Organizational Culture and Effectiveness in Higher Education: A Test of the “Culture Type” and “Strong Culture” Hypotheses

1996 ◽  
Vol 18 (3) ◽  
pp. 219-241 ◽  
Author(s):  
John C. Smart ◽  
Edward P. St. John
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
Organizational Culture ◽  
Colleges And Universities ◽  
Independent Effect ◽  
Institutional Performance ◽  
Dominant Culture ◽  
Differential Effectiveness ◽  
Culture Strength ◽  
Four Year Colleges ◽  
Strong Culture

Two of the more promising lines of inquiry in efforts to understand the hypothesized linkage between organizational culture and effectiveness have focused on the differential effectiveness of organizations depending on their dominant culture type and their culture strength. The primary purpose of this study was to determine whether these two lines of inquiry operate in an independent or conditional manner in explaining the hypothesized linkage between organizational culture and the performance of a sample of four-year colleges and universities. The findings provide support for both lines of inquiry, albeit not entirely in a manner suggested by their respective proponents. For example, while culture type has a decidedly stronger independent effect on institutional performance than culture strength, the differences are clearly more pronounced on campuses with “strong” rather than “weak” cultures. The implications of these findings for research on and efforts to improve the performance of colleges and universities are discussed.

scholarly journals Exploring Community-Engaged Scholarship: Insights and Questions for HRD

2020 ◽  
Vol 22 (1) ◽  
pp. 41-56 ◽  
Author(s):  
Emily A. Morrison
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
Organizational Culture ◽  
Human Resource Development ◽  
Human Resource ◽  
Colleges And Universities ◽  
Large Field ◽  
Engaged Scholarship ◽  
Call To Action ◽  
Public Scrutiny ◽  
Community Engaged Scholarship

The Problem Higher education, including human resource development (HRD) programs, faces increasing public scrutiny for being out of touch with issues and concerns facing local and global communities by guarding limited conceptualizations of scholarship. In response, colleges and universities are identifying ways to bridge the academy (higher education) with the community-at-large and looking to its faculty to weave community concerns into scholarship through means such as community-engaged scholarship (CES). While the literature on and application of CES is robust in other disciplines, it remains less widely discussed in HRD. The Solution HRD scholar-practitioners have expertise in learning, leadership, organizational culture, and change, which could benefit the larger community, but also faculty and their work. Some HRD scholar-practitioners may already be practicing CES; yet, there is limited understanding of CES within HRD despite shared values and principles, including what may be blocking community-engaged efforts. To jumpstart the discussion, this article provides an overview of CES, identifying questions and issues for HRD scholar-practitioners to consider as part of a call to action to inform and advance the practice of and scholarship on CES. The Stakeholders This article has relevance for all who seek direct and indirect ways to collaborate, integrate knowledge across disciplines and contexts (including the community at large, field of HRD, and academicians), address community concerns, and translate knowledge to serve the broader good.

scholarly journals Student Success in College: Creating Conditions That Matter

2012 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 194-195
Author(s):  
Raul A. Leon ◽  
Jaime N. Byrd
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
Student Success ◽  
Colleges And Universities ◽  
Public Institutions ◽  
Educational Environments ◽  
Four Year Colleges ◽  
The U.S

Student Success in College: Creating Conditions That Matter offers a closer look into the U.S. system of higher education, seeking to answer the following question: What policies, programs, and practices promote student success? The authors embark on this journey examining a group of 20 four-year colleges and universities (e.g. schools included eight private and 12 public institutions representing 17 different states, with populations ranging from 682 to 23,063 students) that have fostered educational environments where engagement and success have transformed the experiences of enrolled students. For the purpose of this review, we organize our thoughts in the following two sections:

Winning the Argument and Moving the Fight: The Legacy of a Grassroots Humanitarian

Public Voices ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 115
Author(s):  
Mary Coleman
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
United States ◽  
Winning Strategy ◽  
Supreme Court Decision ◽  
The United States ◽  
Colleges And Universities ◽  
Lessons Learned ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Actors ◽  
Trade Offs

