Institutional Research Agents' Perceptions of How Data Contribute to Organizational Change

Abstract

As federal guidelines have increased reporting demands on all sectors of education (United States Department of Education [USDOE], 2015) and state reporting requirements have expanded as legislatures call for performance-based funding (National Conference of State Legislatures, 2015), the need for institutional research offices has become the norm in higher education. Therefore, it is critical that education administrators understand how the IR function affects organizational change to be able to use the function of the office to its best ability.

Two studies (Knight, 2010; Knight, Moore, Coperthwaite, 1997) imply that the ability of an institutional research agent to function as a change agent is a measure of their effectiveness. Thus, one measure of an IR agents' effectiveness is their ability to help senior administrators bridge the gap between interpreting data and creating change. However, few studies have explored the experience of using data as a catalyst for organizational change from the perspective of IR professionals. Thus, the purpose of this phenomenological study is to describe the perceptions of institutional research agents working within the Mississippi public community college system regarding how data contribute to organizational change within their colleges.

The findings of this study are the rich descriptions of the perceptions of these IR agents. The coresearchers described the experience of data contributing to organizational change as a process of moving from data collection to problem identification to problem solving and ultimately to implementation. The IR agents provide details on how organizational culture and organizational structure impacts their work within their organization.