REFLECTIVE NOTES ON MODERNITY, CHANGING ORGANIZATIONS AND TEACHER EDUCATION
Faculty of Education
Discourse on Capitalist Modernity Tomlinson (1991) argues that capitalist modernity is technologically and economically powerful but culturally 'weak'. This weakness can be seen in a general failure to direct its enormously powerful forces of production: the results of which are evident in the rapidly developing global environment crisis (p. 174). In capitalist modernity there is no sense of qualitative social goals in that there is no real long-term direction. Moreover, while humanity faces enormous material problems, people still find it hard to understand why they do what they do (Castoriadis, 1987). Anthony Giddens (1987) sees these later problems as a crisis of moral legitimacy facing capitalist modernity. It is generally perceived "that the 'modernity' of the present can be distinguished from that of earlier modern periods" (Tomlinson 1991, p. 174). We are said to be living in 'New Times' (Hall & Jacques, 1989) and in a 'postmodernity' period (Smart, 1993). Tomlinson believes that "the prevalent mood of 'postmodernity' (or perhaps 'late modernity' is better) is one of uncertainty, of paradox, of lack of moral legitimacy and of cultural indirection" (1991, p. 175). Now are these 'new times' characterized? These 'new times' represent a new configuration of global power that "replaces the distribution of global power that we know as 'imperialism', which characterized the modern period up to, say, the 1960s" (Tomlinson 1991, p. 175). What replaces imperialism of the past is 'globalization'. Tomlinson explains that globalization may be distinguished from imperialism in that it is a far less coherent or culturally directed process. For all that it is ambiguous between economic and political senses, the idea of imperialism contains, at least, the notion of a purposeful project: the intended spread of a social system from one centre of power across the globe. The idea of 'globalization' suggests interconnection and interdependency of all global areas which happens in a far less purposeful way. It happens as the result of economic and cultural practices which do not, of themselves, aim at global integration, but which nonetheless produce it. More importantly, the effects of globalization weaken the cultural coherence of all individual nation-states, including the economically powerful ones - the 'imperialist power' of a previous era (1991, p. 175). John Urrey (1987) describes globalization as a disorganized process symbolizing the "end of organized capitalism." The history of modernity in the last twenty years or so is preoccupied with the ideas of globalization, the postmodern, Post-Fordist production, late capitalism, restructuring, downsizing (Singh, 2000a) and other similar ideas changing the modern ways of thinking. As a result, the changes in modern world-view of the past have created postmodern conditions, and Giddens (1990) explains the consequences of modernity for individuals and societies. Harvey (1989, p. vii) provides an analysis of "the condition of postmodernity" with a very precise dating, stating that "there has been a sea-change in cultural as well as political-economic practices since around 1972." In his discussion of Fordism to flexible accumulation, Harvey (1989, p. 151, Fig. 2.10) illustrates how the labour market structure under conditions of flexible accumulation has changed from the Fordist regime of the modern period. Harvey's analysis, like those of many others, shows that the labour market has undergone a radical restructuring. For example, among many other changes there has been "the apparent move away from regular employment towards increasing reliance upon part-time, temporary or sub-contracted work arrangements (p. 150)." Moreover, "the current trend in labor markets is to reduce the number of 'core' workers and to rely increasingly upon a work force that can quickly be taken on board and equally quickly and costlessly be laid off when times get bad (p. 152)." All this means that our world is changing fast - geopolitically, technologically, socially and culturally. There are positive and negative effects. Some believe organizations are changing but more slowly than environments. Organizations are certainly cost-cutting and continually restructuring, even as they're also trying to flatten, empower, federalize, and even to humanize. But relative to the pace of environmental change, they aren't breaking any speed records (Leavitt, 1996, p. 293). According to Harvey flexible employment arrangements do not by themselves engender strong worker dissatisfaction, since flexibility can sometimes be mutually beneficial. But the aggregate effects, when looked at from the standpoint of insurance coverage and pension rights, as well as wage levels and job security, by no means appear positive from the standpoint of the working population as a whole (1989, p. 15). Giddens (1990) discusses dimensions of modernity and postmodernity and shows how they seem to be affecting all major aspects of social reality. He explains how we can make sense of changes in the institutional and globalization dimensions of modernity. According to him, as these dimensions change