To assess the effects of participative management (PM) in a suburban school district in an upstate New York metropolitan area, researchers examined the one-year-old program, surveyed staff members, and analyzed district records. The PM plan involved teams of teachers and administrators at both school building and district levels, providing advice and suggestions and working inside a formal decision network. Evaluation data were gathered through a questionnaire survey of all 56 PM team members and of 62 selected nonteam personnel, and through content analysis of all teams' agendas and minutes and of selected district records from the preceding five years. The variables covered included team meeting characteristics, content, and processes; district employee grievances, collective negotiations, and union-administration meeting processes; and survey respondents' perceptions of PM teams' effectiveness, coordination, information provision, and receptivity to ideas. The researchers conclude that PM has widened staff participation in decision-making, won staff acceptance, improved staff-administrator relations, and reduced conflict over who makes what decisions. Implications of the findings involve PM's usefulness in the 1980s for handling issues of decision responsibility, simplistic decisions, administrator time limitations, school-community interaction, union relations, and educators' openness to change. (RW)