How Change Unravels: The Failure of Ideal-centered Organizational Change at Regional Comprehensive Universities

Abstract

ABSTRACT This multiple-case study examined the factors promoting or impeding ideal-centered change efforts focused on reclaiming the founding civic commitments of three Regional Comprehensive Universities. Findings showed that successful change agents engaged detractors in defining the ideal and shaping the change while assessing change efforts and recalibrating their approach as needed. Successful change agents also initiated ongoing cultural engagement with the ideal early on and ensured that it was present throughout the change process. These findings contrast prior research portraying cultural change as the final stage of organizational change, not as an ongoing process. This study is significant because it exposes how postsecondary institutions might enact ideal-centered change focused on reclaiming founding civic commitments despite neoliberal pressures that conflict with these ideals.