Globalization, Decentralization and Flatter Structure Redesign for SLO

Globalization is a generic term and shadows every country for global competitiveness, benchmarking and ranking from economic performance (global GDP growth rate…) to education performance (PISA, TIMSS, PIRLS). No country is immune to the globalization process (Mok, 2006) and the concept of knowledge society (Zajda, 2015; Mok, 2006) or information/digital society emerges for all governments to address quality education. The link between quality education and economic growth was confirmed (Hanushek & Woessmann, 2010; Hanushek & Wößmann, 2007). Therefore, education reform has been the top agenda for every government as a response to the ultimate needs of economic growth and global competitiveness. Globalization may render centralized education systems obsolete due to bureaucratic and hierarchical processes which hinder responsiveness and flexibility (McGinn & Welsh,1999) in the constantly changing environment. Decentralization is a major reform tool for quality service delivery that the governments use as a remedial solution for society (Parry, 1997). According to Leung (2004), educational decentralization is a global trend that almost all countries worldwide have implemented or are implementing. School-based management (SBM) is a popular government strategy for improving quality of education, despite its dichotomy of research findings to confirm its link with student's learning outcomes (Santibañez, 2006; De Grauwe, 2005). The rationale for the debatable SBM’s impacts on quality learning was argued for the SBM to be conceptualized for managerial reforms not for teaching and learning reform (De Grauwe, 2005). 

School to sustain in the constantly changing environment is to transform to Learning Organization, which was argued to well tackle with internal ineffectiveness and to seamlessly adapt with external threats. According to Kools & Stoll (2016), School as Learning Organization is the one "that has the capacity to change and adapt routinely to new environments and circumstances as its members, individually and together, learn their way to realizing their vision”. Being an LO is fluid and adaptive to the constantly changing environment which will nurture creativity and innovation as firm response to the changes. To achieve this, SLO must set a new paradigm perimeter to foster creativity and innovation as a product of their continuous learning. As it was argued by Senge (1990), team learning requires more than just knowing and communicating within teams. Team learning must be deep to align their mental models to achieve a shared vision and strategic goals. Since individual staff comes with their distinct culture, team learning is argued to converge all the difference into one which involves intertwining culture and value. Unfortunately, aligning the mental model, culture and value can't be achieved by superficial talk or discussion, it needs trust, time and deep collaboration to foster a culture of proactiveness and risk-taking. Having reviewed several findings of SLO implementation in European schools, hierarchical structure was argued to raise the high barrier for team learning and the SLO implementation. Bureaucracy, power distance and high norm are all factors to hinder all three levels of learning process (individual, team and organizational levels of learning).

Will redesigning flatter structure or reducing hierarchy fix the issue of SLO implementation at school? SLO model implies the reform to flatter structure to empower the learning at all levels to achieve the shared inclusive vision. Flatter structure was less popular in school research but it will narrow the communication gaps among school staff through reduced layers in reporting and channels of communication. According to Ghiselli & Siegel (1972), flat structure had few levels of management and broad span of control. Flat structure was argued to correlate with staff well-being (Webb, 2023) but it did not make any difference in terms of performance when comparing with staff performance (Carzo Jr & Yanouzas, 1969). Although flatter structure is indifferent from hierarchical structure, it is argued to redesign flatter structure to reduce hierarchy, empower democracy in shared decision-making and build staff high relatedness (Serrini, 2018). Several impediments reported from Latvia studies, Spain, Bulgaria, Turkey and Italy confirmed trusts and individualistic teaching culture to hinder the SLO transformation. To tackle these challenges, school leaders need to redesign flatter structure to empower team learning and shared decision-making with all school staff. Flatter structure will also reduce administrative work of reporting to different supervisors. Therefore, school leaders need to redesign a flatter structure for effective communication, team learning and shared decision-making which will support the practice of collaborative learning culture of all school staff. 

The Organizational Alignment, Measurement and Assessment

Building an organization is like building a house which requires alignment of all foundations to support the growth and sustainability. Building an effective organization, thus, relies on the alignment of internal structures, system, processes, people and culture. We can also refer the organizational foundation as the building blocks where each layer must be aligned to close the imbalance or gaps, which will drag one down while fixing the other. Aligning system, process, structure, people and culture is argued to be paramount and most necessary for effective organizational operation and growth. Therefore, we bring the three important organizational alignment tools up for discussion. These four organizational alignment tools can also be used as the diagnostic tool for evaluating the organizational performance. 

1. The Congruence Model

The Congruence Model was developed by the Nadler, O’Reilly & Tushman, professors of Harvard Business School. It was developed in response to addressing the performance gaps and opportunity gaps in the organization. The alignment is to balance the five organizational building blocks, namely Component Tasks and Interdependence, Capabilities, Formal Organization, Leadership and Culture, where leadership is argued to facilitate or to enable all the rest four components to align with one another. Using the Congruence Model, organization can conduct diagnosis on their internal strength, where all components are aligned to support one another. Being aligned is being able to interoperate to move the organization forward. Using this model is to put all the components on the grid, collect data (onsite primary data and secondary data) to answer in each component and conduct analysis for alignment or misalignment. 

2. The 7-S Framework (McKinsey’s 7S model)

The 7 S framework, as per name call, has words that start with S namely Style, Skills, Systems, Structure, Staff, Strategy and Shared Values. The 7 S model is developed mainly for building the organizational effectiveness through the comprehensive lens of all dimensions in the organization. As argued by the director of Mckinsey’s company, the core of the 7S framework aims to coordinate the interconnectedness of these 7-S dimensions. However, the 7S model can inform the organizational performance through alignment of all 7-S dimensions. Leaders can use this framework to assess each dimension and propose the corrective actions for their strategic execution. To assess your organization with 7S framework, you can develop the sets of questions that fall under each dimension to be answered by leaders / managers in your organization. 

3. The Balanced Scorecard

The Balanced Scorecard (BSC) is a popular strategic management and measurement tool, which was developed by Kaplan & Norton (1991) to tackle a common business financial perspective that exclude other key internal non-financial perspectives namely Customer, Internal Business process (value chain process) and Learning & Growth. The BSC argued to have these four perspectives to be aligned with the company's vision and strategic goals. The BSC has four quadrants on the grid which can be mapped and translated to objective, measure, targets and initiatives. Having the BSC in hand, leaders can cascade these objectives, measures and targets into team and individual performance plans which ultimately align with the company’s strategic goals. Companies can apply these BSC four perspectives to assess if all staff converge their performances to the strategic goals and shared vision. 

4. Malcolm Baldridge National Quality Award (MBNQA) framework

The MBNQA can also be called the Baldridge Excellence Framework which was developed for improving the excellent quality of the US companies to gain competitive advantages over their rivals. However, the Excellent Framework is now a global quality framework to be applied by companies outside of the US. The framework has 7 aspects divided into 6 processes and 1 result. The 6 processes are Leadership, Strategy, Customer, Workforce, Operation and Measurement, Analysis and Knowledge Management. The measurement is argued to first start with the Organizational Profiles which fall into two key parts- Organization Characteristics and Organization Situation. Using the Excellent Framework, leaders can apply through the Baldridge Excellence Builder published in the booklet with sets of questions, scoring and evaluation. 

These four organizational diagnostic tools are built into different dimensions but with a similar objective to measure and to improve the organizational effectiveness. The 7S framework and the Baldridge Excellent Framework seem to  have detailed elements for auditing and diagnosing the organizational performance of which alignment is the underlying objective for organizational assessment. However, the Congruence model is also offering a concise guide for organizational assessment which is simpler and precise for using.