ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the enthusiasm for notions of ‘corporate culture’ in educational administration, as well as other traditions of cultural work that have been important in educational analysis. Despite the impression created in much of the literature in educational administration that organisational theorists have only recently discovered it, cultural analysis has a long tradition in organisational research, management theory and the literature on education and society. The essential issue is summed up in Bates’s claim that educational administration typically amounts to the management of culture and knowledge. In emphasising the significance of culture and cultural control in educational administration, Bates, unlike most within the field, was drawing not only on the pioneering work of Greenfield but also on strong traditions of cultural analysis within the sociology of education. Schools, because they are expressly intended for the education of citizens, are, along with the media perhaps, particularly well placed to contribute to the production of macro-culture.
