TCU Traditional Christian University

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 Léon de Caluwé and Hans Vermaak’s 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, TCU’s 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 opinionated staff members that are its lifeblood, this approach would seem to have limited utility.

From a yellow-print perspective, creating a change coalition between proponents of change from a value-based perspective, such as Dean Daniel in the seminary, and individuals with a technically forward-thinking approach such as Dr. Ray, who thinks that new technology is an inherent good in and of itself, may be helpful. This can potentially win over more traditionalist thinkers like Dean Dovo, who is not against technology, but wants a clear demonstration that the technology that is being incorporated is shown to have a clear, conclusive value for the students.

As well as yellow and blue colors of change, the case study also reflects the benefits red-print thinking. This view of change stresses behavior, versus power positions or bureaucratic hierarchies (Caluwé & Hans Vermaak, 2004). It stresses how when people are watched, much as in the Hawthorne experiment, they often alter their behaviors, and creating a compelling vision statement can be helpful to create a team-oriented approach to change. This may be particularly helpful in winning over reluctant incorporators such as Dean Devo, who agrees that it is vitally necessary for the university to have some technological innovations, such as universally accessible Wi-Fi, but is less certain that technology should be the primary driver of the university’s expansion and its way of leveraging a compelling competitive advantage. Even Dean Traditional is not necessarily opposed to all technology.

But the more reluctant faculty who do not necessarily view technology as essential to upholding the university’s higher values or necessarily commensurate with what will make students want to apply in the future, may be more worn over with a red approach that emphasizes finding out different staff members’ motivations. “Change agents are good at motivating people and at devising systems and procedures that facilitate this adjustment” (Caluwé & Hans Vermaak, 2004, p.12). Another approach, that of green-print change, which emphasizes learning, might be the best approach of all for a university. Green-print approaches recognize that roadblocks to change are often generated when people are frightened by what they do not understand. Teaching people about what the technology is that will be used, how it will benefit them and their specific roles and departments, is critical.

The green-print model also stresses, as is the case with any learning environment, the need to take stock of what was learned and to evaluate both the change and the level of fluency of the change actors. Rather than simply focusing on thinking (as in yellow and red-print thinking) or doing (as in blue-print thinking), thinking and doing are merged in yellow-print thinking, as people learn to approach their actions and activities difficulties. After all, learning is the essential business of any university.