Development of Commitment in Turbulent Times in a Norwegian University College

• In Event: Higher Education Leadership Has Its Own Set of Challenges

Short Description

In 2013, the Research Council of Norway announced a new initiative on gender balance. Presenters will share qualitative research that explored how change agents mobilized and inspired top leaders to participate in this project. Factors including strategy and management actions were dynamic challenges when the study examined the balance between involvement and manipulation.

Detailed Abstract

Background: In Norway, the number of women and men earning doctoral degrees is the same. Yet even in areas where women constitute the majority of researchers with a PhD, it is men who comprise the majority of those recruited to research careers at the senior level. In 2013, approximately 25% of the full professors in Norway were women (DBH). In other European countries, women represented approximately 20 % of the researchers at the top grade of an academic career (European Commission 2013).

In 2013, the Research Council of Norway announced a new Initiative on Gender Balance in Senior Positions and Research Management (BALANSE 2013). The objective of the initiative was to ensure greater recruitment of women to top-level positions and research management. The policy is based on an idea that gender balance fosters quality in research, enhances the relevance of research to society, and improves the competitiveness of research groups. (BALANSE 2013).

Buskerud and Vestfold University College (BVUC) received in 2015 funding for a three years project named Female researchers, Learning, Organization and Gender balance (KLOK), and the aim of the project is to improve gender balance in leading academic positions. In order to accomplish this, the project has two key objectives. The first objective is aimed at individuals, and provide various measures for approximately sixty female researchers. The second objective is development of the organization. In this way, KLOK is a project for strategic innovation and action research – on both an individual and organizational level.

The entire sector of higher educational institutions in Norway is currently undergoing comprehensive restructuring. The numbers of institutions are dramatically reduced through a series of mergers. BVUC where merged with Telemark University College January 1st 2016, and named University College of Southeast Norway (UCSN). It was the second merge for this institution in three years. This means turbulent times for the entire sector, for each of the institutions and for all the employees – including the KLOK project.

The organization and leadership of KLOK has changed over the project period. The project leader was from the beginning vice-rector in BVUC when the project started, and a part of the top management. She was also the initiator of the project. After the second merger, she went back to a professional position as associate professor, in addition to continuing in the role of project leader. In this situation, it became a great challenge to ensure the top managements involvement in KLOK and in gender balance policy.

Every member of a group can do leader actions (Wadel 2012), and define themselves as a change agent (Battilana and Casciaro 2012). From a constructivist leadership perspective, a key role of both a change agent and a leader is to mobilize and inspire. For the project leader in KLOK this means among other things to engage the top leaders in co-creating the project and pushing it forward. In this role, the project leader need to be creative and innovative, to identify the right actions – and then communicate with the top managers in a persuasive way (Weick et. al. 2005). From time to time, the rationale for a mobilizing and inspiring acts, introduced and proposed for the top managers by the project leader, is not always communicated fully – something is withheld. In this way the project leader, as a change agent, is balancing strategic and ethical leadership between involvement and manipulation (Habermas 1999).

Summary: In this study, we observe how the project leader from time to time performs leadership actions to initiate further involvement, dedication and commitment from the top managements related to KLOK. We also examine in what way the top management are dealing with implementation of KLOK as a strategic organization development project for gender balance. In addition, we reflect on how these selected actions balances strategic and ethical between involvement and manipulation.

The research question is:
What characterizes those situations where the change agent’s initiatives is balancing strategic and ethical leadership between involvement and manipulation.

Theory:
Higher education institutions have during the last three decades, experienced profound transformations by adopting more formalized organizational structure, emphasizing the importance of leadership with a more hierarchical internal governance structure (Bleiklie and Kogan 2007). In higher education institutions, strategizing is undertaken in a context of organization complexity – especially in turbulent times. This complexity refers to intra-organizationally transformations as well as transformations in the organizational field (Stensaker et. al 2007, Frølich et. al 2013).
Strategising in higher education institutions is heavily influenced by the demands of the environment to which the organization must conform in order to warrant its legitimacy (Frølich and Stensaker 2012). Implementing new knowledge and knew practices is recognized as political processes, and are fuelled with power and occur as a result of political activities (Foucault 1997,2002). The top level managers in higher education institutions are required to take on and inhabit the role as strategic managers to a much higher degree than ever seen before in higher education systems (Degn 2015).

Method:
In this project, we collect data through ethnographic fieldwork and document studies, in addition to written logs. The project leader of KLOK is action researcher in the project, together with the other authors of this abstract. Autoethnography is in this study understood as “a form of ethnography, it overlaps art and science; it is part auto or self and part ethno or culture. It also is something different from both of them, greater than its parts” (Ellis 2004: 31-32).

Findings:
The findings suggest that the top management only to a small degree got involved, engaged and committed in the gender balance project – especially after the project leader left the vice-rector position. The project leader’s new role, defining herself as a change agent, led to a number of new initiatives relative to the top management. The balancing between involvement and manipulation can be understood as conflicting ideas between the top management and the project leader when it comes to the purpose of the project.

Participants

• Jorun Ulvestad, University College of Southeast-Norway

• Irmelin Drake, University College of Southeast Norway

• Brit Bolken Ballangrud, University College of Southeast Norway

• Sigrun Wessel Svenkerud, University College of Southeast Norway