more and more people get involved in various social movements to protect themselves from the negative impact of globalization. For example, workers, minorities, and cultural and ethnic groups organize themselves to defend themselves from further exploitation in the changing labor process. People occupying different positions in society get involved in emancipatory politics of inequality. The local concerns get highly politicized. Life politics or politics of self-actualisation takes precedence over societal, economic and market issues. The global issues get politicized from the local and personal points of view. In the event of downsizing, local and personal issues -- as well as issues related to self-actualisation -- get exacerbated and, consequently, much has been written about how managers can plan and implement various aspects of downsizing. For example, one finds in the literature on downsizing discussion of such topics as: obligations on the termination of employment, notice of termination provisions, material changes to the employment relationship, early retirement allowance, special retirement programs, volunteer separation programs, special separation programs, loss of skills, surplus staff, employment equity impact, re-employment policies, wrongful dismissal disputes, career management programs, career development roles, career development models, career move options, the changing role of the external career consultant, psychology of termination, humanizing the job termination process, practical guides for humane terminations, termination clauses, and well-ness and downsizing. Like the author, anybody involved in research on school restructuring (read basically as "downsizing"), school reform and teacher education perhaps can see how these concepts could serve as sensitizing concepts in helping researchers to articulate and interpret the results of their studies. These ideas have served this author well in various studies he has conducted in the areas of teacher education and reform. Some of these studies are cited in this paper. Moving away from the discussion of modernity now, the author presents below some selected aspects of discourses on changing organizations. Changing Organizations Today it is generally believed that "the present day crisis facing human kind is a crisis of perception, the ways in which we perceive our social world." How are today's organizations changing? What perceptions are at work? This section reviews selected discourses which shed light on these and other related questions. Again, this author finds the selected material as good sensitizing material for his on-going research and teaching projects.
According to Noer, the profound and basic change in the typical relationship between employee and organizations, and between organizations and society, is nothing less than the fundamental change in world-view... We are in the midst of a fundamental paradigm shift (1993, p. 15). According to him, this shift can be measured by using four organizational yardsticks. These yardsticks compare an old world view to a new world view and the changes they measure occur in the assumptions organizations make about the purpose of employees, the language patterns of organizations used to talk about employees, the long-term versus short-term time orientation of organizations, and the optimum operational size of organizations (Noer, 1993, p. 16). Noer explains that in the old paradigm organizations considered their employees as assets to be developed and cultivate. This orientations has now changed. People are seen as costs to be reduced. Hire and cut has become the ideology. Similarly, the language used by many organizations have changed from a nurturing way of talking to a violent way of having conversations. Instead of using words such as "develop", "help", "grow", today's organizational culture is built on using such words as "take out", "shoot" and "terminate". There has also been change in the old and new time orientation. In the past, organizations were interested in the long tem careers of their employees; they were interested in "making" an employee. Now the focus is on short term, on hiring a person just to do job which needs to be done at a particular time. Finally, there has been change in the size orientation of the organizations. That is, today's organizations focus more on reductionist philosophy (make smaller and cut) rather that on synergistic philosophy (build up and develop), according to Noer (1993, p.17, Fig. 1). To some extent, those who have been following the educational reform and restructuring initiatives taken locally by the school boards, Department of Education, the Newfoundland and Labrador Teacher Association, some researchers at Memorial university, and other stakeholders in the public education, can readily identify the paradigm shift Noer is describing. All one has to do is to read the commentaries by various stakeholders on educational restructuring in the local newspapers to find the "data" supporting the shift from the old to the new organizational paradigm. To be sure, this change is not necessarily always desirable. This becomes clear when one chooses to see educational reform from various critical perspectives.
