La consolidación del Planeamiento Territorial Los grandes Planes Estructurales

There were few studies in the literature which examined participant agency for

organisational change, with fewer again to have examined the cultural mediation of learning. The majority prioritised improving cost or time liabilities of teaching by top-down

predetermined interventions (a particular “challenge of change” for technology in HE noted by Bates & Sangrà, 2011: 10). A minority examined solely bottom-up change, which in isolation may channel and isolate participants (Anderson & Dron, 2014: 57). Theorizing TEL- related change was often presented as capitalizing on technologies to lever economies of scale in HE (e.g. Neave, 2015: 22), generally where one stakeholder group was bestowed with artefacts to replicate and scale results from elsewhere (e.g. educational technologists in Marshall, 2011: 17 and academics in McNaughton & Billot, 2016: 13). My intervention’s multi-voiced aggravation of contradictions appeared to be relatively unexplored for TEL- related change in HE. The orientations of other studies of technology-related change in HEIs are presented in Sub-section 3.4.1, with the dimensions of their change efforts analysed in Sub-section 3.4.2.

3.4.1 Organisational change and technology in HEIs

A search of peer-reviewed articles for [(organisational OR organisational) AND change AND education AND technology] yielded 656 returns. Of note, searching within those results for “Activity Theory” returned only 14 empirical studies, indicating Activity Theory’s nascence. This persistent observation (also discussed by Roth, 2004: 3; Benson, Lawler & Whitworth, 2008: 456) seemed surprising to me, given CHAT’s description by Engeström two decades ago as “the best kept secret of academia” and considering how change and TEL align with Vygotskian principles of mediation. In returning to the 656 returns, additional terms of HE and technology with [(organisational OR organisational) AND change AND "higher education" AND technology] returned 165 articles. 78 of these were rejected due to focusing on cost and time efficiencies of specific and pre-ordained technologies. By manually interrogating

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the remaining 87 abstracts, 24 studies were selected as relevant for the examination of technology-related organisational change in HEIs. Bibliography searching of these studies then increased the total to 36 relevant works in this field. Figure 3.6 illustrates their orientations.

Figure 3.6. Orientations of organisational change efforts in HEIs involving TEL

In the majority of empirical studies where technology and organisational change correlated, the majority of changes were implemented to engage internal stakeholders, and were examined from one group’s perspective (e.g. teachers in Zhu, 2015: 65; managers in Wall, 2015: 393; and learners in O’Donnell, 2016: 101). A notable exception was Singh and Hardaker's (2017: 11) reconciliation of top-down and bottom-up levers (although with a managerial focus it excluded learners). A widespread shortfall in studies was the assumption of participants’ appetites for change. Wilson, Raish and Carr-Chellman (2016: 278) set out to deepen students’ understandings of TEL and systemic change, yet left many contradictions unexamined by amalgamating the disparate needs of designers with those of faculty. Other studies presumed intentionality, resulting in unforeseen rejection such as Magen-Nagar and Maskit's (2016: 215) study where “… teaching staff [were] surprised and sometimes even against incorporating technological methods of teaching …”.

A significant driver for technology-oriented organisational change was to attract external investment. An unforeseen side effect of was the decision-making expectations of investors, with a number of studies experiencing overtly dominant economic forces. Deželan, Laker and Pavlin (2016: 107) adopted an external orientation to their HEI, engaging with local and regional enterprises to examine aspirations for the “practical orientation” of HE. Their

Attracting external investment 31% Emulating experiences of others 22% Exhibition of adaptability and agility 5% Hedge for economic

and political reform 3% Internal stakeholder engagement 33% Promotion of participant agency 3% Promotion of social responsibility 3%

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results raised concerns of HE faculty undergoing “task hybridisation” and “de-

professionalisation”, with implications of investors influencing how HEIs would contribute to society. Influence on the HEI included: commercialisation of research; restrictions on loan programmes; increasing tuition fees; and control of expenditure on facilities. Babaiev, Kadykova, Husieva and Chumachenko (2017: 134) went further to propose that inevitable organisational change, driven by technological advances, ought to drive their HEI to become a project-led and profit-driven institution having parity with business.

One of the lowest representative orientations in the literature was the promotion of agency. Rare exceptions included Lin, Singer and Ha's (2010: 45) post-hoc study of faculty resisting top-down technology-oriented change, with the authors recognising “a clear divide between university administrative officials and individual faculty and staff members based on their stands and positions on the issues of technology”. The emotional responses of staff and their agentic resistance were nurtured by being ridiculed by managers, who had labelled them as “Luddites” (ibid.). Bell and Bell's (2005: 643) study examined participant agency and learner management systems, although it was limited in its exclusion of participants from the project’s design. It included analyses of the misalignment of division of labour and rules, which impacted on day-to-day practice with artefacts such as inadequate ICT server access levels for staff to take ownership. Agherdien’s case study of academic technologies in Hardman et al.'s (2015: 163) CHAT studies was a rare example of studying relationships between mediating artefacts and organisational change for HE.

