ANALYTICAL SKILLS AND THE UNIVERSITY TRAINING OF EDUCATIONAL ADMINISTRATORS (1)

JOURNAL OF EDUCATIONAL ADMINISTRATION – May 1974ANALYTICAL SKILLS AND THE UNIVERSITY TRAINING OF EDUCATIONAL ADMINISTRATORS 1 JAMES G.. MARCH To use universities effectively in the deve

JOURNAL OF EDUCATIONAL ADMINISTRATION – May 1974

ANALYTICAL SKILLS AND THE UNIVERSITY TRAINING

OF EDUCATIONAL ADMINISTRATORS (1)

JAMES G MARCH

To use universities effectively in the development of critical administrative skills, weneed to attend to the problems posed by the context of decline and by the nature ofeducational organizations, managerial work, and university comparative advantage.Five analytical skills are identified as satisfying such criteria: The skills of analyzingexpertise, coalitions, ambiguity, time, and information If we can improve thecapabilities of educational administration to deal with experts, to solve problems inthe absence of goals, to treat data from a decision perspective, to manage conflictand coalitions, and to allocate time, it will be an impressive set of contributions

appropriate to the traditions of academe

INTRODUCTION

During the next ten years many university faculties in educational

administration will revise their curricula The process is ordinary and continuous; the changes are incremental The natural drift of institutional change assures a

sequence of enthusiasms It does not, however, assure attention either to the nature

of leadership roles in contemporary educational organizations or to the distinctive competences of universities and their limitations I believe we can do better

The contemporary problems of education are familiar They inhabit the

professional journals, the daily press, and the bookstands at airports Our schools aretoo rigid, too casual, not innovative enough, too inclined to adopt every new

panacea, not sufficiently concerned with the problems of poor people, too likely to substitute social standards for intellectual standards, not adequately attending to theproblems of multiculturalism, not integrating diverse cultures into a common social and ethical system They are failing to educate many children; they are failing to prepare students for jobs; they are failing to keep drugs, crime, and venereal disease out of the school The fist is important; it is long; and it is inconsistent

The problems in education are the business of educational administration Insofar as education is failing, the educational administrator is subject to indictment; and schools of education are proper codefendants As a result, educational

administration has become a focus for complaints identifying general problems of educational administration, however, is a dubious undertaking The management of learning involves widely varying activities by many different individuals and groups innumerous social institutions The activities range from defending budgets before legislatures to scheduling buses; from negotiating union contracts to administer-in- discipline for adolescents; from psychotherapy to plumbing The positions vary from assistant principal to superintendent; from budget analyst to project officer; from county school officer to Minister of Education; from assistant to the dean to college president The institutions vary in size, in resources, and in complexity

Ordinary professional conservatism suggests caution in identifying generic needs for educational administration It is not a single field; different jobs require different skills Although I think we can say a few things that apply to many relativelyhigh level positions in relatively complex educational organizations in the United States, I would be cautious about extending them to other positions, or to less

complex institutions, or to other institutional or cultural contexts

We need also to be wary of the ideology of administration It is an ideology that appears to be widely shared among modem administrators in business, public affairs, and education It is linked to a rich collection of cultural and philosophical traditions that are important to us It is seductive and often misleading

We can characterize that ideology by the following set of beliefs: If there is a

problem there is a solution If there is a solution it can be discovered by analysis, andimplemented by skill in interpersonal relations or organizational design The solution

to a problem requires the identification of underlying causes and the discovery and implementation of solutions are duties of the administrator If a problem persists, it isdue to inadequacy in an administrator's will, perception of problems, analysis, skill with people, or knowledge of organizations Inadequacies in an administrator can be corrected through proper administrative training

Such beliefs form a familiar basis for administration, administrative theory, and administrative training The beliefs are attractive They comprise a faith of hope They encourage persistence in the face of adversity; they encourage

commitment to continuing administrative development Nevertheless, there are conspicuous problems with parts of the faith The existence of a problem does not necessarily imply the existence of a solution Analysis is only one of several

techniques for the discovery of solutions There are many solutions that cannot be implemented with the best of human relations skills or organizational design Conflict

is sometimes not susceptible to 11 resolution" The complexity of implementation may considerably outrun either the complexity of the solution or the capabilities of participants The removal of root causes may be one of the least likely ways to solve

a problem Problems persist for many reasons that have nothing to do with the administrator Many administrative inadequacies are quite immune to training

interventions

The implications are conservative We should have only modest hope that a change in administrator training or behaviour will ameliorate the problems of moderneducation Those problems respond to many factors; only a small proportion of themare amenable to administrative control The argument suggests a style that is

pessimistic about great drama, but ambitious about making marginal improvements that are perceptible It also suggests that we should not be over-seduced by a

recitation of problems or needs The improvement of training for education

administration must build on our knowledge of the kinds of organizations we have, the kinds of work that managers do, and the kinds of capabilities that universities have Our analysis includes constraints and resources, as well as needs

