Introduction to Holistic Administration
Dr. Dan Jordan defines administration in terms of service qualified by the purposes and goals of the group or educational institution as specified in the theory of curriculum—a service that explicitly calls for administrators to have extensive knowledge about the goals and how they are to be achieved so that they can be both helpful and credible (and therefore not an embarrassment as models);
Identifies two basic functions of administration which must remain in dynamic equilibrium: leadership and management—the former arising from dealing with the present in terms of future possibilities (an expression of transcendence) and the latter having roots in negotiating the present by organising and coordinating the resources represented by past achievements, accumulated knowledge, and expertise (immanence as the heritage of the past);
Explicates the necessity for leadership and management to collaborate in the establishment of priorities, assessing needs, identifying resources, determining feasibility, and allocating resources to achieve objectives as efficiently as possible;
Provides the rationale for defining tasks to be achieved by the educational institution so that personnel may be recruited on a rational basis and the staff can be differentiated (matching talents, interests, abilities and skills with institutional needs) and integrated around purpose;
Explains how differentiation and integration of the staff around purpose functions as the primary means of releasing the institution's potentialities as a social organism;
Citation: Jordan, D. (1974). A summary statement of the ANISA model. Cambridge, MA: ANISA.
Recognizes the unifying advantages of hierarchical administrative structures while guarding against their potential rigidities by establishing consultation as an indispensable procedure through which arbitrariness is removed from decision-making power by distributing it throughout the system at loci of authority legitimatized by expertise and knowledge;
Stresses the importance of information dissemination both horizontally and vertically and relates the rate of information flow to efficiency and morale;
Affirms the necessity for direct feedback on performance and endorses a circumscribed counseling function as an important element in performance evaluation;
Emphasizes the rational basis for institutional self-renewal by making the results of research and evaluation mandatory input to the decision-making process at any given level;
Affirms the importance of morale and defines it as: a pervasive willingness to comply with reasonable policy, to work cooperatively and make sacrifices when the system is under stress; a wide-spread conviction that everyone's energy is constructively utilized in the achievement of the shared purposes and ideals of the system—purposes and ideals which themselves relate to the perpetual release of the potentialities of the group as a social organism and which generate a climate of hope and opportunity for growth; satisfaction with the compensation received for efforts made; a sense of security that derives from trust that confidences will not be broken or injustices committed; and, a sense of unity and belonging that derives from the acknowledgement and appreciation of contributions made;
Reflects the ontological principle of relativity in its emphasis on the participation of community and home so that the children are rescued from the fragmenting discontinuities and conflicting loyalties that impair the release of their potentialities;