Operationalization of a Frame of Reference for Studying Organizational Culture in Middle Schools.

The middle school is an example of an institution which has arisen as a result of a particular set of idealized cultural values and assumptions; yet it is unclear how closely cultures which exist in actual middle schools mirror the idealized middle school culture. In the present study, en attempt was made to operationalize a frame of reference for studying culture in middle schools. Middle school advocacy literature served as a basis for creating items for the Middle School Description Survey (MSDS), which was designed to test elements of the ideal middle school culture. The items were conceptually categorized according to Schein's (1985) cultural content model. R-technique factor analysis of the instrument using data from 295 educators failed to support the validity of these conceptual cultural categories, but did identify the existence of a single "g" factor with which a majority of the items correlated highly. In a separate phase of the study, the MSDS was completed by 146 educators in seven middle schools. Data from each of the schools were used in separate Q-technique factor analyses in an attempt to determine the instrument's usefulness in identifying distinct groups of individuals in these schools relative to their orientation to the culture construct. A number of identifiable "person clusters" were present in the several schools, with a high degree of uniqueness associate with the arientation of each cluster. These results indicate that the MSDS is a promising tool for measuring organizational culture in middle schools. OPEkATIONALIZATION OF A FRAME OF REFERENCE FOR STUDYING ORGANIZATIONAL CULTURE IN MIDDLE SCHOOLS Organizational culture may be viewed as a vehicle by which people attribate meaning to the numerous ambiguous events occuring in the complex organizations in which they work. Although unique cultures develop within individual organizations, all organizations of a particular type or "species" tend to develop their own specialized cultural features. In the present study, the middle school serves as an organizational "species" to which cultural assertions are applied. The middle school is an interesting unit of analysis, for at least two reasons: first, since the middle school is a rather recent addition to the United States educational system, it would be considered to have a more evolving than stable cultarev and second,. since the middle school has arisen as an alternative to the previously established junior high school, it would be interesting to determine how successful the middle school has been in developing an institutional identity distinct from that of the junior high. Middle school proponents (e.g., George, 1983) have suggested that certain cultural factors should be in place in middle schools; however, it is unclear to what degree these factors exist, and to what extent persons who work in middle schools see these factors as relevant to their schools' mission. Thus, the purposes of the present study were (a) to define an "ideal type" middle school culture as espoused by middle school advocates, (b) to develop an instrument to measure middle school educators' perceptions of the existence of this ideal culture in the schools in which they work, and (c) to determine what types of cultures actually exist within selected middle schools. Review of the Literature Defining Organizational Culture Recent definitions of culture have focused or the meaning of organizational events (Dolman & Deal, 1984; DeRoche, 1987; Erickson, 1987;