Content area
Full text
ABSTRACT
In this paper, we are concerned with how change agents go about and experience change implementation in higher education. We identified change agents and interviewed them about how they implement change. Empirical data was analysed using a theoretical framework of change. The findings suggest that change in the university is enacted through a process of negotiation. The findings of this study may offer academic developers, pedagogical leaders, and change agents insight into the complex nature of the change process and inform change agents as to the complex nature and importance of their role.
KEYWORDS
change agents, capacity building, Change Process Prescriptions (CPP), resistance, negotiation
INTRODUCTION
Universities tend to adopt distributed or shared leadership models (Bolden, Petrov, & Gosling, 2009) where many leaders in higher education (HE) adopt their positions out of a sense of duty (Askling & Stensaker, 1999), evoking a collegial culture towards leadership as opposed to a managerial culture (Bergquist, 1992). A consequence of adopting collegial approaches to leadership is that the appointed leaders' leadership skills are often acquired through a process of trial and error. For the most part, collegial leaders lack formal training (Newton, 2003). Often leaders in HE are academics that hold multiple roles within the university as teachers and researchers (Askling & Stensaker, 1999). One of the roles academic collegial leaders often hold may be the role of change agent. This raises concerns as to how HE bodies organise and implement change initiatives, and illustrates a dilemma whereby the change agents are experts in one regard-in relation to their discipline-but are often amateurs in regard to their position as educational change agents. Coupled with this, change related to educational matters in HE occurs in a dynamic and complex setting. In this paper we pose two research questions: how do change agents go about implementing change? Secondly, how can we understand tensions between these change agents' experiences of change and systematic models of change? 1
By illuminating change agents' strategies of change and the challenges that arise when working with change, we may better understand how change can be brought about in higher education and how it can inform an emerging theory of change agency in higher education (Trowler, Fanghanel, & Wareham, 2005). Trowler, Fanghanel, and Wareham (2005)...