THE CONTEXT OF DECLINE

The context of educational administration constrains the prospects for

dramatic administrative success That context has too many dimensions for me to enumerate here It includes aspects of the political, technological, social, economic, and international worlds I will limit mention to three elements of the context that seem to me particularly important to educational administration in the United States over the next decade:

(1) Education is a declining industry

(2) Social expectations with respect to education have changed

(3) Administrative careers and professional esteem are subject to doubt

Each of these aspects of the educational context has consequences for

administrative roles

Education as a declining industry

Education is a declining industry The rate of growth in enrollments has been reduced markedly; in many settings we see an absolute decline in the number of students Although schools are still being built to accommodate shifts in the

population or to replace existing facilities, the number of classrooms being

abandoned is increasing at a faster rate Budgets continue to rise, but without

increase in productivity

The fundamental reasons are well-known American education has a clientele

of the young It has grown rapidly in the past by a simultaneous increase in the proportion of the young in education and in the number of young A declining birth

rate, in conjunction with a near-saturation of the education rate, assures the industry

of a decline in patronage within standard educational programs

A declining industry has certain regular administrative characteristics

Management tends to age This is particularly true when decline follows a period of rapid growth Management is relatively young because of the pattern of promotion and mobility during the growth period It is locked into place by a lack of

opportunities A high rate of management turnover can be sustained only by an increase in involuntary exits As a result, we can plausibly expect a gradual aging of administrators (at all levels) over the next decade

At the same time, decline produces a loss of managerial vitality There are fewer chances for advancement There are fewer resources There are fewer

occasions of success The aging of employees (not just management) tips the

cynicism scale further in the direction of doubt about the utility of commitment Organizational goals and personal self-interest diverge

Finally, decline results in an oversupply of qualified administrators The process by which administrators are developed is not controlled soon enough, or fast enough, or hard enough, to avoid a large output of possible administrators at a time

of lessened demand for their services The result is a backlog of would-be

administrators doing other things Such a backlog simultaneously reduces

enthusiasm and increases pressure for more administrative superstructure, in order

to provide career opportunities

Although the major shock of discovery should pass shortly, the reality of decline is likely to persist for some time Declining industries need administrators too; but they provide a setting somewhat different from the one that is implicit in some of our fantasies

Shifts in social expectations

Recent decades appear to have seen a significant shift and expansion of socialexpectations with respect to education This includes a shift in the kinds of people to

be educated, a shift in the kinds of educational outputs to be produced; and a shift in the range of consequences attributed to education Concern with the educational role in racial and sexual inequities, in the problems of the cities, and in the uses of technical knowledge are the latest manifestations of a long-run increase in the social saliency of educational institutions The process has been steady over many years

It appears more dramatic in the last decade or two partly because we are living now and partly because recent extensions of social claims coincided with a decline in the industry

Educational systems have not been successful in meeting these expectations For example, American education appears to have had little impact on racial and sexual inequalities; it has not changed trends in the quality of life in cities or in the character of social mores; it has not made politics conspicuously more responsive norcitizens more active; it has not assured that graduates are employable; it has not even made many recent inroads in eliminating ordinary illiteracy in reading, writing, and arithmetic

Numerous educators have observed that education cannot solve the complex

of problems confronting society In particular, there has been an attempt to impress

on community leaders the limits of education As John Goodlad observed in 1970:

If you want to really eliminate unemployment, you create jobs If you want to really eliminate slums, you clear up slums, but you don't hold education responsible for getting it done.(3)

