Organizational Life Cycles and the Development of the National College for School Leadership

Abstract

This article employs organizational life cycle, organizational learning stages and group development stages literature to examine my experiences at the National College for School Leadership (NCSL) during its establishment phase. Support was found, and other foci suggested, for this literature. As well, future issues to be faced by the NCSL were suggested, such as domain expansion and further decentralization and developing the maturity to be able to accommodate those who wish to be constructively critical of its activities.

Professional Learning Communities: A Review of the Literature

“…It is unclear, however, whether these would apply to the development and sustainability of learning communities where a key goal is continuous learning rather than implementing a specific change initiative. Mulford (2004) suggests that evaluating the success of organisations depends on their stage of development. Effectiveness might be considered in terms of evolution over time, such that some schools are at a very early stage of developing the characteristics of a PLC (early starters), others are further along the process (developers), while some are more established (mature).…”

Organizational life – cycle: The characteristics of developmental stages in Russian companies created from scratch

“…Most of these changes are caused by company growth and management practices becoming more complex. For dozens of years, management theorists have been trying hard to explain the organisational life process (Chandler 1962;Greiner 1972;Torbert 1974;Galbraith 1982;Churchil/Lewis 1983;Quinn/Cameron 1983;Miller/Friesen 1984;Smith et al 1985;Scott/Bruce 1987;Kazanijan 1988;Hanks 1990;Dodge/Robbins 1992;Hanks et al 1993;Adizes 1999;Flynn 2001;Lester et al 2003;Mulford 2004;Hoy 2006). The most comprehensive reviews of works on the life-cycle theory are given by (Quinn/Cameron 1983;Smith et al 1985;Hanks 1990;Lester et al 2003).…”

“…Over the years much has been written about the life-cycle concept 1 , yet there has been remarkably little attention given to life-cycle empiric models 2 (Smith et al 1985;Hanks et al 1993;Flynn 2001;Lester et al 2003;Mulford 2004;Hoy 2006). Some Russian researchers have studied life-cycles (Yakovenko 1991), but companies started from scratch later than the 1990s have not been thoroughly studied in terms of their development dynamics within the life-cycle concept.…”

Developing primary leadership in England: adopting an interpretivist perspective

“…Thrupp (2005, 17) confirms that 'there are no examples of anyone known for critical perspectives on leadership' being commissioned by the NC. Mulford (2004) makes a similar point that the College has been reluctant to publish any critically constructive material. The reason for this is identified by Thrupp (2005, 18), who states that 'the NCSL is more generally being used as a conduit or relayer of New Labour policy into schools while critical perspectives which do not fit with government policy are largely ignored'.…”