Abstract:

The study examines the perceptions of 539 teachers and school administrators.
Despite the large amount of research concerning the influence of information overload and time pressure on the functioning and vitality of business organizations, their influence on school organization requires as yet a thorough examination. This study is the first step in this endeavor.

The research assumption is that different patterns of school organization constitute different ways of coping with information overload and time pressure. Organizational flexibility, for example, is likely to take advantage of time pressure and information overload for organizational learning. On the other hand, organizational rigidity may lead to the withdrawal into familiar school patterns, and cause limited organizational learning (Argyris, 1992).

The study poses the following three questions:
a) is there a connection between the school organizational pattern and teachers' sense of the degree of information overload and time pressure?
b) What are the differences in the sense of information overload and time pressure among school administrators, home-room teachers, and subject teachers and are these differences influenced by the organizational pattern of the school and by school setting (elementary vs. high school)?
c) Do different patterns of organization mediate the relationship between teachers' sense of information overload and time pressure, and between the educational setting and the roles of teachers in the school (administrators, homeroom and subject teachers)?

In order to answer these research questions, we administered close-ended and open-ended questionnaires that underwent content analysis.

The research results show that:
a) In schools which have a bureaucratic hierarchical organization, teachers experience information overload and time pressure more than teachers who work in schools with a systems approach to organization;
b) The organizational pattern is a mediating variable in the connections between teachers' role in the school and the educational setting and teachers' sense of information overload and time pressure;
c) School administrators experience more information overload and time pressure than teachers with different roles in school. This finding is also supported by the content analysis of the open-ended questionnaires.

Two of the conclusions of the study are as follows:
a) Organizational structure and his pattern (bureaucratic hierarchical vs. systems approach) play an important role in the ability of school staff to manage organizational phenomena such as information overload and time pressure. The systems approach of organizational pattern is characterized by a certain structural flexibility and allows the school to adapt itself more easily to the external environment. From the staffs' point of view, as shown by the content analysis, it seems that this pattern encourages a sense of accountability, division of the burden and cooperation;
b) School staff is divided into three clear groups.

The differences between these groups are expressed in terms of their perception of the school organization, whereby each group relates to the school organization in a unique way. School administrators have a broader and a more comprehensive view of the school organization than their teaching counterparts

Keywords:

Information overload, Time pressure, School organizational structure.