(The following was written in summer 2010)
In October 2009, I became Interim Director
of English Language Programs and the Pathway Program at Eastern New England University (ENNEU) (note, all names are changed for the purposes of this blog). My
previous position was Director of Operations for the Pathway Program. The new
position expanded my area of responsibility to cover not only the Pathway Program,
but all the programs offered by the university’s English Language Institute (ELI),
most significantly its English for Academic Purposes Program.
In this post I describe and analyze
the changes I initiated in the administrative structure, program offerings, and
curricula in this newly expanded English Language Institute, using Szabla’s (2009) Human
Reaction and Action System. Starting with the premise that the primary reason
for the failure of organizational change is resistance on the part of the
change recipients, Szabla’s model seeks to explain the success or failure of
change by situating change recipient response within three aspects of change:
the context of the change, the content of the change, and the process of
change. It attempts to depict recipient response as part of a dynamic system in
which response, context, content, and process interact and influence each
other.
I have chosen to study these particular
changes to gain deeper insight into the kind of change that I frequently
oversee or participate in as a manager in higher education. I see myself as
having been the leading change agent for the English language programs during
the past year, somewhat akin to Burke’s (2008) strategic
decision-maker:
The strategic decision-making theory of
leadership stresses the importance of a congruence between the organization and
its environment; thus the primary tasks of senior leaders in the organization
are to monitor the environment, analyze potential problems, seek opportunities,
form policies and strategies, and implement and then evaluate these policies
and strategies. (pp. 237-8)
My
aim, then, is to further my understanding of the effectiveness of my own
approach to change, as well as the professional environment and processes that
I am engaged in, by ‘stepping back’ and gaining critical distance on them.
Furthermore, I am leaving my position at ENNEU, and want to assess the
impact of the content and process of the changes I have initiated, as well as
make recommendations to my successor (as yet not chosen). I have been able to
collect information about the changes through observation, and through my
knowledge of the internal and external environments, and a deep personal
knowledge of the context. Additionally, I interviewed two members of my team,
whom I shall refer to as Change Recipient A and Change Recipient B (see
Appendix A for a brief description of these individuals, and Appendix B for the
interview protocol), who were participants in the change, and whose comments
provide alternative perspectives and additional depth to my description.
My analysis covers the following areas
of Szabla’s model in turn: content of the changes, the process of change, the
context of changes, and the response or reaction of change participants.
Finally I draw out some of the salient interactions between these change
elements in an attempt to demonstrate how change emerges from these
interactions, before drawing conclusions and making recommendations.
Content
of the Changes
Although when I took over direction
of the English language programs there was widespread recognition that change
was needed, there was no specific institutional plan or vision for what those
changes needed to be. Nor when I started out did I have a clear idea of where I
saw the changes leading: this became clear only as initial changes began to be
implemented. Although this may give the impression that the changes were ad hoc
and unplanned, this was not the case. My first initiatives were intended to
rapidly fix some serious flaws in the programs’ operations, as well as to merge
the structures, operational processes, and some areas of curriculum in the Pathway Program and EAP programs. I refer to this as phase one of the changes.
After that I developed and set in motion a plan to create a new program, this
being phase two of the changes.
Many of the phase one changes I
initiated were intended to tackle problems in the ELI. The ELI was running on
eight-week sessions rather than 15-week semesters. The rationale was that this
allowed more entry points for students and therefore maximized enrollment. That
this strategy was not effective was evidenced by declining student numbers, but
the larger problem with eight-week sessions was the enormous administrative
burden placed on program staff, with the need for frequent application and I-20
processing, student entry and exit proficiency testing, student orientations
and completion ceremonies, and so on. Further, student attendance in the ELI
was extremely poor, with only around 10% of students receiving an attendance
certificate at the end of each session. It was apparent that the eight-week
sessions were attracting non-serious individuals who may have been using the
ELI for the purpose of obtaining an I-20 to stay in the U.S. An additional
problem was with the placement testing procedures. The placement testing system
was in a very poor state, with outsiders showing up unexpectedly every test
date wanting to be tested, inadequate test security, and the same test form
being given repeatedly to the same students
The phase 1 changes were intended to
correct these problems. I made the decision to change the EAP program to
15-week semesters, which would require students to commit to a higher tuition
upfront, and in addition would ease the administrative load. At the same time,
I initiated changes to some administrative procedures. An online attendance
tracking system, as well as a rigorous, written attendance policy and
procedure, were introduced. Students found to be attending poorly were placed
on probation, and the administration made good on its threat not to allow them
to continue studying in subsequent sessions if their attendance was
unsatisfactory. An online test referral procedure was created in which only ENNEU staff could refer applicants for the test; a new test was
introduced; and new test security procedures were put in place.
Meanwhile, the administrative
structures and processes of ELI and the Pathway Program were merged, so that all
staff were now involved in all programs. The scheduling of faculties of ELI and the Pathway Program was also brought together so that any faculty member could
teach in either program, and in both programs in any one semester. Some curricular
elements were also merged, allowing more efficient placement of students from
both programs into the same class in some cases. The overall intention was to
create efficiencies and thus reduce the workload and avoid duplication.
In the phase two change, I took a
little-known program with low enrollment, the American Study Program, which
allowed advanced ESL students to take School of Advancing and Professional Studies (SAPS)
courses at the same time as ESL classes, and decided, with modifications, to
make it the flagship ESL offering of the university, eliminating the existing
EAP program. This involved changes that had been considered administratively
impossible before, such as the mixing of semester-based and quarter-based
courses in one program. The American Study Program involves an even greater merging
of curriculum with the Pathway Program, as well as program-specific courses.
