Decision making, distributed leadership and the objective knowledge growth framework
Authors: Chitpin Stephanie 
Published: October 2019

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to know the extent to which a decision-making framework assists in providing holistic, comprehensive descriptions of strategies used by school leaders engaging with distributed leadership practices. The process by which principals and other education leaders interact various school-based actors to arrive at a distributed decision-making process is addressed through this paper. The position taken suggests that leadership does not reside solely with principals or other education leaders, but sustains the view that the actions of various actors within a school setting contribute to fuller and more comprehensive accounts of distributed leadership.

Design/methodology/approach

While the application of rational/analytical approaches to organizational problems or issues can lead to effective decisions, dilemmas faced by principals are often messy, complex, ill-defined and not easily resolved through algorithmic reason or by the application of rules, as evidenced by the two stories provided by Agnes, a third-year principal in a small countryside elementary school in a small northeastern community, and by John, a novice principal in a suburb of a large Southwestern metropolitan area.

Findings

The value of the objective knowledge growth framework (OKGF) process is found in its ability to focus Agnes’s attention on things that she may have overlooked, such as options she might have ignored or information that she might have resisted or accepted, as well as innumerable preparations she might have neglected had she not involved all the teachers in her school.

Research limitations/implications

The implementation of the OKGF may appear, occasionally, to introduce unnecessary points along this route and may not be laboriously applied to all decision-making situations. However, the instinctively pragmatic solutions provided by this framework will often produce effective results. Therefore, in order to reduce potentially irrational outcomes, the systematic approach employed by the OKGF is preferable. The OKGF must be managed, implemented and sustained locally if it is to provide maximum benefits to educational decision makers.

Practical implications

Given the principals’ changing roles, it is abundantly clear that leadership practice can no longer involve just one person, by necessity, and it is becoming increasingly difficult to imagine how things could have been accomplished otherwise. Expecting the principal to single-handedly lead efforts to improve instruction is impractical, particularly when leadership may be portrayed as what school principals do, especially when other potential sources of leadership have been ignored or treated as secondary or unimportant because that leadership has not emanated from the principal’s office (Spillane, 2006). In this paper, the authors have striven to reveal how a perspective of distributed leadership, when used in conjunction with the objective knowledge growth framework, can be effective in assisting principals in resolving problems of practice.

Social implications

Different school leaders of varying status within the educative organization benefit from obtaining different answers to similar issues, as evidenced by John’s and Agnes’s leadership tangles. Lumby and English (2009) differentiate between “routinization” and “ritualization.” They argue, “They are not the same. The former erases the need for human agency while the latter requires it” (p. 112). The OKGF process, therefore, cannot provide school leaders with the “right” answers to their educative quandaries, simply because any two school leaders, facing the same issues, may utilize differing theories, solutions, choices or options which may satisfy their issues in response to their own individual contextual factors. Similarly, in a busy day or week, school leaders may be inclined to take the shortest distance between two points in the decision-making process; problem identification to problem resolution.

Originality/value

Should the OKGF process empower decision makers to obtain sound resolutions to their educative issues by assisting them in distancing themselves from emotions or confirmation biases that may distract them from resolving school problems, its use will have been worthwhile.