This article was written by Henkin, Ciston and Dee.

The research that was conducted is well

explained in the article abstract. It was focusing on the conflict among the many individual thats
involve in the school management for site-based managed school (SBMS). SBMS is a system
which transfer the autonomy of school from central office to local schools. The power of
autonomy are transfer to four types of individuals which teachers, principals, parents and
community members. These individuals are gathered in a group as a team and usually been called
site councils. SBMS is a management which derived from the belief that the decision making
should be made by the person who are closed to them. According to the Ogawa and White (1994)
literature, it was said that in America, this type of management has been applied to more than one
thirds of all schools. Due to that, this article tries to investigate the conflict in SBSM and what is
the variables that influences the effectiveness of SBSM.
Apart from that, this article also discussing the variety way of power distribution that was practice
in the different district that using SBSM. This article trying to distinguish the degree of autonomy
that was given by central office to local schools. There has been reported that some school were
only given the autonomy to choose which policy to be implement while some other have the
authority to make their own policy (Wallner, 1998). Principal perfomance is said to have a
significant effect toward the success of SBSM. This is caused by the ability for the principal to
manage conflicts between site council member. From this perspective, the writer tried to create a
profile for SBSM that could be applied as a sample for site based management principal. They
tries to determined the strategy that been used by principal.
This research are conducted using the survey method to collect information from the principals all
around America. The school that was choose must be implementing the SBSM. There are about
300 principals that was invited to participated in this research. However there are only 103 that
was willing to participated. This research are using the Organizational Communication Conflict
Instrument (OCCI) which this instrument publicly used by researcher to measure the various
communication behaviour related to organizational conflict. This instrument using the 7 level
continuum of Likert Scales which 1 is rated as "always" to 7 which is rated as "never". Lower
score shows that high frequency of practice. This instrument are created by dividing question into
three major aspect which are non confrontation, solution orientation and control. These major
aspect were distinguished using factor analysis in the development of this instrument with the
varience of 29 items that loaded above 0.5.
The principals also were asked to indicate the extent of those 4 types of council members
involving to variables which are satifaction and involvement. These variables were measured by 5
level liker scales. It were later used to as an independent variables that affect three dependent
variables in OCCI using multiple regression. Using Anova Test, non-confrontation variable is
tested insignificant for satisfaction and involvement. Due to that this variable was omitted from
the regression. Using multiple regression while using solution orientation and control as a seperate
dependent variables, it shows that it was statistically significant for both model at a 5% significant
level. Based on that result, it can seen that satisfaction and involvement does affect the principal
capability to used solution orientation and control approach while handling meetings with site
council.

The result shows that both solution based approach and control approach are significant with
involvement and satisfaction of site council member. However the writer argued that principals
prefer the solution based approach since it tackle the problem as to find the solution. This is the
best way to avoid or manage conflict in the council. The principal however should not forget the
control approach and must be ready to used this approach at any time. Since there must not be
necessarily have solution to all problem, control approach must be practiced by principal to avoid
worst confrontation.
Critics and suggestion
This research was conducted at school that was giving autonomy as SBMS. The research was
focusing on the approach of principal when conducting a meeting with site council. Using data
solely from the principal to measure the satisfaction and involvement of the council member seem
to be weak since the perception of a principal might be influenced by high bias toward school.
Furthermore, a principal can't measured another person satisfaction very well. Using the Anova
test and multiple regression technique seems to be a correct way to measure the influence of
independent variables on dependent variables. However if we look into the article the regression
was measuring satisfaction and involvement effect on OCIC. This is contradict than what was
supposed to be measured by the researcher which is the effect of OCIC approach on satisfaction
and involvement of the council member.
Other than that, this article are focusing to much on site council. This research was supposedly
focusing on measuring the degree of autonomy given by central office to local office through the
perspective of the principal. Using this method, we can investigate the effect of the autonomy
degree on the council conflict decision. To what extend the autonomy given that been given
creates more conflict. This can be used as profil to create the best autonomy boundaries given to
local school.
The third suggestion for this article is to use a mix method research which also involve survey and
interview. Survey mostly can only be used as a scale to measure the qualitative data. However to
understand the reason and underlying caused, it is highly recommended to conduct interviews with
the principal to investigate other approached used by the principal rather than only using OCIC
instrument. The rating scale for satisfaction and involvement also only using one question as a
direct measurement of both variables. This could caused many problem since satisfaction and
imvolvement can be caught by many aspect which is hard to be measured as a direct question.
Apart from those methodological and research framework aspect discussed above, the literature
seems to captured a lot of the SBSM and can be said to explained the matter in this research paper.
The writer has explained the definition of each terms used in the article very well and it is easily
understood by reader.