The organizational change literature
speaks of change dichotomously as being either continuous or episodic (Weick & Quinn, 2008). Other
dichotomous terms such as evolutionary/revolutionary, and discontinuous/continuous,
carry a similar meaning and are also in wide use (Burke, 2008, p. 21). While
episodic or revolutionary change requires what Burke (ibid) refers to as “total
system events” such as a change of mission or strategy, continuous or
evolutionary change refers more to modifications in the way a product or
service is designed and/or delivered. From the point of view of the college or
the university as a whole, the changes described above might be seen as mere
modifications and therefore evolutionary. However, the changes were disruptive,
involved some risk, and in the case of phase 2, involved a change of mission
from the delivery of intensive English to a more holistic preparation of
international students for academic study in the U.S., and a new model
combining ESL and academic content. Therefore, I refer to the changes as ‘small-scale
revolutionary’ changes, a term which I believe captures the radical nature of
the changes but without exaggerating their significance in the context of the
institution as a whole.
The
Change Process
A simplistic view of strategic
decision-maker might place this person at the top of a hierarchy, giving out
orders while subordinates implement them. Indeed, as Barber (2009) has argued,
when urgent change is needed, such as “when services are “awful” and users are
exiting the system, command and control solutions are appropriate” (p. 77).
Kotter has argued that, “transformations often begin, and begin well, when an
organization has a new head who is a good leader and who sees the need for a
major change” (1995, p. 60), a
description that appears to have matched my situation well.
Although such views suggest a ‘strong leader’
approach to change, in fact, change leaders have various approaches available
to them to effect change and minimize resistance among the change recipients.
Chin and Benne (1989) described
three: a rational-empirical strategy, which draws on the Enlightenment value of
persuasion through reason and evidence; a normative-re-educative strategy,
which seeks through a collaborative approach to encourage individuals to
re-align their values, attitudes, and skills with those of the change and thus
achieve buy-in to the change; and a power-coercive strategy, which threatens
economic, moral, or legal sanctions in order to enforce compliance, and in the
organizational setting is achieved through a strategy referred to as command and
control. In practice, the process of change may not be so easy to categorize,
or may involve a combination of these approaches. In retrospect, the process I
adopted appears to have been a combination of all three approaches:
power-coercive in that the team did not ultimately have any choice in the matter;
rational-empirical, since I attempted to explain to team members the rationales
behind the changes; and normative-re-educative inasmuch I consulted with team
members prior to making final decisions, and sought their buy-in by ensuring
that they made decisions about and implemented much of the operational detail
of the changes.
After first consulting with and gaining
the approval of those I report to, I initiated the change process. In hindsight
I see my role as having been interpreter of the inner and outer environments,
deviser of the changes, and communicator to those who were involved in implementing
them. Lewin (1958, cited in Burke, 2008) described three phases of
organizational change: Phase 1, unfreezing the system; Phase 2, movement; and
Phase 3, refreezing the system. A big challenge as I began initiating change
was to disrupt, or unfreeze, operational processes and the attitudes of
individuals that seemed to have locked the English language programs into a
state of inertia that I believed was leading to their decline. I talked with
staff and faculty about the vision of creating a strong and unique program that
would appeal to students, regain the respect of constituents inside the
university (especially Enrollment Management and Student Affairs administrators
with whom ENNEU International – the division of SAPS in which the ELI is located - has
been forging links on other programs), create a sense of pride among faculty
and staff, and raise ENNEU's game in the competitive ESL field. I also
visited and talked with other administrative and academic units on campus that
had previously been resistant to some of the changes I was suggesting, such as
the International Students and Scholars Office, the Registrar’s Office (both
saw operational and/or regulatory difficulties with the mixing of semester-based
and quarter-based courses in a single program, and had previously rejected the
idea as unworkable), and academic program managers in SAPS, to communicate the
changes, hammer out sometimes difficult issues, and gain support. I devised new
curriculum and played a key role in developing marketing materials.
At the same time, to achieve the
movement I was seeking, I acted as a proactive change agent, by directing my
team to work on the changes. This aspect of my approach may have been
power-coercive. Yet it was not so simple. Experience or intuition told me that,
as Hargreaves and Fullan articulate it, “fear or force may bring temporary
lifts in performance, but it rarely secures deep or lasting change” (Hargreaves & Fullan, 2009, p. 2) In fact, I met weekly with the administrative
team of four people, and, as I work in close proximity to them, discussed my
ideas informally in an ongoing way. One of the team in particular (Change
Recipient A), has been with the English language program for 29 years, and I
consulted with him regularly to discuss my ideas. In some cases I was
encouraged by his agreement; in others, I modified my plans; and in yet others,
though he expressed reservations – for example, about the change from
eight-week sessions to 15-week sessions, which he believed would damage our
chances of enrolling certain populations at certain times of the year – I
decided to press on, using a rational-empirical strategy to try and convince
him that the change was worth trying. For example, I pointed out that the cost
in administrative burden outweighed the benefit of enrolling a small number of
Korean students for the Spring B session. With Change Recipient B, too, I was
able to use a largely rational-empirical approach – pointing out how our
current program was not working for the institution, the students, or him – in
order to gain his buy-in for the changes. With both employees, the rational-empirical
strategy was a way of attempting to persuade them to accept my ideas for
change. Simultaneously, I solicited their input on how they might change their
own processes, and how the team as a whole might handle modify its practices to
adapt to the changes – in hindsight, more of a normative-re-educative strategy
that is consistent with the notion, expressed by Burke (2008, p. 44) that,
“participative management is more likely than most other approaches to lead to
higher unit and organization performance.” I did not consciously adopt a
normative-re-educative approach, but believe that the realignment of the team’s
values and attitudes emerged from their engagement with the process of change. Indeed,
once the team members became involved in the change process, it took on a life
of its own (Burke, 2008, p. 260) as they began
to develop new processes, apply technology to resolve problems, and create new
policies and documentation. At this point, “change management (became) an
oxymoron” (ibid).
