J. Hage and F. Hull (1981) developed a typology of organizations based on two major dimensions--scale and complexity. The typology delineates four types of organizations: Type 1, "traditional" organizations, typically small-scale structures with low complexity; Type 2, "mechanical" organizations that are large scale, low complexity structures…

Using a case study of a client with common problems in placing women in non-traditional positions, this speech raises questions of diagnosis and intervention and presents an alternative organizational model that is then applied to the case study. The organizational model emphasizes four components: (1) mission (purpose or rationale for existence…

In long established research organizations, it is necessary to safeguard good research ideas originating at lower organizational levels. The upward progress of unusually good ideas in an organizational hierarchy may be compared with that of ordinary ideas by means of a mathematical model, with the assumption that ideas follow a Poisson…

A study of coordination modes in work group communication was conducted to evaluate and expand leadership contingency models. A total of 106 people in classes and workshops on organizational communication completed seven questionnaires resulting in nine measures of six independent variables representing the following contingency factors from…

A case study of a mixed comprehensive school with an age range of 11-16 investigates the management of the first externally imposed change on the secondary school system during the years 1987-89. Implemented in 1986, the General Certificate of Secondary Education (GCSE) is a national examination for all 16-year-olds delivered through the subjects…

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…

The paper investigates the qualities which distinguish representative democracies from other forms of government, particularly direct democracies, dictatorships, and oligarchies. Representative democracy is based on the precept that political authority should be located in offices which are specified by a popularly ratified or accepted…

In contrast to a teacher-dominated literature classroom where authority rests with the one who has the power to grade, a classroom dedicated to cultivating the creative process breaks down the traditional hierarchies (such as theory and practice, text and reader, and organization and improvisation) and concentrates on the needs of the individual…

The Status Equalization Project had as one of its goals the elimination of systematic white dominance on intellectual tasks in desegregated classrooms. The field experiment described in this report was designed to test the effectiveness of the Multiple Abilities Curriculum and Expectation Training in equalizing race relationships in such settings.…

Efforts to change the role of principals over the past 30 years typically reflect a leader-centrist perspective of schools illustrated by the metaphors of a marching band or the slightly less hierarchical classical orchestra. In these conceptual systems, policy (score) is generated (composed) by policymaking bodies (composers) with principals…

A theoretical framework for mapping school political life is developed which distinguishes elite, bureaucratic, coalitional, and participant types of school political organizations. The framework provides tools for analyzing and comparing patterns of political behavior within and across school political behavior settings. Definitions and…

Educational attainments are seen as the link between the status attainments of one generation and those of the next. Most of the apparent opportunity inequalities are thought to reside in those processes leading to the social origins - educational attainment relationships -- that is, in families, in schools, or in both. The present investigation…