Every community in this nation wants safe, orderly school campuses, but we remain far from reaching that objective. Crime and safety issues continue to plague America's schools and to interfere with the education of our children. This document provides a framework for school improvement that specifically addresses crime and safety. Chapter 1, "The…

A study examined the creation of a new division within an organization, where members of management were primarily from an "immigrant" or regulatory culture, to determine the effects on management and professional satisfaction. Data were elicited through both a survey instrument and in-depth interviews with 26 current employees and 12…

Curriculum may be more adequately explained as the work of an organization than as a plan for individual learning. Research is reported based upon case studies of four allied health programs in one university with the intent to employ concepts from the organizational literature to describe a group of curriculums, and to determine if relationships…

This paper provides an overview of the dimensions of organizational climate as they relate to early childhood work environments. It reports the results of a study involving 629 early childhood workers representing 65 nonprofit and for-profit, center-based programs. The focus of the inquiry was to determine in what ways the 94 administrators and…

This paper examines a vareity of individual, group, and organizational communication skills for dealing with job burnout. Primary emphasis is placed on techniques for: (1) gaining perspective; (2) resolving substantive and affective conflict; (3) developing social support systems; and (4) increasing constructive feedback and employee control.…

Symbolic and cognitive organizational perspectives were used to analyze a case study of a complete academic bargaining cycle. The researcher, as participant-observer, had access to all bargaining sessions and to both union and administration caucuses. Although bargaining is often considered a rational process, this case illuminated the processes…

Entrepreneurship has been one of the major issues in rural education. This annotated bibliography is a guide to theoretical material and to more recent empirical work on entrepreneurs in different economic climates. The material was gathered to enable rural development strategists who want to promote local independent business development to build…

This paper explores the relationships among policy, structure, and culture of educational organizations, specifically, the relationships between policy-mandated educational change and the organizational variables of coupling and culture. A framework for research on policy implementation is presented, which illustrates the interactive relationships…

An analysis of principals' beliefs and behaviors with regard to instructional supervision in the context of Meyer and Rowan's (1977, 1978) concept of the "logic of confidence" is presented in this report. Methodology involved interviews with and observations of 6 administrators and triangulating interviews with 12 teachers. Nine distinct…

Discrepancies between actual and desirable organizational cultures, with a focus on the implications for improving administrator training, are examined in this report. The desirable characteristics of a productive school culture are determined and compared with the perceptions of Australian and U.S. staff. A mailed survey of 587 practitioners in…

Arguing that by identifying rules, researchers can understand and explain behavioral and communicative processes in specific contexts, this paper outlines a formal method for conducting a rules analysis of a conflict case. The first section of the paper defines and summarizes the basic concepts relating to conflict, organizational groups, and…

A study examined how organizational members describe their use and perceptions of electronic mail systems. Fifty-five subjects with access to electronic mail systems were interviewed at two organizations. Results indicated that subjects used the electronic mail system in the following ways: 84% for memos, notes, and correspondence; 53% for voice…

An information society is one in which the expression "to earn one's daily bread by the sweat of one's brow" appears decidedly anachronistic. People have been seduced by the rhetoric of novelty and confused by the surface significance of terms which have become accepted parts of everyday speech. What do rubrics such as information society,…

Differences between declining colleges and colleges not experiencing decline were investigated, along with dysfunctional organizational consequences that may be associated with decline. Attention is directed to 12 negative attributes resulting from conditions of decline, seven of which were found to be significant: no innovation, scapegoating,…

To study the social and economic conditions where black farmers live, 342 southern counties, each having at least 25 black farmers, were identified. The counties were divided into five categories, four of which reflected the most common commodity type of black-operated farm and one which did not exhibit any common black-operated farm type. Most…