ABSTRACT
Covert activity in educational organizations requires, in addition to rationalist positivist research, interpretive and critical studies of a multidisciplinary nature to capture its complexity and contextualization. Where intelligence organizations are physically and socially removed from the public sphere, organizational covert activity is removed from the formal, the sanctioned, the transparent that is described in much of the administration literature. There are a number of underlying principles of organization and professional practice that inform the roles and responsibilities. Here, four of the common ones plausible denial, compartmentalization, secured communications, and deception are discussed in a little more detail, as their application as analytical categories can be applied to the shadow side of educational organizations. The first guides the intent of covert activity in relation to protecting political authority, whereas the second is a structural feature, and the last is both an aim and a practice.
