How might the use of ambiguity model help leaders to understand the organisational challenges of a newly established higher education college?

Introduction

I work as a programme leader for level 4, 5 and 6 courses in a small private London higher education college. When I joined, the college was newly opened, and one of the challenges was to obtain high achievement rates and robust quality processes. At that time, there were not enough resources for students, a virtual learning environment, administrative support for course management or other resources that I was accustomed to. The office was moved weekly, as the space transformed from week to week to accommodate different needs. Policies, procedures and job descriptions were not yet written and implemented. Despite the precedent experience, I found myself into this new conjuncture where I was confused about the limits of my roles and responsibilities. In this new workplace I could not find the expected certainty given by clear procedures and hierarchy, but a fluid workspace and a divided team whose activity was influenced by part-time contracts and missing job descriptions. This is the reason why this essay investigates how the use of the ambiguity model help leaders to understand the organisational challenges of a newly established higher education college. In the beginning, the essay will explore the concept of organisational models, then will continue with an overview of formal and ambiguity models. The last part of the essay will endeavour explaining how organisational models help leaders to understand newly established higher education colleges.

 Organisational models

The organisation is understood as an association of individuals working together in a structured way for a common purpose or specific goals (Cambridge Dictionary, 2019).  The term organisation is widely used within the business environment, entailing a wide variety of legal types of businesses. In higher education, the term organisation includes, amongst other bodies and agencies, public or private universities and colleges.

A college can be characterised by a series of attributes which outline the own organisational model. The Cambridge Dictionary (2019) defines the organisational model as the representation of "the structure of an organization and the relationships between the different people, departments, or jobs within that organisation."  As suggested by Cunliffe (2008) the organisational models contribute to the understanding of how organisations function and how they can be effectively managed considering their circumstances. Bush (2011) and Bush and Coleman (2004) argue that the organisational models differentiate through the goals, structure and external environment. Considering the reality of the organisation, Bush (2011) divide the organisational models into six categories: formal, collegial, political, subjective, ambiguity and cultural. These organisational models present a comprehensible and logical view of general instances which could be applied in specific cases. The ideal models (formal and collegial) prescribe hypothetical solutions, such as Weber's theory of bureaucracy, while the descriptive models (political, subjective, ambiguity and cultural models) capture the truth of the organisation in a specific time and context. One of the main advantages of the ideal organisational models is that they create a benchmark used to investigate the reality of one organisation in a specific circumstance.

A clear fact about organisations is that everyone sees it in a different way. In my college, the owner and the senior management team tend to have a holistic view encompassing the institutional goals in the broad context of the group. The senior management team sees the college as an open system forced to adapt to external challenges and in the same time, the owner sees it as a machine meant to be productive and profitable (Cunliffe, 2008). As argued by Taylor (1911) and Fayol (1949) the mechanistic approach outlines well-defined roles, standard procedures, and a routine supervised by managers. Morgan (1998) adds to the views of Taylor and Fayol emphasizing the bureaucratic routine sustained by robust hierarchical structure and precise flow of information and power (from top to lower levels). The owner of my college communicates desired outcomes (top to lower levels communication) and offers a model of bureaucracy through some administrative procedures shared by all the colleges and universities part of the group. The metaphor of the organisation as a machine (Morgan, 1998) could help the senior management to design procedures and to build up a bureaucratic system to ease the management of the organisation.

However, the nature of education, the activities and processes conducted within the college are more complex and difficult to be contained by the principles of scientific management. Bennett (2006) argues that the necessity of adapting to national and global policies and markets makes difficult for a college to preserve a fixed and static structure. A newly established college as my workplace, due to its rapid development and continuous growth aims to achieve an organisational structure characterised by a "dynamic equilibrium" (Bennett, 2006: 48) specific for open systems. Further, the machine image of the organisation is indisputably affected by conflicts triggered by individual values and interests of senior management team members and other staff.  Moreover, the impact of individual values on organisation determined Glatter (2006) to state that more politically orientated forms of analysis and systems approaches could be more appropriate while studying the education environment.

