Degree Name

EdD (Doctor of Education)

Program

Educational Leadership

Date of Award

December 1984

Abstract

An alternative to American bureaucratic philosophy of management came to the United States from Japan during the decade of the 1970s. The philosophy of the Japanse style of management was based upon the use of creativity and talent of others, including the following concepts: (1) Everyone is knowledgeable and wants to share and contribute something; (2) Management does not know all the problems; (3) Management does not know all the answers; (4) The employee has his own way of doing something and is closer to the problems; (5) Workers can contribute their ideas for effective problem solving. The implementation of these ideas is through the use of quality circles. Quality circles are the medium through which workers share management responsibility for locating, analyzing, and solving problems related to their work area. A quality circle is composed of six to ten or eight to twelve volunteers who meet with their supervisors every week. In this situation the supervisor serves as a circle leader. Initially, they receive training in techniques of problem solving, data gathering and problem analysis. The purpose of this study was to determine the potential effectiveness of implementation of the quality circle concepts and processes to administration of educational systems. In the language of educational researchers recorded by Bellanca, the word "productivity" equated with "effectiveness." He pointed out that effective schools were (and still are) those that produced students who had mastered the required knowledge and skill to move to higher education or to work successfully in a trained vocation. The effective schools, as defined by Harvard's Ron Edmonds, achieved this mastery equally for all students regardless of race, national origin or social class. A participative decision making process should be adopted. Decision making by consensus was the subject of a great deal of research in Europe and the United States of America over the past twenty years, and evidence strongly suggested that a consensus approach yielded more promising and incentive decisions and more effective implementation than individual decision making. (Abstract shortened with permission of author.)

Document Type

Dissertation - unrestricted

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