Initiating and leading a grassroots process of organizational change to advance a university mission

Abstract

ABSTRACT This study presents a collaborative, grassroots-led initiative for organizational change within a values-focused university. These informal change efforts represent a theory-to-practice leadership application in which a small group of faculty and staff members self-organized to enhance the university’s full range of leadership education, development, training, and assessment. The volunteer collaborators sought to better articulate the university’s longstanding commitment to educating and developing ‘principled leaders’ Their efforts also aimed at refining the university community’s dialogue about leadership and addressing certain conceptual gaps. The collaborators developed into a team of change agents who identified and advanced a values-based conceptual framework for educating and developing principled leaders. Their collaborative efforts reflect a recognizable process of organizational change. Understanding how an informal, bottom-up initiative can succeed becomes particularly important considering that even formal, top-down change initiatives often fail. This study follows Lewin’s Action Research methodology of sequential planning, action, and results, as analyzed across iterative cycles of active learning. It applies the stages of a recognized 4-phase organizational change process. The analysis yields key insights drawn from direct experience in this grassroots-led change initiative. Implications and recommendations for practitioners arise directly from this experience in leading emergent change within a higher education context.