Выходные данные статьи:
Anderson, Barry D. School Bureaucratization and Alienation from High School,
Sociology of Education, Vol. 46, Issue 3 (Summer, 1973), pp. 315-334.
School Bureaucratization and
Alienation from High School
Barry D. Anderson
Washington University, St. Louis, Missouri
The relationship between students' alienation from school and perceived school
bureaucratization is examined in a sample of 18 high schools. The major goals of the
study are to identify dimensions of bureaucracy and alienation, to determine the
relationship of these dimensions to second-order, or integrating, factors, and to
determine the relationships between the integrating factors of bureaucratic structure and
alienation. A substantial proportion of the between school variance in alienation is
accounted for by two second-order factors of bureaucratization.
ONE OF THE more familiar questions asked in educational research is: "Are there
characteristics of schools which have a 'bearing on the way students perform in school or
how they feel about the school?" Answers to this question have been sought two ways.
The first has been inquiry into the effects of variables like expenditures per pupil,
facilities, and special programs. The second has been to study the way in which schools
are organized or classes conducted and to examine these in relation to a variety of
outcomes. This report falls into the second of these traditions by attempting to examine
the relationships between the bureaucratic structure of high schools and student
alienation.
What is so important about bureaucracy that it deserves the attention of
educational sociologists? First, there is a recent emphasis on the organizational
framework in which children learn. Perhaps the best known book on the topic at the
moment is Silberman's Crisis in the Classroom (1970), but there are many similar titles on
the shelves of bookstores (See Holt, 1964; Rafferty, 1962). Although differing widely in
their educational philosophy, these men share a concern with organizational structures for
education. To deal with the structural issues raised by these authors we must have ways of
describing the organizational structure of schools. Bureaucratic structure is one
potentially useful descriptor.
In this regard, there is a fairly general consensus, outlined by Hall (1961) that
there are six important components of bureaucratic structure:
1
(1)
(2)
(3)
(4)
(5)
(6)
a division of labor based upon functional specialization,
a hierarchy of authority,
a system of rules governing the rights and duties of members,
a system of procedures for dealing with work situations,
an impersonality in inter-personal relationships, and
a procedure for selecting and promoting participants on the basis of their technical
competence.
These components refine the concept of bureaucracy and enable its application to
schools.
Another reason bureaucracy deserves attention is that it may be related to pupil
achievement in, and feelings about, school. DeCharms (1972) has shown that
achievement is related to feelings of power and control in students. Piaget (1932) has
mentioned the critical role played by feelings of control and power in motivating students
to learn. Coleman et al. (1966) in their study of American high schools, found that a
question dealing with student feelings of power and control was one of the most potent
predictors of achievement: those students who felt powerful also were high achievers. If,
as literature suggests, bureaucracy affects feelings of power and control, then it also may
be a determinant of academic success.
Last, and most important, if the first two points are correct, is the fact that
bureaucratic structure is a variable which can be manipulated by school administrators.
Unlike explanations of poor achievement based on the social origins of students or on
their personalities or on their intelligence, bureaucratic structure may give us an
explanation which provides more than a label for a problem. After all, it doesn't do much
good to know that students who have a low I.Q. do poorly in school unless we know how
to raise I.Q. The great value of studies of bureaucracy is that they may help isolate
components of school structure which then can be manipulated to achieve certain goals of
education.
Like bureaucracy, alienation is an interesting concept for educational sociologists.
According to Seeman (1959) the term refers to at least five distinct components:
(1) Powerlessness: A low expectancy of ability to determine or control outcomes or
reinforcements sought in the school.
(2) Meaninglessness: A low expectancy of ability to make satisfactory predictions about the
future outcomes of behavior in the school.
(3) Misfeasance: (Cf. Seeman's normlessness) An expectation that the use of means which
are prohibited by school authorities is necessary in order to attain goals desired by the
student.
(4) Futility: (Cf. Seeman's isolation) Assignment of low reward value to goals and beliefs that
are highly valued by school authorities.