There has also been a paradigm shift in the way organizations today handle employment contracts (Noer, 1993, pp. 157-158). Noer (1993, Tables 10.1 and 10.2, pp. 81-82) outlines implicit assumptions, strategies, and outcomes of the old and new employment contracts. According to him, in the old employment contract environment the assumption is that employment relationships are for long term, that promotion is considered as reward for performance, that the attitude of the management is paternalistic, and that organizations tend to offer lifetime careers to their employees. The outcomes of these assumptions from the dominant perspective in the current environment are an aged, de-motivated, dependent, narrow, mediocre and co-dependent work force. All these arguments were put forward to justify the need to restructure schools and other educational institutions by the proponents of the school reform movement in this province. It seems that assumptions made within the new contract orientation have relatively strong impact on the thinking of many policy makers and administrators involved in the education reform process in this province. The new employment contract assumes that employment relationship is situational; that performance is rewarded by acknowledging employee's contribution and relevance; that loyalty is defined in terms of responsibility and good work; that management empowers its employees, and job contracting is offered explicitly. The outcomes based on these assumptions are flexible, motivated, task-invested, empowered, responsible and bonded work force.
Today's organizations are involved in mergers, downsizing, and resultant layoffs. Generally, layoffs are not neat, tidy, and sterile. They are full of toxic thoughts and feelings. Layoff processes have important effects on both survivors and victims. "Layoffs are often seen as a subset of overall downsizing strategies" (Noer, 1993, p. 88). Downsizing, or the planned elimination of jobs, has become pervasive in the corporate and the non-corporate world of the 1990s and it raises clusters of feelings among both layoff survivors and victims. These include fear, insecurity, uncertainty, frustration, resentment, anger, sadness, depression, unfairness, betrayal, and distrust (Noer, 1993, pp. 89-90). The clusters of feeling could lead to a violent response to downsizing. Thus in some cases downsizing and termination of a single employee or large-scale termination raises fear in organizations that laid-off workers will respond with violence (Labig, 1995, p. 153). Therefore, it has become important for organizations to carefully consider how they conduct any level of layoffs. In these situations, organizations hire consultants or train their own managers for effective organizational downsizing, layoffs, mergers, and restructuring. Thus, consultants and managers are expected to help organizations to develop internal capacity to facilitate both survivors' and victims' catharsis and grieving. In both cases, consultants and managers should provide organizations with a good theory or model to support their work with survivors and victims of downsizing. In this province, the school restructuring process initiated by the Department of Education and the school boards created a cluster of feelings among teachers and other school personnel. The fear, uncertainty and anxiety associated with losing jobs by these group of people were expressed in no uncertain manner in the Telegram and other local papers.
Noer (1993) talks about the old paradigm managers and the new paradigm managers. He notes that in the old paradigm the manager's role and description will usually be some combination of the trite and dusty 'ings' of the machine age: planning, organizing, directing, coordinating, and evaluating. Most of these old paradigm managerial functions involve data that can be generated by a computer and handled directly by the employee without any management interaction. The real role of managers in the new paradigm is helping. Managers with basic helping skills are powerful tools in a survivor work force. No one likes to be directed, organized, coordinated, or controlled. When these things are done 'to' employees, they turn around and do them 'to' someone else. The result is a manipulative, co-dependent work force bonded around everything but good work, (pp. 129-130). Thus, managers at all levels of organizations can learn and use basic helping skills. Noer (1993, p. 130) suggests that "a helping skills workshop for all managers and organizational reinforcement of new paradigm skills and behaviors through the performance appraisal and compensation systems can be powerful tools for ushering in new paradigm behavior." He outlines "_ings" in old and new paradigms that differentiate the changing nature of today's organizations: changes are to be made from old paradigm "-ings", for example, controlling, evaluating, directing and planning to new paradigm "-ings", for example, helping, empowering, coaching and listening (Noer 1993, Fig. 8.1, p. 81). In the area of teacher education, downsizing and merger of schools have accelerated the debate on the best way of providing services to teachers and other school personnel -- both in-service and in the field. Many education documents prepared in this province reflect aspects of this debate. Suggestions have been made to organize seminars, summer institutes, conferences and forums to consider and evaluate the need to incorporate new paradigm (--ings) as described by Noer and others to train and educate people who play and might play managerial roles in the school system in this province.
