The Structural Frame of Reference39

The central idea in configuration theory is that organizations structure themselves into somewhat naturally occurring configurations according to the type of work that they do, the means they have available to coordinate their work, and a variety of situational factors. Given these considerations, school organizations configure themselves as professional bureaucracies (Mintzberg, 1979), even though in this century they have been managed and governed as machine bureaucracies (Callahan, 1962; Meyer & Rowan, 1978; Weick, 1982). According to institutionalization theory , organizations like schools deal with this contradiction by maintaining two structures: a material structure that conforms to the technical demands of their work and a normative structure that conforms to the cultural demands of their institutionalized environments. By combining the insights of configuration theory and institutionalization theory, school organizations can be understood in terms of two organizations, one inside the other. On the outside, their normative structure conforms to the machine bureaucracy configuration, the structure that people expect because of the social norm of organizational rationality. On the inside, however, the material structure of schools conforms to the professional bureaucracy configuration, the structure that configures itself around the technical requirements of their work.