed in and for their sector hold sway over the education sector. A corollary possible explanation follows the logic of Abrahamson (1991) and Abrahamson and Eisenman (2008) regarding the existence of fashion setting markets in management. Under this logic, fashion setters (such as educational leadership scholars, consultants, and writers) operate in a fashion-setting market in which the goal is to transmit business management concepts to K-12 educational leadership consumers (e.g., administrator practitioners and principal preparation programs) who constitute fashion followers.

We now turn to data that will help us more precisely describe the nature of business management influence on school leadership fashions.

Discussion

As is evident from the graph (see Figure 2), in the Hoy and Miskel book, MBO had a long run of attention, though the intensity of that attention decreased over time, despite a brief spike of renewed interest in 1991 and 1996. From the outset in the early editions, Hoy and Miskel treated MBO critically, providing a chart with pros and cons of the technique. They also preached increasing caution as the MBO fashion faded over time. In the 3rd and 4th editions, they noted, “Obviously, implementing an MBO program requires a commitment of school district resources. While the goal-setting process is no panacea, properly applied, it can be an effective administrative technique” (1987, p. 207; 1991, p. 202). In the 5th and 6th editions (1996, 2001), they wrote, “For educational organizations, implementing and maintaining long-term MBO programs will require large investments and their success may be problematic” (1996, pp. 313–314; 2001, p. 162). MBO disappeared from the Hoy and Miskel text in the 8th edition (2008).

In direct correspondence with the rise of TQM in school leadership beginning in the early 1990s, TQM made a sudden, 9-page appearance in the 5th edition (1996) of Hoy and Miskel. Much as they had in relation to MBO, the authors provided an assessment of positives and negatives about the approach. Paralleling trends in regard to the status of TQM as a waning educational leadership fashion, in the 2001 edition, attention to TQM declined significantly from its 1996 peak. This decline continued in the most recent 8th edition (2008), in which TQM is mentioned only in reference to their discussion of “distributed leadership,” which they suggested, much like TQM, risked becoming “very long on rhetoric and woefully short on practice” (p. 441). In essence, the authors seemed quite cognizant regarding how school leadership innovations like TQM and distributed leadership can become quickly vanishing fashions.

Turnaround was not mentioned in any of the editions of Hoy and Miskel, suggesting the relatively recent nature of its appearance as a business-inspired school leadership fashion.

OPEN IN VIEWER

Figure 3.

Fashion-related pages in Owens Organizational Behavior in Schools and Owens (and Owens & Valesky), Organizational Behavior in Education

Discussion

The Owens and Owens and Valesky text (see Figure 3) presents a different model of business management concept influence. For instance, MBO registered only 1 page in the 2nd edition and two pages in the 3rd edition. Each case constituted a cursory mention in a list of rational planning models, and MBO did not appear again in the text.

The appearance of TQM in Owens, as it did with Hoy and Miskel, corresponded directly with the concept’s rise in K-12 schools. Looking at the graph, TQM appears in the 5th edition (1995) like an earthquake on a seismograph, an unexpected spike outside the norm. Importantly, though, in the text itself, Owens focused his attention broadly on Deming and his 14 theories, rather than narrowly on TQM. The author employed this same approach in the 6th and 7th editions (1998, 2001). In the 8th edition (2004), however, treatments of TQM disappeared from the main pages of the text, as the business management concept was apparently discarded as an old reform. Like a ghost image, TQM lingered only in glossary sections included at the end of the 8th and 10th editions (2004, 2011).

Turnaround did not appear in any editions of the text, again suggesting the relative newness of the trend. Perhaps the 2014 edition will include a review of the now prominent school leadership fashion.

OPEN IN VIEWER

Figure 4.

Fashion-related pages in Roe and Drake and Drake and Roe, The Principalship

Discussion

Roe and Drake and Drake and Roe (see Figure 4) present a third variation. After brief appearances in the 1st and 2nd editions (1974, 1980), MBO no longer appears in subsequent editions of Roe and Drake and Drake and Roe. Total Quality Management initially appeared in the 4th edition (1994) and gained more attention in the 5th edition (1999) before declining in the 6th edition (2003), the most recent edition of the text. If there is a subsequent edition of the Drake and Roe text, our prediction is that TQM will decline in attention, or disappear completely, from it. As in the other texts, Turnaround leadership made no appearance.

OPEN IN VIEWER

Figure 5.

