DAY CARE CENTER: LEADERSHIP AND MANAGEMENT

Day Care Center: Leadership and Management

Day Care Center: Leadership and Management

Introduction

The organizational structure optimization of enterprises is a dynamic process of organizational structure adapting to business strategy. In essence, it is a re-selected process for organizational structure from a small part to the overall. This is an inevitable requirement for the enterprise to adapt to the external environment. Organizational structure is the "skeleton" of organization operating and business management. It has unique strategic significance.  A child care center must have an organizational structure with a clearly defined legal and administrative responsibility in the form and manner directed by the Department which must be submitted as part of the application for a license.

Statement of the Problem

Every child care center must have on-site director. The child care center can only operate without an on-site director for a period not exceeding a total of sixty days within the licensing year. A qualified person must be in charge in the interim period.

Literature Review

Management and leadership

Indicative of the newness and developing nature of the theoretical discourse in leadership in early childhood, the search for the meaning of leadership has been plagued with lack of clarity (see Hujala & Puroila, 1998; Kagan & Bowman, 1997). One of the most important and recurrent conceptual debates has centred on the separation of management and leadership functions of child care centre directors. Rodd (1996) has led the debate by steadfastly arguing that management is present oriented, concerned with implementing the centre's mission or day-to-day work. She argues that leadership, in contrast, is future oriented, linked with the articulation and realisation of visions. Jorde Bloom (1997) states that the separation of management and leadership in the everyday work of Pee- Wee Day Care is rare and difficult to achieve. Instead, both aspects are integrated into one role, perceived as `... just different sides of the same coin. One is not necessarily subordinate to or less important than the other; both are essential for optimum program functioning' (p. 34).

It is easy to follow the logic of the argument being presented here by both Rodd and Jorde Bloom. The difficulty is that the link between leadership and management is often lost in the discussions which usually follow. For example, Jorde Bloom (1997), in presenting her hierarchy of leadership and management, contradicts her earlier remarks by stating `the task performance areas at the lower levels of the hierarchy are typically those associated with management functions. Those at the upper levels are those that are more often associated with leadership functions' (p. 36). Hierarchical models, such as these with upper and lower levels, inject a notion of inequality, and this is directly linked with the distribution of power and authority within the organisation.

The importance of an organizational structure involves assisting business owners, CEOs, and entrepreneurs to conceptualize, visualize, and construct a hierarchical system to be implemented into their organization. For example, the building blocks of an organizational structure include: a chain of command, span of control, departmentalization, distribution of ...