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- Title
Organizational Structure and the Institutional Environment: The Case of Public Schools.
- Authors
Rowan, Brian
- Abstract
This paper develops an institutional approach to the problem of administrative expansion in public schools. It is argued that public schools add and subtract administrative positions to come into isomorphism with prevailing norms, values, and technical tore in the institutional environment. Using historical data on school districts in California, the natural histories of three specific types of administrative services were traced from their emergence as innovations to their diffusion and retention at the local level. The historical data revealed that administrative services supported by balanced institutional environments diffused more widely and were more stably retained at the local level than were services supported by imbalanced institutional environments. Further data analysis contrasted the institutional approach with more common approaches that stress size as a causal factor promoting innovation and structural differentiation. The data revealed that organizational size alone was an insufficient explanation for structural expansion and demonstrated the utility of examining the institutional determinants of organizational structures.
- Subjects
SCHOOL administration; PUBLIC school business management; ORGANIZATIONAL structure; SOCIAL norms; ORGANIZATIONAL ideology; DIFFUSION of innovations; ORGANIZATIONAL behavior; INNOVATION adoption; SCHOOL districts -- Social aspects
- Publication
Administrative Science Quarterly, 1982, Vol 27, Issue 2, p259
- ISSN
0001-8392
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.2307/2392303