Irrespective of their drivers, these studies of technology-related organisational change in HEIs implied that challenges for cultural mediation were in ascension. There was an apparent need in the literature for adaptable policies, flexible decision making models and changes to preconceived managerialist interventions, to enable the emerging opportunities of technology (e.g. Shattock, 2009: 7). Given that a significant driver was the attraction of external investment, the compounding effects of managerialist policies may prove to exacerbate the effects of “technologies of domination” (predicted by Peters, Marshall & Fitzsimons, 2000: 121). These concerns seemed to amplify Rinne and Koivula's (2009: 183) contemporary dilemmas for HEIs; market orientation is increasingly expected of HEIs, yet many societal actors value the stability of HEIs. As a result, HEIs are expected to respond to issues such as massification and reductions in public funding, whilst providing enduring institutional predictability. In combination these factors may threaten existing teaching,

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research and management configurations, which provide HEIs with stability yet inhibit the very changes being called for.

3.4.2 Evidence of dimensions of organisational change in empirical research

Various theoretical models and approaches were evident in studies of organisational change in HEIs which featured technology. Mid-range theories of change in HE were discussed in Saarinen and Välimaa (2015: 41) with many commentators claiming that organisational change in HE was particularly under-theorised when related to technology (e.g. (Kirkwood & Price, 2012: 14; Fahy, 2008: 190). Dominant schools of thought for change efforts in HE were compared by Kezar (2014: 24) with common shortfalls including: leadership driven by tacit theories; ignoring context; following simplistic change models; and ignoring research. The most common dimension of studies relevant to my intervention was that of implementing some pre-ordained change of technological platforms or media, evident in around two thirds of the literature. This was followed by the post-hoc acceptance of change for one group of a population, evident in around one fifth of the papers. There is some statistical overlap in the different dimensions, which are Illustrated in Figure 3.7.

Figure 3.7. Dimensions of organisational change efforts in studies of HEIs involving TEL

The reflection and invention necessary for organisational change often depended upon some failure, crisis or critical problem. An example was Miettinen and Virkkunen's (2005: 437) relationships between organisational change and epistemic objects, a rare example of

0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70%

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recognising the importance of mediation, contradictions and rejection of current social and cultural conditions. Evidence of engaging participants in questioning and modelling their own crises in activity was present in only a minority of studies. An example was Forman, Nicol and Nicol's (2015: 162) proposals for scenario planning in TEL for medics,

acknowledging that reframing inter-professional practice and sustainable change requires “not only the identification of current resources and capabilities but also an exploration of mental models and attitudes”. The researchers also recognised that the embeddedness of their participants’ assumptions evoked defensiveness of the status quo.

Conversely, studies such as Waring and Skoumpopoulou (2012: 513) and Barak (2012: 135) omitted examination of participant critique, which seemed to conceal the agency of resistance to change and miss opportunities to aggravate lucrative contradictions. In the former study, sociocultural relationships were acknowledged, as was the recognition that “a culture of instrumental command and control may be incongruent with academic and collegial values”. Yet the authors examined the implementation of technologies which had already been procured, with participants endorsing change decisions which had already been made. In Barak’s study of organisational change to undertake online HE, a proposal was made to “… provide solutions … while dismantling the resistance of faculty who still believe in traditional teaching” (my italics), negating the expansive potential of resistance. The TEL case studies examined by Powell, Olivier and Yuan (2015: 6) indicated that the stability of boundaries and artefacts was an important resource for participants during change endeavours; their familiarity provided organisational stability in times of flux.

This notion of stability had varied manifestations in the literature. A study of ambiguity and uncertainty by Schrader, Riggs and Smith (1993: 73) examined how organisational stability had been used by strategists as structural inertia, called upon in resisting bottom-up attempts at change irrespective of the potential benefits. It cited in turn Hannan and Freeman's (1984: 141) findings on boundaries and artefacts, where organisational and technological stability, deployed to resist change, avoided the dissonance of personal responsibilities. Conversely, meta-ethnographies by Hoover and Harder (2015: 175) had associated structural stability with enabling agency, fostering bottom-up criticism and assisting with change beyond functional and technological boundaries. The separation of structure and agency was used by many researchers as a dichotomy for examining TEL and change, yet it was rejected by others including by Hodkinson, Biesta and James (2007: 417) who described it as an unhelpfully reductionist duality in researching this field.

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There were few identified studies which focused on multi-voiced perspectives, cultural mediation or local design when considering organisational change in HEIs, which may relate to the field’s predilection for top-down implementation. In studies of unsuccessful

implementations, reflective recommendations included: change ought to have considered social interactions at multiple levels; TEL artefacts were imbued with cultural and social content during organisational change; and, for sustainability through time, the enveloping culture ought to have been generally amenable to change. A further common observation, implied in studies rather than explicitly concluded, was that technological changes induced other organisational changes of unexpected intensity, and vice-versa. An example was Perret-Clermont and Perret's (2011: 97) study, which recognised that changes in artefacts affected identities, meaning schemes, access to expertise and other social and cultural factors. Such observations illustrated my impropriety in separating out the three fields of this review, and of neglecting others. The subsequent section discusses neglected fields then closes the chapter.