Environmental Pressures, Management Imperatives, and Competing Paradigms in Educational Administration

Across much of the westernized world, environmental pressures have transformed the context of public educational administration. In particular, the changing world economy, decline of confidence in the welfare state, and adverse social trends have generated strong pressures for change in the organization and performance of education systems, and for nothing less than a paradigm shift in educational management. Together, these social forces have produced three interconnected imperatives for educational administrators: a productivity imperative, an accountability imperative, and a community imperative. Efforts to respond to these imperatives have generated tensions between competing paradigms in educational management. This article discusses the environmental pressures noted above, the resulting three imperatives, and the tensions flowing from these developments.