(5) Self-estrangement: Participation in school and school-related activities is based largely
upon anticipation of future rewards rather than upon rewards inherent to participation
such as pleasure or satisfaction.
These components should be intrinsically interesting, for what educator wants his
students to feel their school work is meaningless, that it was necessary to cheat to be
successful, or that what is learned in school is of little value? Indeed, these aspects of
alienation seem to contain the essence of many of the things we are trying to help children
avoid through education. Whether or not these dimensions are of intrinsic interest to
educators is moot. The concept does subsume the notion of powerlessness which, as
mentioned above, may be closely related to pupil achievement. That point should be of
interest to educators regardless of their philosophical bent.
Earlier efforts fail to provide a satisfactory test of the hypothesis that individual
2
alienation may be explained by a contextual variable such as bureaucratization. Studies
by Bonjean and Grimes (1970), Aiken and Hage (1966), Neal and Seeman (1964), Pearlin
(1962), and Argyris (1959) show alienation related to some of the characteristics of
bureaucratic organization. In a school setting, Kolesar (1967) found pupil powerlessness
to be related to type of bureaucratic organization. On the other hand, Byles (1967: 21)
found that social control (which is similar to the control aspects of bureaucratization) and
alienation ". . . are two co-existing but separate phenomena, each operating independently
of the other."
The major purpose of the study reported here is to provide a more satisfactory test
of the relationship between organizational bureaucratization and alienation from school
by attempting to account for variance in the alienation scores of students in terms of the
degree of bureaucratization found in their schools. To do this data were collected in 18
secondary schools located in the province of Ontario, Canada, during the period
December-March, 1968-1969. The sample of schools was random, but stratified on the
basis of school and school district size and curriculum (academic, vocational composite).
Information about bureaucratic structure, alienation, and personal backgrounds of
students was collected from all grade ten pupils in each school, giving an N of 3,792.
Since variables other than organizational bureaucratization are 'thought to cause
alienation, the problem becomes one of determining the importance of organizational
bureaucratization over and above the effects of other possible causes. Symbolically the
problem may be expressed as follows:
(1) A=B+C
where A == Alienation.
B = School bureaucratization.
C = A set of variables thought to cause alienation.
Assuming appropriate measures, a regression model seems an obvious means of
examining this problem. Indeed, just such a model is used, but before it can be specified,
a digression into the extent and nature of alienation and bureaucratization in the sample is
required.
Alienation
Alienation has been defined as "... a general syndrome made up of a number of
different objective conditions and subjective feeling-states . . ." (Blauner, 1964: 15). In a
similar vein, McClosky and Schaar (1965: 40) state that Anomy ". . . may be only one of
many symptoms expressing a negativistic, despairing outlook both on one's own life and
on the community in which one lives." Clearly, the implication of such thinking is that
there may be a number of variables which vary together and compose a syndrome which
may be labelled alienation. Alienation, conceptualized in this manner, is somewhat like
Spearman's "g", in that it is a general factor or integrating concept which is composed of
more specific factors.
In contrast to these viewpoints, Seeman (1959:783) argues that there are ". . . five
basic ways in which the concept of alienation has been used." These are logically
distinguishable but may be empirically related. Dean (1961:754) concurs with Seeman
noting that ". . . sometimes the same writer includes several nuances of meaning."
Empirical evidence in the form of factor analytic studies by Neal and Rettig
(1963; 1967), Struening and Richardson (1965), Besag (1966), and Kolesar (1967); as
well as in the form of correlational studies by Dean (1961) and Middleton (1963) support
Seeman's contention that alienation is really multi-dimensional. However, with the sole
3
exception of Neal and Rettig's 1967 study, there appear to be no attempts to reveal the
extent to which the factors, or dimensions, of alienation co-vary. This is an important
point, for if the dimensions co-vary, model (1) will be suitable as a test of an alienationbureaucracy relationship, since it would be appropriate to regard alienation as an
integrating concept under which the dimensions were subsumed.
