ANALYZING A DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION

The purposes of this paper are to present the conceptualization upon which a particular task was modelled; to detail the way in which the theoretical framework was translated into practice; to report briefly on the methodology employed; and to demonstrate the success of the analytic tool adopted. The study set out to analyze a Department of Education, taking manpower utilization as its focal emphasis. It included both recording the present deployment of all employees and describing functional alternatives open to policy makers in their deliberations over the Department's future growth and direction. Systems theory provided the conceptual model selected as the framework for the study. Interviews were used to gather much of the data, though the literature also contributed a fund of ideas on possible future developments and concomitant manpower requirements. It was inevitable that certain alternative structural arrangements should come under consideration. The final section of this paper offers a few examples of the sorts of outcome which resulted from the investigation. They have been selected in order to show that a systems analysis is likely to bring to light wide‐ranging implications for manpower utilization, whether at the level of sub‐system operations and relations, or at the level of total system management.