There are various paradigms or world views that are presently influencing how we perceive, think and talk about organizations (Carlson, 1996). Today, numerous paradigms are available which enable us to understand how various organizations function. Paradigms seem to play a major role in our reasoning processes. Three major paradigms which are often mention in the literature are: positivism, interpretism and criticism. The research done by graduate students in this Faculty (Singh et. al., 1995; Singh, 2000c) have used these three and other perspectives to study various aspects of educational system in this province. The "local knowledge" produced in this way have been very useful in teacher education in this Faculty, to say the least.
In the following several sections the focus is on the metaphor of culture as applied to organizations. At the end of these sections, the author also describes how he and a colleague have been successful in incorporating some of the ideas discussed below into a research project in the area of teacher internship. In managing change in organizations, managers and leaders need to understand organizational culture. In the school and unciversity systems, managerial and leadership roles are performed by varieties of people, for example, teachers, parents, academic and professional staff. Basically, a cultural perspective on organizations informs us that an organizational's culture holds the organizational together, separates it from outside groups and individuals, and as a form of magnetism draws its members together. There are many images associated with the notion of culture; an organizational culture has been defined by researchers and scholars in many different ways (Carlson, 1996, p. 34). Schein (1996) emphasizes the need to focus on the concept of culture in organizational studies: In attention to social systems in organizations has led researchers to underestimate the importance of culture -- shared norms, values, and assumptions -- in how organizations function. Concepts for understanding culture in organizations have values only when they derive from observations of real behavior in organizations, when they make sense of organizational data, and when they are definable enough to generate further study (p. 229).
What it is important to keep in mind is that there are many types of organizational cultures. Carlson (1996, p. 35) points out "typically more attention is given to organizational wide cultures and subcultures with organizations, with little recognition and/or acceptance of organizational ambiguities." In Meyerson's (1991) opinion, a formulation of culture that acknowledges ambiguities will more likely recognize and potentially legitimatize a diverse chorus of voices, interests, and perspectives that potentially exists within an organizational... This view, which sees culture as dynamic and multi-vocal, represents a radical departure from those views that depict culture as a mechanistic, hierarchical system of stable relationships and universal symbols (p. 260).
In any organizational culture there are forces of integration and ambiguity as well as the internalizing of the two (Trice, 1991). Trice (1991) proposes a theory of center and periphery to make sense of this tension. He explains that a set of ultimate ideologies appears to consistently emerge at the center where there is considerable consensus about each one even though they may conflict among one another. These, in turn, radiate outward from the center toward the periphery in varying degrees of consensus to diverse segments of the periphery. This process tends to make for a motley and tangled skein of meanings loosely held together by a distinct center (p. 306).
Organizations have occupational cultures. Not enough attention has been given to this factor in understanding the nature of organizational culture. Schein (1996, p. 235) points out that what is different today is that organizations are more in trouble and that the environment is changing faster. leaders both in the private and public sector are wrestling with difficult economic problems, and the public at large has become cynical about the money spent by organizations, particularly public organizations, on social services... All of this requires tremendous learning, how to collaborate, how to become more trusting and open in communications, how to deal with dependency in the new kinds of fluid hierarchical relationships, how to wield personal versus positional power without losing the commitment of subordinates, how to design organizations with fluid boundaries, and so on. Much attention has been given to the concept of organizational learning. But what troubles Schein (1996) and others (Argyris and Schon, 1996) is that organizations do not learn. They display what these scholars call "learning disabilities" or "defensive routines." These disabilities and routines, they point out, get in the way of the kind of learning that may be needed in today's fast changing world. Schein (1996) focuses on three cultures of management which, for him, seem to impede organizational learning. He labels these cultures as: the "operators," the "engineers" and the "executives." Understanding of the critical role that these three cultures play in organizations that are attempting to improve their operation is necessary. Understanding these cultures, we believe, also helps us to experience downsizing as survivors. This will become clear as we further explore how these three cultures function in organizations. Schein (1996, p. 236) defines the "operators" as "the