The sentiments are amplified by standard interpretations of such things as theColeman Report and the Jencks assessment of education as an instrument of

redistributions The self-denial, while mostly correct, comes suspiciously late As long

as our social problems appeared to be solvable and being solved, educational leaders

did not resist responsibility for the success Much of the growth of our educational establishment (and particularly our system of higher education) has been rationalized

in terms of the educational contribution to everything from prosperity to social

progress to moral reform

Now we are not so sure Failure has lead to a recognition of the limits of responsibility It is a classic story The contrast between school administrators in

1970 and school administrators in 1950 is the contrast between the response to foreign competition by American steel industry administrators in 1960 and 1920 Although we may believe, as I do, that the present posture is closer to the truth, the earlier conceits have not made the job of an educational administrator any easier

The failures, in combination with a general retreat from claims of ibility, will almost certainly reduce demands on schools over the coming few years Much of the widely-noted social pressure on schools is likely to decline Social

respons-expectations adapt to social beliefs about the capabilities of institutions That does not make the context much better Indifference is different from hostility, but it is not

a less constraining administrative position The educational establishment will have

to pay the price of having persuaded society that education is not a general solution

to social ailments Managers who have become adept at dealing with confrontation will have to adapt to a world in which most of the audience is elsewhere Educationaladministration programs that have only recently embraced conflict management as the fundamental fact of administration will discover the conflict muted by ennui and institutionalized into bureaucratic procedures

Administrative careers and professional esteem

Our present career system for pre-collegiate administration has been

developed during the 20th century It is built on a coalition of local schools of

education with local schools and local administrators Certification through formal education, the strong tendency for advanced training in educational administration to

be part-time, and the development of regional baronies of career management based

in schools of education have produced a system that relatively few observers are willing to defend; but which no one knows how to change decisively A career in educational administration is a highly local career for most people Promotional opportunities depend on personal reputation within the district and with local barons;

but there are no clear-cut standards for establishing that reputation, or claiming it It

is a "buddy" system, complemented by a social validation of judgments and formal educational entry criteria

The career system is complicated by the problem of esteem Educational administration is a profession It has a specialized literature, an apparatus of

associations, and a system of entry through formal certification Relative to many occupations, educational administration enjoys considerable social prestige and substantial income expectations; but it consistently suffers from some natural

comparisons:

-Business administration is apparently viewed as having more competent

individuals and better comprehension of relevant techniques It is often

suggested that we introduce more of the techniques of business administration into education; almost never is the converse proposed

-Doctors (M.D.'s), lawyers, architects, and engineers are accorded more

systematic acknowledgement of professional standing They are more likely to

be assumed to know something about their subject matter They are granted theright to speak a technical language rather than a jargon

-In the informal academic status hierarchy the Ed.D is a lower ranking degree than the Ph.D and the Ph.D in Education is a lower ranking degree than the Ph.D in most other fields Doctoral students in education are (by test scores andacademic performance) often systematically less qualified academically than doctoral students in other fields; faculty members in education are (by the

criteria of the academy) often systematically less distinguished than faculty members in other fields.

The legitimacy, or relevance, of these comparisons may be questioned Most

of them are based on arbitrary distinctions of no great inherent persuasiveness They have, however, social significance They are part of the social structure of beliefs within which educational administration operates The educational

administrator has standing within the educational establishment that depends on his bureaucratic position and his informal career network His position outside of the educational establishment is rarely as high as that of individuals with whom he naturally compares himself

So long as education was a growth industry and most of the social

expectations about education could be fulfilled, the career system and the problem ofesteem were masked by successful growth The mask has been removed by decline and the social certification of failure Moreover, localism, limited esteem, and a baronial system of career management are not conducive to the innovative

leadership that we are regularly advised is required in education Quite the contrary, they seem likely to encourage the recruitment of individuals who are relatively

uncreative and to extinguish administrative creativity if it should arise

The third stage of development

The complications produced by these contextual elements are profound We are apparently entering the third of a series of natural phases in the history of a social institution The first stage is a period of dynamic growth Social expectations rise; the institution is able to meet those expectations; there is excitement,

expansion, and self-confidence The second stage is a period of conflict Social expectations outrun the capabilities of the institution; there is frustration, anger, and

recrimination The third stage is a period of neglect Social expectations decline; the

institution is able to meet many of the reduced expectations; there is indifference, passivity, and stagnation

