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Data collected from 41 high schools are used to test a set of hypotheses concerning dimensions of organization and alienation. The results from school organizations are then compared with those of Aiken and Hage for social welfare agencies. Although the relationships between bureaucratic structure and alienation are remarkably similar for secondary schools and social welfare agencies, there are striking differences in their organizational structures. Schools are dramatically more formalized and centralized than welfare agencies; and teachers are significantly more alienated than welfare workers. It is theorized that a bifurcation of professional and administrative domains in schools provides a distinctive organizational structure that reduces the impact of structure on alienation of teachers.

This paper presents an organizational learning framework for reframing management practices within large bureaucratic organizations. Reviewing the relevant literature, the paper argues managers' control orientations and practices effectively stifle learning and personal development by severely limiting the ability of employees to exert control or change the nature of their work activities. To encourage organizational learning, a number of reframing tools are proposed The paper concludes by discussing how reframing tools may be used in conjunction with other psychoanalytic techniques to challenge and change managers' control orientations and practices.

The application of different models of organization to the study of schools is common in the literature on organizational theory. This literature distinguishes rational models, such as the bureaucratic ideal type, from natural systems models, such as the concept of schools as loose‐coupled systems and the image of schools as political arenas. This article examines the extent to which some specially selected schools in Australia and New Zealand can be viewed as resembling certain organizational models. The article concludes that there is no one model which is suitable for describing schools although many of the different models described by theorists seem to be relevant to the schools studied. The article also seeks to isolate some of the factors that result in schools resembling certain organizational models rather than others.