Individuals in action: bringing about innovation in higher education

Sandra Hasanefendic,Julie M Birkholz,Hugo Horta,Peter Van Der Sijde

doi:10.1080/21568235.2017.1296367

Abstract

ABSTRACTThis article addresses academics who innovate in higher education and their characteristics. We undertake a qualitative case study of six individuals who implemented disruptive and transformative pedagogical approaches and curricular practices in their departments and/or at their institutions. Our findings point to six common characteristics – motivation to change institutionalized practices, interest in change, experience in the field, multi-embeddedness, authority to act, and the strategic use of social networks – which seem to play a role at individual levels in driving these disruptive and transformative approaches. While acknowledging studies in higher education that address innovation as a response to exogenous influences, this study highlights the role of individuals with certain characteristics in driving innovation and processes of endogenous change in higher education institutions. These findings are also relevant for higher education practitioners in their desire to foster innovative initiatives in institutional settings.

Highlights

There is an abundance of research into innovation in higher education, whether in curricular programmes (McClure 2015), delivery mechanisms (Davis and Jacobsen 2014), pedagogical approaches, support service mechanisms (Sultan and Wong 2013) or management (Amaral, Fulton, and Larsen 2003)
We focused on these characteristics in the analysis of the interviews to find commonalities; for example, an institutional entrepreneur in higher education institutions (HEIs) can mitigate the costs of change and access funding sources with the same ease as a non-academic institutional entrepreneurs
These include: motivation to change institutionalized practices, interest in change, field experience, multiembeddedness, the authority to act, and the strategic use of networks. These characteristics were related to those that have already been elaborated in literature on institutional entrepreneurship (Figure 1) where individuals engaged in change processes

Summary

Introduction

A key concept used in this study is ‘institutional entrepreneur’ (Garud, Hardy, and Maguire 2007; Battilana, Leca, and Boxenbaum 2009), which functions as a lens for understanding the characteristics of academics who undertake strategic action and instigate transformative changes in their higher education setting This theoretical framework is distinguished from traditional neo-institutional theory, which fails to recognize the role of individual actors in innovation, positing instead that structure is perpetuated by the social repetition of norms and organizational rules of the institutional environment (Suddaby 2013). These findings suggest that, apart from optimal field conditions, the individual characteristics of IEs and their ability to use the social capital available in their networks are significant variables for the success of innovative endeavours This abundant literature provides a framework for an analysis of the characteristics of individuals in higher education who change teaching and research practices by transforming and disrupting the existing institutionalized order. This permits us to know about and advance an understanding of the phenomena in the selected field and is especially useful when the phenomena under analysis are not sufficiently explored or addressed in the field

Findings

Discussion and conclusion

Notes on contributors

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