In general then, I worked primarily
with the administrative team to explain the changes to them, solicit their
input on implementation, and have them change their practices. I also explained
the changes – especially the change to the American Study Program – to
faculty, advising them that the changes were coming. Primarily, the process of
change involved me acting as change agent to turn around a failing department
(power-coercive), and working with staff to gain their buy-in and become a part
in the changes (rational-empirical and normative-re-educative). Lewin’s
re-freeze phase is well underway in some program areas – such as the complete
buy-in and change to 15-week sessions - but in the early stages for others,
such as the American Study Program, which exists in theory but will not see
its first students until September 2010. The program will likely see some
modifications as logistical and other difficulties present themselves in the
implementation, but within the coming year the program will likely be firmly
established and this small-scale revolutionary change process will be complete.
Context
for the Changes
Szabla’s (2009) model differentiates
between outer context and the inner context systems for understanding the
responses to change. Space allows for consideration of only the most salient
features of the outer and inner contexts for organizational change in the
English language programs. For the purpose of this analysis, I refer to the
outer context as those factors lying outside the direct operations of the
English language programs, and inner context as those falling within them.
Consideration of the outer context
takes as its premise the notion that any organization is an open system, a
metaphor derived from biology (Burke, 2008, p. 19) that emphasizes the dependence
of an organism – and an organization – on its interactions with its
environment. Burke summarizes the premise as follows:
In short, it should be clear that
managers of organizations need to be constantly aware that they are managing a
system that has permeable boundaries, is dependent on its environment for
survival, and will go out of existence unless it is actively attended to. (Burke, 2008, p. 54)
Describing
the challenge that David Kearns faced when he took over as CEO of Xerox at the
end of the 1970s, Tucker (2009) states that
the company was perceived by its own employees to be uncompetitive with a chief
rival and thus was in a state of decline. Kearns did not accept this, and asked
his engineers to study what the rival was doing. Tucker continues: “Kearns was
not interested in replication; he was interested in improving on best practice,
on beating the competition” (Tucker, 2009, p. 119). Although
this example is taken from industry, competition has been an increasing
challenge for higher education institutions. Scott (2003) has argued
that, “This competition comes from colleges and universities within and beyond
countries and from private providers” (p. 64).
In the English language teaching field, which generally serves international
students, these forms of competition are a major challenge, and for me, formed
the most salient feature of the outer context system.
Like many universities, ENNEU
has programs for teaching English language, primarily to international
students. The English Language Institute (ELI) has been in operation at
ENNEU since the 1970s. In the past, student numbers have reached the
hundreds, but in recent years the ELI suffered significant decline, and was
failing to meet its revenue expectations. Contributing factors in the external
context appear to have been an overreliance on informal, word-of-mouth
marketing, coupled with a crowded and price-competitive ESL market offering a
fairly generic product.
Additionally, at the institutional
level, major developments led to a competitive threat that ultimately provided
the key to the renewal of the English language operation. The ELI fell under
the administration of the School for Advancing and Professional Studies in 2007, specifically
in a newly-created unit called ENNEU International. ENNEU's president had announced a strategic plan which included internationalization of the
university, and the School for Advancing and Professional Studies (SAPS) became a driver of
international student recruitment through a wide-ranging collaboration with the Educ8 organization. Essentially, SAPS has leveraged Educ8's international
marketing outreach to recruit students into specially designed programs that
ease the way for international students to matriculate into undergraduate and
graduate degree programs. The most significant of these is the Pathway Program,
which has transitioned hundreds of international students (primarily from
mainland China) into the university since its first intake in the fall of 2007.
Until the changes described in this paper were initiated, the Pathway Program and
the ELI were managed separately, with different directors, staff, and faculty –
and somewhat in competition, with the Pathway Program increasingly overshadowing
the declining ELI.
Competition came in another form, when
the university agreed to host an Educ8 International Centers ESL program on
campus in 2008. The intention was market segmentation: Educ8 would provide an
intensive English language program for ‘general’ English learners, and SAPS –
the administrators of which wanted to continue to operate an English language
program in order not to be dependent on Educ8 in the future - would focus on
the upper levels and English for academic purposes. The then ELI director was
to change the ELI’s intensive English program into an academically-focused
English for Academic Purposes program in order to make it distinct from the Educ8 program. However, little substantive change had occurred by the time I
took over in October 2009. The outer-context factor of the Educ8 school may
have been part of the reason for declining ELI enrollments. These developments
were external drivers that in part led to my initiating the merging of the Pathway and ELI administrative structures, operational processes, and
curricula, as well as the launching of the innovative American Study
Program, which differentiated ENNEU’s English language offering from
that of Educ8’s and most other players in the market that had established
strong reputations and effective marketing outreach. A major challenge posed by
the external environment was how to “beat the competition” in order to survive.
