This paper documents the study of three schools participating in a school-improvement initiative carried out by the Board of Education of the City of New York, the Fund for New York City Public Education (the Fund), and the International Business Machines Corporation (IBM) during the 1990-91 school year. The project, the IBM/Fund Project for School Improvement, involved 25 New York City public schools that accepted the assistance of IBM manager trainers in the supervision of their School-Based Management/Shared Decision Making (SBM/SDM) teams. Methodology involved observation, document analysis, and interviews with key participants--IBM managers, school administrators, and team members. Follow-up interviews and observations were conducted one year later in the spring of 1992. Using Bolman and Deal's framework for structural and political approaches to decision making, the findings suggest that controversy and factionalism among team members, who viewed their concerns from the political perspective, was the greatest barrier to the implementation of IBM's structural methods. None of the three schools attempted to retain IBM facilitation in the following year. An implication is that the structural approach of the business community must be merged with the more political process of the school community. Recommendations are made for SBM/SDM teams and business-education cooperation. True bottom-up reform requires strategies developed within the context of school life. One table is included. (LMI)