Responsibility of Bureaucracy of The School to The External

Stakeholders

Lusiana Tri Wulandari, Sudarmo Sudarmo and Didik Gunawan Suharto

Universitas Sebelas Maret, Surakarta, Indonesia

didikgsuharto@yahoo.com

Keywords: responsibility, bureaucracy of school, stakeholders.

Abstract: The objective of this research is to investigate how the responsibility of bureaucracy of the school to the

external stakeholders. This research used qualitative method. The data of this research were gathered through

interview, observation, documentation, and informants. The data were then analyzed by using interactive

analysis technique. The results of this research are as follows: that the responsibility of the bureaucracy of the

school has sufficed in the impartiality and service quality aspects as well as the compatibility of the

school activities to the values and norms in the society but the responsiveness to the demand of the students

still has not sufficed due to financial limitation. The responsiveness of the bureaucracy to the students’

parents or their custodian has sufficed since every complaint or suggestion is taken into account thoroughly

and made as the basis to establish the policies of the school. The improvement of school bureaucracy

responsibility is the important and strategic work for improving the school’s advance, particularly in getting

public support.

1 INTRODUCTION

School accountability is getting more common

throughout world. Accountability in education is a

broad concept that can be attempted in many ways

such as using political party to ensure democratic

accountability, introducing a market-based reform to

improve the accountability to student guardians and

students, or developing peer-based responsibility

system in order to improve teachers’ professional

accountability. The most commonly used definition

of accountability is to involve the mechanism based

on administrative data aiming to improve the

students’ learning achievement (Figlio & Susanna,

2011). The citizen’s active action to encourage the

public accountability is labelled as informal

institutions of accountability; in which citizens

promote informal rules/norms to require the

accountability of public office in catering to the

citizens’ interest (Tsai, 2007).

In education, the need and right of students should

be prioritized, such as the right to acquire knowledge

and to develop potency. The students intended are

students and their parents/guardian as those

contributing to and affected by the achievement of

school bureaucracy. In this research, they are called

external school stakeholders. It is very important to

pay attention to the external school stakeholders’

interest, particularly to private schools. The school’s

accountability before the external stakeholders in this

context becomes very strategic. The future of school,

particularly the private one, is finally dependent on

public’s (external stakeholders’) assessment.

Considering the school bureaucracy and

responsibility assigned to it should be very specific,

the research still operates other aspect of school

bureaucracy inadequately, particularly the red-tape of

bureaucracy and responsiveness to external

environment. The idea of school bureaucracy studied

so far specifically is measured at regency level, likely

different from what occurring at the lower executive

level. The future research, either qualitative or

quantitative, should focus on the consequence of

bureaucracy aspect. The detailed analysis on school

bureaucracy using qualitative approach at regency

level is still required to find out how the different

bureaucracy configuration affects the student’s

performance differently. It will help reveal what

actually occurs in the black box of school

bureaucracy (Krueathep, 2011).

422

Wulandari, L., Sudarmo, S. and Suharto, D.

Responsibility of Bureaucracy of The School to The External Stakeholders.

In Proceedings of the 2nd International Conference on Economic Education and Entrepreneurship (ICEEE 2017), pages 422-428

ISBN: 978-989-758-308-7

“NI” Junior High School (SMP “NI”) is a private

school located in suburban or rural area. In sub

district area where SMP “NI” is located, there are 8

schools at Junior High School level: 3 public and 5

private ones. The 8 (eight) schools always compete

for obtaining students in the beginning of school year

annually. Despite between-school competition for

obtaining students, SMP “NI” never lacks of students

even this school occupies is the private school with

the largest number of students following the three

upper ranks occupied by Public Junior High Schools.

The reality that the number of students relatively

increasing over years indicates that the public’s trust

in SMP “NI” is so high that they enrol their children

in SMP “NI”. The public’s trust results from, among

others, the accountability of SMP “NI”’s bureaucracy

to the public. For that reason, there should be a critical

analysis on the school’s bureaucratic responsibility to

external stakeholders: parents and students in SMP

“NI”. The objective of research is to find out how the

school’s bureaucratic responsibility is to the external

stakeholders in SMP “NI”.

2 LITERATURE REVIEW

The essence of bureaucracy, according to Sagala

(2003), is the work of running government by those

ruling professionally. School bureaucracy is

organized deliberately, systematically and directed.

