Kay Jaffer Education Students’ Regional Research Conference University of the Western Cape

1. National imperatives, local realities: the complexities of university change processes. A cultural perspective Kay Jaffer Education Students’ Regional Research Conference University of the Western Cape 27 – 28 October2006

2. Introduction To really understand university change processes, one needs to develop a deep understanding of the values, attitudes and practices of the people working in them – a cultural perspective is proposed.

3. HE Change imperatives • Great expectations: HE policy framework, transformation, equity and development • Globalised conditions: marketisation, massification of HE; competition; • Mechanisms of regulation • Changed labour relations: LRA; BCEA; EEA

4. Change at organisational level: • Implementation gap – slow to change • lack of institutional capacity, skilled and experienced managers. Solution – management training and/or appointments • Institutions – attempted change strategies not really useful: planning, changed governance, restructuring

5. Different approach to organisational change Need approaches that • focus on the cultural contexts in which change processes unfold • Take into account role and power of people in change processes, esp ito of their values, attitudes and practices

6. Current cultural perspectives on change IN HE: • HE Literature: Burton Clark 1986, McNay 1995, Masland 1992, Tierney, Kezar and others • SA HE lit: Jansen, Cloete and Kulati, Webster and Mosoetsa, Johnson. • In SA policy documents: • In SA institutions

7. My perspective • Draws on work of Alvesson (1992, 1996, 1997, 2002) and Trowler (1998, 2000, 2002) • Alvesson: argues for more reflective, nuanced concept of organisational culture • Describes ‘fallacies’ of current approaches: reifies, essentialises, unifies, idealises, consensualises. • Cultures in organisations loosely-coupled, complex, situated, contextually-contingent, involving relations of power.

8. Alvesson continued • Proposes multiple cultural configuration perspective • Notion of cultural traffic – cultural patterns that change with the flow of meanings and values, which are ever shifting and overlapping.

9. Trowler • Links MCC to change processes and responses to change • Mainstream views of organisational culture not adequate to explain what happens in universities • Social practice theory - cultures not merely enacted, partly constructed on an ongoing basis through interaction • People act as ‘filters’ of change: they receive, experience and implement change in different ways – implementation staircase.

10. Implementation staircase * institutional leaders interpret policies acc to local circumstances and pressures * departments receive, read an interpret acc to cultural, historical contexts * those at the ‘coal face’ receive and enact policy

11. You need to expect therefore: Different outcomes at different locales Resistance and re-construction, or simply avoidance and ignorance Meanings are developed as change processes unfold Signs and events are read in different ways by different groups.

12. Trowler • Popular view - university members passive ‘victims’ of encroaching managerialist cultures • develops categories of different types of response, some creative and engaging: • Sinking • Swimming • Coping • Reconstructing and reinterpreting

13. Conclusion • Pre-existing values and attitudes of staff need to be understood and addressed – deeply-rooted in socialisation, history and traditions and reinforced by daily recurrent behaviours. • But they do not simply enact cultural norms and values; they are involved in their construction on day to day basis • meanings) • codes of signification (QAA) • discursive repertoires • recurrent practices (email communication) • identities in interaction (factions, positions) • power relations (agenda setting, what happens) • tacit assumptions (about assessment) • rules of appropriateness (in the classroom) • implicit theories (about learning, universities, scholarship)