Management of change in higher education.

McRoy, Ian (2006) Management of change in higher education. DProf thesis, Middlesex University. [Thesis]

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Abstract

The project concentrates on the issues facing Intercollege in its move towards university status. The purpose here is to establish a methodology that will assist the process of gaining university status whilst addressing the change management issues.
The project provides evidence that indicates successful application of change management techniques through the use of communication and presentation skills, exercising responsibility, leadership and delegation of authority so that plans can be successfully implemented through both transformational and evolutionary change mechanisms.
The main themes that emerged from the research are contextualised in a model. Substance considers the external influences impacting on a complex institution such as a university and what senior managers should do in order to enact change. In context the external environment is significant with regard to how the individual stakeholders perceive higher education and how its services may be utilised by them. Stewardship of the institution is focused on leadership and ensuring that all managers fully engage with staff. To support this action learning activities are employed to determine the underlying concepts that require addressing. The overlap applies in different forms throughout the research to reveal that by employing action research techniques, leaders and change agents instigate action learning sets as a development tool to overcome these aspects.
The research indicates that it is difficult to become a successful change agent without being an effective leader and that those successful leaders are successful change agents. The project concludes that a praxis of leadership development programme is implemented for managers and that action learning be used to support this in order to achieve a successful outcome during the transformation from college to university status. This will allow individuals to focus on the transfer of learning to the live challenges of the change process.

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