As a work organization, every personnel, media and

program of it should be controlled in order to create

process or activities directed to certain objective.

Individual, group and community and society can

be said as stakeholder if it has characteristics as

suggested by Budimanta et.al (2008): having power,

legitimacy, and interest in organization. From so

many arguments, it can be concluded that

stakeholders are those including individual, group,

and community that can affect and be affected by

organization action in achieving the objective of

organization.

Stakeholders can be divided into internal and

external stakeholders. In the context of school,

internal stakeholder includes Headmaster, teacher,

personnel, administrative staff, chairperson and

administrators of foundation. Meanwhile, external

stakeholders are students and parents/guardian of

students. This research focuses on external

stakeholders, constituting the direct beneficiary of

service provided by the school bureaucracy.

Responsiveness is bureaucracy ability of

identifying the community’s need, organizing agenda

and service priority, and developing programs

corresponding to the community’s need and

aspiration. Responsiveness measures bureaucracy’s

responsiveness to expectation, wish and aspiration,

and demand of community (Tangkilisan, 2005).

Responsiveness is very desirable in public service

because it is the evidence of organizational ability of

identifying the community’s need, organizing agenda

and service priority and developing public service

programs corresponding to the community’s need and

aspiration. An organization with low responsiveness

will have poor performance as well (Osborne &

Plastirk, 1997). Dwiyanto (2002) develops some

indicator of public service responsiveness including:

service user’s grievance, the use of users’ grievance

as public service reference, the bureaucracy

apparatus’ various action in providing service, and

the placement of bureaucracy apparatus in service

system enacted.

Justice is essentially to treat an individual or

others according to their right. Justice value is often

used in public service distribution, as the effect or

follow up of a policy is the value of equality

(Sudarmo, 2011). Such justice (equality) is based on

simultaneous treatment, service providing or product

distribution, service or usefulness to the citizens

generally without considering the specific needs of

each individual. In this case, everyone is treated

equally.

Responsibility, according to Ratminto (2005) is

the measure indicating the extent to which the

compatibility of governance to law or regulation and

procedure specified. To evaluate what the stance, the

behavior, and action of public bureaucracy are, there

should be a distinctive standard evaluation that is

administrative or technical rather than political in

nature. Responsibility is related to the extent to which

the government institution perform all of its activities

corresponding to the correct principle and regulation

with standard professional and technical competition

owned in the attempt of achieving the optimal

objective.

Accountability is an indicator experiencing

amelioration. Formerly, accountability is defined as

financial accountability. But now, it serves as well to

find out the effectiveness and performance of

government in the program it performs.

Fox and Brown (1998) as cited by Ebrahim (2003)

simultaneously describing accountability as “the

process of holding actors) responsible for an action.

Public accountability, according to Widodo (2008), is

the obligation of being accountable for or of

answering and explaining action performance of an

individual/legal entity or an organization’s leader to

those entitled or authorized to ask for information or

Responsibility of Bureaucracy of The School to The External Stakeholders

423

accountability. In Indonesian context, the concept of

public accountability can be used to see the extent to

which the public organization’s policy and activity is

consistent with the public’s wish.

Service quality, according to Goetsch and Davis

in Tjiptono (2007), is a dynamic condition related to

product, service, human being, process and

environment fulfilling or beyond expectation. Service

quality can also be measured from customer

perspective including satisfaction and compatibility

of customer expectation to the service received. The

parameter of quality service is dependent on the

customers; whether or not it has been consistent with

the customer’s satisfaction and has generated

satisfaction. Service quality is defined as the attempt

of fulfilling the consumer’s need and wish and the

appropriateness of its delivery in compensating the

consumers’ expectation.

Discretion is an authority of making judgment and

a freedom of taking an action as the action considered

as appropriate. Keith C. Davis in Sudarmo (2011)

says “a public official is considered as performing

discretion when the border of effective power or

authority he/she has allows him/her to perform a

choice freely among a number of activities to take or

not to take action”.

