Organization Analysis The cycle of production, so to speak, is based around the school year, which runs from fall to spring. Students are organized by grades based on this cycle, and the teachers are organized on the basis of which grades they teach. This means that, for example, James will have a different teacher for each grade, and that the interaction between James and each teacher will be different. However, it also means that there should be several teachers in the school who have prior experience with James, from times when he was more successful. The organization is about educating children. In that sense, students are not to be discarded; the school is under obligation to try to work with all students to ensure that they are sufficiently educated to be passed to the next level. The counsellors and others higher up the organizational hierarchy also have direct roles that they can play. In general, most individual students present few problems, so there is usually sufficient organizational resources to devote extra attention to the children who need that extra attention to progress academically.

The children are the input and the output in this organizational concept.. The throughput is education and growth that they experience in the course of the school year. Mele (2010) notes that in systems theory attention should be paid to the whole, rather than just the part. This can be interpreted as the entire school system having responsibility for the throughput process, not just the individual teacher(s) that deals with James directly. Thus, all members of the system are responsible for the output, which in this case is students ready to move on to the next grade.

The organization would ideally be open to negative feedback from both the sub and supersystems. In this case, it appears that the organization is open to negative feedback from the subsystems. Subsystems, in the family systems adaptation of systems theory, refer to the small groupings and relationships that emerge within a system. Thus, the relationship between James and his various classmates, or his family, or his teachers and other school staff (Morgaine, 2001). Right now, the school is receiving negative feedback about James' performance, and appears willing to accept that feedback and work with these other stakeholders to help James. The supersystem refers to larger systems, in particular external ones such as society as a whole, or the legal system. Again, there is evidence that this system is telling the school something about James and that the school is listening to that feedback with respect to James, and willing to remedy the situation.

The biggest challenge with respect to negative feedback, and the entire throughput concept, is that the school is only one of many different influences on the students. In this case, James' academic struggles are a manifestation of factors that occurred outside of the school's sphere of influence. Thus, being open to negative feedback is not sufficient to resolve the issue. The school has to be one of many active participants in helping James to overcome his challenges.

In social systems, entropy reflects represents the decay in the system (Mavrofides et al., 2011). There are a number of potential causes for entropy. These can include neglect in particular when a system functions well for a period of time. If the system is not rejuvenated, however, entropy can take hold and the system might start to break down, without the people running the system even noticing. In a school, the cycle looks pretty much the same every year. There are new students, and new staff members, but overall, the school functions as a system that changes little from one cycle to another. This makes it difficult to combat entropy, especially when the leadership of the school remains the same. Arguably, this system has not shown any evidence of combatting entropy. The actors within the system might be focused on individual issues -- such as James' behavior -- but they do not seem based on what we know so far, to be focused on overall entropy.

The principle of equifinality states that in a system there are many different ways to achieve the desired state (No author, 2016). At present, the problem with James has been identified. No course of action has yet been prescribed. Thus, the question of pursuing different paths to the desired result is moot. No multiple options have been table, nor has the organization tunnelvisioned onto a singular course...

At this point, the ends have barely been identified, but no pathways have yet been discussed. The only relevance that the principle of equifinality has at this point is that all possible options should be explored before coming to a decision about what the best course of action is for James.
The possible paths for James have to take into account that the school is just one stakeholder. The school cannot deal with a child's drug addiction by itself. The parents, law enforcement and other stakeholders must also take a role. The boy must receive the health care he needs for his addiction problems. There needs to be social workers involved, to help both James and his parents deal with the issue. Law enforcement has to come to a certain understanding with the parents about what they can and cannot do to help James avoid this path. The school has certain resources as well, in terms of the different counsellors that it has. Further, the school is the basic unit of measure for the boy's progress, in the same that it has the decision whether to move him onto the next grade or to hold him back. There are consequences and risks with each action. As such, it is necessary to develop a total stakeholder approach. The school cannot solve this problem by itself.

The role of a school in society is to educate children. At this level -- elementary school -- that is the role. It is not to prepare the students for higher education, or for working. These children are too young for that. The role of the elementary school is to prepare them for junior high, high school, and for the expanded role in the world that they are going to take as they enter their teenage years. Schools are equipped with a variety of resources. Teachers educate, and they interact with the students. Counsellors help students with their different issues, especially in an inner city school such as this. Schools also provide a safe environment for students to interact and socialize with each other. At this point, James is falling behind on many of these things, and the school will need to work with other stakeholders to develop a strategy specifically to help James.

The question about profit and long-term survival is not relevant to a school because by definition a school is not a for-profit entity. The maximization principle does not apply to schools -- if the demand grows, more schools are built.

The school has identified that there are several environmental factors at work here. James comes from a position of poverty, in an inner city neighborhood where poverty is common. The drug addiction is a consequence of this, and of James' desire to escape poverty. There is little to nothing that the school can do to change the economic outcomes of James' family, nor is that the school's mandate. The school can seek out funding to help it to help students like James, but the nature of the budget cycle means that it must deal with James now, based on the resources that it already has. The counsellors will already be aware of the influence that these economic and social challenges have, and will hopefully already have strategies that have been proven to work, either in their school or in another jurisdiction.

Environmental scanning at the school is not a formalized process. It probably does not need to be. The environment is relatively small geographically, and the people running the school are embedded in this environment, dealing with its realities on a daily basis As a result, the administrators and teachers are more than well aware of the social, economic and political realities facing the school, and facing students like James. The admission of how he came to be addicted did not seem to surprise anybody at the school. It does appear that at present, this current ad hoc, but immersive method of environmental scanning, is effective. Some supplementary scanning may be valuable in terms of identifying new and untapped resources that can be used to help James or students like him. As knowledgeable as the people in the organization are with respect to the environment, by no means should they rest on their laurels with respect to understanding their environment, and some formal scanning should be undertaken, even if just an annual review at the end or beginning of each school year.

References

Mavrofides, T., Achilleas, K., Dimitris, P. & Antonios, L. (2011). On the entropy of social systems: A revision of the concepts of entropy and energy in the…