Aberrations Of Post-Bureaucratic Models Of Education Reform In Russia

Abstract

The article addresses issues related to the development of globalization processes within the Russian education system. In detail, a hybrid, post-bureaucratic management concept is considered for education. The thesis is proclaimed that essentially non-formal management models were natural for the Soviet regime, which was manifested in particular in undemocratic decision-making procedures. The article suggests an analysis of the social and cultural conditions of the previous post-Soviet Modernization of education, there is a decline in the regulatory potential of moral norms in educational policy. Namely, the rootedness of ethical norms in society, combined with the development of democratic institutions, creates opportunities for effective work of hybrid management models. The position on non-democratic mechanisms of formation of educational policy, its imitational, and absurdity is argued. This position is based on several facts in the current stage of education reform in Russia. The effects of absurdity as a management technology are discussed. It is concluded that many globalization models (especially models of a network) immanently contain serious threats to democracy that openly manifest themselves in Russia. But in the future, post-bureaucratic governance models can become the basis for curtailing democratic institutions.

Keywords: Absurditydemocracyeducationglobalizationpedagogical knowledgepost bureaucracy

Introduction

Globalization involves almost all spheres of modern life, including national cultures, education systems, and the position of children in society. As a rule, this process is defined as an increase in global organizational factors in economic, political, and cultural life accompanied by the reduced role of state entities. The analysis of various aspects and mechanisms of this process may differ according to a scientific approach applied and a researcher’s vision.

Globalization is a very complex phenomenon, which is the result of various social, economic, and political processes and actions of various agents.

It is not surprising that globalization is accompanied by borrowings (or attempts to borrow) models of economic, political, and cultural relations of the countries-winners by outsider countries.

All that has been said is also true concerning the sphere of education in general and the sphere of education management in particular.

The ideas of hybrid management, post-bureaucratic reforms in governance are an integral part of the “recipe for success” of the public education system in the global world. At least, this trend is manifested (more precisely, declared) in Russia.

However, an isolated consideration of the problems of administrative reforms will not be entirely correct since they are associated with a broad cultural, scientific, and political context.

The concept of post-bureaucracy is undoubtedly connected with the ideology of neoliberalism. Neoliberalism is many-sided enough, but a number of its manifestations may be singled out about the sphere of education.

Common to the use of neoliberal models in developing countries and post-communist countries is their fundamentalism, rigidity, and disregard of greater social groups’ interests (Barber, 2008).

Such examples can be found even in democratic and developed European countries. Here, we may refer to the opposition and revolts against the stifling marketization of universities, as expressed in the slogan “Education, not job training” (Karner, 2011, pp. 134-135), and perceive a negative assessment of market-dominant practical pieces of training in many American schools (Elmore, 2014).

The discourse of neoliberalism is closely related to postmodernism and, in many ways, opposes itself to the values of traditional society, including post-Enlightenment values (Badley, 2005; Fass, 2006, p. 256; Seabrook, 2004, pp. 52-53)

The reason why we pay attention to these features is that the translation into other sociocultural soil of the concepts of hybrid management, "new" management, etc. implicitly includes a rather broad theoretical and ideological neoliberal context. Let us mention two more components of such context: commercialization and fetishization of variability. The role of commercialization as an instrument of social management in recent decades has significantly increased.

The consequences of commercialization have a profound effect in the sphere of professional education: the increase in competition and flexibility in the labor market only creates a demand for commercially valuable skills, resulting in the fact that studies and academic disciplines with little commercial value are disappearing (Nunn, 2001).

A commonplace for contemporary political and economic studies is the idea of innovations as the most important quality of successful economic and political agents.

In this respect, the phenomenon of liquidity, the value of dynamism and instability are becoming increasingly and independently important. The report issued by the National Research Council of the USA demonstrates the primacy of formal values that emphasize the processes of social changes over substantive values (Global Networks and Local Values: A Comparative Look at Germany and the United States, 2001, pp. 224-225).

No one disputes that to maintain its position in the market, the economic agent must constantly work on improving his product.

However, the mechanical extension of this truth to the sphere of education no longer seems so indisputable, since social institutions possess great inertia. Besides, when questions about the pace and resources of innovation are placed in the center of the discussion, the question “why?” is pushed into the background.

Thus, the extension of the experience of using non-bureaucratic, state-public management mechanisms in the education system should always be considered in a broad globalization context.

Problem Statement

The merit of the first serious study of the bureaucracy belongs to M. Weber. Following M. Weber, the Aston school (a scientific school) perceived bureaucracy as a necessary component of any type of organization with a macro formal structure (Clegg, 2012, p. 63).

Bureaucracy was reviewed as an element beyond political power which serves the interests of society as a whole (Clegg, 2012, pp. 64-65). Further, the thorough research of bureaucracy has shown that the values of bureaucracy as a social layer vary considerably and can be determined by both general social and specific factors, such as professional training or the character of a particular bureaucratic organization (Meier & O’Toole, 2006, p. 132). Often it is bureaucrats that are more sensitive to the interests of social strata that do not have sufficient influence in the political sphere. (Meier & O’Toole, 2006, p. 139). The bureaucracy was criticized before, and I am criticizing it now.

Almost any text that analyses the aspects of education management in the 20th century criticizes the absolute power of the bureaucracy in some manner (Fantini, 1968, pp. 5-6).

The analysis of bureaucracy’s disadvantages is confined to acknowledgment that under certain circumstances bureaucratic values can be more effective and efficient than political values (Meier & O’Toole, 2006, p. 132).

The existence of this specific class of values is compounded by the problem of staff behavior management that exists in every hierarchical organization (Fukuyama, 2010, p. 135).

However, control over employee behavior is not the only problem that can be found in hierarchical organizations. Independent departments of these organizations and even entire structures can (and do) avoid performing their primary tasks (Meier & O’Toole, 2006, p. 100).