3 METHODS

A qualitative research on the school’s bureaucratic

responsibility is to the external stakeholders was

conducted in SMP “NI” through interview,

observation and documentation. The sample was

taken using snowball sampling technique (Slamet,

2011). Technique of analyzing data used was an

interactive analysis from Miles and Huberman using

three components: data collection, data reduction and

data display. In this research, the writer employed the

relatively long strategy of collecting data with multi-

methods: interview, observation, and documentation

study. The use of some data collecting strategies was

intended to obtain data from various sources in order

to anticipate the unclear and invalid data resulting

from the interview due to normative answers

regardless the existing reality.

4 RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

Levine (in Sudarmo, 2011) stated that there are three

indicators that can be used to indicate whether or not

public bureaucracy has met its accountability to the

public. They are: responsiveness, responsibility, and

accountability. The three indicators, by Sudarmo,

have been developed into six indicators recalling that

the citizen also requires the bureaucracy to meet the

citizen’s expectation in providing service to them.

Those six indicators of public bureaucracy in

governance are: (a) responsiveness, (b) justice, (c)

responsibility, (d) accountability, (e) service quality,

(f) discretion. In governance paradigm, according to

Utomo (2007), accountability means responsibility

and being responsible to the public in which the

output in the form of service and products of

development are determined more by public service

orientation because the effect of such the decision

always has implication to public interest.

Because the issue of research is related to school,

the writer suggests some aspects of SMP “NI”’s

bureaucratic accountability as follows:

 Responsiveness. Responsiveness is bureaucratic

ability to identify the public’s need, to organize

agenda and service priority, and to develop

programs corresponding to the public’s need

and aspiration.

 Justice. Justice is essentially treating an

individual or others by their right.

 Responsibility. Responsibility is related to the

extent to which an institution implements any of

its activities corresponding to correct principles

and regulation with standard professional and

technical competency existing in the attempt of

achieving the objective optimally.

 Service quality. Service quality can be measured

from customers’ perspective, satisfaction level

and compatibility between the customer’s

expectation and service obtained.

 Compatibility between school activity and

society value and norm.

Responsiveness is the school’s bureaucracy

ability in identifying the community’s and external

stakeholder’s need in providing education service. To

identify both students’ and parent/guardian’s

grievance and critique, SMP “NI” puts Suggestion

and Critique Box at the school. In addition to via

suggestion box, many parents/guardians conveying

grievance, income or recommendation to the school

directly during report book taking. The students have

an opportunity of conveying grievance through

suggestion box or through their class guardian at

school. The expression of suggestion and opinion can

be done during committee meeting as well.

Committee meeting is usually attended by school

management, parents, committee, and foundation

management. All critique, suggestion and grievance

conveyed will be followed-up immediately to bring

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424

SMP “NI” to the better one. Moreover, from

historical aspect, SMP “NI” builds on the leaders’

apprehensiveness with the condition of community;

so that it is reasonable that as time progresses SMP

“NI” pays more attention to the community because

school exists for the community. Responsiveness

principle is also related to the objective of SMP “NI”

attempts to create human beings who are faithful and

pious to Almighty God by guiding the students to be

children with noble character, healthy, intelligent,

competent, creative, independent in order to be

democratic and responsible citizens. The

responsiveness dimension complied with by the

school relative well can evidently support its

accountability to the public, particularly external

stakeholders.

The principle of justice is essentially the school

bureaucracy treating an individual or others

according to their right. This principle can be seen,

among others, from the opportunity the school gives

as wide as possible to the community to study in SMP

“NI” as long as complying with the academic

requirement. During the new student admission, SMP

“NI” treats all prospect students as equally as possible

without discriminating them. SMP “NI” attempts to

provide scholarship to the poor students in order to

keep capable of studying at school. Scholarship is

important because 90% of SMP “NI” students have

parents working as labor and most of them have

income below Regency Minimum Wage. The

principle of justice is also performed by SMP “NI” in

service to the students by attempting adequate

education facilities. The implementation of justice

value is a school affecting the external stakeholders,

extending then into the public wholly.

The principle of responsibility can be seen from

whether or not the implementation of SMP “NI” was

conducted corresponding to the regulation of

Foundation sheltering it (“NI” Boarding School

Education Foundation). The responsibility aspect of

SMP “NI” can also be measured from the

compatibility of the activity performance to rules or

principles in learning process. Essentially, SMP “NI”

always complies with the general rule governed by

foundation, while the more specific rule is governed

by the school itself. The organization operating in

formal education, teacher or educator implemented

the general principles of learning to which the teacher

refers in implementing the learning. The good

responsibility affects positively the stakeholder’s

trust, and vice versa.

