The Role of Trust: Intermediaries and Organizational Change within Higher Education Institutions

• In Event: Positionality and Research Use in Educational Policy and Practice: Toward Evidence-Informed Decisions

Abstract

Our paper explores how intermediary organizations (IOs) work as mediators that create value in reform efforts by building trust between partners (e.g., Honig, 2004). Recent research in state-level legislative policymaking finds that the value of IOs lies in strengthening policymakers’ relationships within the policy process (AUTHOR, 2019). We argue that postsecondary IOs can play a similar role, providing higher education institutions with both policy and political benefits as they navigate fieldwide and organization-specific vulnerabilities (Hamm & Banner, 2025).
2. Theoretical Framework
Over the last few decades, the understanding of the role intermediary organizations (IOs) play in higher education has shifted from boundary spanner (Lubienski et al., 2014; Ness, 2010; Scott et al., 2014) to include agenda-setting (Gandara et al., 2017; Miller & Morphew, 2017), as well as a less explored mediator role (e.g., Harkavy & Puckett, 1991; Honig, 2004). In this session, we build on this three-part framework by expanding the IO as mediator (Table 1; Figure 1). To accomplish this goal, we synthesize across (1) reflections on our personal experiences working in a privately funded reform effort, (2) interview data collected from our IO colleagues and professionals who worked with us, and (3) literature on the role of trust in public policy.
3. Methods & Data Sources
Between 2018 and 2022, we interviewed 44 participants working with or as intermediaries, selected via purposeful sampling (Patton, 2014), representing 38 institutions and three sub-samples (philanthropic funders, employees of IOs, and postsecondary staff working with IOs). We iteratively and collaboratively coded the data (MacQueen & McLellan, 1998), in several rounds, meeting often to discuss intercoder agreement. These codes were then aggregated into themes that represent how IOs worked within the sampled context.
4. Conclusions & Significance
Our work shows how IOs operated in ways that empowered and protected the vulnerabilities of higher education organizations and professionals. These mediator functions included using their roles to buffer institutional personnel from onerous requests, strategically aggregating information to protect partners’ reputations, and providing cover to pursue student success initiatives within organizations resistant to change and hostile state policy contexts. Overall, IOs worked towards common reform goals within diffuse and complex systems and with differently motivated actors through using their positionality to address the risks inherent in large-scale change.
In addressing risk and vulnerability through a mediator role, IOs were able to cultivate and strengthen trust between stakeholders. This work required working in a highly relational manner, taking time to understand the needs of all involved parties, and maintaining a degree of independence from funders. Our work underscores the importance of IOs positionality within the complex higher education system and explores the strategies that IOs use to balance short-term needs with long-term goals. What’s more, building trust allows higher education institutions to utilize research more effectively within their politically charged, vulnerable, and evolving contexts. Given the current context, this research offers significance by providing direct actions that researchers, practitioners, and policymakers can deploy to best support higher education policy and practice.

Authors

• Emily Parrott, Thrive Scholars

• Travis Heath Olson, Michigan State University

• Anna Drake Warshaw, University Innovation Alliance