School managements should ensure that leadership practices exceed previous systems regarding their administrative roles, this can be realized when the administration makes involves other stakeholders in decision-making proceses.
In order to ensure that the relationship between the management and the stakeholders is fruitful, the objectives of the two parties must coincide. In this article, Legotlo and Mathibe prove that a school’s administration can collaborate with the local community in issues such as decision-making, and the benefits of this collaborative effort.
The objective of this paper is to analyze the strengths and weaknesses of the article in the areas of style, problem definition, methodology, originality and analysis as used by the author in coming up with this document.
Literature Review
In this section, we attempt to give a summary of the document under analysis. As an introduction, the article mentions that if a school relates with the society positively, the partnership will lead to the school’s development, whereas the neglect of such a relationship would lead to the school’s alienation.
The stakeholders in the society who can collaborate with the school comprise of students, teachers, parents, non-governmental organizations and the state. School managers should incorporate decentralization in their leadership style as opposed to the former principles of centralization in which school heads make all the decisions (Legotlo and Mathibe).
The authors then attempt to define leadership both in general, and when applied in a school setting. The authors say that a school leadership should motivate the community to support their visions by being actively involved in their implementation. He explains that, in the 21st century, there is a requirement for transformational leadership to empower all stakeholders.
Legotlo and Mathibe then embark on a case study of South African schools. From their findings, they state that the country produces outstanding leaders despite South Africa’s rating as one of the countries with the least developed educational systems in the world. This success, according to statistics, is because schools meet the interests of the entire body of stakeholders.
The stakeholders, on their part, do much in ensuring that schools meet their objectives. In addition, the South African government stipulates that decision making in schools should be decentralized. The authors conclude that this decentralization concept of leadership will work only if the stakeholders and the schools have a common vision.
Method and Analysis
The research articles used by the authors are crucial to understanding organizational behavior and the effectiveness of such organizations, however, one has to read the article numerous times to have that clear understanding concerning UAE’s organizational behavior patterns.
The topic, though, suggests that decentralization of decision-making in a school is vital to incorporating other stakeholders such as parents, students, non-governmental organizations, staff members and the state. From the findings of this research, many of the management bodies ought to borrow organizational practices of decentralization from schools in South Africa.
The authors’ introductory note and the assigned studies are significant in the education sector. The introduction gives useful information, for example, the government of South Africa insists that there should be a partnership among all stakeholders.
For us to relate the introduction of the article to the problem statement, one would have to read the introduction several times. Nevertheless, the authors’ thoughts in the introduction have a decent flow. They start by emphasizing the importance of human relations and serving people, since these promote the development of a school.
In the second paragraph, they show that partnership with stakeholders leads to joint decision-making and equal distribution of power. The authors conclude that it is necessary for school institutions to upgrade their leadership structures to transcend past management practices of centralization.
When it comes to the relevance of the sources, we can conclude that they are comprehensive and up-to-date. According to a website dictionary, educational leadership is the process of capturing talent and resources that are available within the school staff, pupils and parents.
This definition coincides with the definition given by one of the cited authors, who mention that educational leadership is the process of acquiring knowledge and making prerequisites for development.
These similarities prove that the document and its claims are up-to-date. Nevertheless, the authors need to state clearly that they are discussing the topic of leadership in the education circle, although we can get that from the text. It would have been better if they added “educational leadership” in the section title where the topic on leadership is under discussion (Legotlo and Mathibe).
The tone of the article is stern and objective, and the authors go straight to the point. Legotlo and Mathibe vary their findings from factual to comparative. For example, they state clearly how the Education Department in South Africa is heavily involved in the participation of stakeholders in the development and management of schools.
Table 2 in page 6 gives a comparison between leadership and management. The authors’ conclusive research is evidently by their use of numerous sources. Their choice of words is appropriate although other sections are complicated to the average reader. For example, the thesis statement is not easy to comprehend.
