Changing management paradigms: implications for educational institutions

An experiential approach to learning about change management

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to focus on the role of experience in learning about, and preparing for, change management.

Design/methodology/approach

A course with a different approach to teaching about change management has been proposed to learners. It uses drawing, simulation and exploration of case studies. Learners wrote reports on change management before and after the course and these reports were then thematically analyzed.

Findings

Results show the specific ways in which the course places learners in a position to: experience change, use their collective experiences, acquire and develop practical knowledge, and prepare themselves for change. Capitalizing on such experiences of change could arguably become an integral part of an organization’s “readiness to change” strategy.

Research limitations/implications

It would be useful to further investigate what happens after this experience by interviewing learners, later on, in order to analyze how they subsequently use, in a real professional environment, such knowledge and skills acquired during the learning process.

Practical implications

Using this approach, future managers are arguably better prepared to implement change. Capitalizing on such experiences of change could become part of an organization’s “readiness for change” strategy.

Social implications

The benefits of experiencing change management in a learning environment will only be reaped when firms allocate time and space to such experiential learning. This entails going beyond managing this change to a deeper perspective by identifying key elements to maintain and/or enhance one’s experience of managing change.

Originality/value

The value of the present paper lies in individual and collective experience as a key element to prepare managers to change management.

Making educational organizations able to change: a literature review

Purpose

Educational organizations have to continuously adapt their structures, processes and practices to meet the evolving institutional and social challenges raised by the external environment. From this point of view, organizational change is a fundamental ingredient of the recipe for success in educational management. The purpose of this paper is to contextualize organizational change to educational institutions, pointing out its determinants, barriers and consequences.

Design/methodology/approach

A systematic literature review was performed. On the whole, it concerned 330 scientific contributions. Manuscripts were searched in two large citation databases. Tailored selection and inclusion criteria were designed in order to exclusively focus on papers investigating organizational change dynamics in the educational environment. In sum, 41 contributions were included in this literature review.

Findings

Organizational change in the educational context paves the way for various managerial challenges. First, the internal and external triggers of change should be concomitantly handled, in order to curb isomorphic pressures and steer organizational evolution. Second, specific strategies should be implemented to overcome the barriers to organizational change, including ambiguity and uncertainty. Finally, yet importantly, the side effects of organizational change should be recognized, in an attempt to attenuate their drawbacks on employees’ working conditions.

Practical implications

Organizational change should be understood as an iterative process, rather than as a circumscribed event. Educational managers should design specific approaches and deploy ad hoc tools to effectively implement organizational change.

Originality/value

This study attempts to systemize the current scientific literature about organizational change in the field of educational management, illuminating some intriguing avenues for further research.

The Slow Death of Formal Learning: A Polemic

Over recent years, approaches to education and training have become more informal, situated, outcome focused and experiential. Within this context, formal learning now plays a greatly diminished role, being supplanted by activity-based and technologically-based learning. This article, structured in the form of a polemic challenges readers to critically examine the importance and value of formal learning in modern learning environments. It reviews four propositions charting changes to the learning environment arguing that formal learning plays a central role in deepening an individual’s functional and general knowledge. It questions the branding of formal learning as an outdated delivery mode associated with an old-fashioned antiquated pedagogy and argues that decisions on learning styles should be based upon sound evidence-based research.