For this study alienation is defined along lines suggested by Seeman, with the
exception of minor changes in terminology designed to obtain greater clarity; and with
the proviso that school is deemed to be the focus of alienation. For example, students
were queried about their feelings of powerlessness in school as opposed to their being
generally powerless (Cf: Clark, 1959). Items such as the following were used:
(1)
(2)
(3)
(4)
(5)
Powerlessness: My teachers generally do what they want to do, no matter what I say.
Meaninglessness: School doesn't help me figure out what to do with my life.
Misfeasance: Cheating is the only way for me to get what I want out of school.
Futility: I have better things to do with my time than fool around with school clubs.
Self-estrangement: I would prefer to be out working than to remain in school.
Bureaucracy
The classic formulation of the bureaucratic model is by Weber (1946: 196-204);
his model is applicable to all types of administrative tasks and to many different types of
organizations. His work has led to a variety of attempts to refine the bureaucratic model
and to use it in empirical research. These have raised the question of how many and
which of Weber's bureaucratic characteristics or dimensions are essential to bureaucratic
structure. There is considerable confusion in the literature about this point, beginning with
Weber himself. Pugh et al. (1963: 295) find twenty-six different characteristics in his
formulation. Yet, despite the profusion of possibilities, both Heady (1959: 515) and more
importantly Hall (1961:6 -7) conclude that there is substantial agreement on the basic
elements. With this as his rationale, Hall (1961) was able to construct scales to measure
perceptions of six of the "basic" dimensions: hierarchy of authority, specification, rules,
procedural specifications, impersonality, and technical competence.
As was the case with alienation, if model (1) is to be appropriate, the dimensions
of bureaucratic structure must be parts of an integrative concept. If they are not, it is
improper to treat bureaucracy as the sum of its parts. There is more evidence on this point
than was the case with alienation; several studies of bureaucracy (Hall, 1966; Kolesar,
1967; Punch, 1967) have attempted to determine the extent to which these dimensions covary. Using a variety of techniques all have arrived at a similar conclusion – the
dimensions seem to be measuring more than one underlying concept, for they do not vary
together. The point is largely academic at this point since dimensionality of the concept is
an empirical question which can be answered in the data analysis.
Drawing upon Hall, Kolesar (1967), and Punch (1967), items such as the
following were constructed for each of the six dimensions:
(1) Specialization: I take a large number of different courses.
(2) Procedural Specifications: I follow a lot of routine school regulations about how school
work is to be done.
(3) Hierarchy of Authority: School officials frequently exercise their right to tell me what to
do.
(4) Rules: I am careful not to violate school rules which regulate my personal conduct.
(5) Technical Competence: My chances of success in this school depend almost entirely on
my ability.
(6) Impersonality: My relationships with teachers are formal and impersonal.
4
Instrumentation
The instruments used to measure alienation and bureaucratization consisted of
Likert-type items with five possible responses ranging from strongly agree through
undecided to strongly disagree. The questions were selected in two stages. First, a pool of
360 items was divided randomly among six questionnaires of sixty items each. These
were administered to between 25 and 30 grade ten students of varying ability. The
students were given simple definitions of the eleven concepts the items were intended to
measure and were asked to match each item with its appropriate definition. If the fraction
of correct choices was not larger than that which could be expected by chance, the item
was discarded. This procedure eliminates items which are ambiguous to students; it also
tends to insure that the measures of bureaucratic structure and student alienation are not
merely two different measures of the same concept.
The 110 remaining bureaucracy items were administered to 25 students in a
school where one of the explicit goals of the staff and students was the removal of
bureaucratic characteristics. They also were given to 67 students in a private,
bureaucratically organized school for boys. Fifty-seven items which differentiated (P <
.05) between the two schools were retained for the final scale.
The 104 remaining alienation items were administered to two groups of
adolescents. The first of these was a class of 27 grade eleven students all of whom were
(1) more heavily involved in extra-curricular activities, (2) taking one or more extra
academic courses, (3) attending school even though they were legally free to leave, and
(4) regarded by their teachers as students who truly enjoyed school. The second group of
youngsters was drawn from a boarding house established to aid alienated youths and a
church drop-in center located in an area where alienated youths congregate. Staff
members of the drop-in center and of the boarding house identified some of the most
alienated youths in the two centers and 15 of these youths, all but one of whom had
dropped out of school, responded to the items. The 44 items which differentiated between
the two groups (P < .05) were retained for the final scale.