The overall focus on profitability found on senior management level is not adopted by the college's academic staff. The lecturers focused on learning, information and culture are picturing the college more as a brain. The academics are shifting the emphasis from the whole organisation to individual leadership, resources and subcultures developed within each subject-specific department. The image of the organisation as a brain as observed by Paisey (1992) is widely influenced by the department leadership and by the classroom experience and students’ engagement.

The students' image of the college as organisation is extremely different. They may see the college as an organisation which constrains their freedom (physic and psychic) as well as a place for social fulfilment and professional development. For this purpose, they expect the college to be a highly organised institution. The image of the organisation as a prison is shared in a certain measure by staff due to elements of organisational culture and the rigour of policies. In a college, the issue of power and control can create barriers to innovation (Morgan, 1998) and may lead to staff burnout and overall inefficiency.

The formal models

According to Bush (2011), the formal organisational models comprise five approaches on the elements of the organisation: structural models, system models, bureaucratic models, rational models and the hierarchical models. These models have common characteristics related to organisational structure, goals, authority and accountability. 

A stable and robust organisational structure, with clear roles and hierarchy, is assumed to be definitory for formal organisations. Bell (1980) consider that a consistent and stable structure is assumed to be true for educational institutions. The clarity of roles is meant to positively impact the achievement of goals and efficiency. A higher education college can be organised in functional departments (recruitment, administrative, academic, etc.) and/or subject-specific departments (e.g.: The School of Media, The School of Business). In the early stage of development, the organisational structure of my college differentiates the following components: the senior management team (leading the organisation), the middle management (programme leaders), the lecturers and the support staff (administrative operations and recruitment). Other support functions (human resources, marketing, etc) were externalised.

The formal models consider the organisation a system with a clear structure and hierarchy. Due to the nature of the education and learning processes, a college can be pictured as a multi-level system (Coleman and Earley, 2005), where each level affects the other levels and the whole organisation. The image of the organisation as a system is discussed in literature by more authors (Weick, 1976; Senge, 1990; Hanna, 1997; Morgan, 1998), with emphasis on the flow of information, the inter-relation between subsystems and the role of individuals within the system. In the United Kingdom the higher education college can be described as an open system in continuous interaction with the external environment, as argued by more authors (Hanna, 1997; Scott, 1998; Bennett, 2006), because it needs to adapt systematically to regional, national and international policies, to standards and regulatory frameworks. 

The open system image described by Hanna (1997) and Senge (1990) applies well to my college. The organisation is structured on more layers, with different levels of interaction with the students. The structure reveals departments (administration, academic, senior management, recruitment) functioning as subsystems within the whole organisation. Being part of a larger group, the college can be considered a subsystem within a larger system, with access to shared functions (human resources, marketing, accountancy). In the same time, as a newly established institution, the college depends on multiple relationships with national and international partners (awarding bodies).  Aiming to meet the expectations of various stakeholders and to achieve desired development milestones, the college is aligning the internal policies and the quality cycle to relevant regulatory bodies and agencies (British Accreditation Council, Quality Assurance Agency, The Office for Students).

In higher education institutions, as well as in other schools, the hierarchy is characterised by the vertical relationships with the principal or the owner as the highest authorities emphasized by responsibilities, clear job roles, and accountability. Within an ideal formal organisation, the leader is the most rational person to be in that role, all-powerful, responsible for the organisational profit, efficiency, and development. However, here we need to consider the strengths and weaknesses of the wide and narrow span of control characteristics for flat and tall organisational structures. In a higher education college, the issue of the source of power at the top of the hierarchy may create conflicts. The source of power in my college is attached to senior management members as well as to expertise. The subject-specific specialism and the high qualifications empower members of staff who are not necessarily on managerial roles.

System thinking can be proper for most  the organisations because enhances the interaction and communication between different stakeholders. If everyone in the organisation has a system thinking mindset some gaps could be reduced and managerial solutions embraced more easily.  The system thinking mindset in a newly established higher education college can help the manager understand that the high retention and achievement rates depend on the quality of resources and academic team’s performance. Similarly, the academic team will work with the admission department to stress the entry standards and will try to deliver the programme in a way that eases high retention and achievement.  This operation will support the mechanistic approach discussed by Taylor (1911) and Fayol (1949) where the quality of the input influences the quality of output.  

