THE ADMINISTRATION OF INSTITUTIONS FOR THE BLIND IN LATE NINETEENTH CENTURY BRITAIN

No modern society has ever been so strongly convinced of the power of private charity to remedy every social ill as was Britain's in the Victorian period. Although the idealization of philanthropy has abated somewhat since the first Thatcher administration's eulogies on 'Victorian values', there is an increasing tendency, particularly in the U.S.A. and Great Britain, to turn to privatization in a search for efficiency, flexibility and lower cost in social administration. An examination of the organization and functioning of institutional education for the blind in Victorian Britain, until now regarded as one the most successful examples of private endeavor suggests that the calls for state intervention towards the end of the nineteenth century were a response to a situation where, at administrative level, truth had been suppressed, institutional performance and results clearly did not match the resources made available, complacency reigned, and corruption was not unknown. Furthermore, evidence exists of grave lapses in professional ethics on the part of managerial committees and staff. The roots of the problems lay in the isolated, parochial approaches to selection and induction at managerial level, a lack of transparency in reporting on achievements, the low educational aspirations of the educators, and a short-sighted concern for immediate profit in the workshop. Widespread resistance to 'interference' from the state delayed reform. More recent failures in privatized ventures indicate that, perhaps, the problem lies in certain misconceptions inherent in the philanthropic approach.

経営論集 = Management journal

AA11522987

13462059

4

171

180

2002-08-15

英語

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紀要論文

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