Suchergebnisse

Die chronischen Schwierigkeiten der amerikanischen Schulpolitik, das amerikanische Schulsystem dem Leistungsniveau anderer entwickelter Industriegesellschaften anzugleichen, werden in diesem Beitrag als Ausdruck von tiefer liegenden Konflikten in der amerikanischen politischen Kultur interpretiert. Die These ist, daß der die amerikanische politische Kultur kennzeichnende Widerspruch zwischen den Forderungen nach Freiheit des Individuums und den Forderungen nach Gleichheit der Sozialchancen eine wichtige Ursache für die zu beobachtende Polarisierung und Selbstblockierung der Schulreform zwischen Schulwahlfreiheit und Chancengleicheit, zwischen Bildungsindividualismus und staatlichem Finanzausgleich ist. Die Aussichten, zu tiefgreifenden Verbesserungen der Schulausbildung zu kommen, dürften somit auch von der Fähigkeit der amerikanischen Politik abhängen, die gerade im letzten Jahrzent zugespitzte Polarisierung der Schulreformer in feindliche ideologische Lager zu überwinden. (DIPF/Text übernommen) ; The United States' persistent difficulties to revitalize public education and implement "world standards" are interpreted in the context of deep-seated conflicts in the American political culture. The paper argues that the conflict between individual liberty and equality, characteristic as it is for American political culture, is at the bottom of the polarization and self-obstruction of American school reform between the imperatives of "choice" and "equality", "excellence" and "equity". The prospects for profound change would, so it seems, depend on the ability of American educators and politicians, to overcome the polarization and provide a rationale for public education capable of integrating the opposing, but in a certain sense complementary demands of excellence and equity.

The controversy around Weber's theory of bureaucracy that occupied post-war American organization theorists serves as a backdrop to consider differences in the institutional and cultural environments of American and continental European, notably German, organizations. I suggest that formal organizations in the United States emerged under institutional and cultural conditions sufficiently different from those Weber witnessed as to account for the differences in the European and American organizational discourses. European institutional-cultural conditions favored a centralized, hierarchical, obedience-based organizational form with little uncertainty tolerance emphasizing loyalty. In the US, by contrast, the primacy of the large business organization which operated in volatile markets under the cultural imperative of equality favored flatter, less hierarchical, and more nearly decomposable organizations in which compliance was based on a temporary contract. Indifference vis-à-vis the national and cultural particulars of formal organizations may have led early organization research to prematurely close off a potentially fruitful line of inquiry in the field of comparative organization.