D

Summary

Decoupling

Decoupling is one of several ways in which organisations might resist (or not) external, so-called ‘institutional’ pressures to be and act in a certain way (see, for example, Coburn, 2004), with other possibilities ranging from enthusiastic adoption, through grudging acceptance and avoidance, to refusal. In this spectrum, decoupling is a form of avoidance. It originated as a mechanism to explain lack of intra-organisational change in the literatures on institutional theory, with landmark contributions from, among others, Weick (1976) and Meyer and Rowan (1977). Weick (1976) pointed out that rational theories of change in organisations, including schools, often fail to account for what actually happens there and what might motivate it. Weick (1976) subsequently developed the notion of ‘loose coupling’ to indicate the ways in which ‘coupled events are responsive, but that each event also preserves its own identity and some evidence of its physical or logical separateness’ (p 3).

Meyer and Rowan (1977) built on Weick's (1976) insight by suggesting that a binary exists between those two elements of an organisation that are most often loosely coupled or decoupled. The first element consists of the organisation's structures, which grow to reflect the demands of the environment or what Meyer and Rowan (1977) call the ‘institutional rules’ (p 340) where institutional refers to beyond the organisation. These rules ‘function as myths which organisations incorporate, gaining legitimacy, resources, stability, and enhanced survival prospects’ (Meyer and Rowan, 1977, p 340). (In other framings, these institutional rules would constitute the policy landscape to be resisted, accommodated or embraced). The second element, decoupled from the first, consists of the technical realm of routine work activities within the organisation, which may operate according to quite different logics or imperatives. This means that ‘conformity to institutionalised rules could promote the long-term survival of the organisation without necessarily increasing its efficiency or technical performance’ (Oplatka, 2004, p 149).

Taking up this analytic in relation to education, Oplatka (2004) notes that ‘one aspect of schools’ conformity to socially legitimated changes and innovations is that their organisational structure and processes mirror the norms, values, and ideologies institutionalised in society’ (p 148). In many states and jurisdictions internationally, these ideologies contemporarily will be largely grounded in market-based logics.