Knowledge that Transforms

One of the new techniques of comparative analysis developed in recent years for the study of foreign systems of public administration is the ecological or environmental approach. Utilizing such an approach, the following study compares the public administrative systems of Canada and Ceylon in relation to their geographic, economic, social, and political setting. By examining these administrative systems on the basis of some of the more significant environmental influences affecting them, this study attempts to identify the cultural variables influencing public administration in an industrially welldeveloped Western nation and a developing new state. Richard L. Harris is research analyst, Institute of Government and Public Affairs, University of California, Los Angeles, and Robert N. Kearney is assistant professor of political science, Duke University.

Although there is considerable empirical evidence that college-educated people have distinctive values and attitudes, existing research presents both positive and negative evidence that colleges serve as actual agents of moral socialization. To order these findings and generate research hypotheses, a typology of client-serving organizations is developed. This typology differentiates client-serving organizations which do and do not induct their clients into the organization. It further distinguishes among varieties of inducting organizations. By employing the typology it is possible to determine the extent to which these organizations can mobilize mechanisms of moral socialization and confront organizational problems lowering the effectiveness of these mechanisms. From this typological framework, a set of predictions about the differing moral impact of certain kinds of inducting organizations is derived, and their application to the study of colleges is discussed.' Charles E. Bidwell is assistant professor of education, University of Chicago and Rebecca S. Vreeland is assistant research sociologist, University Health Services, Harvard University.

This report focuses on the community decision-making roles accompanying the political statuses of administrators and of putative influentials. Comparisons are drawn between the administrative elites of two Southern communities and between the administrators and the influentials within each community. In both communities administrators were found to be moderately to highly involved in, and influential over, community decision making. Similarities in their role enactments were more frequent than dissimilarities. Compared with the influentials, the administrators held lower socioeconomic status, ranked lower on one of three measures of politicization, were highly involved in somewhat fewer and in different issues, and performed different kinds of roles in issue resolution. Interaction and interdependency exist between the two status groupings within each locality. AM. Kent Jennings is a research associate at the Brookings Institution.