During the first two phases of the institutional life-cycle, we generate

significant elements of superstition in our beliefs about administration and the

ingredients of administrative success During the period of growth, most problems have many good solutions Administrators (and their teachers) come to believe that they understand what it takes to make a successful administrator Since many different things work about equally well, different schools of experts arise Each is subjectively confident; each is able to cite experience to support their confidence

During the period of conflict, the half-life of a problem is forever No matter what you do, the problem remains Administrators (and their teachers) keep looking for the secret without finding it Schools of administration, foundations, and

governmental agencies keep supporting solutions, quickly abandoning one for

another without changing their luck until finally as the institution enters the period of neglect, they decide to give up entirely

The move from one period of conflict to a period of neglect is not a happy one.Decline, social expectations, and professional esteem feed upon each other A

declining institution encourages an administrator to accept a limited social role and reduced esteem Clients who are persuaded of the institution's disabilities reinforce parochialism and decline The movement is neither grand nor dramatic; but it is a movement that is unlikely to produce the exciting administrative-situation-of-the-year

Although I believe the process is in many ways inexorable, I do not, propose

we abandon the field in self-pity Administrative glory is largely determined by broad exogenous factors; heroes and villains are made by events; but administration is the profession of leadership, the art of intelligent coping with an arbitrary fate It is a minor matter; but our prospects for human control over events are built on

collections of minor matters.

Nor should universities abandon tile effort to make administrative training more appropriate for modern educational administration The system we have evolved for certifying educational administrators through the granting of a doctorate

is, in my opinion, a curious system The doctorate is a silly prerequisite for an

administrative position I would not argue for perpetuating that system as it now exists I do believe, however, that there is a place for university training in

administration The university is not a good training ground for all administrators or all administrative skills; but it does have important special functions An active and imaginative university effort will become particularly critical as government agencies and foundations become disillusioned by unspectacular results and reluctant to maintain a long-term investment in the marginal improvements that might be

feasible

THE CONTEXT OF TRAINING

I take a training perspective What are the kinds of things that a university program in educational administration should attempt to teach? The viewpoint is not heroic I assume the educational apparatus will change over time, but that

educational institutions approximately as we know them will persist There will be schools, school districts, and colleges I assume that the activities of administrators will be modified in the future, but that recognizably administrative roles will continue

to exist in recognizably bureaucratic organizations I assume that university schools

of education will continue to develop and change, but that the fundamental role of the university in the training of administrators will not disappears

A professional training program should provide opportunities for intellectual growth along several dimensions that are only loosely tied to immediately usable administrative skills A university-trained educational administrator should be an educated person, capable of interpreting and elaborating ideas from the culture of intelligence He should have an elegant appreciation of society, its problems, its heterogeneity, and its heritage

The graceful wisdom of an educated person, however, is not enough An administrator needs to be competent both in the fundamental skills of administration and in the basic technology of the institution he administers; and universities need toprovide education in those competencies if they are able to do so efficiently

Administration is a job, and it calls for talents Some of those talents are learnable.The kinds of basic skills that a university program in educational administration should attempt to teach are the skills that are useful, will be used, and can be taught.The trilogy is not redundant We need to examine the problems of educational

administration, and to be attentive to those problems But we also need to be

concerned with what educational organizations are, what educational administrators

do, and what universities are good at

Schools as organized anarchies

Educational institutions are organized anarchies 6 By this I mean that they frequently exhibit three important, and troubling, features:

First, their goals are problematic It is difficult to specify a consistent set of goals Instead, goals seem to shift over time; they seem to vary from one part

of the organization to another; they seem to be stated in terms that are hard

to translate into action There is conflict over goals, and the conflict is not resolved easily Although it is sometimes possible to impute goals to the organization by observing behavior, such amputations appear often to be unstable or to define goals that are not acceptable to all participants in the organization The decision process seems to reflect more a series of actions

by which goals are discovered than a process by which they are acted upon Speeches on goals express platitudes that are not useful administratively

