Change Management and Leadership in Higher Education

Introduction: The Headless Chicken Metaphor

The phrase "headless chicken" describes an organization that is alive and able to operate and continue to exist, but has no sense of what it is or where it is going. By applying this label to themselves, the group in the case study of a higher professional education organization correctly identified how it was feeling, and also identified how the organization arrived at that unfortunate position. Once these two factors are known, a path can be charted out of the situation by strategically installing new leadership — by someone who understands the nuances of what it will take to make the process succeed.

The process of change in an organization cannot be initiated by the simple replacement of a leader. The organization also has a culture that has been built over its lifetime. When a new leader is brought in from outside the organization, a change in culture is almost inevitable, and negotiating these issues is much like trying to reattach a chicken's head. The new leader may look the same and hold the same title, just as one chicken head looks like any other. However, without proper preparation, skillful execution, and a clear vision of what the organization will look like after the transition, the organization may emerge from the process with its head pointed in the wrong direction — focused on looking back at where it has been rather than forward to where it is going.

In the college featured in this case study, a new administrator was installed in an attempt to bring change. However, the first new principal, installed in 1996, provided little in the way of solid leadership. His laissez-faire, or possibly management-by-exception, approach gave staff no real foundation on which to build toward the future.

This paper investigates the nature of change within the organization and examines different leadership theories in order to answer the following questions:

What is the change process within an organization, and how can the organization prepare for and transact meaningful, lasting change? What leadership style is most effective for initiating lasting change? What are the differences between leadership, empowerment, and management, and how is the organization served by each?

Literature Review: The Change Process

Managing organizational change is far more complicated than teaching staff new tasks or replacing personnel. New tasks, often based on new goals and objectives, will also affect the organization's culture. The existing organizational culture must adapt to new priorities and purposes embedded in those new tasks. In order for people to make the transition to new processes, the organizational culture needs to be nurtured through a change process comprising three distinct steps. Only then will the organization adapt to new processes and new technology, and — after testing the waters — establish a new equilibrium around a new identity.

The impact of organizational culture on the well-being of a business organization has been explicitly recognized by many researchers (Dennison, 1984; Camerer and Vespalian, 1988; Wilkins and Ouchi, 1983). Tunstall (1986) suggests that a company's culture is the amalgam of shared values, behavior patterns, mores, symbols, attitudes, and normative ways of conducting business. Culture may influence what organizational strategies are selected and whether they succeed (Cartwright and Cooper, 1993). Existing cultural orientations may be quite supportive of a firm's mission at a particular point in time, but wholly inappropriate when significant strategic change becomes necessary — as in the case of the educational model examined in this study.

Culture has been recognized as a key consideration in the strategy implementation process (Bourgeois and Brodwin, 1984). It is assumed to explain the success of some organizations (Peters and Waterman, 1982), to represent an essential element in organizational effectiveness when it fits the strategy (Schwartz and Davis, 1981), to act as a determinant of strategy (Ackerman, 1982), and to influence the implementation of decisions (Schwartz and Davis, 1981). Such claims confirm that culture plays a large role in the overall implementation of specific strategies — and therefore must also play a critical role when dramatic strategic change is mandated.

Few concepts in organizational theory have as many competing definitions as organizational culture. Despite some disagreement and ambiguity, certain elements repeatedly emerge in nearly all definitions (Deal and Kennedy, 1982). Schall offers a comprehensive definition: "Culture is a relatively enduring, interdependent, symbolic system of values, beliefs, and assumptions evolving from and imperfectly shared by interacting organizational members that allows them to explain, coordinate, and evaluate behavior and to ascribe common meanings to stimuli encountered in the organizational context" (1983, p. 11).

Kurt Lewin's (1935) model for organizational change was built on his familiarity with the physical sciences. He developed the force field analysis and described the organizational change process in terms of unfreezing the organization, moving the organization through the change, and then refreezing it in the new changed condition. His pictorial representation was based on moving a block of ice from one container to another. When frozen, water placed into a different container retains its original shape. Changing the organization is similar: even when the container has changed, the organization itself has not.

In order to facilitate a true change in organizational identity, the ice must first be unfrozen. The unfreezing step is often the most neglected, and when the organization fails to take on a shape that reflects new strategic directives, leaders are left wondering why so much time and energy was spent attempting change only to fail. Only after the water is unfrozen can it be poured from one container to another. Once successfully repositioned in the new container, it can be refrozen and take the shape of that container. The organization thereby changes in both form and function.

Identifying the factors opposed to change and minimizing them is the heart of managing the change process. Within any organization, there exist unspoken expectations about how the organization functions — and this is the heart of organizational culture. In order for the organization to change, these cultural factors must be addressed and staff must be given support for a new organizational identity. This approach has been called the socio-technical approach to organizational development.

