Bureaucracy and Alienation: A Comparative Analysis

Data collected from 41 high schools are used to test a set of hypotheses concerning dimensions of organization and alienation. The results from school organizations are then compared with those of Aiken and Hage for social welfare agencies. Although the relationships between bureaucratic structure and alienation are remarkably similar for secondary schools and social welfare agencies, there are striking differences in their organizational structures. Schools are dramatically more formalized and centralized than welfare agencies; and teachers are significantly more alienated than welfare workers. It is theorized that a bifurcation of professional and administrative domains in schools provides a distinctive organizational structure that reduces the impact of structure on alienation of teachers.