Second, their technologies are unclear Although we know how to create an educational institution, to staff it, and to specify an educational program for it,

we do not know much about the process by which it works It does work, at least in some senses Students seem to change Moreover, we can duplicate our results If we recreate the procedures in a new school, they will often have approximately the same outcomes But we have remarkably little

capability for designed change in the system We do not, in general, know what will happen if we make changes; we do not, in general, know how to adapt the standard system to non-standard students or situations New occasions require a new set of trial-and-error procedures, either in the school

or in an experimental laboratory

Third, participation in the organization is fluid Participants come and go Students, teachers, and administrators move in and out There is even more turnover in other participants or potential participants Parents, individually and collectively, are erratic in their involvement; community leaders

sometimes ignore the schools, sometimes devote considerable time to them; governmental agencies are active, then passive All of the potential actors in the organization have other concerns that compete with the school for their attention Thus, whether they participate in the school depends as much on the changing characteristics of their alternatives as it does on the

characteristics of the educational organization involved

Organized anarchies are not bad organizations They are not unusual

Indeed, they are quite common Decision situations involving problematic goals, unclear technology, and fluid participation are familiar to all types of organizations They do, however, pose some problems for administrators, and particularly for our standard theories of administrative action

The manager of an organized anarchy requires a modified theory of decision Almost all of our current ideas about intelligent decision making relate actions to pre-existent goals that are clear and widely shared A manager is directed first to

determine his goals and then to act Such behaviour is often possible and useful, but

it is not always so When he wanders into the domain of coalition decision making or goal-free problem-solving, the administrator is little aided by our current ideas about problem-solving.7

The manager of an organized anarchy requires a normative theory for the allocation of attention In a system in which participants wander in and out,

outcomes frequently depend on the timing of involvement Time and attention are key resources that need to be managed.(8)

The manager of an organized anarchy requires a new set of ideas about

management The fundamental postulates of management emphasize control and coordination of the organization with respect to a set of well-specified objectives Where goals and technology are unclear and participation is fluid, it is not clear what

to make of the usual managerial precepts

What do managers do?

One of the persistent difficulties with programs for reform in the training of administrators is the tendency to try to improve managerial behaviour in ways that are far removed from the ordinary organization of managerial life Unless we start from an awareness of what administrators do and some idea of why they organize their lives in the way that they do, we are likely to generate recommendations that are naive

Henry Mintzberg has recently taken a careful look at the literature on

managerial time allocation and attempted to identify how managerial time is

organized and what roles a manager plays within an organizations The studies he reviews do not significantly involve educational administrators, but attempts to make

similar studies of executives in educational institutions show similar patterns (10)

With respect to the organization of time, these studies indicate that

executives work long hours The exact number of hours per week varies, but it is substantially greater than the number of hours worked by most non-executives in most organizations Much executive work is brief, disconnected, incomplete, and initiated by others Most time is spent in verbal interaction with others Executives tend to move to problems and information that are specific rather than general, concrete rather than vague, solvable rather than impossible, and currently pressing and local rather than distant in time and place Relations with subordinates and with individuals who are not in a direct line relationship within the organization occupy substantially more time than do relations with superiors A considerable amount of time is spent in scheduled meetings

Mintzberg also tries to identify the roles that a manager performs His

breakdown is based on data that are more difficult to interpret and, therefore, subject

to greater doubt than the data on the allocation of time; but his categories are more carefully based on empirical observations than others in the literature and have somesubstantial implications for management training From Ws analysis, Mintzberg deduces eight basic sets of managerial skills that would improve managerial

performance in doing better what they now do

(1) Peer skills: The ability to establish and maintain a network of contacts with equals

(2) Leadership skills: The ability to deal with subordinates and the complications

of authority, power, and dependence

(3) Conflict-resolution skills: The ability to mediate conflict, handle disturbances,and work under psychological stress

(4) Information-processing skills The ability to build networks, extract and validate information, and disseminate information effectively

(5) Skills in unstructured decision-making The ability to find problems and solutions when alternatives, information, and objectives are ambiguous.(6) Resource-allocation skills The ability to decide among alternative uses of time and other organizational resources

(7) Entrepreneurial skills The ability to take sensible risks and implement innovations

(8) Skills of introspection The ability to understand the position of manager andits impact on the organization

Although the process of deduction is not always clear, Mintzberg's judgments are informed by as good an understanding of what executives actually do as we are likely to obtain If we are going to consider ways of improving the effectiveness of managers in their behavior, as opposed to their "function" or "purpose" deduced from

"needs" or "problems", we might intelligently start from here In particular, if we wish

to identify tools of analysis that will be used, they will need to be tools that match thepattern of managerial activities

The distinctive competences of universities

The university does some things badly Such things it clearly should not do It does other things well, but not well enough It cannot do all of the things that it does relatively well Indeed, it probably ought not to do some things that it does better than any other social institution The university should attend primarily to activities where it has a distinctive competence