Fashion-related pages in Ubben and Hughes and Ubben, Hughes, and Norris, The Principal

Discussion

Ubben and Hughes (later joined by Norris) present a fourth variation (see Figure 5). After not appearing in the 1st edition (1987), MBO made a modest appearance in the 2nd edition (1992) in a brief overview that was steeped in skepticism that the trend would survive in schools. The authors explained:

Management by objectives (MBO) suggests many things to different people. To some it suggests mounds of paperwork and an almost infinite number of statements of objectives. Insensitivity and insensibly applied, MBO can become so and has in some organizations in both the public and private sectors. Any good concept, any good procedure, can be misused (p. 133).

Management by Objectives never appeared again in subsequent editions of the text.

In contrast, TQM first appeared in the 3rd edition (1997), emerging in line with its appearance as a general trend in K-12 school leadership. Ubben and Hughes specifically translated Deming’s 14 theories for educators, noting for instance

Point 1 Create a constancy of purpose for improvement of products and services. This means that the focus must be on helping students reach their maximum potential by providing a basis for students and teachers to work together continuously to improve (p.14).

Demonstrating the authors’ generally hopeful tone regarding the trend, they ended the translation section by explaining, “We will return to the concept of total quality management consistently throughout the remainder of the book” (p. 16). After a decline in pages in the 4th edition (2001), Ubben, Hughes, and now Norris (2004) devoted more pages in the 5th edition, but this may have been an aberration due in part to the fact that in two cases a short paragraph that mentioned TQM continued over two pages. Also, in the 5th edition they no longer included a chart translating the 14 essential Deming principles applied to education. In fact, the references in the text had, by 2004, become shorter and less substantive. In a two-sentence TQM reference broken over two pages, for instance, the authors wrote

In Chapter 2 we discussed the concept of total quality management (TQM). Retention [of students] violates the TQM principle of not setting outcome goals. It is much better if a school uses instructional process solutions to adjust for individual differences of children. (pp. 146–147)

In Chapter 2 of that edition, however, the only mention of TQM was its appearance in a list of “current staff-development delivery systems discussed in a later chapter” (p. 29). After the 5th edition, the attention given to TQM fell to a level successively lower in each edition. In the 7th edition (2011), the one TQM-related page remaining was a simple definition that had appeared in previous editions, suggesting again the effect of a ghost image of a faded reform effort.

Turnaround leadership did not appear in any of the Ubben and Hughes (and Norris) editions. Again, perhaps the 2014 edition will cover what has now become a high profile school leadership fashion.

As an overall summary of our findings from our investigation into K-12 educational leadership textbooks, MBO and TQM appeared to emulate the same bell-shaped life cycle curve expressed in our analysis of the ERIC data. Importantly, after the fashions completed their life cycles, remnants could remain in the guise of what we call “ghost images.” Turnaround, meanwhile, was not mentioned in any of the 31 textbook editions that we examined, which suggests it is still in the process of emerging as a school leadership fashion. Although it has appeared in the more rapidly changing discourse reflected in the ERIC document data, it has yet to emerge in the more relatively stable environment of textbook editions, which change only after several years.

Though we can only hypothesize here, the appearances and disappearances of MBO and TQM in the educational leadership textbooks may help to illustrate the functioning of the fashion-setting market in school management. The sudden appearance of a school leadership fashion in a textbook may reflect the attempt of the authors, in the role of fashion setters, to satisfy the needs and wants of the reader, in the role of fashion follower, to have access to the latest trends in educational leadership. Once a fashion gains currency in the educational leadership realm, it may in fact be incumbent upon the authors of a textbook to include the fashion as part of a revised edition to demonstrate that the textbook as a whole still has relevance to the field. Accordingly, we can speculate that any future editions of the long running textbooks we examined will contain reference to Turnaround.

We progress now to analysis of our data, in the form of a conceptual model.

Stage 1: Genesis

“Management-knowledge entrepreneurs” act as “fashion setters” who create new organizational management concepts (which are often “innovations” that can become “fads” or “fashions”) in response to demands from management-knowledge consumers (Abrahamson & Fairchild, 1999). These new organizational management innovations, fads, and fashions are disseminated and achieve wide attention in business leadership (Ettore, 1997). Though the new concept may explode like a star in the business management universe, it will take several light years to reach the world of school leadership.

As described previously in this paper, TQM experienced a complete prior life in business before it emerged in K-12 education. From 1971 to 1991, TQM achieved widespread attention in business and reached its peak as a defining management trend of the 1980s. A swift decline followed in the first half of the 1990s (Gibson & Tesone, 2001). Like a parallel existence in a distinct universe, the entire span of the TQM life cycle (except for decline) occurred before the concept emerged in K-12 school leadership.

