ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that ethical concerns lie at the heart of administrative theory and practice, and that the positivist aspiration of value-neutrality is misguided. The traditional view of educational administration is located within an orthodoxy that separates facts from values—one that views administrative work as neutral with respect to particular ethical positions and particular policy regimes. Viewed in these terms, educational administration is fundamentally concerned with ethical values; how these become institutionalised in educational structures and procedures; and how it might be possible to challenge or transform them. In the context of education, Noddings would like to see her ‘caring’ perspective extended to all instances of deliberation involved in school administration. Christopher Hodgkinson is surely correct, then, in concluding that administration involves ‘ethical action in a political context, or purposeful human conduct, or behaviour informed and guided by purposes, intentions, motives, morals, emotions and values as well as the fact or the ‘‘science of the case’’.
