The College in the Eyes of Its Students

Abstract

This research deals with the way an organization is perceived by its customers and, more specifically, how a particular organization—a "Teachers' Training College" is viewed by its "customers"—that is, the students studying in it. The study focused on collecting stories written by the students describing their daily lives in connection with their studies in the college. The stories were analyzed by means of four analytical methods: the structural method of LEVI-STRAUSS, PROP's formalistic method, LABOV and WALETSKY's analytic method, and the lexical method of analysis. It was found that the college emerges as a system suffering from a degree of ambiguity, principally with regards to rules, regulations and inter-relations, leading to contradictory expectations and conflicts. This ambiguity may be an outcome of the transition from a "small organization" culture to that of a "large organization," which ties in with the growth in the number and variety of activities that has taken place in the college in recent years, due to a process of academization. URN: urn:nbn:de:0114-fqs0203242