Organizational Learning and Decision-Making:
A Southeastern School District and Elementary School
Greg Alford, DA
University of Phoenix
Org 714

Organizational Learning and Decision-Making: A Southeastern School District and Elementary School
Although learning should be an easy task for a school and school system, the bureaucracy of a public educational system presents many obstacles to substantive learning on the part of the employees and the smoothness of the decision-making process. This paper examines the opportunities for organizational learning and the decision-making process in southeastern U.S. school district and specifically at an elementary school Pre-K CDC Program.
What is Organizational Learning and Decision-Making? Organizational learning is the process through which managers seek to improve organization members’ desire and ability to understand and manage the organization and its environment so they make decisions that continuously raise organizational effectiveness. There are two types of organizational learning strategies that may be pursued by any group: exploration and exploitation. Exploration is a method where organizational members learn of ways to improve existing organizational activities and procedures through experimentation. Exploitation is where those members refine and improve on existing activities and procedures to increase effectiveness (Jones, 2010). Organizational decision-making is the process of responding to a problem by searching for and selecting a solution or course of action that will create the greatest value for stakeholders in the organization. Programmed decisions are those that are repetitive and routine utilizing formalized standard operating procedures (SOPs) to address problems that routinely occur. Nonprogrammed decisions are those that address problems and solutions that require creative thought not routinely encountered and covered by existing rules, routines, or SOPs. According to Jones (2010), there are five models of organizational decision-making: rational, Carnegie, incrementalist, unstructured, and garbage-can. The Rational Model is a straightforward, staged method of tackling decisions by identifying and defining the problem, generating alternative solutions, and selecting and implementing the decision. The Carnegie Model uses less input information and limits the possible alternatives as identified by relevant managers with final decisions being made by compromise and negotiation as opposed to unanimous consent. The Incrementalist Model addresses decision-making by choosing alternatives that are only minimally different than those previously used and avoid radical changes in the organization. The Unstructured Model operates when uncertainty is high and calls for a series of small, incremental steps that collectively have a major effect on organizational effectiveness over time. The Garbage-Can Model attempts decision-making by proposing solutions to problems that do not yet exist and seek to modify previous decisions to fit the future scenarios (Jones, 2010). All of these models assist organizations in making operational decisions and address problems with varying amounts of information available to bring stability and routine to the many complex, and simple, problems that face modern organizations.
Examined Organizations The organizations examined by this paper are southeastern public school district (SPSD) in Tennessee and a specific school (SP), a PreK-5 elementary school within that school district. The SPSD is a system of more than 42,000 students, 6,500 employees and 78 schools (46 elementary, 21 middle, 17 high schools, and 14 magnet schools) and serves roughly 6,000 students with disabilities and 4,000 for gifted and talented designation. The system is implementing several new standards including the Volkswagen Teacher Training Institute that focuses on writing and the Volkswagen sponsored ACT readiness program to develop a workforce for the new Volkswagen plant recently located in the school district’s area. SP is a work-site magnet school located in the largest city in the area near the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga. It enrolls approximately 442 students in grades PreK-5 as an International Baccalaureate Candidate School that offers a rigorous curriculum that develops the whole child with technology labs, as Fast ForWord language lab (including German), and a media center with an extensive collection of student and teacher resources. SP has a PreK Child Development Class (CDC) for developmentally challenged students through the Special Education division of the SPSD with one teacher and two paraprofessionals, two therapy professionals, and a nurse. For this paper, the principal and the lead PreK CDC teacher were interviewed concerning the organizational learning and decision-making models employed in the SPSD and at SP. Questions asked are found in the Appendix.
Models of Decision-Making Used
Dr. X is the principal of SP and has held that position since July 2011. She holds a Doctor of Education degree and has 15 years of experience as an educator. According to Dr. X (personal communication, November 14, 2011), the decision-making model used by SPSD adheres to the Rational and Incrementalist motifs. The school system has a SOP for handling problems and generating solutions within a very rigid bureaucratic structure. Changes are generally very minor from year-to-year unless a State or federal mandate dictates otherwise. With regard to decisions involving the CDC or any other special needs problems, Dr. X must utilize the Central Office hierarchy to ensure compliance with State and federal laws, though building level decisions are primarily within her purview of administration. She is often frustrated at the slowness of response from the Central Office because of this bureaucracy and finds it true that the monopoly of power at the Central Office fosters poor academic performance by being lethargically reactive (Marlow, 2001).
Ms. Y, a new teacher both within the profession (a 2011 graduate) and at SP, is the lead teacher of the PreK CDC. She holds a Bachelor of Science degree from the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga in Early Childhood Education/ Special Education. According to Ms. Y (personal communication, November 14, 2011), the decision-making model applicable to her classroom is the Rational Model. She has a very strict chain of command she must use in making decisions and is bound by an extensive SOP for special education concerns and procedures. With all but trivial classroom issues she must contact her principal, then the head of the Special Education Department or the lead teacher at the Central Office. She also echoed the concern that the bureaucracy involved often is the culprit for lengthy periods from the time a question is asked until a solution is derived and routinely must wade through many levels and individuals for even the smallest of decisions.
