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will sooner or later thrust change on them"
(P6)
.

         The writer concurs with this conclusion.


3.5
Which Management Techniques?


         Since we have stated that the Church should at least consider

adopting more rational techniques, it would perhaps be useful to

describe briefly some which may have relevance. We can conveniently

do so under certain generic headings.


3.5.1
Management information systems


         Two systems were found during the course of this study, one

prepared by Johnson at Vanderbilt University, Tennessee in 1976
(B17)
and

one by King et al at Lancaster University in 1970
(P5)
. Both are designed

to provide information at a diocesan level of management as to trends

at a parochial level which would enable diocesan management both to

anticipate problems and to exploit opportunities - i.e. to conduct

what in other contexts might be called strategic management. Areas

covered include membership and attendance; giving (financial contributions);

enrolment in ancillary activities; need to build new or abandon old,

churches; baptismal rate; missionary effort; population movements and

finance. Of the two information systems the first is dynamic, designed

to predict trends as far forward as the end of the century, and

probably too complicated for use in the present English situation; the

second is more passive (although capable of development into dynamic

form), based on and therefore attuned to, a Church of England diocese,

and is more easily adopted and comprehended.


3.5.2
Forms of organisational structure and relationships


         Essentially the field covered by Dryden
(T5)
although he appears

to have come to it too early to assess fully the impact of the new

synodical system. Much of his work is couched in the general rather

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