Abstract
AbstractDigital innovations in schools and universities matter. New leadership approaches and new organization knowledge are necessary for leaders to realize long-term school and university transformations afforded by important digital innovation experiments. This chapter takes a hard look at leadership and organization theory and practice, along with a critical look at innovation adoption to help digital school and university innovation teams find more sustainable, impactful innovations. First, we examine research and theory on formal leadership and organization to argue that classical, formal leaders separate people from the work of others, limiting innovation teamwork. We also examine formal organizations as “houses,” finding that these over-structure people and power in vertical functional “boxes” in bureaucracies that limit school or university readiness to adapt—even when great digital innovations offer transformation potential. Less formal leadership and organization is then explored with evidence from the author’s research on leading complex adaptive teams as more adaptable organization network forms. We conclude that less formal leadership and less formal organizing structures offer more innovation potential by creating adaptive spaces for digital innovations. We present a new theory and guidelines for leading and participating in high-impact digital innovation networks working to lead learning organization emergence (transformation) via digital innovations.
Highlights
Because adoption can be forced or manipulated in vertical power orgnizations, formal leaders often lead change by (a) seeking “buy-in” among employees for a technologically enhanced process that will result in what they hope will be an organizational change (Rogers 1962) and by (b) hoping that a technology or “app” can and will change the organization (Visvizi et al 2018). This linear cause-effect approach to change leadership and innovation has been harshly criticized by contemporary organization and education scholars, who have proven time and again that formal leaders mostly create “piecemeal” or incremental change in education systems by assuming linear, steady-state change parameters while ignoring human learning and socio-technological influences (Reigeluth and Duffy 2008)
Our research finds repeatedly that relational networks in education systems can thrive with reciprocal, shared influence, not power-over, so that power is shared among these networks with high-capacity, decentralized patterns or clusters find autonomy and freedom in less formal self-direction during both large school (Kowch 2005) and university (Kowch 2016) innovation design and deployments
That we have explored the kind of leadership that creates space for innovation teams to experiment and thrive, along with organizations or “structures” that allow for innovations to change the organization itself, we are ready for a model to help build, lead, and experiment with digital innovation teams so that the organization can transform from those digital innovations
Summary
Innovation doesn’t happen in a vacuum but requires openness and interactions between systems and their environments. We argue that leading digital transformation in the learning organization first requires different leadership approaches and different organization structures to allow more autonomous, team-based digital innovation efforts across education ecosystems (Kowch 2018a). Can schools and universities adapt to digital innovation experiments that can truly transform their products and processes (learners with better lives). We offer theory and practical guidelines for digital innovation leaders who guide integrated solutions that can, with the right leadership and organization, truly transform and sustain a school or university. The final section offers theory and practical guidelines for networked digital innovation team members and leaders whose experiments can be better engines for genuine, system-wide education organization transformation
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