#LTHEChat 167: Strategies for Institutional Change

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Driven by growth opportunities, market forces, competitor pressure and technological innovation, the pace and scale of change in the higher education sector today is unprecedented. The frequency with which new strategies, structures, policies, processes and tools are launched and their resulting impact on our work poses genuine risks to our health and wellbeing; stress related illness has reached epidemic levels (Morrish, 2019) with many colleagues adopting survival mode simply to ‘get through’ the change. However, the underlying drivers of change are not static, rendering change a continual process and so more sustainable approaches are required.

As a tandem consideration, the distinctiveness of our HE institutions mean it is often inappropriate to directly ‘lift and shift’ theories and frameworks for managing organisational change from the corporate sphere (Allen, 2003). There is a clear need to take ownership of change initiatives if we are to preserve these valuable unique features as we work to assure the future of our sector.

In this tweetchat we will share experiences of institutional change initiatives, explore some of the reasons for their success and what we can learn from them and do to create desirable change that enables us to survive and thrive in these challenging times.

References

Allen, DK (2003), ‘Organisational Climate and Strategic Change in Higher Education: Organisational Insecurity’, Higher Education, 1, p.61

Education, 1, p. 61

Morrish, L (2019), ‘Pressure Vessels: The epidemic of poor mental health among higher education satff’, HEPI Occasional Paper 20, Retrieved from https://www.hepi.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/HEPI-Pressure-Vessels-Occasional-Paper-20.pdf

Biography

Beck McCarter @beckmccarter is an independent consultant, educational developer and Senior Fellow of the HEA. She’s worked in partnership with a wide range of people and organisations to successfully implement learning and teaching enhancement initiatives and was part of the team awarded a Collaborative Award for Teaching Excellence in 2017. She has a particular interest in the use of empowering pedagogies to tackle structural inequalities in education and has been tilting at windmills since before records began.