For example, recent commentaries on administration, not only in education but also in business, the military, and public bureaucracies, have emphasized the importance of three talents: (1) the talent to deal effectively with people (2) The talent to manage conflict (3) The talent to mediate between the organization and thebroader society Because of the importance of such talents, there have been

suggestions that training programs for administration should include an amount of training time proportional to the importance of each talent The suggestions depend

on an implicit assumption that the talent-return on training investment is constant across domains of training The assumption seems implausible

The amount of time to be spent in a training program on different forms of training depends not only on the importance of the talent involved but also on the return (in terms of the value of talent improvement) per unit of time spent in training

We have, I believe, some ideas about how to improve the capabilities of

administrators with respect to the three talents cited above However, the

technologies are not well-developed; and some of them involve exposure to

experience more than the specification of formal knowledge or formal procedures As

a result, there is likely to be a rapidly decreasing marginal return to the investment oftime in training in some of these areas, and a comparative disadvantage for

educational institutions

There are numerous areas of administrative training in which the university has an absolute advantage As a partisan, I may exaggerate; but I think the list of domains in which the university has a simple advantage is long: Universities do as good a job as anyone at most aspects of management training They do better at providing the basic knowledge, at identifying general problems, at isolating and providing broad experience in the necessary interpersonal and intellectual skills, at discussing value issues, at encouraging risk-taking and innovation, at building social and personal sensitivity, at exposure to conflicting ideas and sentiments, and at building a sense of self-esteem I cannot demonstrate the absolute superiority of the university in these domains, but I believe the argument is plausible I believe, in fact,the list could be made considerably longer

Despite this, the university does not have a comparative advantage in all of these domains It ought not to be a general purpose social institution, or even a general purpose participant in administrative training It ought to pursue its special role

The university has a distinctive area of competence It is the domain of the intellect What the university does best, relative to other institutions, is to develop new knowledge and its implications It is an intellectual institution Except in a few areas of scholarly activity, universities are the site for the vast majority of the basic scholarship that is done in the United States This is true throughout the biological, social, and physical sciences; in the humanities; and increasingly in the arts It is true in almost every area of applied knowledge: law, medicine, engineering,

education, business administration, criminology, social welfare, politics

In their history, universities have done other things They have provided entry

to the religious or commercial establishment; they have managed major amusement systems; they have been centers for social experimentation in individual mores and social philosophy and for socialization into proper behavior But their primary claim is an intellectual one Their faculties and students are smarter in intellectual terms and know more of the things that are learned in scholarly ways than most other people They read, write, and think more and better than most otherpeople They have the time and the organization to do good research and good thinking

sports-Since the problems of the world are not necessarily amenable to intellectual solutions, the social value of a university can shift over time With such a shift, we would expect some shift in the comparative advantage calculations also Some non-intellectual activities would become more appropriate for the university However, shifts in the problems of the world are almost certainly much greater over time than shifts in the comparative advantage of the university Most of the time, regardless of shifts in social needs, a university should retain approximately the same basic

specialization

In a similar way, the advantage for the university in the training of

admin-istrators is primarily in the intellective domain It is in providing the research basis for intelligence and in teaching the intellective skills of management Other

institutions are likely to have a comparative advantage in other training areas As the mix of administrative needs shifts, the primary role of the university is to provide the intellectual base of new skills; it is not to attempt to provide all of the training For some administrative jobs and some administrators, the university is a relatively inefficient training center Some important administrative tasks have relatively small intellectual components It may be considerably more vital that the administrator be strong, or loving, or energetic, or sensitive, or charismatic, or a member of a

particular social, ethnic, or sexual group We can recognize the importance of such tasks and the legitimacy and value of such attributes without accepting the

proposition that the university should provide either the training or the certification for them

FIVE CRITICAL SKILLS OF ANALYSIS

If we are going to use universities effectively in the development and

dissemination of critical administrative skills, we need to attend to the problems posed by the context of decline and by the nature of educational organizations, managerial work, and university comparative advantage Not all problems can be solved, and certainly not by university programs in administration But there are some things that are relevant, appropriate to the things managers do, consistent withthe kinds of organizations in which they do them, and intellectually demanding

I will mention five different analytical skills that seem to me to satisfy the criteria They include:

(1) The analysis of expertise The management of knowledge.