A number of factors in the inner
context – the staff, structure, and operations of the ELI and the Pathway Program –
also drove change. Originally, the Pathway Program had fallen under the
responsibility of the previous ELI director, since the Pathway Program contains a
strong English as a Second Language (ESL) component. It was managed separately,
however, with adjunct faculty being taken on specifically for the program, and
a completely separate curriculum. I took over the management of the Pathway Program
in early 2008. As I developed a new database for the Pathway Program, and
implemented processes such as testing separately from the other ELI programs
(as required by the program setup), the two programs moved increasingly apart.
When I took over the entire English language operation, the administrations of
the two programs merged, creating a kind of ‘blended family’ with a wider
remit.
At that time, the ELI was suffering
from serious quality issues. An external audit conducted around that time
described the ELI administration and curriculum as in disarray. One challenge I
faced in becoming the supervisor of the ELI staff was what Foster and Kaplan (2001,
cited in Burke, 2000, p. 16) have called “cultural lock-in,” an inability to
change the culture even in the face of threats from the market. Systems were
well established – such as the eight-week sessions, and English testing and
level-placement procedures – that, even though difficult to manage, continued
to be viewed as the best way, or rather the only way. To bring quality
improvements to the ELI, there had to be change in what Szabla (2009) calls the
culture system (Fullan (2007) calls this
reculturing, in contrast to restructuring), as well as by leveraging what
Szabla (2009) calls the social system, which was already in place.
Reactions
of Change Recipients
Overall, resistance to the plans by
change recipients (or participants) was low. Szabla’s (2009) model categorizes
recipient response as cognitive processes, affective processes, evaluative
processes, and action processes. All these can be seen in the responses of my
two interviewees, though they can be difficult to tease apart in practice.
I had discussed the proposed change
from eight-week to 15-week sessions with Change Recipient A (the employee with
many years of service) prior to making my decision. At the time, he expressed
concern – as did the former ELI Director – that this would allow fewer entry
points into the program, and might be bad for business. He was acting from what
Szabla refers to as the value orientation in response to change content, that
is, an assessment of the content of the change based on his perception of its
value to the organization. I countered with a value orientation argument: the
current system was attracting non-serious students, and my vision was to create
a more serious program with a much stronger reputation. To do that, a first
step was to attract students who would be willing to commit to 15 weeks
upfront.
Reflecting on the changes during the
interview conducted for this assignment, Change Recipient A gave several reasons
for a positive cognitive response to the changes. After recounting a brief
history of the program for me, a history filled with instability and change,
some of it traumatic, he stated, “Last year’s changes were minor compared to all
of this, just smaller details” (Personal Communication, 2010). This opened my
eyes to the fact that what appeared to be major changes to me were perceived
entirely differently by this staff member. Change Recipient A was aware, though,
that changes were needed: “The ELI was dying, and when McMillan [the former SAPS Dean]
let Educ8 open on campus, it became impossible to compete with a cheaper IEP
(intensive English program) on the campus” (Personal Communication, 2010). He had an extremely positive affective
response to my decision to make the American Study Program the flagship ESL
program for the university. The reason for this is that he in fact devised and
helped manage the original, ‘beta version’ of the American Study Program
that had run on a small scale for three years. The new American Study
Program confirmed for him that his idea was a good one, and it was an idea (the
mixing of ESL and content classes) that he strongly believed in. Thus, he
evaluated it positively, and this led to action.
Change Recipient A had some doubts that
were rooted in recent history around the introduction of the Pathway Program, which he believed had changed the work environment and caused some
people to leave: “I saw people who had been here for years move out, and others
too, they left. Why did so many people leave?” (Personal Communication, 2010) In
contrast to the way the Pathway Program had been introduced, however – he had not
been a part of the planning or implementation, and knew little of the program –
Change Recipient A stated that, “With American Study, I felt responsible
for what was happening” (Personal Communication, 2010). His concern was with the way the program was
being adapted more in the style of the Pathway Program: “I was concerned. I didn’t
see your vision or strategy of doing the American Study in the
Pathway format…(but) you outlined what you wanted and I was 100% committed to
make it work” (Personal Communication, 2010).
Change Recipient B also expressed
mixed responses. “There was a need,” he said. “I was having difficulties
monitoring and enforcing student attendance. American Study promised to be
more rigorous and manageable. The reasons given to us made sense” (Personal
Communication, 2010). On the other hand,
Change Recipient B expressed some negative affective responses, mainly related
to the additional work burden imposed by the changes. Prior to the merging of
the operations of the Pathway Program and the English Language Center, he had
worked solely on Global Pathways. Therefore, he said, “It was difficult for me
because the programs were different. I had to work with new people and new
systems. For example, I have to deal with different data sources such as the
hard copy information I get from (employee name). So things weren’t smooth.
There was a lot of added work integrating the new programs” (Personal
Communication, 2010). This may be an
example of what Fullan (2007, p. 175) calls an
“implementation dip,” defined as “the social-psychological fear of change, and
the lack of technical know-how or skills to make the change work” (ibid). Scott
(2003) referred to
this phenomenon as a “capability gap,” and warned that, “people will not engage
in or stick with a change effort (i.e. a personal learning project) unless they
see it as being relevant, desirable, and feasible for them to do so” (p. 73).