The author of this article argues that the two-decades-long litigation struggle was necessary to push the political actors in Mississippi into a more virtuous than vicious legal/political negotiation. The second and related argument, however, is that neither the 1992 United States Supreme Court decision in Fordice nor the negotiation provided an adequate riposte to plaintiffs’ claims. The author shows that their chief counsel for the first phase of the litigation wanted equality of opportunity for historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs), as did the plaintiffs. In the course of explicating the role of a legal grass-roots humanitarian, Coleman suggests lessons learned and trade-offs from that case/negotiation, describing the tradeoffs as part of the political vestiges of legal racism in black public higher education and the need to move HBCUs to a higher level of opportunity at a critical juncture in the life of tuition-dependent colleges and universities in the United States. Throughout the essay the following questions pose themselves: In thinking about the Road to Fordice and to political settlement, would the Justice Department lawyers and the plaintiffs’ lawyers connect at the point of their shared strength? Would the timing of the settlement benefit the plaintiffs and/or the State? Could plaintiffs’ lawyers hold together for the length of the case and move each piece of the case forward in a winning strategy? Who were plaintiffs’ opponents and what was their strategy? With these questions in mind, the author offers an analysis of how the campaign— political/legal arguments and political/legal remedies to remove the vestiges of de jure segregation in higher education—unfolded in Mississippi, with special emphasis on the initiating lawyer in Ayers v. Waller and Fordice, Isaiah Madison

Global Goals and Contributing Disciplines in Higher Education, With a Focus on Sustainable Engineering

2016 ◽  
Vol 138 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Kaufui Vincent Wong
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
United Nations ◽  
Colleges And Universities ◽  
Quality Engineering ◽  
Sustainable Engineering ◽  
The United Nations ◽  
The Many ◽  
Engineering Schools

This work has been done to recognize the various contributing disciplines in colleges and universities to achieving the global goals. One aim is to point out the many college disciplines internationally that would contribute to these goals. Only four out of the global goals seem not to be directly contributed to by sustainable engineering. A presentation of relevant publications has been made of the role of sustainable engineering in accomplishing the 17 global goals of the United Nations. The pervasiveness and long reach of the many branches of sustainable engineering are evident. The implied importance of good quality engineering schools and colleges worldwide cannot be refuted.

scholarly journals Exploration of the path of art education resources in Colleges and universities in Jiangxi

2020 ◽  
Vol 189 ◽  
pp. 03004
Author(s):  
Lai Wenqing
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
Cultural Capital ◽  
Art Education ◽  
Colleges And Universities ◽  
Cultural Resources ◽  
Cultural Inheritance ◽  
Cultural Elements ◽  
Education Resources ◽  
The Law ◽  
Aesthetic Concepts

Art education in colleges and universities is an important part of China’s higher education. It takes art as the content and educates people. Through educational activities, it fosters college students to form correct aesthetic concepts, improve their personal personality, and stimulate their imagination and creativity. The integration of art education into Hakka cultural inheritance has the problem of compatibility between the law of cultural inheritance and the law of education. Efforts should be made to activate static local cultural resources into dynamic educational and cultural capital. Hakka culture curriculum system should be integrated with traditional cultural characteristics and art education concepts. The contents should be closely related to art education, and the Hakka spirit of simplicity and diligence should be transmitted through the connotation of Hakka culture. The “cultural resources into curriculum resources”, “cultural elements into cultural creativity” double path teaching implementation, to achieve the value of Hakka cultural resources inheritance.

scholarly journals Accounting for institutional variation in expected returns to higher education

2017 ◽  
Vol 25 ◽  
pp. 110 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shawn Dorius ◽  
David Tandberg ◽  
Bridgette Cram
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
Public University ◽  
Colleges And Universities ◽  
Policy Implications ◽  
Expected Returns ◽  
Student Body ◽  
Capital Theory ◽  
Post Secondary ◽  
Institutional Variation ◽  
Returns On Investment

This study leverages human capital theory to identify the correlates of expected returns on investment in higher education at the level of institutions. We leverage estimates of average ROI in post-secondary education among more than 400 baccalaureate degree conferring colleges and universities to understand the correlates of a relatively new metric of institutional ROI. Results indicate that a diverse undergraduate student body, high graduation rate, and public university status are strong, positive, and robustly associated with institutional ROI. The model accounts for more than 70% of inter-university variation in ROI, suggesting that the factors we have identified are among the most important correlates of institutional ROI. We discuss the policy implications of these findings for institutions of higher education in the context of institutional rankings and a rapidly evolving education landscape, giving special attention to student body characteristics colleges and universities.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document