Under the influence of these and other circumstances, in recent decades, drastic changes in views regarding bureaucracy, both in sociology and the management of private and public sectors, have been affected by the revolutionary rhetoric of management consultants such as Tom Peters and Gary Hamel, new public management, “public choice” theory, the managerial cult of “excellence”, and the belief that markets or quasi-markets should supplant “bureaucracy in public administration” (Clegg, 2012, pp. 66-67).

Old bureaucratic organizations were replaced by network organizations that aim to operate using mixed methods, which integrate self-regulation with the legislative framework (Global Networks and Local Values: A Comparative Look at Germany and the United States, 2001, pp. 228-229).

However, certain “fragments” of the old bureaucracy exist implicitly beyond the façade of modern bureaucracy because powerful elites, in developing operational autonomy in every possible way, attempt to preserve centralized strategic control (Clegg, 2012, pp. 68-69).

In the context of network organizations, people’s lives are more separated; thus, institutionalized dialogue and cooperation are managed through sometimes infirm and unclear networks of control over influence and friendship; an employee’s careers “will be liquid careers”, irregular and project-based (Clegg, 2012, p.82).

The key result of such network post-bureaucracy is presented by the deprivation of an organizational mindset or even the disappearance of organizational memory. In this respect, politicians and managers may quickly forget relevant recent experiences (Clegg, 2012, p. 91).

If the basic structural elements of an organization are destroyed, its form, character, and identity are lost. This may result in a situation where the goals on which basis the organization was founded can also be damaged (Byrkjeflot & du Gay, 2012, pp. 85-109).

Although network organizations and hybrid management systems are often described as the optimal organizational form, however, according to Frances Fukuyama, this form is unattainable.

Thus, there are compelling arguments against the absolute efficiency of network post-bureaucratic organizations. An additional critical feature of network organization is that it creates an incomparably wide range of opportunities for corruption.

If a classic bureaucracy (taken with all its disadvantages) is a “habitual enemy” to systems of legal and political control, especially within a true democracy, then network organizations, together with non-formalized and traditional ties, are fruitful grounds for corporate embezzlement and related machinations.

Add a hallowed totem of innovativeness and instability mixed with an absence of organizational memory (owning to the absence of actual organizations as sustainable hierarchical structures), and we will have an environment with a uniquely high risk of corruption.

It is worth mentioning that history has already seen organizations that have successfully replaced state control in the spheres where corruption-resistant features were not implemented — the Mafia. The Mafia, especially in its traditional form, is perfect – even naturally – suited to the network scheme in any management structure.

This entails serious risks for all institutions in a democratic society. It is quite obvious that the most striking examples appear in areas in which globalization mechanisms begin to extend network models of organizations in societies with low levels of democratic features.

Research Questions

• The extent to which the use of forms of post-bureaucratic effectively in countries with a low level of democratic development?

• What impact on post-bureaucratic mechanisms have socio-cultural characteristics of post-totalitarian society?

Purpose of the Study

The purpose of the research is to analyze the consequences of the use of post-bureaucratic management models in Russian education. The results are presenting in this article.

Research Methods

The design of the proposed research belongs to the category of philosophical. Main research methods - Literature review и Secondary data analysis.

Findings

Post-Soviet society may not be considered safe from this point of view. According to Reddaway (2012), the result of Yeltsin’s rule was the creation of a perverted form of capitalism and a group of super-rich oligarchs, some of whom he allowed to play roles in his government (p. 101).

The same author concludes that post-Soviet political systems imitate democracy, i.e., have democratic facades, while lacking a basic essence. Wedel (2001) shows the importance of the informal systems of power in the post-Soviet society, and that “the localization of the most important political-economic influence has been resolved in the control of the interface between state and private, bureaucracy and market, and legal and illegal” (р. 4). Besides, she notes such an important feature as the unit of decision making is the informal group. “The second property of informal systems is that informal groups and networks operate in, mediate, and blur different spheres-state and private, bureaucracy and market, legal and illegal-boundaries widely accepted in the practice and rhetoric of public policy and administration” (Wedel, 2001, р. 4).

The advantages of post-bureaucratic, informational management models fully manifest themselves in societies with established democracies, in societies where the majority of subjects are bearers of positive business ethics and universal morality. Unfortunately, this post-Soviet society is out of the loop.

Conclusion

Globalization is a very complex and multidimensional phenomenon. Its effects in each state, or branch of the economy, have both unique and common features. Education reforms in Russia can provide a rather demonstrative experience of what metamorphoses management models are undergoing that have shown their success in developed countries.

The concepts of post-bureaucracy, and the corresponding administrative forms, proved to be a very convenient mask for informal network structures, rooted in the clan system of the old Soviet political elite.

The hidden, shadowed nature of decision-making and power mechanisms challenges both the mechanisms of democratic control over them and their effectiveness. In the practice of managing Russian education, examples of absurd decisions are rather frequent. Absurdity in management not only shows insufficient competence of decision-makers and imperfections of decision-making infrastructure, but it also serves as a destructive technology directed against true professionals, destroying their basic value orientations.

The reasons for this situation, as we have tried to demonstrate, lie in the fact that post-bureaucratic management models implicitly assume that all workers have grown up in a democratic tradition based on the values of the Enlightenment and are not able to imagine anything else, and their behavior is within the framework of business and human ethics. The lack of such a platform in post-communist society leads to the fact that new management models begin to poorly provide results and create effects that hinder and even destroy the development of democracy.

It seems to us that this problem is not only a problem of post-communist and developing societies. Blurring the ethics and values of the Enlightenment in the global world destroys those constraints that make hybrid management models safe and effective, which can ultimately lead to the degeneration of democratic institutions.

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