In contrast to Change Recipient A, Change Recipient B expressed his initial
concern principally in terms of what Szabla (2009) refers to as the motivation
orientation, or the evaluation of change based on its perceived importance or
relevance to the individual. An explanation as to why in spite of this obstacle
Change Recipient B was motivated to engage with the change effort is attempted
below.
Both informants surprised me by
stating that they felt they had not been informed of the rationale for the
changes. Change Recipient B said, “A lot happened when I was new, so I didn’t
have any input into getting rid of the EAP and introducing American Study,
not much input. It was just decided, primarily by you. I wasn’t kept in the
loop” (Personal Communication, 2010). Change
Recipient A stated, “I wish somebody had said earlier that this was the overall
strategy. Somebody should have given a speech” (Personal Communication, 2010). In hindsight, I have been able to understand
how much of the discussion around the changes involved me and my superiors,
rather than my team, and that my communication with the team could have been
more thorough.
In spite of these concerns, both employees
have given the changes their full support. Perhaps this is related to the
underlying power-coercive nature of the work environment: not cooperating with
the changes might lead to sanctions such as a poor performance evaluation or
failure to be considered for a raise. On the other hand, the informants’
statements also indicate that their positive evaluation of the changes was
rooted in cognitive and affective responses. A single statement by Change
Recipient B is a good summary of these points: “I went along with it because
you’re my superior and it seemed like a good idea” (Personal Communication,
2010). A further motivator may have been
the support the team members received both from me as the team leader, and from
the other team member who was also working on the changes. This was a small
team of only five individuals (including myself), brought together to
administer the English language programs. A concern of mine in the merging of
this group was to encourage the individuals to bond and work collaboratively.
As Scott (2003) has argued,
“collaborative cultures will not emerge spontaneously but must be coached and
modeled” (p. 74).
I encouraged collaboration through regular, informal meetings, and frequent ad
hoc discussions.
I encountered little resistance to the
changes from other stakeholders in the university. This may have been a result
of increased confidence in me as opposed to my predecessor, or to a more
forceful style on my part, and a strong desire to push the changes through come
what may. To overcome possible skepticism from the Registrar’s Office (which I
had been strongly warned about), I made alliances with registrar staff in SAPS
and prepared a strong case for the American Study program. Given the need for
decisive change, I feel my directive approach was correct.
Dynamics
of Change
A defining feature of Szabla’s (2009
) Human Reaction and Action System is its representation of interactions among
its various elements in attempting to explain change participants’ responses.
It does not present a linear, cause-and-effect explanation (for example, with
single-headed arrows leading from content, process, and context to response),
but instead seeks to depict how change content, process, and context are
mutually influencing, and how they each affect and are affected by the
participants’ responses. In this way, the model is an example of what Capra
(1996, cited in Burke, 2008) has termed “deep ecology”, which involves “seeing
the world as an integrated whole rather than a dissociated collection of parts”
(p. 56). Deeper understanding of the changes I initiated at Northeastern can be
achieved by analyzing how some of these interactions played out in practice.
The merging of two administrative
structures and sets of processes is an example of how change content and
process interact. As mentioned above, the decision to do this was made and
communicated in a largely top-down manner. The process for making this happen,
though, had to be carried out with responsibilities distributed to the members
of the team, because they had the most detailed knowledge about what systems
were already in place, and how those systems needed to be adapted – or new
systems created – in order to accommodate the change. For example, Change
Recipient B was managing a database for the tracking of Global Pathways
students, while the tracking of ELI students was carried out by another
employee on a different database that had been used for many years. The
employees concerned discussed how they intended to handle this – by shifting
ELI records onto the Pathway database, which in turn became a
comprehensive database for all students in the programs. They reported this
solution to me, but I did not attempt to direct them. Hence, the process of
employees making decisions about how to implement change itself resulted in
change content – the creation of a ‘master database.’ This was not originally
planned for, but emerged from the interaction of individuals who now became change
agents in the system.
Change content and context also work
in a dynamic interaction with each other. When the Educ8 English language
school opened on ENNEU’s campus in 2008, it represented a competitive
threat to the existence of ENNEU’s English language program, as Burke
describes it, a change “in the system’s environment that threaten(s) its
ability to obtain resources…” (2008, p. 68) and leads to revolutionary, as
opposed to incremental, change. At the
time, the English Language Institute did little to adapt to the existence of this
cheaper and more flexible program on campus. When I took over as Director, the Educ8 school was thriving, and ELI enrollments were in decline. This
situation, imposed in the external context, forced me to develop a program that Educ8 could not compete directly with. To do this, I exploited a feature of
the ELI’s internal context: that it had been brought under the administrative
umbrella of the School for Advancing and Professional Studies, and could take advantage of
this position by offering both English classes and content-area classes.
Essentially, a change in the external context forced the ELI into a niche –
English language and academic content for advanced level ESL students only –
that was made possible by the internal context in which the ELI was operating.
Again, the influence between context and content is mutual. Although the
American Study Program has yet to see its first students, applications have
exceeded all expectations. Because applicants now have a viable – and cheaper -
alternative to the Pathway program, there may be some migration of
applicants from Pathway to American Study. Although it is too early
to know how this will play out, it is likely that Educ8 (which recruits for the Pathway Study will need new strategies to attract applicants to the Pathway Program. American Classroom may also influence other players in the
university-based ESL market, especially in Boston, to reconsider their own offerings,
especially to higher-level students who frequently yearn to escape what they
perceive as the rut of English language classes.
