This dissertation is a qualitative study of how the emerging organizational operating environment of the Information Age is demanding a change in internal organizational dynamics. The parts of the study include a review of literature, a scan of organizational external factors and internal dynamics and a series of in-depth interviews with organizational leaders from the private, public and non-profit sectors. During this time of transition from the Industrial Age to the Information Age, four major external factors are changing the operational environment: the emerging global economy; new technology; changing consumer tastes; and demographic shifts. Thus we see that the operational environment is very different then it was during the Industrial Age and today's organizational leaders must maintain a constant dialogue about the emerging global economy, diversity of the work force, greater productivity and quality. Leadership must understand that human resources are their most valuable asset because the key organizational resource has become knowledge. Such a paradigm demands the creation of "learning organizations," that tap the desire of each member of the organization to contribute fully and create the environment for that to happen using the dynamics of leadership, vision, values, and network structures. This study offers leaders, of any type of organization, a perspective on key organizational external factors of the Information Age and the organizational dynamics a of 21st century learning organization.

Education Reform has legislated school governance councils to promote site-based decision making. School teams have been suggested in special education as a pre-referral resource and assistance to teachers working with special needs students. Cross-constituent groups must be brought together to restructure schools and provide instructional support. The site-based teams require evaluation. Several performance activities, variables, and levels of training and support have been suggested in studies from states where there have been attempts to implement site-based decision making. Few of these reports have attempted to quantify the activities and variables suggested for team functioning. Through a thorough literature review of the subject and an extensive survey of site teams in the public schools in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, a set of team activities and variables was identified and quantified by the author. The collected data was utilized to develop an evaluation instrument. The resulting questionnaire was administrated to evaluators and team members of school site teams. A statistical analysis was performed to assess the significance of these performance descriptors in estimating the overall functioning of school site teams. The results of the statistical analysis and literature review provide the immediate supervisor with a set of variables to gain insight in the assessment of team functioning. These results can also be used to develop a self-assessment instrument to enhance team functioning. The model developed by the author can be generalized to management settings other than education. Customization of the evaluation tool is suggested as a means for future application of this study. The results of the research focus on the importance of team process and group dynamics, as well as specific product variables germane to the organization in the development of an evaluation instrument that can be used to assess overall team functioning.

The Charnes Cooper Rhodes ratio DEA model ("CCR") is used, with panel data from a large sample of Massachusetts' school districts, to test three propositions concerning the Massachusetts Education Reform Act of 1993 ("MERA"). First, did the degree of positive correlation between Socio-Economic Status ("SES") and educational outcomes decrease, secondly did educational opportunity become more equal among towns in Massachusetts, and finally were education standards raised overall? The CCR model is a Linear Programming method that estimates a convex production function using Koopmans' (1951) definition of technical efficiency and the radial measurements of efficiency proposed by Farrell (1957). It has been widely used in Education Production Function research. The pursuit, through state and federal courts, of equitable funding, allied to the belief that smaller class sizes improve outcomes, has made K-12 education expensive. The belief that outcomes are in constant decline has led to calls for "Accountability" and to "Standards" reform. Standards reform was combined, in MERA, with reform of state aid formulas and additional state funding, to ensure a minimum basic level of education pursuant to the decision of the Massachusetts Supreme Court in McDuffy v. Robertson. The one certain relationship revealed by decades of research is a strong positive correlation between SES and outcomes. If MERA ensured a higher basic level of education, then the correlation between SES and outcomes should have weakened as the education of less well SES-endowed children improved. The CCR model was used first to measure "correlation" between multiple input and multiple output variables. Strong positive correlation was shown to exist and it appeared to strengthen rather than weaken. Next the CCR model was used to determine if there were changes in the distribution of per pupil expenditures and, lastly to determine whether outcomes improved between after MERA. The analysis suggested that the distribution of expenditures improved but that outcomes deteriorated. This deterioration seems to be closely related to the changes in the proportion of all students, in a grade, actually taking the tests. There is little evidence that MERA achieved anything and no basis upon which to argue that it achieved nothing.