Preliminary Analysis of Bureaucracy and Alienation Data1
At this point it is possible to examine four hypotheses which must precede an
examination of model (1). They are:
HI. Factors identifiable as Hierarchy of Authority, Rules for Personal Conduct,
Procedural Specifications, Impersonality, Technical Competence and Specialization
will emerge from an Image Analysis2 of the correlations between the items intended
as measures of school bureaucratization.
H2. A factor identifiable as Bureaucratic Structure will emerge from an Image Analysis
of the correlations between the dimensions of bureaucratic structure revealed in the
test of hypothesis one.
H3. Factors identifiable as Powerlessness, Meaninglessness, Misfeasance, Futility, and
Self-estrangement will emerge from an Image Analysis of the correlations between
items intended as measures of student alienation from school.
H4. A factor identifiable as Alienation from School will emerge from an Image Analysis
1
Alienation and bureaucracy items available from the author upon request.
Image analysis is a desirable factor analytic technique for two reasons: an attempt is made to remove
error variance from the correlation matrix before factoring and it allows exact computation of image scores
based on the reduced correlation matrix. The latter point is particularly important because of the heavy
reliance placed on factor scores later in this analysis. Guttman (19S3) and Kaiser (1958, 1963) discuss these
and other advantages of Image Analysis in more detail.
2
5
of the correlations between dimensions of alienation revealed in the test of
hypothesis three.
HI. The 57 items of the Bureaucracy Scale were subjected to an Image Analysis and
nine factors with eigenvalues greater than one were found. The last three of these had no
loadings greater than .24 as did 23 items. These factors and items were dropped from
subsequent analyses on the grounds that they were uninterpretable. The first six factors
were then rotated to a Promax criterion (Hendrickson and White, 1964) after which they
accounted for 25.7% of the total variance in the 34 item scale and 93.2% of the common
variance.
The factors generally correspond in meaning to dimensions of bureaucratic
structure. They are named as follows: (1) Rules and Regulations, (2) Hierarchy of
Authority, (3) Impersonality, (4) Subject Matter Specialization, (5) Centralization of
Control, and (6) Technical Competence. These results were as expected with two
exceptions: two hypothesized dimensions. Rules for Personal Conduct and Procedural
Specifications combined into a dimension called Rules and Regulations and the
hypothesized dimension Hierarchy of Authority contained a group of items measuring
Centralization of Control.
H2. Since the Promax rotation used to test hypothesis one yields correlated
dimensions of bureaucratic structure, it is possible to seek an integrating second-order
factor through Image Analysis of the 6x6 matrix of correlations between the dimensions.
This analysis yields three factors with eigenvalues greater than one but when rotated to
the Varimax criterion, factor three has no loadings greater than .24 and is discarded. The
remaining two factors account for 47% of the total variance in the dimensions and 95% of
the common variance.
Factor one is defined by the dimensions of Hierarchy of Authority and
Impersonally (the factor also has high loadings on dimensions of Specialization and
Technical Competence, but so does factor two). Since the factor seems to measure
reliance on formal status as a means of handling interpersonal relations it is named Status
Maintenance. Factor two seems to measure the extent to which people regard their
behavior as controlled through rules and centralized decision-making and is named
Behavior Control.
In sum, hypothesis two must be rejected since a single integrating factor was not
found. However, the two factors which were found, taken together parsimoniously
describe an individual's perceptions of school structure since the co-ordinates which
locate any school on a two-dimensional "map" of bureaucracy are given by the two image
scores. In terms of the relationship between bureaucratic structure and dependent
'Variables such as alienation rejection of hypothesis two simply means that the factors of
bureaucratization must be studied in conjunction wit each other.