The most significant set of
interactions has occurred between the change context and the change process. The
notion of culture lock-in was mentioned above. Culture lock-in can be located
in the cultural system of the internal context system of Szabla’s (2009) model.
Culture lock-in was closely related to another feature of the internal context
system, the technical system. ELI processes such as student enrollment,
placement testing, and record-keeping and documentation were tightly bound up
with the established but outdated ELI database. Additionally, administrators’
roles, an element of the inner context social system, were well established and
also tied to the technical system. Faced with the external context threat of Educ8’s establishment on campus and declining ELI enrollments, this entrenched
set of cultural, social, and technical practices needed a revolutionary, mandated
change process put in place by a strong change agent (myself) in a relatively
power-coercive way. At the same time, as explained above, the specifics of how
to break apart the existing structures and processes had to be worked out in a
more distributed way by the individuals who worked in and with them. This
latter process in turn affected the internal context, as members of the two
teams were forced to adapt the technical systems and the processes, and in
doing so collaborate with each other, altering the social system in which new
roles and relationships became established.
Another way in which the context
influenced the process was in establishing a timeline for change. There were
two contextual influences on the timing of the change. First, I was new in my
position as Director, and felt some pressure from my superiors to bring rapid
and tangible change to the ELI. Second, fall is the semester which brings the
highest level of enrollment of new students. As I began working on the
introduction of the new American Study Program in January 2010, the fall
semester became the urgent deadline by which to make the necessary changes, and
thus precluded lengthy discussion and planning among the various stakeholders.
These two factors were key in my decision to mandate change. The established
timeline galvanized team members to work on making the required adaptations to
the existing practices rapidly.
The change process and participant
reactions worked in a positive, mutually reinforcing way. As described above, I
initiated the changes in a power-coercive way, that is, after some consultation
with the team and with my superiors, I made and communicated the decisions to
the team members. This strategy alone does not guarantee success, and indeed
may induce a negative response in the change recipients. Szabla’s (2007) research
indicates that when change recipients perceive a power-coercive strategy, they
may respond less positively than those who perceive normative-re-educative or
rational-empirical strategies. Hargreaves (2004) similarly found
that teachers responded in an emotionally negative way to mandated change in
which they were not consulted.
My approach, in tandem with the initial
power-coercive strategy, was to explain the rationale for the changes to team
members, consistent with Chin and Benne’s (1989) empirical-rational strategy:
Because the person (or group) is
assumed to be rational and moved by self-interest, it is assumed that he (or
they) will adopt the proposed change if it can be rationally justified and if
it can be shown by the proposer(s) that he (or they) will gain by the change.
(p. 23)
This
was illustrated by Change Recipient A’s comment that “you outlined what you
wanted and I was 100% committed to make it work” (Personal Communication,
2010), and Change Recipient B’s comment that, “the reasons that were given to
us made sense” (Personal Communication, 2010) In terms of the Human Reaction and
Action System, the two change recipients accepted the changes cognitively and
this influenced their intent and their actions in favor of the changes. Their
response in turn positively influenced the change content, process, and
context. They were motivated to find solutions to break the cultural lock-in
imposed by long-standing ways of doing things, and by the technical system;
their self-direction meant that beyond the initial decisions, a power-coercive
strategy was no longer necessary; and once the American Study Program was
publicized on the ENNEU website, greater-than-anticipated applications
created positive feedback from the external feedback that convinced employees
that they were making the right changes, and encouraged greater self-direction
and motivation.
Conclusions
and Recommendations
A number of conclusions can be drawn
from the above discussion and analysis. The first concerns Hargreaves and
Fullan’s (2009) statement in the introduction to their book Change Wars:
Anyone who tries to change something in
the world, their colleagues, or themselves has a theory of how to bring about
that change. This theory may be implicit or explicit, reflectively aware or
blindly willful, but it is a theory of change-in-action that is driven by
knowledge, experience, beliefs, and assumptions concerning how and why people
change, and what can motivate or support them to do so. (p. 1)
My
theory at the start of the change process – at that time unarticulated - was
that change needs to be initiated by a strong change agent, but that the
individuals involved needed to provide input and involvement for the changes to
be implemented. Reflecting on the changes, my theory has evolved. I believe
that there are circumstances that called for rapid and urgent change and the
breaking of cultural lock-in, but this is not true of all situations requiring
change. For example, where there is no crisis or urgency, a more evolutionary,
participatory approach to change may be more appropriate, and it might be
embodied in systems of committees or individual initiatives that bring change
from the bottom up rather than top-down. My own evolution from a position of
having a specific theory of change to one in which I believe that decisions
about the change process need to be based on a consideration of the change
content and context and how these will be perceived by change participants,
reflects a dynamic interactivity between practice and one’s theory in which
each is influenced by the other. Therefore, Hargreaves and Fullan’s statement
above might be expanded thus: “…and this theory itself changes as the
individual gains new knowledge, experience, beliefs, and assumptions as a
result of involvement in managing change.” This is a useful insight that I can
hopefully bring to bear on future change projects to avoid (or prevent) a
dogmatic insistence on a particular approach to change.