Time lag interval between Stage 1 and Stage 2

Birnbaum (2000) explored in detail the apparent time lag between the rise of a management fashion in sectors, such as business or the military, and its appearance in higher education. Similarly, as we noted in the first stage of our data analysis (mapping lines of influence), TQM had a long gap in time between its rise (1970s), apparent peak (1980s), and decline (1990s) in business, and its emergence (1992) in K-12 educational leadership (Gibson & Tesone, 2001; Bonstingl, 1992a). The fact that MBO and Turnaround also had long intervals between their emergence in business and their emergence in K-12 educational leadership suggests such delayed transmission may be the norm. Put in another way, it appears that only after a business management concept has peaked (like the case of MBO) or peaked and begun to decline (like TQM and Turnaround) in business does it emerge as an innovation/fashion in school leadership.

Stage 2: Emergence

Early adopter schools, districts, K-12 reform organizations, and educational leaders apply the former business management concept to education. As in the business sector where consultants, media, and schools of business serve as fashion setters who help disseminate management fashions (Abrahamson, 1991), in K-12 education, policy makers and political figures, educational leadership scholars and consultants, and school administrator associations translate organizational management concepts for educational leadership consumers. At this stage, fashion setting is incipient as definitions of the concept and stories of early adopters are disseminated in ways that help showcase the business-derived reform as an attractive “innovation” that will attract the attention of the broader K-12 educational leadership community. In school administration, TQM received early fashion-setting benefits via the publication of an entire issue of Educational Leadership articles dedicated to the topic (see, e.g., Bonstingl, 1992a). Since the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development published the magazine, the special issue stood poised to help increase access and exposure to TQM ideas to a host of K-12 practitioners.

Stage 3: At scale

The translated, disseminated K-12 school leadership innovation becomes a prevailing school leadership fashion as it achieves wide-spread institutional attention, benefits from increased popular publications, and generates scholarly study. At this stage, fashion setters provide focused, regular emphasis on the topic as fashion followers seek more information about the hot new trend. In a market-based competition, fashion setters (such as educational leadership scholars) who invoke the prevailing “in” fashion may gain further currency and attention from fashion followers (e.g., educational leadership practitioners). For instance, in the mid-1990s during TQM’s at scale period in K-12 schooling, a host of influential educational leadership figures—including English and Hill (1994), Leithwood and Steinbach (1993) and Schmoker and Wilson (1993)—published works related specifically to translating TQM principles for school administrators.

Stage 4: Decline

Attention to the business-influenced school leadership fashion declines and fades away as implementation impediments emerge (Cuban, 1988; Tyack & Cuban, 1995) and/or the fashion simply goes out of style (Abrahamson & Fairchild, 1999). In the case of TQM, the decline can be especially noted in our search in ERIC for fashion-related texts. (See Figure 1.) In 1994, there were 57 publications related to TQM in schools, in 1995 there were 36, and in 1996 there were 19. By 2000, only seven documents related to TQM in K-12 education appeared, suggesting a steep, permanent decline had indeed begun. The fashion market for TQM had, in essence, collapsed, and fashion setters as well as fashion followers were left to search for new concepts to replace the faded trend.

Stage 5: Restart

Autopsies, in the form of popular and academic examinations of the faded business-influenced school leadership fashion, begin to take full flower (Cuban, 2010). In the case of TQM, as noted previously Baim and Dimperio (2001) offered a doubtful outlook regarding the long-term viability of the school leadership innovation turned temporary fashion. Ghost images of the fashion can linger well after the demise of the fashion. For instance, TQM appeared only in the glossary of the most recent edition of Owens and Valesky (2011). Even if there are a small number of educational leadership individuals and organizations today who may be “true believers who remain loyal” (Ettore, 1997, p. 35) to the faded TQM fashion, most educational leadership practitioners would consider employing TQM in schools to be like wearing yesterday’s outdated outfit to tomorrow’s dance.

At the same time during the restart stage, K-12 educational leadership “management-knowledge consumers” (Abrahamson & Fairchild, 1999) have begun to search for other organizational management ideas translatable to schooling. Markets tend toward the cyclical, hence the cyclical reform process that Tyack and Cuban (1995) described in education almost naturally ensues in school administration: A “new” business-inspired school leadership fashion replaces an old, fleeting business-inspired school leadership fashion. We argue that this repetitive cycle has served as an accumulating fashion trend over the past four decades. Under this ongoing fashion trend, business-derived management ideas, no matter whether outdated or discarded in the business sector, are marketed to educational leadership stakeholders as superior, innovative reform approaches. In such cases, the particular substance of a reform strategy may matter less than the fact it was created under the auspices of the recognized, elite fashion brand called “business.”