Service quality is defined as the attempt of

fulfilling the consumers’ need and wish and its

delivery appropriateness in compensating the

consumers’ expectation. The service quality of SMP

“NI” can be seen from the number of prospect

students enrolling and the increasing number of

prospect students enrolling annually. It can also be

measured from parents/guardians’ satisfaction with

SMP “NI” when their children study in SMP “NI”.

The relatively large number of prospect students

enrolling in SMP “NI” annually proves that the

community’s trust in the school is high. It is

supported with the parents/guardians’ and the

students’ satisfaction. As the attempt of fulfilling the

consumers’ need, wish, and delivery appropriateness

in compensating consumers’ expectation, in addition

to providing a variety of facilities and infrastructure

for the students, the school also attempts to maintain

and to improve the quality of teaching-learning

process implementation. Service quality dimension

affects the public accountability both directly and

indirectly.

The motivation of making discretion is moral

consideration with the expectation to produce the

decision outcome oriented to those affecting by the

decision/policy. SMP “NI” lies amid Islam

communities in Sub District area, so that it should

attempt to make decision/policy corresponding to its

environment. School policy considered as supporting

the activity of surrounding communities as Islam

community includes: intracurricular activity (Islam

religion subjects more than those in other schools),

extracurricular activity (e.g. Quran reading and

writing, tilawah, drum-band, boy scout, school

activity patrol, and self-defence), other activities in

the attempt of celebrating certain event or program

(e.g.: short program of boarding school, mujahaddah,

and regular recitation). Discretion focusing on the

compatibility of decision/policy to stakeholders’

expectation is beneficial to the improvement of

school bureaucracy’s accountability.

The problem of fulfilling school bureaucracy’s

accountability often does not stand alone as a single

phenomenon. Dimensions of accountability can be

seen from an empty room free of other aspects’ effect.

In financial context, as the private school located in

suburban area, the problem of budget availability is

the strategic variable affecting accountability

dimension of school bureaucracy, in addition to

human resource. Therefore, the healthy school

bureaucracy viewed from material (budget) and

human resource aspects should remain to be

improved. School bureaucracy is expected to

strengthen the school budget (for example, by

exploring income source not incriminating the

students) and to improve the quality of teacher in

Responsibility of Bureaucracy of The School to The External Stakeholders

425

order to improve the accountability to external

stakeholders.

Considering the explanation from the result of

previous studies, it can be found a description on the

SMP “NI”’s responsibility to external stakeholders as

organized in the following Matrix of Output.

Table 1: Responsibility of bureaucracy of the school from

various indicators.

No. Indicators Elaboration

Responsiveness

 Children’s grievance is

accommodated in

suggestion box and by

the class guardian

 Parents/guardians’

grievance is

accommodated during

the meeting and report

receiving.

 Children’s and

parents/guardians’

grievances are followed-

 Grievance become the

reference of policy

 Historically, SMP “NI”

was established as the

response to the condition

of society

 Guiding and

Counselling with

mistake point is the

manifestation of the

school’s responsiveness

arents/

uardian

Justice

 Every child deserve to

enrol (to study) in SMP

“NI”

 There is scholarship

program to make all

children can study at

school

 Equal right in using the

school’s infrastructure

 Health service is

provided to all of

students, educators, and

education staff

 Mistake point is applied

to all of students

 The implementation of

regulation

(Permendikbud

No.44/2012

)

Responsibility

 The school obeys the

foundation’s rule

 The school obey the rule

concerning the use of

School

 Operating Grant

(Bantuan Operasional

Sekolah = BOS)

 Not all of teachers

comply with the

rinci

les of learnin

Service quality

 Number of applicants

increases

 The number of students

relatively increases

 All of parents/guardians

are

satisfied when their

children study in SMP

“NI”

 Senior High School

students are satisfied

with studying in SMP

“NI”

 Infrastructure facilities

to meet the students’

need

 The activeness of

teaching- learning

process in order to meet

the children and

parents/guardians’

ectation

Compatibility of

school activities

to value and

norms

 Many school activities

have Islamic values

 Surrounding

environment

constituting Islam

community has

norms identical with

that of SMP“NI”

 Drum Band becomes

the students ‘attraction

 Parents/guardians like

the Islamic activities in

SMP “NI”

Processed: Result of interview with the research object

There is an extensive debate about the

relationship between school bureaucracy and student

performance. The school bureaucracy exerts varying

effect on the student performance, dependent on

assignment environment. The finding shows that

school bureaucracy can be favourable to and or at

least not harmful to the students. In this case, school

bureaucracy can play a very desirable part in children

education (Krueathep, 2011).