Efficiency of Managerial Decision-Making The nature of public schools is to create a central bureaucracy to manage and implement school Board policies to avoid variance at each individual school. Consistent with the basic principal-agent model, each interest seeks to institutionalize its demands on the system by establishing rules, designing procedures that permit monitoring, and restricting discretion within the school system, a rigidity that leads to poor performance at the grass roots level, the classroom (Meier, Polinard, & Wrinkle, 2000). Dr. X (personal communication, November 14, 2011) notes that her hands are often tied in making substantive changes at SP because of the bureaucracy she must negotiate through as well as dealing with the local teacher’s union and contract limitations on what changes she may institute. Ms. Y (personal communication, November 14, 2011) states that because her principal is new to this assignment at SP, she has encountered many obstacles in making and implementing key decisions on revamping the structure and methodologies at SP despite her professionalism and high expectations for the entire staff. Ms. Y further asserts that the managerial decision-making at the SPSD central office is seemingly lacking in any coherent fashion and that each of the departments within the system tends to shift the “blame” for problems or lack of solutions on other departments. She notes that she routinely gets the response of “let me ask someone else” when asking a reported decision-maker which delays the resolution process considerably.
Explorative and Exploitative Organizational Learning The many trade-offs made between multiple outputs from limited resources dictates the degree of explorative and exploitative learning opportunities available to public school systems and that often leads to low performance on the part of individual schools. Existing literature has generally found a negative correlation between measures of bureaucracy and measures of school performance, however there is considerable disagreement over the causal explanation underlying this relationship (Smith & Larimer, 2004). The primary explorative learning that occurs at SPSD is dictated by school Board policy and what exploration they approve funding for according to Dr. X (personal communication, November 14, 2011). Dependent on individual and collective scores on standardized tests administered annually, the school system approves investigation of new curriculums and procedures and usually assigns a committee of principals, supervisors, and teachers to identify new programs that may be implemented either system-wide or at specific schools. Ms. Y (personal communication, November 14, 2011) reports that she is not allowed to use the curriculum she deems appropriate for her students but must attempt to adapt the materials given her by the bureaucracy of the SPSD. Currently she has been given a program called STAR that is specifically designed for students with Autism yet she is required to use if with all students regardless of whether they have that disorder. The head of the Special Education department provides training to lead teachers who then train classroom teachers who are evaluated by the developers of the curriculum. The classroom teachers are not allowed to engage in explorative or exploitative learning to identify and use curriculum, though they may do some of either in developing daily methods of implementing the new program.
Involvement of Managers in Encouraging Organizational Learning The centralized management of organizational learning of school systems is based on a bureaucratic paradigm that is inappropriate for the task entrusted to the individual schools and teachers to comply with. Virtually all relevant sources of feedback and pressures for meaningful change and reform are insulated from those who are tasked with the primary function of educating young people (Center & Blackbourn, 1992). Principals, according to Dr. X (personal communication, November 14, 2011), are given directives from the central office of the outcomes they are required to achieve and monitor within their individual schools and must tailor their methods to adhere to these directives. However, because of contract limitations negotiated by the local teacher’s union, the principal is constrained by what procedures and time factors are involved in promoting organizational learning. Routinely, Dr. X uses memos, emails, and personal communications to encourage organizational learning among her teachers as well as formal observations to monitor teacher compliance with learning objectives. Ms. Y (personal communication, November 14, 2011) notes that she is regularly encouraged by her principal, lead teacher, and head of the Special Education department to attend learning opportunities and research areas of interest to employ new methods of achieving efficiency in her classroom and adherence to State and federal mandates concerning special education. She further opines that the tension that exists between teachers who have been at the school for many years and the new principal who is seeking to make changes has impeded some of the organizational learning that could be happening. The problem that exists is that within the building level bureaucracy butts heads with the educational reform that is being attempted and the actual educational practice of the veterans of the school (Gordon & Patterson, 2008).
Knowledge Management Systems and Integration of Technology In any heavily bureaucratic organization, the use of knowledge management systems and technology are integral in each division of the bureaucracy being able to communicate and coordinate their activities. Because of the reliance on test scores, attendance, and other data to gain funding for initiatives in education, these systems are doubly important. Motivating teachers and principals to comply with mandated directives requires data gathering in a timely fashion to calculate the degree of bureaucratic functionality and to identify the effectiveness of intrinsic motivational factors, risk propensity factors, and extrinsic motivational factors (Patton & Miskel, 1975). SPSD has invested heavily in software and hardware expenditures to collect and analyze data and in teacher and student technology access. According to Dr. X (personal communication, November 14, 2011), SPSD has centralized payroll through virtual timecards, established a teacher resource database, and computerized many of the knowledge base systems for easier access and use by teachers and administrators. Ms. Y (personal communication, November 14, 2011) uses Power School (a virtual reporting system for teachers to communicate student performance to parents), electronic time cards, and a centralized substitute automated system to manage her internal records and reporting. She regularly uses the Promethean Board (an electronic version of the chalkboard/whiteboard) in instruction, classroom computers, printers, I-Pads, and has a laptop computer assigned to her to manage data that she uses in her classroom and away from the schoolhouse building to manage information.
Cognitive Structures Both Dr. X and Ms. Y (personal communications, November 14, 2011) hold a system of belief that all children can learn and this is supported by the SPSD. Dr. X is limited in her implementation of changes in cognitive structure by the SOP of the district and the constraints of the teacher’s contract that biases the directions she may like to take in making alterations that might improve the efficiency of her school. Her education and background dictate some of her philosophy of what should be done but must conform to the bureaucratic structure that exists at the district and school level. Ms. Y is limited in her instructional discretion by the mandate that she use a curriculum that is a “one size fits all” approach that may not meet the individual needs of her students.
Conclusion
Organizational learning and decision-making are key components to the success of any organization and the efficient operation of any entity is dependent on the best practices being employed to this end. The organization examined in this paper is an example of a group that is plagued by its own bureaucracy in achieving the type of success that a for-profit company would be bankrupted by. As Jack Welch opined, “An organization's ability to learn, and translate that learning into action rapidly, is the ultimate competitive advantage.”

