Teachers play an important role in developing a robust school vision. This study is aimed to find out the likely relationship between the teachers' perception of school health and a robust school vision. It has been found that there is a significant positive relationship between teachers' perceptions of organizational health and the relative…

Current policies place unprecedented demands on districts to use evidence to guide their educational improvement efforts. How districts respond is likely to be influenced by how individuals in the district conceptualize what it means to use evidence in their ongoing work. This study draws on sensemaking and institutional theory to investigate how…

In a high performance work organization (HPWO), employee basic skills are just one of many components. HPWOs feature the following: they have flatter organizational structures, have work done by teams of highly skilled workers, and have a focus on quality, customer service, and continuous improvement. The collaborative approach to workplace…

The cohort concept has recently been reconsidered in response to pressures for reform in school-leadership preparation programs. A cohort is defined as a group of students who engage in a program of studies together. Surveys sent to 37 institutions across the United States that use cohort models in their administrator-preparation courses elicited…

This paper describes the various types of school-business partnerships that exist in rural America. Data were derived from an extensive review of literature and limited field observations and interviews. Findings indicate that little formal research has been conducted on reform-model, school-business partnerships. Two strands of thought regarding…

In January 1994, Arizona's Maricopa Community College District issued a request for proposals to develop new administrative software applications to solve problems related to high maintenance costs for existing systems and difficulties in updating software. The result was the Apollo Project, in which the District contracted with Oracle Corporation…

Some organizational theorists argue that current approaches to management are not going to work in the 21st century. The book explores this modern dilemma and presents two premises underlying the design of organizations capable of responding to an increasingly complex and challenging business and social environment. The first premise is that the…

Scarce resources have facilitated increasing interdependence among organizations. This paper describes the group dynamics of the cooperation and collaboration models and examines which one is most suitable for maintaining effective group involvement. The cooperation model is comprised of two organizations that reach a mutual agreement; however,…

This volume contains presentations and workshop papers from the International Congress on "The European Dimension of Vocational Training--Experiences and Tasks" that provided those with responsibility for vocational training a forum for analyzing and discussing challenges that have emerged from European cooperation in vocational…

This book addresses the goal of radically repositioning training from a peripheral role in the organization to that of a provider of bottom-line results, return on investment, and driver of performance. Each of five parts, and their respective chapters, begins with a changing mindset model that implies a shared perception, by both the individual…

These five papers are from a symposium that was facilitated by Elwood F. Holton, III at the 1995 conference of the Academy of Human Resource Development (HRD). "HRD Alignment: A Systemic Assessment of HRD in Organizations" (Richard J. Torraco) describes the HRD alignment model as a model for evaluation that offers a systemwide perspective on HRD…

Education reform solutions often ignore the people involved and concentrate solely on the systems in which they work. This paper presents an overview of invitational education theory and Total Quality Management (TQM) theory and describes their uses for improving education. Both theories are holistic approaches; stress the cooperative nature of…

This paper describes the development of a revised Organizational Leader Authenticity Scale (OLAS) for use in determining the authenticity of both educational leaders and noneducational leaders. "Authenticity" refers to the degree to which the leader's action matches his or her words. A Staff Authenticity Scale was also developed and tested. The…

This handbook outlines techniques and processes for improving institutional effectiveness and ensuring continuous quality improvement, based on strategic planning activities at Wisconsin's Milwaukee Area Technical College (MATC). First, institutional effectiveness is defined and 17 core indicators of effectiveness developed by the Wisconsin…

History indicates that when a community college "single college district" opens a new campus center, that center tends to follow one of two different patterns of development. The new campus typically either remains in the subordinate role of a center forming a "single college multi-campus district" or it develops into a comprehensive college…