Rather than defining the organization by a technical or task basis and forcing human resources to conform, the socio-technical approach allows the organization to develop along human and relational lines in order to maximize the human element. When the organization faces change, the human relationships that form the basis for internal interactions must therefore also be addressed. Ultimately, both the technical and the social elements must be addressed together to bring about lasting change.

The change process, in summary, is a matter of identifying and minimizing human resistance to change. This may require leadership training or training staff in human relationship skills. Change is a multifaceted and multilevel dynamic transition. Staff expectations must be met and staff skills upgraded if change is to occur without significant opposition. Change can be managed effectively if those leading it identify all opposing factors before engaging the process, providing both social support and technical expertise to unfreeze, move, and refreeze the organization in its new state.

Leadership Styles in the Change Process

"As the behavior of the leader, so is the behavior of the follower." This principle can be observed in families, peer groups, and the business environment alike. Many academicians and practitioners view leadership as the most important topic within organizational behavior. The success of an organization is more heavily dependent on the quality of its leaders than on any other single factor. Leaders play a major role in determining organizational goals and in deciding how those goals can be accomplished.

While many studies have sought to identify leadership styles since the end of World War II, the concepts of transactional and transformational leadership were introduced by Bass (1985) and later expanded into the Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire (MLQ), a 360-degree instrument used to track the evolution of leadership styles. Shortly afterward, Avolio and Bass (1991) introduced theoretical models that included three distinct styles of leadership.

Transformational leaders guide followers toward established goals by clarifying role and task requirements while leaving employees free to determine the details of how to achieve them. They are typically aware of personality traits and blend leadership directives with subtle motivational techniques. Transformational leaders are often charismatic and visionary, and can inspire followers to transcend their own self-interest for the good of the organization.

Barling, Weber, and Kelloway (1996) completed a field experiment with 20 managers trained in transformational leadership and compared them to untrained control groups. They found positive training effects, particularly in the managers' intellectual stimulation of their staff. Followers' commitment and financial performance also increased as a result of transformational leadership training. A transformational leader instills feelings of confidence, admiration, and commitment in followers through direct interaction. Such a leader is charismatic, creates a special bond with followers, articulates a compelling vision, and delegates authority while coaching and advising each individual. In doing so, the transformational leader stimulates followers intellectually and arouses them to develop new ways of thinking about problems.

Transactional leaders view their role as a transactional process in which they respond to subordinates' lower-level needs and security concerns. Leaders and subordinates are treated as bargaining agents, and relative power regulates an exchange process in which benefits are issued and received. Unlike transformational leadership, the transactional relationship involves no particular effort to change followers' values or cultivate internalized organizational commitment. In times of crisis, if followers have confidence in the leader they are willing to assign greater responsibility to that leader; if they lack confidence, they become less tolerant of the leader than usual.

Laissez-faire leaders exercise little influence or control over their group. Leaving members to sort out their roles and tackle their work without guidance, this style of leader does not participate in the process. The result is often a team that flounders with little direction or motivation. The laissez-faire leader's hands-off approach is frequently interpreted as a sign that the leader does not care, or does not know what is happening in the day-to-day activities of the organization.

Conclusion

The purpose of this study was to examine a case study in change management within a higher education institution. The change process was initiated by a failed leader and reinvigorated by a new one. However, at the time of the case study, the change process was not complete. The organization was midstream and needed to recognize that the issues and motivations that began the process would not, on their own, carry it through to a final, stable new state. The organization needed to be led through the change process by someone who understands human dynamics and can guide the entire organization forward.

The change process for an organization comprises specific and predictable stages. In the first stage, the organization must be unfrozen from its current state and given the motivation to begin the change process. In this case, the presence of a non-leadership administrator was the beginning of the unfreezing process. Individuals became unsettled in their roles and sought new leadership to address the problems and needed changes in the organization. The new leader was required to initiate new directives and empower staff to work toward new strategies.

Also required in the first stage is the reduction of forces resistant to change. The goal of change must be both different and better for organizational members in order to engage their participation. If the change is only directed toward being different, members will question why they should exert energy simply to become different. If the change is directed only toward being better, members have no immediate reason to learn new procedures, tasks, and priorities. The change process must guide the organization toward a new culture that is both different and better in order to secure the genuine commitment of its members.

The second stage is the movement stage. During this stage, unanticipated issues are likely to surface and must be addressed to sustain forward progress. The shifting of roles in the organization may make some longer-tenured members uncomfortable. If not managed and diminished, this situation could become systemic and stall the change process entirely.

Finally, the organization will need to refreeze itself in its new state of increased activity and renewed culture. As it does so, it will begin to reap rewards at both the collective and individual levels, consolidating the gains achieved through the change process and establishing a stable foundation for the future.

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