The institutional goals set up by leaders are reflecting the broad vision of the organisation and are followed by all employees. Clear and specific goals will attract a higher degree of consent and will better relate to the stakeholders meant to achieve them (Bell, 1980). Working on reasonable and proper goals will lead employees to a feeling of achievement, enhancing not only the efficiency but also employee's self-esteem, confidence, and improvement of own practice. On the other side, the goal orientation may be a weakness in the situation when they refer to a single aspect of the educational process. This may lead to the distortion and corruption of the learning process, as different stakeholders will focus on achieving isolated goals regardless of the means.

The complex nature of education is reflected in the organisational level of bureaucracy as described by Weber. In colleges, the bureaucracy is enhanced by the public management and the external standards (Bush, 2011) imposed by public management and awarding bodies. Hence, the formal organisational models reflect a partial truth of educational organisations such as colleges.

The ambiguity models

The ambiguity models are describing organisations with unstable and unpredictable features. In this context, the organisational structure is determined by the external environment (Bell, 1980) and its own function. The organisational structure so well defined in the formal models became problematic in ambiguity models where the organisation seems to function on trial – error procedures and past experiences (Bush and West-Burnham, 1994). The organisational structure in a newly established college may not be as robust as expected due to the role ambiguity and a participative mode of operation dictated by part-time contracts and the early stage of team development. My college experienced within one year few essential changes within its organisational structure which affected the workload of senior and middle managers. For example, few support roles were dissolved to simplify the administrative department and the responsibilities were shared between middle managers and remaining administrative staff. Furthermore, in a short time the college experienced changes in senior management roles and more positions were added to the organisational structure.

The ambiguous authority is enhanced by the scarce participation to decision-making process. As experienced in my college the participation in committees and other decisional processes was fluid and inconsistent due to the high number of employees on fractional contracts. Moreover, in colleges and universities, the ambiguity of authority lies in the expertise of the employees at the department level (Block, 2014a). In my college, the academic department is divided between the three areas of study. Each area of study has different needs in terms of resources and has different approaches to subject delivery. Furthermore, within each area of study are modules whose requirements are so different, that they differentiate enough to create their own subsystem. The variety of characteristics on the subject level leads to fragmentation and loose coupling (Bush, 2011) on institution and department level. The subject specific specialism and mode of delivery deepen the loose coupling issue to individual basis, ideas, activities, intentions, and actions (Orton and Weick, 1990).  In this circumstance, the middle and senior management should recognise these differences and hand in the authority to the specialism staff. Block (2014b) consider that multiple differences should be acknowledged and shared between all the subject specialist, so a commonly agreed set of values to be developed and used as a benchmark in strategic planning.

In the above context, the productivity was hindered by work overload and by the role ambiguity enhanced by fluid organisational structure and missing clear job descriptions. Moreover, working in partnership with various institutions increased the external demands which at times conflicted with each other and added workload. For example, delivering the same qualification in partnership with two institutions doubled the planning and preparation due to: differences in course content, differences within the academic calendars and double preparation for external examiners.

According to Bell (1980) and Bush and Coleman (2004) unclear goals are characteristic for ambiguity models, as well as the matter of authority which is inconsistent. While the lecturers knew what to do due to the broader goals of education, middle managers and sometimes senior managers were confused by the lack of clarity regarding institutional goals. Within my college, a conflict arises between the goals of the senior management and middle managers. The senior management team was focused on increasing the profit through recruiting a high number of students. The middle managers focused on creating an effective learning environment able to foster high achievement rates, highly opposed to the rapid growth of students’ numbers in the situation of insufficient resources and administrative support.

As stated by Cohen and March (1986), the developers of ‘the garbage can model’, the ambiguity organisational models are relevant for many organisations, describing the unpredictability and complexity of college management, but they cannot be generalised for the whole organisation.