Second, the changes I initiated and
witnessed are, on a small scale, an illustration of what Joel Klein meant when
he said, “You can mandate ‘awful’ to ‘adequate,’ but you cannot mandate
‘greatness’; it must be unleashed” (cited in Barber,
2009, p. 79). That is, in a time of crisis or urgency, moving an
organization from poor performance to a level at which it can survive, a
power-coercive strategy may be appropriate. However, change recipients must be
the ones who will take the changes to a superior level of performance. In this
process, as in the process I have described above, those involved in the
changes may themselves change from being change recipients to change
participants. Being realistic about the changes I initiated, I do not believe
they have resulted so far in greatness. However, they appear to have stopped
the decline and have introduced operational efficiencies. If Klein is correct,
the next step in this process will need to involve the onboarding of more
change participants, including full-time and adjunct faculty.
Third, and related to the second
conclusion, I take from my experience the lesson that Fullan expresses as
follows: “change cannot be managed. It can be understood and perhaps led, but
it cannot be controlled” (Fullan, 2007, p. 70). What
Szabla’s (2009) Human Reaction and Action System shows us is that change occurs
in the interactions of a large number of variables. Attempting to control any
single one of these – such as the external context system, or the affective
system of the response system – is self-evidently impossible. To try and
control the entire range of variables and their interactions, then, is clearly
futile. The change environment can be considered to be a highly complex system
in which, according to Mason (2008), “our best
chance of success lies in hitting the problem from as many angles, levels, and
perspectives as possible” (p. 45).
Fourth, although Szabla’s (2009)
Human Reaction and Action System is premised on the notion that organizational
change fails primarily because of resistance, the changes described above did
not elicit a great deal of resistance. This appears to be the result of a
combination of factors that can be found in the model: change content that was
undergirded by a strong rationale; an outer context that presented threats to
the existence of the English language operations as well as an inner context
that had become inefficient and incapable of handling change, making employees’
work more difficult; and a process that, while initially power-coercive,
quickly became participatory as the team members played their part in effecting
the detailed changes. Change Recipient B’s rationale for buying into the
changes include, “because you are my superior” (Personal Communication, 2010) and
this reveals an underlying power-coercive structure embedded in many
organizational workplaces, but a participatory approach to change can give employees
a sense of ownership and agency that can lead to positive action in the
direction of desired change.
Fifth, I have learned that when
planning or analyzing change, it is important to understand how the change
recipients are perceiving the change. I believed I had communicated the overall
vision behind and plan for the changes adequately to my team, but some of the
comments of my two informants – such as, “I wasn’t kept in the loop” and “I
wish somebody had said earlier that this was the overall strategy” – revealed
that their perceptions were formed by much less information than I thought I
had communicated. Initial resistance on their part might have been triggered in
part by this inadequate level of communication. What this tells us is that a change
leader does not have all the information about the change, and that to gain a
more complete picture it is important to solicit the participants’ views. This
was well illustrated in Szabla’s (2007) study in
which he did not attempt to establish which strategy had been used to effect
change, but rather asked participants how they perceived the strategy.
Finally, it is important to
recognize that the initiated changes are but a first step and the changes are
far from complete. Kotter (1995) warned
against “declaring victory too soon,” and depicted change agents and resistors
celebrating early achievements and failing to continue to see the necessary
changes through. Although a small-scale revolutionary change has been achieved,
the results are only adequate, not great, and more resources and effort will be
required to take the English language unit to a significantly higher level of
performance. Additionally, the need to embed the changes in the cultural system
of the inner context system is emphasized by Kotter: “Until changes sink deeply
into a company’s culture, a process that can take five to ten years, new
approaches are fragile and subject to regression” (Kotter, 1995, p. 66). The changes
described above are not organization-wide, and will no doubt require less time
to become firmly established; nonetheless, Kotter’s point that change that has
not become a part of “the way we do things around here” (1995, p. 67) is fragile, is
well taken.
This brings me to recommendations. I
am leaving ENNEU, and will not have further involvement the changes I
have initiated and overseen. My recommendations are therefore directed at
whomever takes over the role of overseeing ENNEU’s English language
programs.
In order to sustain and build on the
changes achieved so far, the new director is recommended to follow these
guidelines:
1.
Gain
broader buy-in for the changes. At this time, a small administrative team has
undertaken the changes. In September, the results of the changes – especially
the introduction of the American Study Program – will impact others, in
particular many of the 60 or so faculty who teach in the English language
programs. Although many are aware of the coming changes, they have not been
involved in their implementation. How will they perceive the changes? Will they
feel that change has been imposed upon them in a power-coercive way? What
strategies might be implemented now to prepare them for the coming changes and
to gain their buy-in? I would recommend that as a minimum, they need to be
fully informed of the changes through email, meetings, and informal conversations.
Following this, ways need to be found to involve them in the continuous changes
that will be needed to bring further improvement.
2.
Consistent
with the idea that change cannot be managed, only led, find ways to introduce
stimuli for change into the system, such as by pointing out deficiencies in
administrative procedures or curriculum or by exposing them to professional
development opportunities, and supporting and encouraging staff and faculty to
seek solutions. The aim is to stimulate their cognitive systems (to recognize
the deficiency), which might affect their affective systems (a sense of
dissatisfaction with the current situation) which in turn might influence their
evaluation of the situation and drive a desire to act to bring change. This process
is not guaranteed, but can only be encouraged through various stimuli and, as
Fullan (2007, p. 171) suggests,
“allow for (change) to happen.”
3.
