The University
Because our focus is on institutions of higher education, it is probably useful to remind ourselves about the features of these institutions. Earlier, we acknowledged the diversity in tertiary institutions. However, understanding the commonalities among them is clearly a critical precondition for creating effective change.
What are some features of universities, and how do these impact change? First, we can think of universities as a community of faculties, each of which is quite diverse. The work and education (i.e., the production function) in an art department differs from that of a physics department. The work of chemical engineers differs from that of marketing professors. These faculties also are often loosely grouped—the work of the physics department, for example, is fairly independent of the music department. This is not a tightly integrated organization moving in one unified direction.
Second, the principal producers—the professors—are relatively autonomous. Their work as educators has considerable freedom around what and how to teach. While the relative autonomy of the professor varies across institutions and countries, this concept of autonomy distinguishes professors from other occupations. They may show allegiance not only to a university, but also to an external professional community. This loyalty to one’s discipline weakens the university’s ability to shape and change its professors.
Attempts to change behavior, such as university reward systems, rarely produce major results. Indeed, the principal reward in the U.S.—tenure—reinforces autonomous behavior and eliminates the need for major changes in work.
TABLE 6.1 Framing Organizational Change
Preconditions for Change Defining the unique features of a university—sources of inertia Identifying different learning environments Selecting a strategic form of change
Critical Processes in Planning Achieving Change Implementation
Institutionalization
Although some of a university’s outputs are operational, such as the number of students graduated, other measures of effectiveness are more ambiguous. The quality of education provided to the class of 2001 is difficult to assess. It is also hard to quantify the time lag between environmental changes, organizational reactions, and their consequences for the university. The market forces that lead to sudden drops in market share or profitability in industrial firms seem absent in most university settings.
Universities are focused on creating knowledge in particular disciplines and serving as repositories for and presenters of such knowledge. The process of scanning and assessing a university’s broader environment has not been well developed. Although there have been many dramatic changes in technology, globalization, and demographic composition in the last 50 years, universities have been slow to adapt to the world’s changing needs and demands (Williams, 1999). This organizational inertia is due to the characteristics described above—the autonomy and loose coupling of faculty and departments, the tenure system used to reward faculty, dual allegiances to the institution and one’s professional colleagues, etc. As former Carnegie Mellon University President Richard Cyert once said, “People say it’s easier to move a cemetery than it is to move a faculty.”
(Changing Nature of Work Video Series, 1996) He might as well have said the same thing about universities.
These basic features and their implications for change should be self-evident. My goal is to make these features salient as educators work through the stages and dilemmas of creating change. The agent of change must think of these general features and how they take specific form in his or her own institution.
The Learning Environment
The second critical contextual element is the nature of the learning environment. In many conversations, meetings, and symposia, I have been struck by the ambiguity surrounding the concept of TEL environments. For many, it is a concrete thing such as a videoconference or Web-based course. Obviously, that is a restrictive picture. The map we develop about learning environments is another precondition for organizational change. There is not one map, but many legitimate different meanings. Earlier chapters by Raj Reddy and Paul Goodman (chap. 1) and Richard Larson and Glenn Strehle (chap.
2) have provided some input for articulating forms of learning environments.
Let me suggest some dimensions for conceptualizing learning environments. The first is space and time. Figure 6.1 provides a simple view of where and when learning can happen, a preliminary map. Basically, this table provides a preliminary map of where and when learning can unfold. There are many options in each cell and in combinations across cells. The traditional classroom typically has been organized around the delivery- receiving mode (Cell 1), in which the professor delivers information and the students receive it. However, even in this traditional setting, computers can be used to provide students with opportunities to visualize phenomena that have, in the past, been presented only through words and text. Ruth Chabay's electronic hockey example (Chabay, 1995) provides a useful way to understand physics principles of Columb's law and Newton’s second law, the superposition principle. Jack Wilson’s studio concept (chap. 10) provides another example of innovative classroom learning. Cell 2 pictures students learning in distributed settings at the same time. On one hand, this is an old environment that first appeared in correspondence courses decades ago and appears today in courses that are delivered by video conferencing or as streaming lectures over the Web. Chapter 7 describes one of the most advanced virtual universities using these types of technologies.
Cell 3 captures the role of computer-based systems for learning. Chapter 8 describes a computer-based environment for learning finance. Chapter 9 captures the role of intelligent tutors in improving learning and educational performance. Cell 4 deals with
FIG. 6.1. Learning environments by space and time.
asynchronous forms of learning. Here, students are distributed geographically and do their educational work at different times.
Figure 6.2 focuses on the second dimension of learning environments: what people are learning, not so much in terms of specific content but whether that learning is largely explicit or tacit (Nonaka & Takeuchi, 1995). Explicit knowledge is knowledge you are aware of and can articulate or explain to another person. The mode of delivery is based on transferring explicit knowledge. On the other hand, tacit knowledge represents things you understand that may be quite important, but cannot be articulated or presented to another. In developing a map for changing learning environments, the distinction between explicit or tacit knowledge is important, and so are the mechanisms for converting tacit to explicit or vice versa.
