Organizational Linkages: Expanding the Existing Metaphor

During the past 25 years, many researchers and scholars have suggested that schools and school organizations often operate with a structural looseness much different from that of the rational bureaucracy. Coupling and linkage are two metaphors which have been developed to describe the intricacies of life in schools and school organizations. Briefly reviews some of the developments of the linkage metaphor, the relationships between coupling and linkage, and illustrates how the linkage metaphor might be useful in developing greater understanding of change processes in schools and school organizations.