References
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Gordon J Patterson J A 2008 "It's what we've always been doing." Exploring tensions between school culture and change.Gordon, J., & Patterson, J. A. (2008). "It's what we've always been doing." Exploring tensions between school culture and change. Journal of Educational Change, 9, 17-35.
Jones G R 2010 Organizational theory, design, and changeJones, G. R. (2010). Organizational theory, design, and change (6th ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall.
Marlow M L 2001 Bureaucracy and student performance in US public schools.Marlow, M. L. (2001). Bureaucracy and student performance in US public schools. Applied Economics, 33, 1341-1350.
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Smith K B Larimer C W 2004 mixed relationship: Bureaucracy and school performance.Smith, K. B., & Larimer, C. W. (2004). A mixed relationship: Bureaucracy and school performance. Public Administration Review, 64(6), 728-736.

Appendix Interview Questions 1. What is your name, educational background, and position at Brown International Academy (BIA) and within the Hamilton County Department of Education (HCDE)?

2. What model of decision making does your organization currently use? (Please attach any organizational charts, memoranda, pamphlets, etc. that may illustrate your description)

3. How would you describe the managerial decision-making processes currently in place at BIA and in HCDE?

4. To your knowledge, what aspects of explorative (organization members search for and experiment with new kinds or forms of organizational activities and procedures) and exploitative (organization members learn of new ways to refine and improve existing organizational activities and procedures) organizational learning are used at BIA and in HCDE?

5. What knowledge of management systems (e.g. document, digital, learning, content, records, etc.) do you employ at BIA and what information technology do you use in implementing those systems?

6. What cognitive structures (systems of beliefs, preferences, and values that develop over time and predetermine a manager’s response to and interpretations of a situation) and biases (factors that systematically bias and affect organizational learning and decision-making) in your position at BIA and in HCDE?

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