In the world of organizational theory, few debates have proven as persistent – or as genuinely instructive – as the question of whether management and administration are the same thing. Pick up one textbook, and you’ll find them treated as entirely separate functions. Pick up another, and they’re used interchangeably without a second thought. This terminological conflict is not just a matter of academic hair-splitting; it shapes how institutions are structured, how authority is distributed, and how educational organizations are led and governed. Understanding where different thinkers stood on this debate – and why – is essential for anyone working in or studying organizational leadership.
Table of Contents
- The origin of the debate
- Administration as a determinative function, management as an executive function
- How this plays out in educational institutions
- Management includes administration: E. F. Brech’s view
- No distinction between management and administration: the synonymous view
- The terminology gap between sectors
- Resolving the conflict: a practical framework
- Why this debate matters for educational management
The origin of the debate
At the early stage of management thought, no meaningful distinction was drawn between management and administration, and both terms were routinely used in place of each other. That changed in 1923, when British thinker Oliver Sheldon published The Philosophy of Management. In that landmark work, Sheldon emphasized administration as a decision-making function and management as an execution function – and in doing so, sparked a terminological conflict that management scholars have been debating ever since. Three broad schools of thought eventually emerged from this ongoing debate, each offering a fundamentally different answer to the same question.
Administration as a determinative function, management as an executive function
The first – and perhaps most widely cited – school of thought holds that administration and management are two distinct functions, with administration operating at a higher level than management. This view was championed by Oliver Sheldon, William R. Spriegel, G.E. Milward, Ordway Tead, and Florence, among other American and classical thinkers.
Sheldon’s own definition is precise and illuminating. According to him, “Administration is the function in industry concerned with the determination of the corporate policy, the coordination of finance, production and distribution, the setting of the compass of the organization and the ultimate control of the executive.” Management, by contrast, is concerned with executing those policies within the limits set by administration. In short: administration defines the goal; management strives toward it.
Spriegel reinforces this distinction with equal clarity. He described administration as that phase of a business enterprise concerned with the overall determination of institutional objectives and the policies necessary to achieve them, while management is the executive function responsible for carrying out those broad policies in day-to-day operations.
Milward adds a further dimension to this view. According to Milward, “administration is the process and the agency used to establish the object and purpose; secondarily administration has to plan and stabilize the broad lines or principles which will govern action. Management is the process of executor of these policies.”
From this perspective, administration is a thinking function – it decides what needs to be done and why. Management is a doing function – it determines how those decisions get implemented. The two roles require different skill sets, and in larger organizations, they may be performed by entirely different groups of people.
How this plays out in educational institutions
In an educational context, this distinction is relatively easy to visualize. The governing board or board of trustees of a university, for instance, functions in an administrative capacity: it sets institutional policy, approves budgets, and determines the strategic direction of the institution. The principal, department head, or dean, on the other hand, operates in a managerial capacity – translating those policies into timetables, staff assignments, curriculum delivery, and daily operations. Both roles are indispensable, but they are not the same.
Management includes administration: E. F. Brech’s view
The second school of thought turns the first one on its head. Rather than placing administration above management, E. F. L. Brech – a prominent British management scholar – argued that management is the broader, all-encompassing function, and that administration is simply a component within it.
Under Brech’s model, administration does not sit above management – it sits within it. It is one specific function among many that management encompasses. Kimball and Kimball, along with Richman and Copen, share similar views: management comprises both policy-making and execution, while administration is that part of management dealing with routine functions in a known setting.
This position reflects what is often called the European or British viewpoint, which stands in direct contrast to the American viewpoint described in the first school of thought. American authors like Ordway, Tead, Shulze, Oliver Sheldon, and William Spriegel considered administration a broader activity and management a narrower one; British authors like Brech, Kimball, and Kimball held the reverse.
Brech’s framework also has practical implications for how organizations are structured. He divided management into three levels: top management, responsible for policy formulation; functional management, responsible for planning, organizing, directing, and controlling departmental activities; and lower-level management, concerned with supervision and day-to-day operations. In this scheme, what others call “administration” is simply the top tier of management – not a separate institution.
