Case Study in Technological Innovation:

Traditional Christian University (TCU) and Confronting Change

Traditional Christian University (TCU) is a midsized Christian university that is financially solvent yet seeking to grow its current midwestern base in a more global fashion, widening its scope and student body. Its chosen path of doing so is through greater and more sophisticated leveraging of available technology. However, there is a rocky path to change ahead. One useful way to conceptualize change is not a singular method, but rather to view change as a multifaceted process. Change can be looked at through many different colored lenses. One of the greatest strengths of Lon de Caluw and Hans Vermaaks Color Change theory is that the theory suggests that there is not simply one way of looking at change but rather many. Although this may be difficult, to balance and prioritize different views of change, it can ultimately be a fruitful one in a complex environment.

The theory categorizes different ways of looking at change by five colors or prints: yellow, blue, red, white, and green. For example, yellow-print models of change tend to stress change as an organizational power play within the organization. At TCU, different organizational actors have very different views of change, for example. Dr. Cash is more interested in cost-cutting as an immediate money saver, versus investing in innovation, while Dr. Town is very excited about the prospect of leveraging new technology. Support for change has a great deal to do with the power position and specific department of the organizational actor, in other words, not simply the objective value of the change.

However, TCUs leadership, the case study notes, has taken a highly bureaucratic or blue-print view of the change, stressing that a top-down mandate that change will be enough to generate buy-in. Blue-print models tend to view bureaucratic mandates, or creating structures which make compliance easy and noncompliance difficult, to be superior. But at a university, which is fractured into many different coalitions, and which has many experts, highly intelligent and...…the other four models, it stresses the fact that organizations are always open systems. For example, in the past year, the pandemic has made online learning tools far more acceptable and necessary, and impacted the logistics of taking in international students and travel study abroad, often in negative ways. Even creating the most enthusiastic change coalition between IT adepts and change advocates who believe in technologys spiritual and educational as well as financial value might be impacted by outside events.

Ultimately, the university is a learning culture, and stressing the green-print educational value of technology is vital. Even when stressing its financial benefits, the fact it can make university learning more efficient and affordable is a factor must be used in the selling of the change to deans and faculty, not simply viewing education as a business. Stressing short-term buy-ins even in the simplest fashion, like making it easier to incorporate visual aids into the classroom, may be helpful in creating enthusiasm, even while keeping the potential for chaos…