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Among the latter, the analysis shows that neither universal nor probabilistic laws governing human behavior are possible, even within the positivist or empiricist traditions in which laws are a central feature. Instead, the analysis reveals a more modest view of explanatory social theory and what it can accomplish. In this view, the kind of theory that can be produced is basically the same in form and content across quantitative and qualitative research approaches, and across different disciplines

In writings on the theory of valuing, many take the position that impacts on the relevant outcome dimensions should be aggregated to arrive at one summary assessment of program merit. A contrary position is taken here, specifying that the impacts should be kept separate and unweighted and expressed only in their own original measurement scales. All impacts, however, should be portrayed, including those for which no rigorous data analysis has been carried out. It is argued that aggregating, even by the individual stakeholder, is both futile and misleading. An extensive evaluation of the effects of research grants on the university is included as a full-scale illustration of the method. Financial impacts are considered, as well as impacts on faculty and student quality, on university prestige, and on the quality of instruction.

The conflict between expertise & democracy in the allocation of authority in organizations is examined & reconciled. While emphasis on expertise in the allocation of authority in organizations excludes nonexperts from decision-making processes, emphasis on democracy undermines the value of expertise. A voluntarist model of democracy allows the reconciliation of expertise & democracy by inserting the third value of product quality into the allocation of authority equation. Under this model, members of an organization volunteer to submit to expert advice so as to adhere to the value of product quality. Voluntary adherence to product quality assures the viability of not only the product but also the organization. 30 References. D. Generoli

The nonequivalent-control-group design is important because true experimental designs are frequently either infeasible or undesirable and other quasi-experimental designs have only quite limited applications. This design, however, has been disparaged as nearly useless because it depends upon statistical methods that may give biased results when applied to it. The design is too important to let lie in this condition. It is suggested that slight modifications, a few of which have been offered by others, might render it more reliable. One such modification, quite simple, widely applicable, and highly restorative of internal validity, is suggested here. The bias associated with the standard design is presented as resulting from basic violations of the assumptions of statistical methods. Both reduction of the bias and estimation of its extent are shown to be possible if the comparison group is selected at random from the relevant population and used by itself, rather than in conjunction with the experimental group, for the preliminary estimation of parameters. The modified design is shown to have various advantages relative to its unmodified form and even, at times, relative to true experimental designs. A secondary purpose of this article, supportive of the first, is to clarify the analysis of evaluation designs by conceptualizing the issues in terms of ordinary least-squares regression.

Participativeness as a style of supervision is considered as a dependent variable. The data do not directly support the initial hypotheses in any important way, but severalfindings of interest emerge indirectly from a more detailed, multivariate analysis. First, supervisory behavior in these terms is probably influenced significantly by affect between supervisor and subordinates. Second, when affect is not a factor, supervisory style is more rational, with participativeness depending on the training of the subordinates and their perceived capacity to contribute constructively to decision-making. Third, the measurement of participativeness in research affects theoretical development in an important way, since the technical and professional level of subordinates probably has a significant effect upon their objective level of participation but not upon the degree of participation as reported by them. Fourth, the latter finding is significant for the much more common body of research in which participation is treated as an independent variable; it may help to clear up many puzzling and inconsistent findings in that tradition. Lastly, the data analysis suggests a new normative and descriptive conceptualization of democracy in the workplace, which is offered in conclusion as a competitor of the power-equalization approach.

The organizational goal concept is important for significant types of organizational research but its utility has been downgraded in recent scholarship. This paper reviews critically key contributions to conceptualizing the organizational goal and synthesizes many of their elements into a more concrete and comprehensive conceptualization. The efforts of Etzioni, Seashore and Yuchtman, Simon, and Thompson to bypass the need for a goal concept in evaluative and other behavioral research are unconvincing in important respects. However, they are persuasive in underscoring the importance of viewing organizational goals as multiple and as empirically determined. Perrow, Gross, and others convincingly suggest a dual conceptualization, so that goals are dichotomized into those with external referents (transitive goals) and those with internal referents (reflexive goals). Deniston et al. contribute the desirability of subsetting the goals of organizations into "program goals" and of differentiating goals from both subgoals and activities. The existence and relative importance of organizational goals and an allied concept, "operative goals," may be operationally determined by current social science methods. The goal concept as presented here has implications for the evaluation of organizational effectiveness, for research on organizational behavior, for organization theory, and for views of the role of organizations in society.