In the article, there is the incorporation of statistics, where the authors cite the Beehive Survey in page 4. This survey expounds on community participation in organizations and the way it leads to the production of outstanding leaders.
Nevertheless, one would expect to find more than one set of statistics for such an informative article. In addition to the statistics given, the use of graphs and charts to present these statistics would bring out their findings in a more profound way.
There is some limitation to the author’s originality since he is citing too many articles to support their claims. There is no problem in using these citations, but the author’s original thoughts seem to get lost within the numerous citations quoted.
The authors did a lot in analyzing leadership and management as shown in table 1 and 2 of pg. 3 and 4 respectively. Table one gives the differences between transformational leadership and transactional leadership. Table 2, on the other hand, gives a comparison between leadership and management.
Nevertheless, from the discussion, we would expect to find a table comparing performance of schools, where the involvement of the community in decision-making and where community is not involved. Such a table should have social relevance of the content taught in school on one side, and its outcomes one the other as the variables.
The authors’ conclusion, though wordy, emphasizes the need for partnership between schools and communities, to improve the quality of education. However, stakeholder interests may be in conflict with those of the school, and this would lead to a stalemate. The ideal situation would be when the school’s vision and the stakeholder interests are in line.
There were sources that could prove that the above findings were accurate and executable. In addition, Legotlo and Mathibe made an excellent reference page. He arranged the references in alphabetical order, according to APA citation style requirements.
For the in-text citations, there were good citations quoted from other sources, showing that the author is knowledgeable. The only concern was that most of the sources dated before the year 2000. This implies that some of the findings in the article might be either irrelevant or outdated.
The article contributes to the organizational behavior of an institution given that other organizations, apart from schools, can adopt the authors’ findings and use them for their benefit. An example of such institutions is local government offices, which would benefit from a partnership with the citizens.
This would improve their service delivery and the government would be more accessible to people. Although few leaders are aware of the advantages of decentralized management, the knowledge and implementation of the findings can become truly profitable to their organization.
The essay shows complication, and reading the content can be difficult. There are sections in the article where spotting the main idea that the authors want to bring out is difficult. It would be advisable that the reader should be able to understand the main idea of the section or paragraph within the first few lines of their reading, yet this is not the case. For example, the diction used in concluding the article is complex, and not easy to understand.
The article is lengthy, and the authors needs to improve on structuring the hierarchy to improve the logical flow of the document. The headings and subheadings stand out, and the lines are of reasonable length. The writer has used many paragraphs, and this helps the document improve on its readability although none of the paragraphs is indented.
The use of tables is commendable since it breaks the monotony of the plain text. Such a document would be even more appealing, if the author included graphs and charts to explain his findings in a better way. As stated above, the relationship between academicians, practitioners and other stakeholder, where there is sharing of leadership and decision-making, would be extremely fruitful, if their objectives are in line.
Conclusion
Legotlo and Mathibe conducted in-depth research before coming up with the article, this is readily evident from the volume of sources that they use to back-up their arguments. The advanced language used made the article complicated; thus it was not so easy to read, although it was appropriate for the intended audience.
The argument was logical, and the author’s facts were accurate. The text was well organized and clear, and this helped the reader to have a better understanding of what the concepts put across by the authors. There is sufficient evidence to back-up their claims, bedsides, there is clear definition of relevant terms and the arguments made supported the main points.
The texts did not have an opposing point of view (or a counter-argument), though the writer concluded that all stakeholders had to have a common goal.
From the article, the writer makes it is clear that whenever the school or any other organization incorporates all stakeholder in the decision-making and leadership process, both stand to benefit, as long as they have come together to achieve a common goal. This information would be beneficial to UAE’s organizational behavior and organizational effectiveness.
Work Cited
Legotlo, Modise W., and Mathibe, Isaac Ramoloko. The Leadership of the School Community as Sharing Power and Decision Making in the School. No Date. Web.