The United States blood plasma industry uses various rhetorics to access donors and markets its products while managing its stigma and potential legal liability. The industry includes both the public "nonprofit" sector and the private, for-profit blood collection and manufacturing businesses owned by pharmaceutical companies that rely on…

This book aims to understand school-community connections and the most effective ways to mobilize school and community resources in the service of children and youth; and to understand the complexities of communication and exchange of information, both across disciplines and across professional boundaries of service responsibilities. Nineteen…

This monograph describes how to design cash incentive programs in higher education as a way to help employees achieve their best productivity and as the most cost-effective way to communicate and stimulate the work behaviors that the institution values. Including a mentoring role as part of recognition of model departments or model managers not…

This paper reviews legal risks associated with staff layoffs at institutions of higher education and methods for managing those risks and describes planning steps designed to minimize institutional legal exposure. Legal risks include claims of breach of contract, discrimination, tortious conduct, and violation of labor laws, collective bargaining…

This paper presents findings of a study that examined leadership among staff members in a suburban Cincinnati (Ohio) junior/senior high school that was undergoing school restructuring. The research examined principal-staff communication, with a focus on the staff decision-making role. The school was participating in both the Goodlad Institute of…

Shared governance within the community college fosters a sense of empowerment and equal partnership in the members of the organization. Accountability is multi-directional, not hierarchical, as in the case of the traditional pyramidal organization. In California, community college governance underwent a tremendous change in 1988 with the passage…

This book offers a step-by-step, systematic process for designing high-performance learning organizations. The process helps administrators develop proposals for redesigning school districts that are tailored to the district's environment, work system, and social system. Chapter 1 describes the characteristics of high-performing organizations, and…

Delineating the content that must be covered in the secondary schools of the State of Idaho, this guide presents a course of study for teaching English language arts for success in the workplace. Although educators sometimes use the terms interchangeably, the course of study in the guide is not an instructional or curriculum guide--it prescribes…

Rigid tracking systems structure inequality and affect students' opportunity to learn. Moreover, students gain from participating in rigorous advanced courses. This case study identified the practices and processes involved in creating a school culture of detracking wherein more students participate in high school advanced courses and experience…

The concept of vision is necessary to keep school improvement on track. This paper describes the efforts of two school districts to develop their school-district visions through a collaborative vision-building process. Each district--the Dekalb School District in northeastern Texas and the Altus School District in southwestern Oklahoma--began the…

This case study examined how representatives of one high-profile partnership worked to influence their associated school. Analysis drew from the "power-influence" perspective of educational policy analysis, a "microcosmic" approach that illuminates the political dynamics of an organizations by analyzing how people in organizations interact…

Practices to maintain and enhance board-member relationships are described in this handbook. Following the preface, chapter 1 presents a historical overview to describe the problems involved in defining the proper roles for school boards and superintendents. Chapter 2 identifies current board/administrator roles and what they should be for the…

A staff development process that uses group-building activities to foster staff collegiality is described in this paper. As schools become involved in restructuring, cooperation and positive working relationships become more crucial for effective school teams involved in participative decision making. Five characteristics of group-building…

Teachers of advanced technical and professional writing need to provide credible ways in which their students can extend the cultural critique the teachers try to engage them in into the world outside the classroom. The nature of resistance in nonacademic discourse can be explored to help both the teachers and students think through the imposing…

This digest summarizes a longer document with the same title concerning the introduction of enduring innovations into a higher education organization. Organizational change involves three steps: (1) mobilization, (2) implementation, and (3) institutionalization. Without institutionalization, the innovation is likely to be terminated no matter how…