Since more than ten years, the German three tier-system of Land administration is under reform. According to experts these administrative reforms show a new quality of change in comparison to previous phases of modernization. Whereas former reform-measures merely affected the surface of administration, Mehde (2009) now notices systematic and incisive changings at the structural, i.e. the organizationallevel. These reforms aim to transform the input-oriented, centralized administration into an output-oriented, decentralized, and deregulated one. With regard to the sixteen school administrations of the German Länder these reforms have been connected with the implementation of a “semi-autonomous school” as well as of a monitoring system (Altrichter/Maag Merki, 2010).

To date, there exist only very few studies analyzing the inter- and intra-organizational changeswithin the Land administrations (Brüsemeister & Newiadomsky, 2008). Therefore, in educational science as well as in the Land administrations themselves there is need of specific empirical knowledge of these „black boxes“, e.g. of the specific reform-state, the reform-designs put into praxis, their trend of development, and last but not least of their impacts on the effectiveness and quality of the German school systems as well as on the potentials of innovation offering the different actors within the system (Kühn, 2012; Wacker et al., 2012).

The presentation introduces findings of a qualitative case-study on the reform of the Land administration of Hesse. In comparison to the other Länder the reform-program of Hesse shows a far more systematic, far-reaching, and advanced reform-progress. The study is based on the following research question:

To what extent does the organizational reform of the school administration of the Land Hesse lead to a fundamental change in its inter- and intra-organizational governance regime?

The presentation gives an overview on the theoretical background of the study and its methodology. An emphasis is placed on its main findings of structural change and their impact on the administrative action system. These are connected with governance-relateddiscussions in system theory, constructivism, and postmodernism (Snellen, 2006). For example, a symbiosis of administrative change and the aforementioned (meta)theories can be found in Kegelmann’s (2007) postmodern model of NPM or in (New) Public Governance as upcoming international model for administration (Bovaird/Löffler, 2009). The study further rests uponadministrative and political science, organizational theory as well as upon control- and governance-theory (Mayntz, 2009). Based onthe mentioned models for administration, on the concept of a people-processing-system (Luhmann/Schorr, 1979) as well as on Rosenbusch’s (2007) model of an pedagogical culture within the school administrations of the Länder there is made the case, that the German school administrations are more likely to become an effective and innovative action system, if they are directed according to a postmodern governance regime and thus constructed as people-processing- and network-organizations. Therefore, the administrative reform-model (New) Public Governance is taken as example how the Land administrations could be transformed into such heterarchies. Although the presentation aims to present suggestions for the German school administrations there may be identified as well helpful hints for European school systems with a similar administrative tradition.

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