PUB TYPE Reports- Research/Technical (143) Speeches /Conference Papers (150) Information Analyses (070)

This paper revisits the literature on the nature of school organizations and presents a view of secondary schools as complex social systems, as opposed to bureaucratic-rational structures. Research was conducted into three Western Australia secondary schools planning to implement school-based decision making and planning procedures. The restructuring program reflected a corporate managerialist perspective viewing schools as rational systems and reform as a matter of linkage tightening. The first section reviews organizational theory literature to develop a rationale for viewing schools as open social systems. The second section focuses on research methods employed to assess the possible effect of subsystem linkage and an open social system on implementing school-based management. The third section offers a brief cross-case analysis of the three secondary schools, focusing on the schools&apos