Purpose: The purpose of this paper is for the author to recount how his use of organizational theory to understand educational reform in the USA led to a change of mind. Design/methodology/approach: My shift resulted from my conclusion, derived from the new institutionalism, that only marginal changes can be made in schools and, thus, fundamental…

This article is intended to spark a discussion between two research communities--scholars who study learning and scholars who study educational organizations. A secondary purpose is to encourage researchers to look beyond schools to examine learning in other types of educational organizations. The authors outline a framework to guide research on…

This study examines the historical conditions that fostered significant reform in science education. To understand these conditions, we employ a framework drawn from the new institutionalism in organization theory to study the founding and early development of the Exploratorium--a prominent science center that greatly impacted the field of science…

Although scholars have developed and applied various explicit conceptualizations of leadership to the study of educational administration, far less attention has been given to implicit or informal conceptions of leadership. Some recent studies claim that leadership impact on organizational performance is minimal or illusory; others argue that more…

Conceptualizes leadership as an organizational quality. The dominant perspective on organizations has fostered a narrow treatment of four leadership assumptions involving function, role, the individual, and culture. Originating from people's personal resources, leadership flows through networks of roles comprising organizations. Leadership shapes…

Research on administrators' influence on the performance of their organizational units has accumulated evidence on principals' influence, but the influence of superintendents is largely neglected. Results from a sample of California school districts demonstrated that superintendents exerted little influence on academic performance. Constructing…

Using Karl Weick's concept of organizing, argues that the information processing systems of administrators and teachers are largely separate. (JW)

Drawing on concepts from an institutional theory of organizations, this study describes policy, teacher union, and academic actors who shaped and promoted school-based management in the national arena, their interests, and the network that linked them. School-based management was at least partially the product of institutional environment. (SLD)

This study sought to describe how an elementary school faculty made sense of the impending succession of its principal, and to extend Gephart's effort to develop a grounded theory of leader succession by examining an unforced succession in an organization whose members exerted little if any influence on the selection process. On the basis of…