(2) The analysis of coalitions The management of conflict.

(3) The analysis of ambiguity The management of goals.

(4) The analysis of time The management of attention.

(5) The analysis of information The management of inference.

Each of these skills is important to the problems facing the administrator; each is consistent with organized anarchies; each can be adapted to the things that managers do; each is appropriate to academe Others might identify a different list Mine has no necessary uniqueness It is one person's view of some important

problems and skills in administration and administrative theory

Each of the skills is linked closely to the everyday requirements of managerial life, but each is clearly an intellective skill Each involves a technology of analysis and thought Each is based on the intellectual development of a scheme of analysis Each is a tough problem, incompletely understood Each demands a program of research as well as a program of training and testing For each we have a start

The analysis of expertise

Much administration involves managing the taking and giving of advice

Administrators deal with experts, and are experts They give advice, and they take it.Both aspects are important Indeed, both are important in a single relationship

Consider the problem of dealing with individuals who have greater knowledge

in an area than the administrator does but to whom he is not willing (or permitted) to delegate full responsibility for action The situation is a daily one Educational administrators confront experts on teaching, curriculum, finance, management science, research, construction, bus schedules, and the rest of the technical

knowledge necessary to schooling The level of expert sophistication often

considerably exceeds that of the administrator

Our problem is to specify a set of procedures for coping with differentials in technical knowledge Imagine the following experiment:

An administrator is presented with two individuals, each claiming to be

certified as an expert on computer-assisted instruction In fact, neither of them, one of them, or both of them may be expert The false experts are all

as highly educated as the real experts, have all had the same general kind of training, and have all been given a short time to familiarize themselves with the literature on computer-assisted instruction The administrator is faced with a series of decisions on whether to buy equipment for a computer-

assisted program; if so, which equipment, which program; and which

organization for instruction His problem is to solicit advice from the "experts"

in order to reach a decision

Although such an experiment, or some variation on it, is quite feasible, we have not conducted it We should We do not have a clear picture of how to analyze expert advice, but we do have a start It comes, for the most part, from work on evidence and testimony in the law The techniques are the techniques of

interrogation and confrontation

Interrogation is the skill of asking questions that solicit information on two critical issues: First, what can the expert say that is relevant to the decision problem?Second, what degree of confidence can be placed in what he says? These are the classic problems of testimony They are, it should be noted, joint problems of the expert and the administrator The expert, as well as the administrator, is uncertain about what information might be relevant and what degree of confidence to place in the statements he makes This does not mean that the expert and the administrator share the same perspective; they may be quite different The expert may, in effect,

be a salesman peddling a solution The jointness of the problem is not destroyed by the conflict of interest

Skills in interrogation are learnable The rules of interrogation that are taught

in legal training have some difficulties as a model for administrators, and their basis

in serious data is a little obscure; but they are a good start They summarize a long history of concern by individuals of considerable intelligence and institutions of impressive durability

Confrontation is a procedure of observation We confront one expert with another and observe the interaction Where do they agree? Why do they agree? Where do they disagree? What inference can be made from the disagreement? The main point to confrontation, however, is procedural; we wish to improve the quality ofquestioning We proceed from an assumption that the quality of answers can be assessed if the right questions are asked It is an interesting assumption, with

substantial administrative significance

In fact, both interrogation and confrontation require inferences to be made The logic of those inferences is not well-articulated or understood in the literature, but it seems to depend on several simple analytical assumptions:

(1) The homogeneity assumption We attempt to assess the competence of

an expert by sampling from his knowledge Since we have no independent way of knowing whether he speaks correctly in most areas of his expertise, wecheck his knowledge in some areas we have in common If he knows what he

is talking about there, we assume he probably knows what he is talking about elsewhere We assume that the level of competence in the areas we cannot judge is approximately the same as the level of competence in the areas we can

(2) The density-precision assumption It is harder to tell whether an expert's

knowledge is correct than it is to assess the density of his knowledge Does

he know a lot of things that appear to be related? If he can recite facts,

studies, theories, documents, reports, and observations, we are inclined to suspect that the precision of his knowledge may be greater than if he reports only a sparsely occupied memory If he reports conclusions without a richness

of detail in support, he is subject to more doubt

(3) The independence of errors assumption We assess each expert's