The purpose of this article is to explore Microsoft Corporation as a new international actor shaping educational reforms and practices. This study examines how the implementation of Microsoft's global Partners in Learning (PiL) program varied and was mediated by national politics and national institutional practices in two different contexts,…

Focuses on the relationship between communications technology and the human organizational setting within which it is used. Suggests that program effectiveness is determined more on the basis of how much learner involvement and control exists than on the delivery of a predetermined set of centrally prepared messages to learners. (Editor/RK)