Little's Law and Educational Inequality: A Comparative Case Study of Teacher Workaround Productivity

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Keppler, Samantha M.
• 署名单位: University of Michigan System; University of Michigan
• 刊物名称: MANAGEMENT SCIENCE
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0025-1909
• DOI: 10.1287/mnsc.2023.4829
• 发表日期: 2024
• 关键词: workarounds; frontline workers; Nonprofit Operations; Education operations; public sector operations; people operations

摘要

In this paper, we explore an employee workaround widespread in K-12 schools: compensating for insufficient funding with partnerships to nonprofit organizations (NPOs). We take an equity perspective and ask the following questions. (i) How do partnering workarounds differ across schools with different levels of socioeconomic advantage? (ii) What can education and NPO leaders do to ensure these workarounds do not exacerbate educational inequities? To answer these questions, we use Little's Law: a school's long-run average number of resource-supplementing partnerships (L) is a function of its average annual partnership formation rate (lambda) and partnership cycle time (W). We collect and analyze interview (n = 62) and survey (n = 140) data from six strategically sampled schools with different levels of socioeconomic advantage to compare differences in lambda and W and understand the implications for educational equity. We find wealthier schools have higher lambda, making them more productive. We also find schools have equal W independent of wealth, but this problematically amplifies differences in lambda. The difference in partnering productivity translates to educational inequities. We find that poorer schools report about 35% greater utility per partnership, but that is not enough to offset the disadvantage of fewer partnerships. Moreover, we find that differences in partnering productivity are particularly large for curricular partnerships, which are harder for poorer schools to form because of the high demand for wrap-around partnerships. Our findings contribute new knowledge on workarounds which supplement organizational resources and on the relationship between workarounds and equity.