This book is aimed at managers, chief executives, personnel directors, and all those who want to know what action learning can do for their organizations. Part 1 (Chapters 1-3) provides a general introduction to action learning. It describes the underlying theory and principles of action learning and the benefits that organizations can expect to…

A study was done to explore the role of senior and middle managers in British Further Education (FE) about a year after these institutions had been incorporated and gained their independence from local funding authorities. The research examined administrator attitudes at a large broadly based urban college providing a wide range of educational and…

This paper offers a new conceptual framework for thinking about school restructuring by examining the meaning and implications of restructuring as a school improvement strategy. Conceptualization efforts are organized around a set of fundamental questions: (1) What is the meaning of restructuring? (2) What makes restructuring necessary? (3) What…

This publication contains the proceedings of a symposium on higher education finance and management which examined the current financial and managerial direction of colleges and universities. The event brought together institutional presidents and policy makers, corporate leaders, leading financiers, top college and government administrators,…

This guidebook argues that solutions to the many problems that internally plague academic institutions of higher education are best developed when administrators closely examine the values, beliefs, traditions, and histories that organizational members hold. Institutional evaluations should take place within a cultural context in which…

At present, the composition program at San Diego State is located in two departments. The Academic Skills Center offers pre-baccalaureate courses for basic writers and developmental ESL writers. The Department of English and Comparative Literature offers most of the required general education two-semester sequence, advanced composition courses,…

This book is intended as a resource for educators engaged in the pursuit of quality and excellence. Specifically, Total Quality Management (TQM)--defined as a way of thinking and working to achieve continuous improvement through employee involvement and a focus on customers--is applied to education. Following the introduction, the first two…

The use of group therapy is expected to increase dramatically in the next decade. This volume explores the convergence of consumer demand for group treatment and corporate marketing of health care plans and how it will affect group therapy as a discipline. It shows how to put in place the key organizational elements that are needed to create and…

This digest discusses two recurrent themes presented in the New Directions for Community Colleges volume titled "Organizational Change in the Community College: Ripple or Sea Change?" First, change in the external environment is accelerating, and colleges must respond to these changes to thrive. External environmental influences include…

Five background papers were produced for the Research, Development and Dissemination System Committee of the National Educational Research Policy and Priorities Board in preparation for the proposed reauthorization of the Department of Education's Office of Educational Research and Improvement. The first paper, "Shaping the Future of…

The Synergistic Model of Organizational Career Development is an attempt to combine best practice principles from two domains: organizational development and individual career planning. The model assumes three levels of intervention within an organization: philosophical, strategic, and practical. Interventions at any of the levels may be directed…

While the concept of choice is not new to families able to take advantage of the available options, the idea of giving parents nearly total freedom in selecting their children's public school is new. Proponents of choice claim it results in higher test scores, fewer dropouts, and more involved parents. Critics maintain that there is no proof of…

The notion of the "everyday problematic" (Smith 1987) is used to examine the experiences of three doctoral students engaged in research about leadership for women, with a focus on leadership discourse, feminist perspectives, and organizational change. "Everyday problematic" refers to the discrepancy between what is defined as leadership and what…

Ways in which strategies drawn from the local change process literature can enhance the broader implementation of a new approach to site-based management (SBM) are described in this paper. The first section presents a new conceptual framework for SBM that is based on decentralizing power, knowledge, information, and rewards within systemic…

Twenty-nine members of a manufacturing organization were interviewed to learn how they identified, evaluated, and responded to what they perceived as significant changes in their organization. A grounded theory approach was used to analyze the interview transcripts. A model of the process of organizational change was constructed from emergent…