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Abstract
The concept of coupling-the relationship between the environment, administrative goals, and instructional practices of education organizations-is a staple in New Institutional research. Yet processes of coupling have remained elusive. Drawing on ethnographic research of the "Ontario Learning Center" (OLC) franchise, along with interviews of franchise owners and representatives, this article examines an ideal-type, tightly coupled organization. Despite the fact that the educational materials, the progress monitoring, and even the "emotional labor" of instruction are highly formalized and monitored, the author discovered evidence of loose coupling everywhere. Most strikingly, loose coupling is being accomplished in the context of rule following (rather than rule breaking) based on how managers and instructors interpret and prioritize available technical and institutional frameworks. By examining these processes, this article makes two contributions: First, it examines the symbolic dimensions of tightly coupled organizations by articulating how organizations and their actors reinterpret environmental demands in mutually beneficial ways. Second, this article situates the growing "inhabited institutions" literature within the new realities of education organizations, examining how meaning is actively constructed and how such processes generate understandings about appropriate lines of action.
Keywords
New Institutionalism, tight coupling, loose coupling, institutional environments, technical environments, learning centers, private education, private tutoring, inhabited institutions
Almost four decades have passed since New Institutionalism popularized the image of education organizations as "loosely coupled" systems. This concept captures the relatively weak connection between the institutional environment and its instructional activities. In theory, loose coupling allows schools to integrate multiple and conflicting goals, while awarding them legitimacy and trust. The malleability of this concept, and its ability to explain the "structural looseness" among parts of schooling systems, has made it a staple in studies of education organizations (Bidwell 1965; Hallett 2010; Meyer and Rowan 1978; Scott and Meyer 1991; Weick 1976; for a general discussion, see Rowan 2006a).
Despite its centrality, processes of coupling-and more specifically, the relationship between the environment of schooling, instructional practices, and actors within educational settings-have remained elusive. As Spillane and Burch (2006) argue, most examinations view loose coupling as a "monolithic or unitary practice" that assumes that all day-today instructional practices are divorced from administrative structures and policies (see also Gamoran and Dreeben, 1986; Orton and Weick 1990). Differentiating elements between and within teaching...