Why Don’t They Just Keep on Doing It? Understanding the Challenges of the Sustainability of Change

Context of assessment in competency-based nursing education: Semi-structured interviews in nursing education institutions in a low-income country

Organisational considerations are essential when proposing the implementation of an educational innovation like programmatic assessment. Currently, most recommendations by regulatory bodies to adopt curriculum reforms do not take into consideration the characteristics and context of low-income countries. This paper explores the contexts of four nursing education institutions in a low-income country that recently adopted the programmatic assessment approach in their programmes. The study was underpinned by the environment phase of the Design Science Research framework and used semi-structured interviews to collect data. Deductive thematic analysis was performed to map the data to three themes: the people; the organisation in terms of culture, structure and strategies; and the state of technology. The results revealed that organisational contexts in terms of the people, the organisation culture, structure and strategies and the state of its technology are essential in the implementation of programmatic assessment. Successful implementation requires a shift in organisational paradigms in terms of assessment cultures while affording maximal support and education to enhance the capabilities of students and educators experiencing the change. Collaboration with other institutions at advanced stages of programmatic assessment implementation is essential. Finally, continuous professional development for all stakeholders is essential for sustainable implementation of the programmatic assessment approach.

Institutionalization of Organizational Change Outcomes in Development Cooperation Projects: The Mediating Role of Internal Stakeholder Change-Related Beliefs

This paper investigated how change outcomes of development cooperation projects can be institutionalized within the beneficiary organization. While a lot of attention has been paid to sustainability in scientific research on issues, projects, and policies related to environmental, industrial, and agricultural production and sustainability management, there are limited studies on the sustainability of organizational-level change outcomes of aid-based project interventions. Using the lens of organizational change institutionalization models, we examined how internal stakeholders’ change-related beliefs, organizational characteristics, and project characteristics relate to the institutionalization process of project outcomes. Data were collected using a questionnaire returned by 130 respondents from a university in the Global South implementing institutional development cooperation projects. Using partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) to analyze the data, we found that organizational characteristics and change-related beliefs both had direct positive effects on the institutionalization process, while project characteristics had negative effects. Additionally, this study reveals that stakeholder change-related beliefs mediated the relationship between organizational and project characteristics and the institutionalization process. The findings support the continual engagement of organizational internal stakeholders in institutionalization efforts throughout the project life cycle, rather than waiting for the project to end. In contrast to the mechanistic, linear result chain approaches that dominate development project discourses, there is a need for more iterative approaches that allow the development of necessary attitudes and behaviors among the beneficiary organization’s internal stakeholders to sustain the project-induced changes.