Decoupling Under Pressure

• In Event: 256 - Section on Organizations, Occupations and Work Roundtables (one-hour)
  In Refereed Roundtable: Table 11. The Organization of Education

Abstract

Changes in organizations' performance evaluations place greater pressure on decoupled organizations to sustain myths of improvement based on ceremonial criteria of worth. I develop hierarchical and relational models to explain the variability in reported performance metrics among schools in California's public school system over the period 1999-2012, during which the state facilitated the entry of charter schools as an alternative organizational form and introduced standardized test metrics to evaluate schools' technical performance. My findings suggest that organizations maintain legitimacy under increased performance pressure by decoupling to demonstrate technical competence at higher levels of the organization while exposing lower levels to increased risk of failure. While the entry of charter schools in some districts contributed to increases in districts' reported effectiveness and efficiency in terms of the new performance criteria, it also contributed to decreases in the enrollment and performance of district public schools proximate to charter schools.

Author

• Valentina Assenova, Yale University