No distinction between management and administration: the synonymous view
The third school of thought cuts through the debate entirely. Scholars including Henri Fayol, Dalton E. McFarland, Louis Allen, Koontz and O’Donnell, George R. Terry, and William H. Newman argued that the distinction between management and administration is more a matter of language and context than of actual functional difference.
Henri Fayol made this position explicit at the Second International Congress of Administrative Science, where he stated that all undertakings – whether in industry, commerce, government, or any other field – require the same core processes: planning, organization, command, coordination, and control. As Fayol argued, “We are no longer confronted with several administrative sciences but with one which can be applied equally well to public and private affairs.” From this perspective, the label used – administration or management – is secondary to the functions themselves.
McFarland’s trajectory is particularly instructive. He had initially drawn a distinction between management and administration in earlier editions of his work, but later revised his position – concluding that it is genuinely difficult to distinguish between the two, and that both terms are substantially similar to each other. McFarland noted that in government agencies, administration has traditionally been the preferred term, though in recent years the term management has become increasingly common even in public sector contexts.
Louis Allen similarly saw no meaningful distinction. Authors like Fayol, Koontz and O’Donnell, Allen, Strong, Terry, and Newman used the two terms interchangeably, believing that management is a specialized activity required for running any social institution composed of human beings – called management in business enterprises and administration in government and social institutions.
The terminology gap between sectors
This third view helps explain a very real phenomenon that anyone working across sectors will recognize. The same person performing the same functions – setting direction, organizing people, overseeing outcomes – is called a manager in a corporation and an administrator in a government department or a university. The difference between the two terms lies mostly in their usage across different countries or different fields of human organization, not in any fundamental difference of function. The term administration tends to dominate in public and educational settings, while management is the preferred language in the private sector.
Resolving the conflict: a practical framework
Given these three competing perspectives, how should one make sense of the debate? A useful practical resolution is the one proposed by several scholars: classify management into administrative management and operative management. Administrative management deals with the determination of objectives and policies, while operative management handles the execution of plans for achieving those objectives. Higher-level managers spend a significant portion of their time on policy formulation and decision-making, while operative management focuses on implementing those policies effectively.
This framework is especially practical for educational institutions, where a single leader – say, a school principal – routinely performs both functions. They may formulate the school’s assessment policy (an administrative act) and simultaneously supervise teachers’ implementation of that policy (a managerial act). The functions are distinct in theory; in practice, they frequently overlap in the same individual.
Why this debate matters for educational management
Understanding this terminological conflict is not merely an academic exercise. How an institution conceptualizes the relationship between administration and management has direct implications for governance structures, accountability lines, and leadership roles. If a school system treats administration and management as entirely separate functions, it will likely create rigid hierarchies where policymakers are insulated from the realities of execution. If it treats them as synonymous, it risks blurring accountability – with no clear distinction between who sets the direction and who is responsible for delivering it.
A more balanced approach – one aligned with the practical framework discussed above – recognizes that both functions exist within every organization, that they require different orientations, and that the most effective leaders are those who can move fluidly between thinking and doing, between setting policy and implementing it.
What do you think? Given that management and administration overlap so frequently in practice – especially in schools – does it make more sense to treat them as two distinct functions requiring different people, or as two aspects of a single leadership role? And does the terminology you use (administrator vs. manager) shape the way you think about authority and accountability in your institution?
References
- https://www.yourarticlelibrary.com/management/difference-between-management-and-administration-management/27883
- https://www.businessmanagementideas.com/difference-between/difference-between-administration-and-management/18903
- https://www.yourarticlelibrary.com/difference/difference-between-management-and-administration-with-diagram/25576
- https://www.preservearticles.com/difference/difference-between-administration-and-management-explained/30886
- https://irshantgautam.com/a-terminology-between-management-and-administration/
- http://www.preservearticles.com/2012051732284/what-is-the-difference-between-administration-and-management.html
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