TABLE 1
Correlations between the Dimensions (First-Order Factors) of Bureaucratic
Structure
Dimensions
1. Rules and Regulations
2. Hierarchy of Authority
3. Impersonality
4. Subject Matter Specialization
5. Centralization of Control
6. Technical Competence
1
1.00
0.03
0.34
–0.35
0.63
0.56
2
3
1.00
0.65
–0.47
–0.01
0.45
1.00
–0.56
0.22
0.36
4
5
6
P .01 =0.23
P .05 =0.16
1.00
–0.28
–0.26
1.00
0.35
1.00
6
TABLE 2
Second-Order Factors of the Dimensions of Bureaucratic Structure
Dimensions
Unrotated Factor
Loadings
1
2
3
Varimax Rotated Factor
Loadings
1
2
3
Communalities1
1. Rules and Regulations
–0.57
0.48
–0.01
0.16
0.72
0.07
0.55
2. Hierarchy of Authority
–0.58
–0.46
0.06
0.72
–0.02
0.19
0.56
3. Impersonality
–0.67
–0.23
–0.10
0.68
0.23
0.04
0.51
4. Subject Matter Specialization
0.58
0.10
0.17
–0.54
–0.27
0.05
0.37
5. Centralization of Control
–0.43
0.44
–0.07
0.08
0.61
–0.01
0.38
6. Technical Competence
–0.63
0.12
0.21
0.38
0.46
0.31
0.45
Variances
2.03
0.71
0.09
1.45
1.23
0.14
2.82
Eigenvalues
6.46
3.43
1.52
…
…
…
…
1
These also represent lower-bound estimates of the reliabilities of the dimensions (Harman, 1960: 15).
TABLE 3
Correlations between the Dimensions (First-Order Factors) of Student
Alienation from School
Dimensions
1. Self-estrangement
2. Misfeasance
3. Powerlessness
4. Futility of Extra-curricular Activities
5. Meaninglessness
P .01 = 0.23
P .05 = 0.16
N = 3792
1
1.00
0.75
0.72
0.77
0.873
2
3
4
5
1.00
0.77
0.73
0.83
1.00
0.74
0.78
1.00
0.76
1.00
H3. The 44 items of the Alienation scale were subjected t an Image Analysis and
five factors with eigenvalues greater than one found. These correspond to the dimensions
of alienation (1) Self-estrangement, (2) Misfeasance, (3) Powerlessness, (4) Futility of
Extra-Curricular Activities, and (5) Meaninglessness. (Se Anderson (1970 or 1971a) for
tabular results of the analyses performed to test hypotheses one through four.) The only
major restriction of the original hypothesis is the change in meaning attached to Futility.
Six items were discarded because they ha no factor loadings greater than .24.
The five factors were rotated to the Promax criterion; the rotated factors account
for 38.9% of the total variance in the seal and 91.4% of the common variances
H4. The 5x5 matrix of correlations between the dimensions of alienation was
subjected to an Image Analysis which yielded a single factor accounting for 72.4% of the
total variance in the dimensions and 99.7% of their common variance. Thus it is
reasonable to assert that the dimensions of alienation are indeed aspects of single,
integrating concept.
7
TABLE 4
Second-Order Factors of the Dimensions of Student Alienation from School
Unrelated Factor Loadings
Dimensions
0.87
-0.06
0.00
1. Self-estrangement
0.84
0.04
0.00
2. Misfeasance
0.82
0.06
0.00
3. Powerlessness
0.02
0.00
4. Futility of Extra-curricular Activities 0.81
0.91
0.02
0.00
5. Meaninglessness
Variances
3.62
0.01
0.00
Eigenvalues
17.62
1.22
1.01
Communalities
0.76
0.72
–0.67
0.66
0.83
3.63
Summary
Analysis to this point has shown that for this sample it is appropriate to regard
alienation as an integrating concept under which the five dimensions described by
Seeman may be subsumed. A parallel analysis has shown that the dimensions of
bureaucratic structures not co-vary and that two integrating concepts called Behavior
Control and Status Maintenance are needed to describe the data.
