Status, Risk, and Receptivity to Innovations in Complex Organizations: A Study of the Responses of Four Groups of Educators to the Proposed Introduction of Sex Education in Elementary School
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Media type:
E-Article
Title:
Status, Risk, and Receptivity to Innovations in Complex Organizations: A Study of the Responses of Four Groups of Educators to the Proposed Introduction of Sex Education in Elementary School
Contributor:
Giacquinta, Joseph B.
Published:
American Sociological Association, 1975
Published in:
Sociology of Education, 48 (1975) 1, Seite 38-58
Language:
English
ISSN:
0038-0407;
1939-8573
Origination:
Footnote:
Description:
The author maintains that the literature on receptivity to organizational innovation erroneously assumes people to be generally unreceptive to change and is misguided in its emphasis on the atheoretical measurement of receptivity correlates. In contrast, he reports hypothesis-testing research using data from a survey of the responses of a select group of public school educators to the proposed introduction of sex education in elementary schools. Variations in receptivity were demonstrated to be associated with variations in organizational status rather than with personality or demographic characteristics. From highly unreceptive to highly receptive, the order of the groups according to status was, as predicted: board members, administrators, classroom teachers, sex education specialists. Moreover, paralleling these group differences in receptivity were, as expected, significant differences in the groups' risk levels which they perceived the introduction of sex education would create for them in their status. These results support the proposition that fundamental structural factors--organizational status and status risk--outweigh psychological or demographic conditions in explaining the phenomenon of receptivity to organizational change. Additional ways of testing this theoretical orientation in schools and other settings are suggested.