The Effects of Organisational Size on Principal Decision Making

The study examines the effects of organisational size on elementary school principals′ instructional leadership decisions to allocate teachers to groups of students. More specifically, the study tested the invariance of a personnel allocation decision‐making model for principals from three categories of California district and school sizes, using the LISREL methodology. The results confirmed the fit of the proposed model to the data across schools of all sizes and in small and medium school districts. In large school districts, however, the proposed model did not fit the data. A specification search to determine the model that describes this organisational context indicated that political bargaining with parents and teachers over the allocation of teachers and students is a less important decision input for principals in large school districts.