In addition, a series of one-way analyses of variance (see Anderson, 1970: 128,
134, 207 and 226) show that each item, dimension and integrating factor differentiates
significantly between schools. Also, the communalities shown in Tables 2 and 4 are lower
bound estimates of the reliabilities of the dimensions of bureaucratic structure and
alienation respectively (Harman, 1960: 15) and are adequate for the purposes of this
study.
The Bureaucracy-Alienation Relationship
Because there are two aspects of bureaucratic structure, model (1) must be
respecified as:
(2) A = SM + BC + C
where A = Alienation.
SM = Status Maintenance.
BC = Behavior Control.
C == A set of variables thought to cause alienation.
The analyses of bureaucracy and alienation in the sample enables image scores to
be computed for each subject for A, SM, and BC. But what is to be done about the control
variables? This is important, for any relationships between school bureaucratization and
student alienation may be confounded by variables known to be related to alienation.
There are a number of these: political apathy (Dean, 1960; Erbe, 1964; Rosenberg, 1956),
lack of access to life goals (Mier and Bell, 1959), low educational achievement
(Middleton, 1963), low social class (McClosky and Schaar, 1965; Middleton, 1963; Gold,
1960; Erbe, 1964), low social class identification (Mier and Bell, 1959; Mizruchi, 1960),
low degree of social participation (Mizruchi, 1960; Neal and Seeman, 1964; Pearlin,
1962; Clark, 1959; Erbe, 1964), membership in work-centered groups (unions) (Neal and
Seeman, 1964), preemptory exercise of official authority (Pearlin, 1962), large
hierarchical discrepancies between manager and managed (Pearlin, 1962), lack of
promotions (Pearlin, 1962), high expectations of financial reward (Mizruchi, 1960), low
satisfaction with the organization (Clark, 1959), and low degrees of relevant knowledge
(Clark, 1959; Seeman, 1963; Neal and Seeman, 1964).
8
The more important of these: sex, socio-economic status, social participation,
membership in school-oriented groups and degree of past success are measured to enable
statistical control over their effects on the bureaucracy-alienation relationship.
Socio-economic status was measured using the seven broad categories of the
Blishen Scale (Blishen, 1965), a measure of SES developed for coding Canadian
occupations. Participation was measured using modified versions of the Chapin Social
Participation Scale (See Miller, 1964: 209-212) for both school-related and extracurricular activities. Since all students were in grade ten, age per se becomes unimportant
as a cause of alienation, but it serves as a proxy for success.
As the last step prior to specifying a regression model, the sample was split in half
and an average score computed for each school on each factor of bureaucratic structure
using one of the halves.3
The regression model to test a relationship between bureaucracy and alienation
can now be specified as:
(3) A = SM + BS + SP + ASP + Age + Sex + SES
where A = Alienation scores for each student derived from second-order Image Analysis.
High scores indicate high alienation.
SM = Status Maintenance scores for each school derived from second-order
Image analysis and averaging procedure. High scores indicate frequent
attempts at status maintenance.
BS = Behavior Control
for each school derived from second order Image
Analysis and averaging procedure. Low scores indicate frequent
observance of controls by students.
SP = Social participation in school activities for each student. High scores
indicate high participation.
ASP = Social participation in out-of-school activities for each student. High
scores indicate high participation.
Age = Age of each student in years.
Sex = For each student scored 1 if female, zero if male.
SES = Socio-economic status from the Blishen Scale. Low scores indicate high
social class.
Means, standard deviations, and correlations between the variables involved in the
model are shown in Table 5; the necessary regression equations are shown in Table 6.
Table 6 may be interpreted by noting that in equation 6.1 a unit increase in Status
Maintenance over the sample (which, because of scaling, would be equivalent to
decreasing the number of attempts at keeping social distance) should result in a decrease
of .615 units in the average alienation score over the sample. A unit increase in Behavior
Control over the sample (because of scaling, this would mean a decrease in observance of
rules) would result in a .552 unit increase in average alienation. In short, the relationship
between bureaucratization and alienation is as hypothesized: increasing presence of
bureaucratic characteristics seems to be associated with increasing alienation.
