ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the implications for management of the complexity of change in schools brought about, in part, by the very varied requirements and provisions of the Act. It draws out some of the dilemmas and contradictions that school managers now confront. This involves looking at the management of change in practice and thus, necessarily, at the changing of management. The chapter begins, however, by making two general points about the processes of educational change. It suggests that innovations are interpreted and responded to on the basis of the divergent 'interests' and the perspectives of different organizational members. The new possibilities for changing power relations and securing privileges, embedded within the innovations themselves, are resources for the micro-political struggles that go on within the institutions. The chapter describes a lack of clarity and inadequate information combine to produce an air of desperation with regard to decision-making and forward planning.
