An analysis of school business practices to increase available slack resources for contingencies and other management concerns

Slack resources are marginal or excess resources in an organization, and may be in the form of underutilized capital or excess personnel necessary to fulfill an organization's mission. This analysis examined ways that school business leaders capture underutilized slack resources for redeployment elsewhere in their respective school districts, especially during times of fiscal emergencies, contingencies, or crises. This study examined two research questions: in the five years before 2005, what practices have school business leaders used to increase slack resources to allow respective districts greater ability to react to contingencies, use for innovation, or incorporate into problem solving? Second, what factors influence school business managers' present plans to increase available slack resources?;In answer to these questions, the literature review reported ways that school districts have reacted to fiscal stress. Studies described prevalent ways described in the literature. Linking fiscal stress to slack resource literature, the analysis defined slack resources, and reported how school districts could identify and redeploy these latent resources. The study reports findings from a 2005 survey of New York State school business managers and leaders who were members of the New York State Association of School Business Officials (NYSASBO); of 903 business surveyed, 290 responded, of which 190 were used in logistic regression models. The study modeled whether districts planned use of a particular practice was associated with fiscal stress, slack resources, organizational coalitions, voter relations, business manager's views of effectiveness of a practice, and whether a district has used a practice within the five years prior to 2005.;The study modeled thirty-seven different practices grouped in three categories to increase slack resources: revenue increasing, productivity/efficiency, and cutting practices. The models showed that business manager's view of the effectiveness of a practice to increase slack resources and whether a district has used a practice within the five years prior to 2005 were the best predictors of respective planned practices to increase slack resources. The study also showed that perceived amount of slack resources have associations with other factors such as per-pupil revenue, expenditure, and assessed valuation amounts. This study is unique in that it is the first to examine how school districts can seek out and extract slack resources through particular practices.