Building a building while building a culture

Abstract

This study examined how intentional change decisions impacted the organizational culture of a newly constructed and reconfigured elementary school in Central Massachusetts. District administration enacted seven intentional change decisions during the project to influence the culture of the new school. Semi-structured interviews were held with nine staff and administration focus groups and five 1:1 interviews with district administrators. Transcripts were analyzed using provisional coding to understand the impact of each instructional change decision. The use of "thick descriptions" (Geertz, 1973) of participants lived experiences supports understanding of the impact of the intentional change decisions. Theming the data and "thick interpretation" (Ponterotto, 2006) was used across instructional change decisions to identify three major themes: the significance of belonging, the importance of planning, and the impact of shared leadership. Viewing through the lenses of Boyatzis' Intentional Change Theory and Schein's Theory of Organizational Culture suggest three findings that answer this study's research questions and support intentional decisions when merging or creating new organizations: intentional change decisions that build relationships build culture, a sense of belonging is necessary to the development of a positive culture, and intentional change decisions impact the outcomes of the change.--Author's abstract