The issue of retrenchment as an organizational adaptation to changing conditions is discussed here in relation to four interrelated policy questions: What is the economic future of schooling? What economic assumptions underlie the institutional model of school organization? How could economics be interpreted in terms of a human investment model of…

Models of organizational structures developed through the study of commercial organizations are not necessarily applicable to educational organizations. Technical organizations such as factories act to regulate the flow of their processes and products and, thus, to buffer them from external forces. Institutional organizations such as schools or…

The workings of schools have not received the attention due them in the study of educational administration. We need to generate new "images" or models of school organization that are more congruent with reality. These models need to be refined through expression and discussion and selected and changed through scientific methodology.…

This paper describes a conceptual framework that can order the host of changes occuring in institutional structure as a consequence of recent learner-centered reform in postsecondary education. Several schemata are examined, and a functional systematization of structures suggested; however, none of these purports to be a completely satisfactory…

The author's dissertation, summarized in this presentation, was primarily concerned with the question, "Are public schools like Max Weber's conceptualization of bureaucracy?" From a survey of the literature discussing the nature of organizations, a taxonomy of organizational facets was used, first, to identify and classify the features…

This paper describes the progressive/collaborative model high school program, a model designed to facilitate student movement from special day classes into regular classroom environments with an ongoing emphasis on serving at-risk students. Charts outline options available to special education students through this model and differences between…

This paper discusses different approaches to analyzing the internal control structure of organizations and describes a model interview structure that was developed for use in a longitudinal study of decision-making in 41 elementary schools. The model is designed to garner objective accounts of school decision-making through periodic interviews of…

A study of two small-to-middle-sized midwestern school districts, each observed for over a year, shows that the negotiated order concept can provide a useful framework for viewing schools' organizational functions. According to the negotiated order concept, organizational relationships require constant negotiations concerning values, goals, rules,…

The model used in a multivariate fashion to reorganize the Department of Industrial Technology Education at the University of Idaho thereby undergoing a test for effectiveness is presented. This model is a product of a seminar held in West Germany in 1986 in which a group of professional educators from several countries produced a generic model…

To implement School Based Management (SBM) in Charleston County, South Carolina, the school district was reorganized to include a management team to make shared decisions on all phases of district activities. Local schools were required to develop short and long range plans that encouraged needs assessment, goal identification, strategy…

This paper analyzes the relative funding model developed as part of the reorganization resulting from the 1988 Australian Government's White Paper on Higher Education Policy. This reorganization created the Unified National System which has resulted in fewer but larger higher education institutions. The relative funding model is described in terms…

The major purpose of this paper was to develop a Human Resource Accounting (HRA) macro-model that could be used for designing a school organizational effectiveness audit. Initially, the paper reviewed the advent and definition of HRA. In order to develop the proposed model, the different approaches to measuring effectiveness were reviewed,…

The paper explores the relationship between specific organizational variables of four public elementary schools and the integration of emotionally disturbed and neurologically impaired students into regular classes. It is explained that in a review of the literature concerning organizational variables and change, nine variables were selected for…

The reforms currently proposed by educators and policymakers are based on two categories of assumptions: (1) changes in school organization will increase effective use of scarce resources; and (2) choices made by parents and children will effectively "match" students to appropriate learning environments. This paper presents a dynamic model of…

This explorative essay considers some new developments in open-system theories of organizational interaction with relevant environments that might be useful for educational historians. The authors explore ways in which changes in the social meaning of the American high school may have led to structural and functional changes. Three dimensions of…