As I look back over the changes that my school has undergone over the last few years, I notice they offer interesting examples of how varied the results of change can be. While we’ve undergone shifts due to the pandemic, there have also been changes in academic structure. These changes have been received in different ways by faculty and their effectiveness can likely be tied to our school’s readiness for change, a clear connection made by Weiner (2009). One change occurred rapidly while the other was a gradual process over the course of a few months. I argue that the key factor was the perceived value of the change which led to different levels of commitment from organizational members.
Around two years ago, our school decided to add the role of Associate Dean to our academic structure. Prior to this, Instructors reported to Program Chairs who oversaw the day-to-day activities of a range of programs; these Program Chairs reported directly to Deans. The organization felt a new role of Associate Dean should be created to ease the workload on both the Deans and the Program Chairs. The details regarding what how the existing roles changed is unimportant; what matters is how the change occurred. Change that shifts longstanding academic structures and introduces new job descriptions that impact almost everyone in an organization would likely be classified as large scale and long term (Al-Haddad & Kotnour, 2015). Because of the impacts of the change, an organization would likely want to use the Judson method to minimize resistance from those being impact through communication and collaboration (Al-Haddad & Kotnour, 2015). Instead, the change was communicated to the organization after the plan had been made, with those effected having little involvement in the process. This lack of inclusion for those impacted was likely what resulted in the difficulty regarding commitment or understanding of the change. Weiner (2009) explains how members of an organization implement change for three reasons: “because they want to…, because they have to…, or because they ought to” (p. 2). This process resulted in change motivated by “have to”, which results in less cooperation than the preferred “want to” motivation (Weiner, 2009). Two years later there is still confusion relating to the responsibilities of these adjusted roles. Perhaps this could have been avoided if leadership had communicated the plan earlier or gathered feedback from organization members to help define the responsibilities before implementing the change. It is difficult to see the impacts of our change methods until after they have been implemented, but I would argue that communicating change early and encouraging involvement is rarely a bad idea when it comes to large scale organizational change.
While the change in organizational structure was a long term, large scale change, the pandemic introduced a short term, large scale change that led to most of our school teaching remotely for the last year. The school’s executive began responding to the pandemic on March 4, 2020, and on March 15, 2020, they paused all classes for one week to transfer all delivery online (Bow Valley College, n.d.). During that week, each instructor worked to convert their courses to online delivery while the school rolled out Microsoft Teams as the primary tool for synchronous classes and teacher-student communication. Both the school and faculty established support channels and communities of practice to help ease the transition to new delivery tools and faculty’s rapid course redevelopment. This change may be considered a combination of all three change motivations: we wanted to, we had to, and we ought to. The change was radical, completely shifting both where we taught and how we taught within the span of a week. The urgency of the change meant there was little time to use a formal change model, yet the change was effective and successful. Rather than the confusion that resulted from the change from the previous paragraph, the commitment and clarity around the objectives resulted in far more change occurring in far less time. This isn’t to say there weren’t hiccups throughout the transition, but faculty understood that the goal was a necessary one and, rather than complain, most knew where to look for support and help with problems they encountered. In this example, leadership came not only from executive, but also from colleagues in every part of the organization. The change was so urgently necessary that people helped however they could, and frequent internal communication about the changes reduced the potential for confusion. In the end, our school has been almost entirely teaching remotely since the change was made in March 2020. Various new supports have been initiated and the overall feeling has been that the change has been a successful and positive one.
Looking back over these changes, it may be easy to find reasons for what went right or wrong in either, but that does a disservice to the complexity of change. Perhaps each change could have been performed at a different organization using the same methods with completely different results. One of the major impacts on both changes is whether the members of the organization felt that the change was needful, what Weiner (2009) calls change valence. In the first example, that value was not felt by many in the organization before the change and communicating the need well before the change occurred may have had a positive impact. In the second example, the whole organization felt the need from the beginning. Even if the resources are plentiful, if leaders do not communicate the value to the organization in a way that garners commitment to the change, there is little chance of it being successful (Al-Haddad & Kotnour, 2015).
References
Al-Haddad, S., & Kotnour, T. (2015). Integrating the organizational change literature: A model for successful change. Journal of Organizational Change Management, 28(2), 234–262. https://doi.org/10.1108/JOCM-11-2013-0215
Bow Valley College. (n.d.). Bow Valley College COVID-19 Updates | Bow Valley College. Bow Valley College. Retrieved February 11, 2021, from https://bowvalleycollege.ca/our-stories/2020/news/previous-covid-19-updates
Weiner, B. J. (2009). A theory of organizational readiness for change. Implementation Science, 4(1), 67. https://doi.org/10.1186/1748-5908-4-67
