It is generally understood that sustained scholarly dialogue is one of the chief ways in which an academic knowledge base expands and develops. The field of educational administration is no exception and Evers and Lakomski deserve much credit for fostering and fuelling productive debate through their work of recent years. Their difficult but important first book, Knowing Educational Administration (1991), now ranks comfortably among other essential works of our field by Simon (1945), Barnard (1938), Hodgkinson (1978) and Greenfield and Ribbins (1993). Expectations are therefore naturally high for this second book.
In the opinion of this reviewer this book delivers on a promise made in the introduction to extend and further explore key debates in educational administration. Anyone familiar with the educational administration literature would confirm this after reading the book. More to the point, the work of a decade by Evers and Lakomski has been usefully consolidated for the first time in this single text. On the other hand, this book may also disappoint some readers, especially those already familiar with the authors’ work. There is not a lot of new, previously unpublished material. Also, the arguments in support of coherence criteria, while compelling in many respects, do not yet constitute a convincing justification for their adoption as a comprehensive foundation for the study of educational administration, even to a sympathetic reviewer.
A certain eclecticism is characteristic of our branch of the social sciences, a condition which predisposes it towards controversy. As remarked elsewhere, these perennial controversies have sometimes taken on the appearance of endless medieval conflicts, with the champions of each warring faction residing in craggy paradigmatic redoubts (Begley, 1996). For some time now, this quarrelsome environment has been the self‐chosen arena for Evers and Lakomski, and one in which they seem to operate with considerable comfort. It is these epistemological controversies, some old as the hills, that generate the crisis, the unfreezing of attitudes and the press for new perspectives that justifies a coherentist posture. Over the years their books and papers have regularly provoked the complacent denizens of the educational administration world. Their new book conforms to that norm.
For those unfamiliar with the work of Evers and Lakomski, they attempt to mediate the epistemological battleground of educational administration, one they largely created in the first place, by arguing that the weaknesses in traditional administrative science can be traced back to foundationalist epistemological assumptions embedded therein. They critique the paradigm approach, employing Kuhn (1962) and Feyerabend (1981) as warrants, and assert that foundational divisions promote an unhealthy critical immunity from one methodological paradigm to another. As an alternative to the foundational or paradigmatic meta‐theories of administration, Evers and Lakomski propose criteria of coherence as their contribution towards the development of a general theory of administration. In this their second book, they offer an in‐depth exploration of the implications, applications, and consequences of naturalistic coherentism for the practice of educational administration.
This book is organized in four sections with a healthy total of 23 chapters. With the exceptions of the preface, introduction, and concluding chapter, the book is primarily re‐edited previously published material, spanning the years 1988 through 1995. Part one, comprised of three chapters, sets the stage by assessing the present condition of the field of educational administration. The third and final chapter in this section is key reading as it introduces coherence theory. It is also representative of the authors’ most recent writing. Section two would have benefited from the addition of a short introduction, as would the remaining two groupings of chapters. As things stand, one is left to reread the introduction at the front of the book to be reminded of the purpose and organizing theme for each section. In any case, part two employs six chapters of re‐edited material first published between 1988 and 1995. The aim of these chapters is to explore the links between coherence theory and a mixed bag of contemporary conceptual frameworks; including organizational learning, transformational leadership, policy analysis, administrative decision making, and brain theory. Part three is composed of three chapters once again, one each devoted to the authors’ favourite foils: T. B. Greenfield, Hodgkinson, and Arrow. The final section of the book, Part IV, entitled Critical Debates, is quite remarkable in terms of its length as well as function. Ten chapters are allocated to documenting the challenges and rejoinders exchanged over the years between the authors and their critics. Courageous and generous as this is of the authors to share valuable book space, it also illustrates the previously made point about the their need for controversy as an arena for developing and promoting their work. The outcome, however, is that they have shared their book with some of the fiercest and most dedicated critics of their work including Willower, Gronn, Ribbins, Bates, Hodgkinson, Maddock, and Barlosky. This make for great reading. For the benefit of readers new to the field, it would have been nice to include short biographies on each of the critics as helpful introductions to an international arena.
There is a special irony about Evers and Lakomski’s work that was evident in their first book and is repeated in their second book. It is that their chosen arena for debate (epistemology) and their particular academic writing style does not lend itself to attracting a large practitioner audience. Yet, there is so much in their coherentist orientations that would naturally appeal to practitioners, particularly when engaged with academics in the perennial rigour ‐ relevance debate. Academics have typically championed paradigmatic consistency, while practitioners generally prefer to remain focussed on the practical task of solving the problems of the day. To illustrate by personal anecdote, I still vividly recall my first fiery introduction to epistemological debate when, as a school administrator freshly admitted to OISE as a graduate student during the early 1980s, I mildly remarked to a faculty advisor that one really ought to be free to pick and choose among theories, frameworks and constructs, selecting those that effectively address the problem at hand without worrying too much about into which sociological or research paradigm one trespasses. The response was predictable and swiftly, as well as hotly, delivered. That was an academic skirmish that I had no hope of winning in 1984. If only I had known then about Evers and Lakomski’s criteria of coherence and understood that as a practitioner I was quite justifiably and naturally manifesting the coherentist orientations of material pragmatism.
This book’s greatest strength is that it compiles in one volume most of the key issues associated with the field of educational administration. Not only have the authors assembled their key works from the preceding decade, they have courageously invited their critics to participate in the dialogue by devoting generous portions of the book to contrary positions. Strategic considerations notwithstanding, this produces a book which is a valuable introduction to the field for newcomers and, in particular, a great basic text for graduate‐level core courses in educational administration. For such purposes it is well recommended. Willower probably says it best:
As a philosophical work specifically devoted to educational administration, (this book by Evers and Lakomski) is perhaps the most comprehensive, technically proficient, and elegantly argued book currently available on that topic. They make abundantly clear the limitations of positivistic thought and of subjectivism and critical theory, both of which attacked positivism and attained new popularity after long periods of intellectual marginality. ( Evers and Lakomski,1996, p. 166)
It must be acknowledged, however, that some readers will be disappointed with the book. There is not much new information. It is very much a consolidation of material previously published in a variety of important journals and books devoted to educational administration. As unreasonable as it is to expect from Evers and Lakomski, so soon after their first book, a full blown and comprehensive defence of coherentist theory, this is a predictable expectation for some readers. If the authors have failed in this regard, it comes as no surprise to their critics. Coherence theory raises the hope of a rational, integrated and knowable world. However, to many people, experience and intuition suggests that this world is also inhabited by individuals who do not necessarily respond rationally to situations. Yet, as the authors contend, the field of educational administration is still very much in a state of ferment, and subjectivism and chaos theory are no more convincing as an organizational foundation. Even if materialist pragmatism never achieves the status of a complete philosophy, like other philosophical theories it can be recognized as both enlightening in certain respects just as it remains problematic in others.
