ABSTRACT
This chapter shows what sort of contribution can be expected from organizational analysis and what sorts of investigation it will require, against the background of existing studies in education and what appears to be helpful work elsewhere. Few acknowledgements are required of existing or widely agreed conceptualizations of the scope of organizational analysis in education. Many of the less desirable features of the urge to ‘technologize’ organizational information prematurely or inappropriately appear historically in US tradition of administrative theory in education. The Parsonian categorizations, while elegant in their symmetry, may safely be regarded only as a series of ‘reminders’, particularly apposite in sensitizing us to the necessary differences in level required of an exhaustive organizational analysis. Three issues are chosen as relatively neglected problems in the analysis of educational organizations in respect of which this sort of ‘reminder’ helps. They are external relationship and boundary maintenance; formal and informal organization; and output and self-maintenance.