Let us think about learning to play an instrument. My teacher can give me information (explicit to explicit) about the structure of scales or whether I am playing a Chopin prelude at the right speed or sound. But other aspects of playing this composition cannot be explained, although my instructor understands them. Perhaps by watching and listening to others play this piece, I can either intuitively acquire new insights about playing this particular piece (converting tacit information into tacit knowledge) or, over time, I may be able to induce from observation some explicit principles used by my instructor (tacit to explicit). Additionally, by mastering several Chopin preludes, I may acquire some tacit ideas that may affect how I play other pieces by Chopin (explicit to tacit).
FIG. 6.2. Forms of knowledge conversions.
I introduce this idea of explicit-tacit conversions because it is fundamental to creating effective change. If you think about learning as the delivery of explicit knowledge, it leads you down one path toward change. If you think about learning in terms of the conversions in Fig. 6.2, you will create different change paths. These are not simply academic distinctions; they are important preconditions to effective change.
The third dimension related to mapping learning environments focuses on our basic assumptions about learning. How do people learn? Note that I do not expect change agents in universities to acquire complicated theories of learning. Rather, I want the reader to think about the question and be able to articulate some basic principles and their implications. In chapter 3, Herb Simon suggests some features underlying how people learn.
• Learning depends wholly on what the student does, only indirectly on what the teacher or university does.
• We must use technology only when we can see how it will enable us to do the educational job better.
• Information is no longer the scarce factor in human learning … the scarce factor is human time …
• In designing courses … for our students, we must apply ruthlessly principles of sampling.
• Humans process information serially. Increasing mental loads inhibits effective learning A very different perspective comes from the work of John Seeley Brown and his associates (Brown & Duguid, 1995). They argue that people learn in “communities of practice,” typically informal, self-designed groups in which people share information, tell stories, and observe. As Brown says:
A community view … allows a more rounded view of what learning … is and how it happens. A delivery view assumes knowledge is made up of discrete, preformed units, which learners ingest…. People don’t become physicists by learning formulas…. In learning how to be a physicist—
how to act as one, talk as one, be recognized as one—it is not the explicit statement, but the implicit practices that count. (Brown & Duguid, 1995, p. 9)
I could give other examples; however, the point of this section is that developing a map of learning environments is a necessary condition for effective change. It is probably not useful to think about learning environments solely as things (e.g., video conferencing, Web-based courses). As Fig. 6.1 illustrates, there are many types of environments. Figure 6.2 challenges you to be more clear about what you want people to learn. Finally, the discussion on learning assumptions pushes you to further clarify your map. If you believe the assumptions about communities of practice, your strategic choices about changing learning environments will be very different than they will be if you are grounded in the delivery-receiving mode of education.
The basic precondition for change is that one needs to be explicit about the intersection between the mode of delivery, the forms of knowledge (explicit-tacit conversions) and assumptions about how these people learn. Failure to understand this intersection will significantly harm any change effort.
Forms of change
The third precondition for change considers the form of change. Given an analysis of the organizational context of the university and the nature of the learning environment, one must consider the strategic form of change. The recent literature on organizational change has paid some attention to different forms of change (Nadler et al., 1995; Weick &
Quinn, 1999). Figure 6.3 represents one typology (Nadler et al., 1995). One basic theme is that some organizational changes build on work already done, attempting to make small, incremental changes. Incremental changes represent the continuation of ongoing change within the organization and may require a large or small amount of resources.
Another form of change, known as discontinuous change, occurs when an organization makes a fundamental break with the past and undertakes a major restructuring. Nadler et al. (1995) introduce a second theme based on whether the change strategy is reactive or proactive. Proactive means the organizations plan ahead and anticipate the need to make changes. Reactive strategies occur when changes in the environment, competitors, or other forces spur the organization to change.
As illustrated in Fig. 6.3, these two themes generate four different change strategies.
Some strategies are incremental and proactive. Another strategy represents reactive- discontinuous change. In this case, changes in the environment cause fundamental changes in the environment. The other two cases represent reactive incremental change and proactive discontinuous change.
Why consider these types of change? First, it is one way to think about change in organizations. Second, the forms of change have different implications. In incremental change, the force of change can be internal, while in discontinuous change, one typically
needs to understand major environmental forces and develop future strategies. In incremental change, the focus is on parts of the organization. In discontinuous change, the whole system is the object of change. The level of stress, trauma, and dislocation is much stronger in discontinuous change. The role of senior leadership is more fundamentally proactive in discontinuous change.
FIG. 6.3. Forms of change.
Why worry about discontinuous change ? Universities are prime examples of institutional inertia, where discontinuous change seldom occurs. Are we not really talking about anticipatory or reactive incremental change when we focus on postsecondary institutions?
First, I introduced this typology because I want the people responsible for change to think about alternative forms of change. Second, while changes in tertiary institutions have been incremental in the past, for some, more discontinuous change may be important for survival or effectiveness in the future. Earlier in the chapter, I noted many new competitors that are beginning to gain market share in areas previously considered the domain of universities. Changes in technology and demographic factors also call for more fundamental changes. Some universities already are spending more time recreating their identity in a fundamental way (chap. 7 captures a movement to discontinuous change models). In the future, discontinuous change may be an important strategic choice in order to offset the forces of inertia and respond to the changing environment. This third precondition is introduced to stimulate change agents in tertiary institutions to consider alternative forms of change. Perhaps in the past, the only strategic choice was around making proactive or reactive incremental changes. The future challenge for the university will be to consider all forms of strategic change.