Marketing and the 'Re-enchantment' of School Management

Abstract

In Britain, an emerging slogan in the Labour government's educational policy is 'standards, not structures'. With it may come a discursive shift in the management of the school. Just as educational structures have been marketized, so now there are some signs that school management is itself becoming marketized, thereby revealing an emergent 'common marketing' within the field of education. Although the signs are few within education, within the broader realm of management theory, the indications are stronger. In exploring this, the argument draws upon two concepts from the academic literature on marketing: relationship marketing; and internal marketing. What is common to both modes of marketing is the instrumentalization of the expressive, or the rationalization of the emotions for performative purposes. In relation to these concepts, brief reference is made to recent policy initiatives in the training of headteachers in Britain. In theorizing this, the relevance of Mestrovic's theory of 'postemotional society' is considered.

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