Ankara University Journal of Faculty of Educational Sciences (JFES)

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to examine the concept of organizational drift and to reveal how organizational drift emerges in organizations in strategic, mission, implementation, reliability, leadership, and ethical dimensions. In the most general sense, institutional drift is the gradual and seemingly imperceptible deterioration of standards in an organization that cannot be eliminated because it cannot be detected in time and leads to failure. An organization experiencing institutional drift moves steadily and gradually away from its intended course in an imperceptibly slow manner, unpredictably abandons its culture, standards, and work practices, and falls into disarray as a result of day-to-day decisions that are inconsistent with institutional goals. It is of great importance for the country's economic, social, political, cultural, and security systems that the National Education System, which employs more than one-third of all public personnel and has a size and scope that concerns almost the entire population of Turkey, continues to operate in accordance with its accepted institutional goals, strategies, principles and standards written in legal documents. An institutional drift in the education system will cause drift in other systems of the country. With the radical and continuous changes in education policies in recent years, coupled with the uncertainty and chaotic environment created by the COVID-19 pandemic, the possibility that the drift that may occur in the education system may directly lead to irreparable problems for the present and future of the country and bring many risks with it requires evaluating educational institutions as high-risk organizations and taking measures to prevent institutional drift.