This personal reflective essay explores a group Dissertation in Practice (DiP) model and process used in a localized Doctor of Education program. It describes and recommends this team-based DiP approach as an innovation that prepares practitioners to tackle complex problems of practice by focusing on a process centered around group dynamics that…

Discusses two models for dissertation support groups, noting rationale, models, and examples of such groups. Offers suggestions for the development of dissertation support groups. (SR)

Following recent thinking that sees organizations' structures as dependent on their environments, the authors consider characteristics of institutional sectors that affect the organizations arising within them. They first point out problems in present models relating organizations to their environments and discuss several "forerunners"…

Classifies organizational theories, by analytical level and assumptions about human nature, into four perspectives (system-structural, strategic choice, natural selection, collective action), each with different concepts of organizational structure, behavior, change, and managerial roles. Identifies six debates generated among the perspectives and…

This essay reviews major trends in methodological and theoretical approaches to the study of organizations since the mid-sixties and espouses the political analysis of organizations, a position representing a middle ground between comparative structuralism and the loosely coupled systems approach. This position emphasizes micropolitics as well as…