live managers and workers who make and deliver the products and services that fulfill the organizational's basic mission." From the management's view, he says, it is this group which is typically targeted "in the sense that 'developing managers' is typically conceived of as training people how to better handle the operators in the organizational." His research shows that "it is the operators' group that discovers the systemic interdependencies among the functions and learns to deal with them." The problem he points out is "that the innovations and more effective operations do not diffuse upward in the organizational or last" (p. 236). In order to understand why this happens, we need to understand how two other cultures interact with the "operator culture," Schein says. According to him in every organizational there is a core technology that underlies what the organizational does, and that technology is designed and monitored by various kinds of 'engineers' who share a common occupational culture. I have labeled this community 'engineers,' but it includes the technocrats and core designers in any functional group (p. 236). The interesting point here is the perspective held by the "engineers" as a cultural group. Schein (1996) gives an example. He says that from the point of view of the 'engineers' on their way to Boeing, the cockpit crew is not necessary because the plane can be flown by computers from the ground. The social interaction that is necessary under unanticipated crisis conditions or the need to reassure passengers is viewed as irrelevant and expensive. If given the choice, the engineers would replace people with machines and routines. Engineers tend to view the need for complex human teams, the need to build relationships and trust, and the need to elicit the commitment of employees as unfortunate and undesirable derivates of 'human nature' to be circumvented, if possible, because they are so hard to manage and control (p. 237). What process reveals the presence of a third critical occupational culture in organizations -- the 'executives'? Schein (1996) says that we discover this culture when we notice that operators' initiatives to improve their work is thwarted by the 'engineers.' The "operators" want to implement their new systematic insights and new found desires to work in effective teams, but the 'engineers' do not provide support to their initiatives. Instead, the 'engineers' keep proposing technical solutions that make operators very skeptical and feel threatened because they might lose their job as a result of the technical solution. The resolution of the tension between operators and engineers often result in proposals for new machines or new training programs that have to be pushed 'up' in the organizational for approval (Thomas, 1994, p. 237). Who is asked to approve the 'engineers' request? The "executives" - the third cultural group. Schein (1996) here is talking of the "executives" who have worked hard and have been promoted to the position of CEO (Chief Executive Officer). He points out that the essence of this role is financial accountability to the owner shareholders, often embodied in the principle to keep the stock price and dividends as high as possible... The essence of their status is that they are the place where the buck stops, where ultimate accountability lies" (p. 237). From the viewpoint of this group of people "people become 'human resources' and cost factors rather than capital investment (p. 238). Schein explains that one consequence is that when the operator culture attempts to improve effectiveness by building learning capacity, which requires time and resources, the executives disallow the proposed activities on the grounds that the financial returns cannot be demonstrated or that too many exceptions are involved that would undermine the control system. Executives thus unconsciously collude with the engineers in wanting to minimize the human factor (p. 238). He further points out that in effect, all of the research findings about the importance of teamwork, collaboration, commitment, and involvement fall on deaf executive ears because in the executive culture, those are not the important variables to consider (p. 238). What interests us in Schein's discussion of the three cultures of management is his observation, based on a growing body of research (e.g., Donaldson and Lorsch, 1983; Kotter and Heskett, 1992; Collins and Porras, 1994), that some organizations have been able to overcome the negative impacts of short-run financial thinking by evolving cultures that integrate the executive, the engineering, and the operator point of view, but those organizations are still the exception rather than the rule, and we still do not fully understand how they did it... (p. 238). Significance of Crossing Cultural Boundaries The final point Schein (1996) makes in his discussion of the three cultures is that "we will not learn about the power of culture unless we cross real cultural boundaries" (p. 239). Incidentally, in an another paper the author has detailed the significance of the notion of crossing cultural boundaries in relationship to the notion of the cultural worker by pointing out the fact that one of the defining attributes of a cultural worker is that he/she has learned how to cross cultural borders with relative ease. Further, this author has observed that several cultural groups operate and can be identified when an academic unit in a university setting is being downsized. In these circumstances, cultural workers learn how to interact with various groups