Applying models to understand newly established higher education colleges

Discussing the nature of theory in educational management from the perspective of earlier studies, Bush (1989) recognises the value and relevance of formal models for colleges, arguing that they are considered as a norm for all the organisational approaches. In contrast to formal models, referring to ambiguity theories, Bush states that “there is little empirical evidence to support their applicability to British education” (Bush, 1989: 8) although later on (2011) the same author recognises the ambiguity as a common aspect of complex organisations as colleges, with great intensity during periods of development.

Even if in the early stage the organisation is in continuous change and the participation to decision-making is arbitrary, there are several predictable features. These are dictated by the broad nature of education, by regulatory frameworks, code of conduct and awarding bodies. The existence of these formal elements overcome the lack of goal clarity at the institution level and helps the academics to successfully manage the learning and teaching process.

The above circumstances are becoming more complicated with regard to the decision-making process and the issue of power. Alvesson and Sveningsson (2003) emphasize that in knowledge-intensive organisations the ambiguity is a key dimension due to complex operations and authority relationships. This statement can be applied to higher education colleges, organisation with highly qualified professionals and ambiguous authority generated by the variety of subject-specific departments lead by subject specialists. The highly qualified employees tend to be more autonomous and to expect space, flexibility, recognition of their specialism and freedom of innovation. They have own visions about management and leadership, and this may constitute a challenge for a senior manager. Moreover, within a knowledge organisation one of the issues that may arise is the question of who the most rational person is to lead the organisation. In my workplace, I experience the situation in which the most qualified employees were in powerless positions. This circumstance challenged and eroded the leadership through the ambiguity created by individual visions on the process of leadership together with the lack of trust in the rationality of the senior management members.

As I experienced in my college, lecturers, managers and support staff can have different visions and behaviours related to organisation, based upon individual values and priorities. Idealist individuals with respect to perfection, have the tendency to search into the college the view of the ideal educational organisation (Paisey, 1992) under formal organisational models, without necessarily having the knowledge of the existent condition of the college. The new team members tend to behave independently and to show a lack of confidence influencing the overall functionality of the organisation. Moreover, as suggested by Chang, Duck, and Bordia (2006), group behaviour is influenced by the time-space complex which in the case of a newly established college is a sensitive issue. The ambiguities occurring in an early stage of institutional development could negatively affect staff behaviour and performance. Dorman (2003) argues that organisational variables such as role overload, role conflict, classroom environment , and role ambiguity are very important for teachers. As it happened in my experience, the role ambiguity negatively affected the self-esteem and trust as a professional and together with the other organisational variables lead to the onset of emotional exhaustion. I was able to come out of this state only by accepting that not all the problems can be solved, and classical solutions may not produce the desired outcome. I learned that ambiguity can be transformed into an opportunity for innovation and progress.

Regardless the efforts to regulate the activities and processes within the newly established college by the norm of formal models, it needs to be accepted that the organisation is influenced by erratic contexts and by the intricacy of human behaviour. Understanding the ambiguity and formal models help leaders of newly established higher education colleges to handle the unpredictability and to create an organized anarchy which eventually will further the development.

Often the theories are disregarded as they are thought to be secluded from the college and classroom reality, and the staff relies the most on own professional experience. Leaders operating without a basis of theoretical knowledge may find difficulties in understanding the organisation, especially when the decentralisation (generated by the differences between disciplines, the nature of operations and high autonomy of academic staff) leads to ambiguous goals and relationships. Different stakeholders' perceptions of the organisation, based on individual values, could be considered and valued as an asset (Paisey, 1992) by the leader. Understanding the newly established higher education college as a synthesis of elements help leaders to make decisions and develop a tactical solution. The theory motivates the decision making, enhances the effectiveness (Bush, 1989) and lessen the leader's frustration generated by the ambiguity and the complexity of the institutional activity. The understanding of various organisational models ease leader's adaptability to the spontaneous and more or less predictable environment and facilitates organisational performance (Miller, 2016).

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