Abstract
The purpose of this study was to describe the informal communications network or "grapevine" among school principals. The investigators interviewed all elementary, secondary, and special school principals in a suburban school district in the midwest. Based on the responses of these principals to questions about the ways they informally interacted with peers and others in the district, the researchers identified "clan-like" informal grouping patterns among elementary principals and "guild-like" informal grouping patterns among other principals as well as other informal channels of communication. The principals' grapevine structure seemed to reflect patterns of occupational socialization of school principals and informal boundary spanning processes, processes viewed as latent yet relatively functional aspects of educational organization.
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