ADMINISTRATIVE ATTRIBUTION THEORY

It is hypothesized that the growing body of empirical data concerning the naive psychology of the assignment of cause — attribution theory — yields a substantial number of concepts which are logically assumed to offer significant potential insight into the administrative process. In order to stimulate the research necessary to test this hypothesis the existing research is presented and a theoretical formulation entitled Administrative Attribution Theory is offered. The structural framework of this conceptualization rests with five constructs: (1) asymmetry, i.e., attributions reflect a general positive bias; (2) concomitance, i.e., attributions vary with pre‐conditioned mind sets; (3) enhancement, i.e., attributions provide the individual psychological control of the environment; (4) process, i.e., the attributional process is highly generalizable, and (5) reconstruction, i.e., existing attributions may be altered through the manipulation of external variables. Examples of researchable questions are given to further facilitate field testing in educational administration.