3
The other half is used later to test the bureaucracy alienation relationship. The sample was split in
order to reduce the possibility that alienation scores could be contaminated by misperceptions of alienated
people (see Davids, 1955). Tannenbaum and Bachman (1964) describe other ways of partialling individual
effects out of tests for organizational variables.
9
TABLE 5
Means, Standard Deviations, and Correlations for Analysis of Bureaucracy Alienation Relationship N – 1890
1
2
3
4
5
1. Alienation
1.00
2. Status Maintenance *
–0.12
1.00
3. Behavior Control *
0.19
–0.09
1.00
4. Number of School
–0.21
–0.02
0.02
1.00
Organizations
5. Number of Non–0.11
0.00
0.02
0.41
1.00
School Organizations
6. Age
0.10
–0.02
–0.02
–0.16
–0.09
7. Sex **
–0.17
0.02
–0.02
0.00
–0.03
8 Socio–Economic
–0.10
–0.02
–0.39
–0.05
–0.02
Status
–0.01
–0.32
–0.14
1.31
1.10
Means
0.99
0.16
0.31
2.00
1.41
Standard Deviations
* These are school means computed from the second half of the sample.
** Sex is scored 1 for a female, zero for a male.
6
7
8
1.00
–0.08
1.00
0.01
0.06
1.00
15.43
2.14
0.52
0.50
3.77
1.91
The size safe 'the squared multiple correlations (RSQ's) reported in Table 6 is
quite small. Equation 6.1 accounts for the most variance and hence is the most accurate
predictor of alienation. The control variables (equation 6.2) account for the next largest
segment of the variance, while the school variables (equation 6.3) are the least accurate,
accounting for only 4.6% of the variance in alienation. These findings indicate that a good
deal of variance in individual student alienation from school is explained by factors other
than school bureaucratization and the control variables. In other words, the small RSQ's
mean that it is impossible to make accurate predictions about an individual student's
alienation from school with these variables. Nevertheless, the trend relating
bureaucratization to alienation in general is strong and ought not be ignored.4
By partitioning the variance into that accounted for by the controls alone, the
factors of bureaucratization alone, and overlap between the controls and
bureaucratization, the degree to which school characteristics are confounded with the
controls is shown. (See Mood, 1971.) In this case there is very little overlap between the
two sets of variables. In other words, the effect of school structure is over and above the
effect of students' characteristics.
One last point needs attention. Since school bureaucratization at best explains only
4.6% of the variance in alienation from school, can the concept be said to be useful?
Might there not be other characteristics of schools which led to alienation? In order to
answer this question a regression analysis was performed using a series of eighteen
dummy variables for each school to predict alienation. The model is:
(4) A = S1 + S2 + S3 + ... + S18
where A = Alienation.
Sn == one if in school n, zero otherwise.
Model (4) captures all variance in alienation attributable to differences between
schools. The model has an RSQ of .064, meaning that differences between schools
account for a maximum of only 6.4% of the variance in alienation from school. Given this
result the components of bureaucratic structure used in the study seem to perform quite
well as descriptors of schools, for they account for 71.9% of the between schools variance
4
Large squared multiple correlations would be surprising, as they would mean that patterns of school
organization had very similar effects on all students. This hardly would meld with other research and
common sense knowledge about the impact of school on students.
10
in alienation (4.6 / 64% × 100%).
TABLE 6
Regression Equations Predicting Alienation from Bureaucracy and Control
Variables
Status
School Non-School
Behavior
Maintena
OrganizaOrganizaControl2
nce2
tions
tions
Equation
#
RSQ1
6.1
0.124
–0.615
+0.552
–0.096
6.2
0.087
…
…
6.3
0.046
–0.609
+0.582
Age
Sex
SES
Constant
–0.028
+0.024
–0.314
–0.019
–0.103
–0.095
–0.025
+0.023
–0.318
–0.055
+0.152
…
…
…
…
…
–0.125
Variance accounted for by all variables=12.4%.
Variance accounted for solely by controls=7.8% (12.4% – 4.6%).