The demand of public as stakeholder for the

school bureaucracy ran trustfully and responsibly is

in line with the global will of international society

today. The school as bureaucracy is defined as an

organization with command chain in the form of

pyramid, in which more people are on the bottom

level than on the top. The essence of bureaucracy is

the clarity of duty and authority, impersonality in

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426

which people comply with rule rather than comply

with the rule according to others’ will. Bureaucracy

is related directly to efficiency, productivity,

organizational system and government

implementation in which bureaucracy is directed to

ensure the working mechanism and system that is

regular, appropriate and controllable.

School community as the stakeholders in this

research focuses on the students and

parents/guardians as external stakeholder. Bendell

(2006) stated that “stakeholder” concept can be

beneficial as it groups the individuals together by

their effect on organization. Stakeholders are

individual, a group of individuals, society or

community, related to or having interest in company,

either simultaneously or partially.

School uses school practice to involve the

community in education process, to find out the

important of knowledge and cultural background,

public participation and interaction between schools.

Three areas identified to improve the

interrelationship in school bond are: introducing and

embracing the important role of technology to build

community, allocating time in the curriculum for the

teacher to work for the sake of their students’ social

and emotional wellbeing, and to reinforce the attempt

of developing common language for staffs around

pedagogical practices (Bower et al, 2015).

The indicators of successful accountability,

according to Kande (2009) are:

 The community’s improved trust in and

satisfaction with the school

 The community’s improved awareness of their

right to assess the organization of education in

school

 The improved compatibility of school activities

to values and norms developing in the society.

The accountability chosen by the school

requires

It to go forward in such ways as:

 Improving teacher’s and school’s ownership of

accountability to support professionalism and

student learning.

 Ensuring that school evaluation is a dynamic

and inclusive process involving students,

parents, staff, governors and society leading to

the better practice.

 Building a professional reflection culture,

investigation and learning inside and outside

school improving teachers’ aspiration and

developing the better teaching learning practice

and students.

 Embedding collaboration inside and outside

school as the tight and effective instrument for

practical improvement.

 Using school network to develop capacity and

to ensure that all of schools are involved.

 Focusing on the examination to support more

the accountability led by the school (Gilbert,

2012).

The accountability responsibility affects teacher-

student relation, particularly involving young

teachers. Collegial relation is also affected in many

ways. The positive collegial relation improves

teachers’ motivation and efficacy, even in the

inhibiting context. The organizational context of

teacher job is an important contextual factor in the

term of how the relation is changed in the schools

experience the improvement of external control

(Mausethagen, 2013). School context is so important

in supporting parents and teachers to ensure the

students’ academic success (Helker and Wosnitza,

2016).

The positive school climate and leadership are so

important to build parent-school partnership and to

support the parents’ involvement in the children

learning (Povey et.al. 2016).

5 CONCLUSIONS

The result of research shows that bureaucratic

responsibility of SMP “NI” can be seen from

adequate justice and service quality aspects. It can

also be viewed from the adequate compatibility of

school activity to values and norms within society.

However, viewed from the aspect of responsiveness

to the children’s demand it is still inadequate due to

financial limitation. The school bureaucracy’s

responsiveness level to parents/guardians has been

adequate because any grievance and suggestion is

considered thoroughly and becomes the foundation in

developing the school policy. From responsibility

aspect, although not all of teachers have been able to

implement the rule due to limited time, overall SMP

“NI” has obeyed the rule enacted by the foundation.

Public accountability is a common-sense reform

that will reinforce public education and protect the

public investment in school (Annenberg Institute for

School Reform, 2014). Improving the draft school

accountability policy in the next generation is an

important problem for the future works (Deming et

al., 2013). Analysis on school bureaucracy’s’

accountability as recommended in the result of

current research as least can give an early

representation to elaborate farther the bureaucracy

accountability in other organization forms.

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427

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