effectively (Singh, 2000, b) and become leaders and managers in different unique situations. Organizational Change as Cultural Change Laurent (1989) suggests that the management of organizational change depends upon our capacity to conceive it. Our premises, assumptions, and conceptions about the nature of organizations and the nature of change set limits to the change process. Therefore, in order to enhance our understanding of organizational change, we need to probe our assumptions and beliefs about the nature of organizations and the nature of their change in a systemic manner. According to him a probing process conducted at three levels of analysis -- individual, organizational and societal -- can benefit our understanding of organizational change. Laurent (1989) analyzed organizational change at those three levels and reached eleven conclusions, providing us with a number of interesting insights about organizational change and its management. For example, he points out that to a great extent, the dynamics of organizations reflect what is conceived by individuals as being probable, possible, feasible, and desirable (p. 84). Like Greenfield (1973), he thinks that organizations are social inventions...'organizational change' refers to the ongoing nature of that invention process which is embodied in the actors' assumptions (p. 84). Further, Laurent asserts that organizational change should be understood as a process of evolution. We need to ask two questions:
Managing organizational change has little
to do with shifting State A to State B; it has more to do with transforming State A into
State B, which is very different. A process of transformation requires equal
attention to be given to understanding the past, assessing the present, and envisioning
the future (p. 84). Laurent (1989) explains that "a spiral is a more accurate imagery of change than a straight line." While a straight line imagery of change may provide impetus and movement, it needs to be balanced by the insight of many eastern cultures, which exhibit more of a 'being' orientation where individuals and groups are defined predominantly in terms of affinitive relations (p. 84). Laurent (1989) goes on to say that organizations have a tremendous capacity for change, but this point has not been sufficiently stressed in organizational literature. He argues that organizations have a much greater capacity for change than smaller organisms like the individuals who populate them, or larger entities like the societies and cultures that constitute their environment (p. 85). He further discusses the relative change capability of individuals, organizations and societies and states that organizations are the privileged places where change can occur most drastically. They can also be conceived as the most significant levers of both individual and societal change. They mediate important changes such as technological change (p. 86). Organizations are born in the minds of people. Laurent (1989) states that for organizations to change, people have to change their minds about them, requiring a collective change of mind in the social fabric of the enterprise. However, this cannot occur without the lever of leadership (p. 87). To manage organizational change and to provide leadership for organizational change are two different things. Laurent (1989) points out that examples abound of carefully planned organizational changes that have failed in spite of systematic management. Management may be an excellent tool to maintain stability, to ensure survival and keep things going. But management is not sufficient to transform or revitalize an organizational. Minds cannot be managed. They can only be inspired (pp. 87-88). As mentioned at the beginning of this section, the ideas discussed above were helpful for this author to develop research projects in the area of teacher internship. In a study done by this author it is suggested that there are three predominant internship cultures within which the teacher interns have to operate. These are: the cultures of partnership, the cultures of collaboration and the cultures of reflective and critical internship in teacher education. Therefore, there is need to do more studies to understand the details of each of these cultures, how these three cultures interact with each other and, what the real impact the interaction between them has on teacher interns' learning and teaching capabilities in the classroom (Singh, 1998, Rose, 1998). The Challenges of Dualities in Organizational Cultures Organizations can be seen as cultures, and organizational change can thus be thought of as cultural change (Laurent, 1989, p. 88). One element of culture is that it is always learned. There are organizations which are learning organizations, thus more prone to change. On the other hand there are organizations which display "learning disabilities" or "defensive routines". (Schein, 1996; Argyris and Schon, 1996). Most complex organizations seen as cultures face the challenges posed by dualities such as: competition - partnership, differentiation - integration, loose - tight, control - entrepreneurship, planned - opportunistic, formal - informal, vision - reality, top down - bottom up, tolerance - forthrightness, individuality - teamwork, flexibility - focus, decentralization - centralization, business logic - technical logic, to name a few. Evans and Doz (1989, p. 219) point out that "organizations are besieged by the paradoxes that these dualities create." Today's complex organizations are both highly differentiated and tightly