Following
from the previous recommendation, do not attempt to manage the necessary
continuous change through a coercive approach. The time for episodic,
revolutionary change, requiring strong, top-down management, is past, and it is
now time to make ongoing improvements to the new system. Since neither the
leader nor any single individual in the system has full knowledge of all
aspects of it, bring more individuals into the process of change, and be open
to improvements made in a bottom-up way, what Fullan (2007) describes as
“developing internal commitment in which the ideas and intrinsic motivation of
the vast majority of organizational members become activated” (p. 179).
4.
Be aware
of the external context, especially the market system. The American Study
Program is an innovation that creates a niche for ENNEU because of the
blending of English language and academic classes. However, the market is not
static: the model is one that other institutions could copy, and new pathway
programs (designed to funnel international students into mainstream academic
programs) are being introduced at several Massachusetts colleges and
universities in the fall. In order to continue to survive, ENNEU should
not settle into a lengthy ‘re-freeze’ period that precludes further significant
change if it is needed.
Organizational
change, even when described and analyzed using a framework like Szabla’s (2009)
Human Reaction and Action System, is an extremely complex phenomenon to
understand and describe. As Fullan has stated, “transformation would not be
possible without accompanying messiness” (Fullan, 2007, p. 169) The above
analysis has, of necessity, left out an enormous amount of detail and messiness,
but, in allowing me to draw conclusions and make recommendations, has suggested
to me a new way of theorizing change, opened my eyes to the wide array of
elements and interactions involved in change, and, especially, convinced me
that change is highly complex, does not proceed in a linear, cause-and-effect
manner, and is amenable to leadership but not management.
References
Barber,
M. (2009). From System Effectiveness to System Improvement. In A. Hargreaves,
& M. Fullan, Change Wars (pp. 71-94). Bloomington, IN: Solution
Tree.
Burke, W. W. (2008). Organization
Change: Theory and Practice. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, Inc.
Chin, R., & Benne,
K. D. (1989). General Strategies for Effecting Changes in Human Systems. In W.
G. Bennis, K. D. Benne, & R. Chin, The Planning of Change (4th ed.,
pp. 22-45). Fort Worth, TX: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich College Publishers.
Fullan, M. (2007).
Understanding Change. In M. Fullan, Educational Leadership (pp.
169-181). San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.
Hargreaves, A. (2004).
Inclusive and Exclusive Educational Change: Emotional Responses of Teachers and
Implications for Leadership. School Leadership and Management, 24(2),
287-309.
Hargreaves, A., &
Fullan, M. (2009). Change Wars: A Hopeful Struggle. In A. Hargreaves, & M.
Fullan, Change Wars (pp. 1-9). Bloomington, IN: Solution Tree.
Kotter, J. P. (1995,
March-April). Leading Change: Why Transformation Efforts Fail. Harvard
Business Review, pp. 59-67.
Mason, M. (2008). What
is Complexity Theory and What are its Implications for Educational Change? Educational
Philosophy and Theory, 40(1), 35-49.
Scott, G. (2003).
Effective Change Management in Higher Education. Educause Review, 2003(November/December),
64-80.
Szabla, D. (2007). A
Multidimensional View of Resistance to Organizational Change: Exploring
Cognitive, Emotional, and Intentional Responses to Planned Change Across
Perceived Change Leadership Strategies. Human Resource Development
Quarterly, 18(4), 525-558.
Szabla, D. (2009). The
Human Reaction and Action System. Work in Progress.
Tucker, M. S. (2009).
Industrial Benchmarking. In A. Hargreaves, & M. Fullan, Change Wars
(pp. 117-133). Bloomington, IN: Solution Tree.
Weick, K. E., &
Quinn, R. E. (2008). Organizational Change and Development. Annual Review of
Psychology, 40(1), 361-386.
Appendix A
Profile of the two interviewees
Change Recipient A is a male, in his
fifties, who has worked with the English language programs at Eastern New England University for 29 years, in the capacity of instructor and program coordinator.
He had no involvement in the Pathway Program until he began reporting
to me in October 2009, when my job responsibilities extended to all English
language programs. Under his previous boss, he launched a version of the
American Study Program, the program I modified and made the flagship ESL
program of the university.
Change Recipient B is a male, in his
twenties, who has worked with the English language programs at Eastern New England University since June 2009. His job title is Academic Coordinator, and he is
primarily responsible for operational and logistical support. When he began
this job, the only program he supported was the Pathway Program, and he reported to
me. When I became Interim Director of the Pathway and English Language
Programs, his role expanded into supporting the other English language programs
that fell under my responsibility.
Appendix B
Interview Protocol
For this study, I used a
semi-structured interview format which encouraged the interviewees to speak
freely without directing their comments. When they digressed, I steered them back
to the topic of the question. Each interview lasted approximately 30 minutes. I
took notes, and wrote them up in full after the interview. I asked each
interviewee to read my full transcription of their interview to confirm that I
had captured their words and meanings accurately.
Interview
Questions
1. The English Language Institute and the
Pathway Program have undergone changes over the past year. What, for you, have been
the most significant of those changes?
2. Talk about the process by which these
changes have been introduced and implemented.
3. What do you see as the advantages and
disadvantages to the changes?
4. To what extent do these changes make
sense in the institutional context? In the wider context?
5. How would you describe your feelings
about these changes? Generally positive, generally negative, or mixed? Have
your feelings changed over time?
6. What is your level of confidence that
the changes will be successful? Why?
