Organizations or individuals who operate independently but who have common links, such as a shared clientele, a shared funding source, or common ownership, form "loosely organized systems." Organizational theory has concentrated on the nature of tightly organized systems, which generally need help reducing the rigidity of role definition and of…

This paper proposes viewing students as full-fledged organizational members who participate in school planning, problem-solving, and decision-making about school curriculum, grading policies, teacher evaluation procedures, budget, and the like. Three tested strategies are described that help students increase their understanding of how the school…

The author examines the process by which the formally-structured outgrowths of social movements become part of local power systems. Although social movements often start out in opposition to local power systems, they sometimes merge with those systems in order to operate effectively and to accomplish significant change in the distribution of…

There is a lack of systematic methods for effective implementation of meaningful consumer and community participation, which is a major factor contributing to critical deficiencies and imbalances in the planning and implementation of human services programs. A constituency-based approach for the development of service acquisition systems is…

A systemic, holistic perspective is used in examining three challenges to the educational community today and in positing the idea of a societal organization of education for meeting these challenges. The problems identified--(1) improvement in the quality of education, (2) provision of life-long learning experiences, and (3) improvement in the…

There is a crucial need in the field of higher education for a methodology of self-study and self-evaluation of the effective and efficient management of postsecondary institutions that deals with facts as well as perceptions as they relate to institutional management. The Management Systems Inventory (MSI) addresses itself to this need. MSI is a…

This mastery test is designed to accompany unit 5 of the second-semester 12th-grade course, "Comparing Political Experiences." The 25-item multiple-choice test was developed by the National Evaluation Systems, Inc. in conjunction with the project directors to determine whether the unit objectives have been achieved. The test measures…

This monograph is an historical document portraying the problems of starting Florida's first ten teacher education centers (1974-75). Its aim is to provide information to individuals and groups considering active participation in teacher education centers. The document is organized as four sections followed by a bibliography and appendix. The…

The American Association of State Colleges and Universities (AASCU) is an outgrowth of the Association of Teacher Education Institutions and the American Association of Teachers Colleges. The major purposes of the new organization founded in 1961 were: (1) to enable the members to make their influence felt in connection with national affairs; (2)…

Examined is the phenomenon of the recent faculty development movements in institutions of higher education. Of special importance are: (1) major ways we have approached faculty development; (2) forces that influence the faculty development movement. A construct of faculty development involves giving conscious attention to planning, studying, and…

The organization and mobilization for literacy work consist of two overlapping parts: organizational design and institution building. Organizational design, which covers both the technical and the social system, can be seen to include the following processes: analysis of the institution; invention of roles; invention of rules relating the roles…

This paper builds a theory of organizational communication which explains communication at several system levels. The theory is built around a decision-situation model of communication theory and incorporates concepts of organization structure and behavior taken from research on complex organizations. The theory is supported with original data…

If the justification for the existence of an area of study called organizational communication is that communication scholars have something to say to people in organizations, then researchers in the field must be able to take their knowledge into the work-a-day world and make themselves understood to people who are not social scientists. While…

This paper argues that research on innovation and organizational change should shift its focus from the impact of individuals to that of organizational structure and environmental factors. The results of two research projects carried out in 1968-69 and 1969-70 on organizational change in school districts are presented to support the premise that…

The Institute was set up to introduce an alternative to current methods of staff supervision. To implement this alternative, members of the Boston Department of Staff Development were trained in effective interpersonal communication, a goal-setting technology to enhance teacher motivation, procedures for setting meaningful and measurable…