This paper proposes a methodology for selecting organizational decision strategies, including a new "heuristic" decision-making model. References included. (MD)

Argues that choice and determinism are independent variables that can be positioned in two separate continua to develop a typology of organizational adaptation. The typology suggests the complexity and interdependence of important variables and decision processes as a function of both choice and determinism. Appended are 44 references. (MLF)

This paper analyzes two types of decisions for insuring mobile oil rigs and fixed installations in the Norwegian North Sea: (1) decisions about information for ratemaking and underwriting, and (2) decisions about the conditions of insurance. Appended are 46 references. (MLF)

A field study of Canadian Government bureaucracy illustrates two perspectives on strategic decision processes. Processes follow a structured progression or are anarchic, wherein decisions are inferred from outcomes of fortuitous combinations of events. Both perspectives facilitate processual understanding but fail to specify the influence of…

Argues that the case study method of assessing human interactions in organizations provides incomplete information and contains inadequate judgment criteria. Examines epistemological assumptions on which case study or interpretive methodology rests (including cultural analysis of organizations) and recommends an alternative problem-solving model…

Enlarges the epistemological debate between the logical positivists, preoccupied with socialization, role assignment, and behavior control, and the critical theorists, who repudiate functionalism, value-neutral principles, and "hard data" as detrimental to a comprehensive understanding of educational administration. Includes 47 endnotes.…

To assess political activity in decisionmaking, selection of a new dean was studied in 40 professional colleges at large state universities. Interdependence affected political activity directly; faculty consensus regarding desired attributes had contrary effects. Political activity may assist existing coalitions to gain advantage or to facilitate…

After criticising the prevalent assumption of organizational theory that organizational behavior is based on common typological forms, this paper proposes a political analysis of schools as organizations as a practical theory general enough to be useful to practitioners. The first section reviews the basic elements of comparative structural…

This executive summary of a research project explores the general question of how school districts change their domains through the management of major proposals ("issues"). The study, which focused on case studies of three suburban superintendents' management of five to seven major issues, used raw data consisting of interviews with…

Based on an institutional-contingency view, this study focuses on ways in which public and private school sectors in six San Francisco area counties embody different organizational logistics and authority principles, including rational-legal, traditional, and local-market. Results suggest that, among other characteristics, nonreligious private…

Some baseline information is offered in this study to help determine the ends to which the strategic planning processes are being put and the outcomes that are being pursued. A conceptual overview of planning models and the role of planners are presented. The complete study comprises a two-stage process of data collection. First, strategic plans…

This publication builds a conceptual framework that categorizes alternative policy instruments for educational reform into actions. It defines four categories of policy instruments and hypothesizes how each will operate in addressing different policy problems in different political and organizational contexts. Subsequent research will assess…

This review discusses major organizational theories used by researchers to investigate questions related to librarianship: libraries as bureaucracies; contingency theory; decision-making; design and structure; technology; organizational climate; research by social scientists; theory, research, practice. Development of organizational theory and its…

This essay reviews major trends in methodological and theoretical approaches to the study of organizations since the mid-sixties and espouses the political analysis of organizations, a position representing a middle ground between comparative structuralism and the loosely coupled systems approach. This position emphasizes micropolitics as well as…

Four papers generated by a broader study of issues management in three suburban Chicago school districts are collected here. "Achieving Routine" focuses on the effective routinization of organizational change, in this case a curriculum decision, through the use of administrative mechanisms and the conceptual linkage of the new to…