integrated. Thus, "they need both strong formal and informal systems, the properties of both looseness and tightness..." and "there is a need for specialization and generalism, for balancing business logic with technical logic" (Evans and Doz, 1989, p. 220). So the key guiding notion here is of "dynamic balance." Evans and Doz (1989, p. 224) summarizes the findings of many studies in today's turbulent and competitive environment and state that the key top management task becomes one of maintaining a dynamic balance between key oppositions. Dualities should be viewed not as threats to consistency and coherence, but as opportunities for creative organizational development, for gaining competitive advantage, for organizational learning and renewal. In any organization there is tension and change. An inverted U-shaped relationship exits between change and tension, according to Evans and Doz (1989, p. 225, Fig. 12.3). Evans and Doz (1989) state that many studies show that "to facilitate evolutionary change in the organizational, an optimal degree of tension needs to be built into its culture -- neither too much nor too little" (p. 224). Today the challenge for managers is to develop dualistic capabilities in their organizations. Evan and Doz (1989, p. 225-26) raise a number of questions: How can a complex multinational develop the capabilities to balance opposites? How can top management develop and maintain dynamic balance? How can one exploit dualities so as to fuel strategic and organizational development? The dualistic paradigm raises new questions for researchers and executives, questions that are pragmatic 'hows.' The organization of today's classrooms is very complex (Singh, 2001; Martin, 1985). In the context of doing action research in the area of teacher internship, this author had observed and had been told during the conversations by teacher inters, co-operating teachers and university supervisors that some of the ideas presented in this section had been very helpful to them. This is not very surprising because teachers spend a major proportion of their time in managing cultures of their classrooms and schools. For example, consider the composition and resulting cultures of the classrooms and schools in this province, where all classrooms must incorporate the Pathways Program (Younghusband, 2000; Philpott, 2001) mandated by this province's Department of Education. The teachers in this situation have to face the challenges posed by the dualities in their classrooms in an imaginative manner. They have to be creative in understanding the new context of their classrooms and use this understanding to set new plans and goals in order to act differently to produce desired outcomes. Dualities also exist in many other forms in today's classrooms and schools. For example, Wilf Martin (1985) in his studies of the schools and the classrooms in the Atlantic Provinces in Canada has identified many dualities. According to him, students have many perspectives on the classrooms and on schools which they have to attend for several years by law. For example, students in his research thought of teachers in terms of: helpful - unhelpful, understanding - not understanding, and co-operative - not co-operative. Further, students in his studies were also concerned with such topics such as rules in the school, homework given by teachers, teachers' pet and class victims and students embarrassment. In all these areas students had generated their own dualities to make sense of their classroom and school cultures. In this authors's own research with seconded teachers (Singh, et. al., 1996), he found the following dualities existed in the school and teacher cultures: master teacher - regular teacher, good teacher - bad teacher, novice teacher - experienced teacher, burnt out teacher - energetic teacher, committed teacher - uncommitted teacher, and student centered teacher - personal career oriented teacher. These dualities appeared in the context of teacher internship process when the following questions were asked: who should be seconded from the school system to function as university based student interns' supervisors? Several conflicting issues arose around these dualities, which the author observed having potential for negative impact on the teacher internship process and on the morale of many teachers in the context of school cultures. Many issues - such as Who is the master teacher? How should this be decided? What new status should be accorded to the position of the master teacher at university and the school board levels? In what ways should this new status be rewarded? What is expected of the master teacher? -- created a great deal of tension and conflict among many teachers and school administrators. The process of naming master teachers made some teachers overly competitive, while it made others develop cynical attitudes towards the teaching profession, teacher internship, Faculty of Education and the school system. Some seconded teachers were able to maintain dynamic balance between the opposites. Evans and Doz (1989, p. 220) suggest that what top management needs is the ability to understand an organizational in terms of these dualistic processes, in terms of inherent conflicts and tensions, oscillations from one side of the duality to the other. More particularly, the need is for road maps and mechanisms to build dualistic properties into their firms, to harness the tensions constructively, to play on the chords of opposing polarities. In any organization going through the process of restructuring, as did the school system in this province, one could experience many dualities at work. Therefore, both the survivors and the victims of restructuring need to make sense of specific operating dualities in their organizations for healthy survival. Organizational Cultures, 'Hot Groups' and 'Managers Lib' As organizations change, many consequences