Variance accounted for solely by bureaucratization=3.7% (12.4% – 8.7%).
Variance accounted for by overlap between bureaucratization and controls =0.9% (12.4% – [3.7%+7.8%]).
1
All squared multiple correlations are significantly greater than zero (p<0.01).
2
All beta weights for bureaucratization are statistically significant (p<0.01).
An unanswered question deals with whether or not a lower level of aggregation
such as the classroom might not have provided a better explanation of alienation than
school level variables. Since the students who took part in this study were moved through
a number of rooms during a school day, it is impossible to answer the question. Research
presently under way in a sample of elementary schools will attempt to get at the problem
by examining students who are in the same classroom for nearly all of the school day. In
this sample, it will be possible to use the classroom as a unit of analysis and thus to get
directly at differences between teachers.
Conclusions
Evidence provided by this study suggests that in the case of schools it is
appropriate to regard bureaucratic structure as composed of two main components: Status
Maintenance and Behavior Control. While it is possible that the structure revealed in this
study might not be applicable to organizations other than schools, the model used offers
promise as a means of answering the question "How many, and which, dimensions of
bureaucratic structure are important?"
Alienation from school is composed of five empirically distinguishable
dimensions. These are correlated and load on a single second-order factor, indicating that
they comprise parts of an integrating concept. The study thus provides strong support for
the work of Seeman and indicates that the dimensional model of alienation might be
applied profitably to studies of alienation from foci other than schools.
The contextual measures of bureaucratization account for only about 4.6% of the
variance in alienation from school, calling attention to the possibility that theories which
locate the source of alienation in work environments may be incorrect. While there are a
number of studies of these theories, none seems to account for a great deal of variance in
alienation. Further, the most successful studies seem to tie specific aspects of bureaucratic
structure (e.g., rules and regulations) to specific aspects of alienation (e.g.,
powerlessness).
In this regard, the regression equation, and not the amount of variance explained,
seems to be the appropriate means of seeking school effects. In fact, this is precisely what
Blalock means when he notes that
... if there is any degree of assurance that in effect manipulations have been made primarily in
11
terms of the independent variable, then comparisons involving slopes will ordinarily be more
meaningful than those using correlation coefficients. . . . Basically, our interest in correlation
coefficients in these comparisons should be mainly to help us determine the degree of accuracy in
our estimates of slopes. (Blalock, 1964, p. 126)
Given this interpretation, then, one would assume that the school effects found in
these data were significant, but that they could not be expected to be the same for all
individuals in each school. Such an interpretation seems much more reasonable than the
dismissal of school effects entirely on the grounds that they explain a trivial amount of
the variance in alienation. In fact, the amount of variance attributable to school effects is
very dependent upon the units of analysis selected for a study, while regression weights
are apparently much more stable across levels of aggregation. Despite the low squared
multiple correlations, the measure of bureaucratic structure does account for a large
proportion of the variance in alienation attributable to differences between schools. Thus,
the notion of bureaucratic structure seems promising as a way of describing differences
between schools.
For the practitioner, linking the research to deCharms' and Coleman's findings
associating student feelings of power and achievement suggests that school administrators
hold a key to pupil achievement in that less bureaucratic modes of school organization
may produce higher levels of pupil achievement. This is a tempting hypothesis since
students of low socio-economic status (where grades often are low) seem to attend more
highly bureaucratized schools than do students of high status (Anderson 1971b). This
raises the interesting possibility that the poor achievement of these pupils in school may
be due partially to the way that schools are run, and not just to deficiencies in their
background as much current literature would suggest.
Administrators may play a key role; earlier research (Punch, 1967) has shown
school bureaucratization to be related to the way in which school principals behave. Thus
principals who choose to do so might be able to reduce student alienation from school by
modifying the organizational structure of their schools and classrooms.
One final point. There is a negligible correlation between student and teacher
perceptions of school bureaucratization (Anderson, 1971c), suggesting that faculty may
not realize student views of school organization. They must, then, take pains to assess
students' viewpoints, since student perceptions are most likely to be related to student
conduct and attitudes toward the school.
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