Decentralize four key resources: power, knowledge and skills, information, rewards

Decentralize four key resources:
power, knowledge and skills, information, rewards

1. Power

Power means that a well-informed, competent faculty has the authority to make decisions about the best application of resources and the best educational practices to use. The school team has authority over the budget, which it can spend in any way that it chooses, subject only to limits on the total amount. It also has authority to recruit, select, develop, and evaluate personnel. Moreover, the school site involves all teachers in decision-making roles through vertical (math, science, language arts, student discipline) and horizontal (sub-school, grade level) decision-making teams.

2. Knowledge and skills

Knowledge and skills in at least four areas help employees achieve high performance and improve outcomes:

Interpersonal or team skills for working together effectively
Technical knowledge and skills for providing the service - e.g., new curriculum and instruction expertise
Breadth skills for engaging in multiple tasks, especially tasks like curriculum and staff development that have been "decentralized" to the work team
Business knowledge and skills for managing budgets and other fiscal matters

Developing such knowledge and skills implies a substantial, ongoing investment in human resource development that could approach two to four percent of revenue. It also implies a schoolwide capacity for change, a sense of professional community, and a shared curriculum and instructional knowledge base.

3. Information

Information about organizational goals, levels of performance, and key parameters of work processes is required for employees to make decisions that lead to organizational objectives and high performance. Employees need information on district and site revenues, costs, cost structures, customer satisfaction, benchmarks with other schools, and the environment. The most effective schools create vertical and horizontal communication channels and actively seek to share information throughout the school community.

4. Rewards

Rewards are used to align the self-interest of the faculty with the objectives of the organization. High-performance organizations shift from a seniority-based compensation system to one based on direct assessments of knowledge and skills. A second reward option is compensation based on group or team performance rather than individual performance - for example, sharing the savings from cost reduction and receiving group-based salary bonuses (Lawler, 1990). Mohrman, Mohrman, and Odden (1995, forthcoming) have developed a model of such a structure for education, although education has been slow to implement changes in teacher compensation.

(See Odden & Odden, 1994; Mohrman & Wohlstetter, 1994; Wohlstetter, Smyer, & Mohrman, 1994.)

References