will follow. Leavitt (1996) thinks two things are bound to happen:
By "hot groups,"Leavitt means a small group of people who are full of life and exciting ideas, and are involved in innovative research. Although organizations are being downsized (restructured), they are not necessarily shrinking. In fact, Leavitt (1996, p. 292) suggests that they're growing larger via mergers and conquests. They're also hiring new people as they layoff old ones, so there will still be managers and they will still be members of large institutions. Second, in the volatile new organizational environment, those freed up managers are likely to make much greater use of a heretofore rare and often despised organizational tool, small, task-obsessed hot groups. The environments of today's organizations are changing at an accelerating rate. All organizations are becoming more like research and development departments. That means everyone has to innovate and develop new products and processes. Managers have to do the tasks that ennoble the human spirit (Lipman-Blumen, 1996). Leavitt (1996, p. 297) says such a quest evokes a Breughal-like organizational vision: dynamic, busy, peopled by many active little groups scattered all over the canvas, each working like the devil. Some are deeply into competitive games, some battle against monstrous enemies, still others work and play together in collaborative alliances, and some are just parting company following yesterday's success or failure. It is a vital human panorama, urgent, flexible, mobile, the whole only loosely coupled, quite egalitarian, and vaguely bounded, a dramatic contrast vaguely bounded, a dramatic contrast to the grim and massive organizational monoliths of the past. And the people who work in those organizations? Quite like those who preceded them, except they are freer, much more autonomous, and much more deeply and positively involved in their work. Optimism run amok? According to Leavitt, if managers want to do interesting and innovative work, they should think about creating hot groups in their organizations. He states that the smallish, temporary groups are excellent mechanisms for dealing with many of the ever novel and ever more complex problems imposed and enabled by the new world (Leavitt 1996, p. 298). Leavitt is obviously talking about what managers can do during the restructuring process in different types of organizations, but it is worthwhile to keep in mind that teachers, principals and other school personnel often play manager's role in many situations in the schools system. After all, schools are social and bureaucratic organizations. Thus the ideas expressed by Leavitt have implications for the school system during the time of restructuring, and also for the various academic units in a university which is being downsized. The author of this article has developed this theme in another related articles entitled, "Practising Cultural Work and Roving Leadership" (Singh, 2000, b), and "Reflective Notes on Downsizing and Change Processes" (Singh, 2000, a). In these articles the author has detailed how it could be possible for many teachers, principals, parents, administrators and other school personnel to function as "hot groups" during the period of rapid school restructuring process by "liberating" themselves from the constraints put on the organizations during the period of educational reform. Similarly, based on his observations, the author has also described how academic and professional staff in an academic unit in a downsized and middle sized Canadian university can do the same. In this author's view, both cultural workers and roving leaders functionin many ways as "hot groups" as described by Leavitt. Summary All these patterns of organizational change described herein, which are taking place in the larger context of capitalist modernity, explain much about structural changes of organizations and changing cultures in them, but there are still more factors. Individuals or small groups of individuals still have a huge impact on changing organizational cultures in the fragile moments when new organizational structures, cultures and processes emerge and take their moral and ethical shapes. In a similar vein, Singh (2000, a) has earlier written that a big change in any society as whole is often a result of millions of minute changes brought by individuals struggling to resolve issues affecting the quality of their lives and communities at a particular time. It is the desire of multitudes of individuals to improve their own and their loved one's everyday lives that functions as a catalyst to bring about substantive levels of changes in the quality of living in communities and in societies and cultures as a whole. When individuals think, talk and act this way, their social selves expand. This expanding social self in turn could produce happier and unhappier consequences when it impacts on the existing culture. There are many examples of this in history. Let us think about this for a moment; let us see the larger societal structure and the big global picture for a moment. Let us ask if it would be possible to imagine today's South Africa coming into being without Nelson Mendela.
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