The new managerialism in education management: corporatization or organizational learning?

During the 1990s, many schools and universities had begun to phase out traditional forms of educational governance and adopted forms and practices used in private and corporate management. Yet, the meaning (and implementation) of these changes is contested. Proponents of the new managerialism in education argue that managerial methods are necessary to respond to the demands of a changed environment with dramatically increased degrees of uncertainty in a knowledge-dependent society. Opponents view the new managerialism in the context of capitalist corporatism penetrating heretofore sacrosanct boundaries of non-market institutions. In this paper, I argue that the ongoing changes in education management are better understood as instances of organizational learning in response to the limits of bureaucratic organization in turbulent environments.