There exists a body of theory and assumption that runs squarely at odds with that which has provided the ideological underpinnings of educational administration as it has been developed over the past two decades. The ideological conflict between these two views rests on two fundamentally different ways of looking at the world. One is the…

Available from: Comparative Administration Research Institute, Kent State University Press, Kent State University, Kent, OH 44242. (IRT)

Develops the concept of value-rational authority. Protestant churches are compared to autonomous professional organizations in order to show that the segmented structure of both reflects a compromise between organizational adaptation and a commitment to ideology. Professional organizations are viewed as value-rational organizations rather than as…

Interviews were conducted with the presidents and senior administrators of 20 Colleges of Applied Arts and Technology located in the province of Ontario (Canada) to assess the relationship between organizational size and organizational structure. It was found that a relationship existed between the size variable and certain structural dimensions.…

Using educational organizations as a case in point, it is argued that the concept of loose coupling incorporates a surprising number of disparate observations about organizations, suggests novel functions, creates stubborn problems for methodologists, and generates intriguing questions for scholars. (Author)

In discussing what is meant by the concept "organization," the author raises the questions, "What is an organization that it can have such a thing as a goal?" and, assuming it appropriate to speak of organizational goals, "how do the goals of individuals bear on those of the organization?" The author submits that answers to these questions raise…

A number of conceptual and empirical problems that arise in 80 studies are noted and their implications are pursued. It is argued that size has generally been defined in terms too global to permit its relation to organizational structure to be understood adequately. An alternative conceptualization is presented. (Author/IRT)

The transactions cost approach provides a framework for evaluating organizations on the basis of efficiency because it allows the identification of the conditions that give rise to the costs of mediating exchanges between individuals. The three basic mechanisms of mediation or control are markets, bureaucracies, and clans. (Author/IRT)

This dialectical analysis is guided by four basic principles--social construction, totality, contradiction, and praxis. The organization is seen as a concrete, multileveled phenomenon beset by contradictions that continuously undermine its existing features. (Author/IRT)

Some organizations, such as the college or school, are by the nature of their enterprise, anarchic and, where this is so, attempts to retain predictability by strong boundary maintenance are irrelevant, since unpredictability is built into the organization. (Author)

Organizational patterns can be examined from two major perspectives. The formal structure of an organization consists of those relationships among the organizational components that are the result of deliberate planning. This formal structure tends to be static and is the primary focus of management theory. The informal structure of an…

Available from: Comparative Administration Research Institute, Kent State University Press, Kent State University, Kent, OH 44242. (IRT)

The pressures for accountability and collective bargaining will formally and forcefully alter the existing informal balance of power relationship between the structures of official law and policy on the one hand and the informal structure of teacher professionalism and colleagueship on the other. (Author/IRT)

The interorganizational network may be conceived as a political economy concerned with the distribution of two scarce resources--money and authority. Organizations pursue an adequate supply of these resources. Interactions and sentiments of organizations are dependent on their respective market positions and their power to affect the flow of…