The effects of environmental change on a "young" university.

AuthorCordeiro, William P.
  1. INTRODUCTION

    People don't like change. For decades, many authors have analyzed our resistance to change (Lewin, 1947; Coch, 1948; Dalton, 1970; Bridges, 1991; Burke, 2003). As much as we resist change, change is a fact-of-life for everyone and every organization. No person or organization is immune to the effects of their changing environments.

    This conceptual paper attempts to link theories of change to a case example. The example concerns California State University Channel Islands (CI)--the newest of the 23 campuses in the California State University (CSU) system. CI was founded in 2001 and opened to students in 2002. CI started with 13 faculty members and a few administrators. Today, CI has 85 tenure/track and 200 adjunct faculty members and 650 full time employees.

    While the campus grew steadily from 2001 to 2009, the State of California budget difficulties have severely impacted CI since 2009. CI was scheduled to reach an enrollment of 6,000 full-time equivalent students (FTES) by fall 2011, but has been held to only 3,500 FTES at this time. All employees were furloughed two days each month throughout the 2009-2010 academic year, and hiring freezes have been implemented. In summer 2011, two high-level administrators were laid off, a member of the President's Cabinet left for another job, and work hours were reduced for many employees. The recent economic downturn continues to influence the California state budget adversely causing significant reductions in state funding for the CSU. These budget reductions are considered permanent with dim prospects of increased funding from the state in future years.

    Since the effect of change on humans and their organizations has been extensively studied, there are many tools, suggestions and models to help managers in adjusting to change (Weick, 1999; Wasleree, 2003; Marks, 2009; O'Heir, 2011). After briefly exploring the concept of change and offering suggestions to assist managers of changing organizations, we describe the case of CI. Our goal is to provide useful information for organizations in transition.

  2. ORGANIZATIONS IN TRANSITION

    The external environments surrounding organizations are in constant flux. Additionally, the internal organizational environment which surrounds employees is constantly changing. The impact of these changing external and internal environments produces a variety of symptoms: confusion, uncertainty, ambiguity, stress, inefficiencies and, ultimately, ineffectiveness in organizations. Change happens because environments constantly change and--since everyone is surrounded by and cannot escape their environments--no one is immune to the effects of change. As organizations change, employees may feel insecure, confused and--ultimately perhaps--frozen. Often, employees withdraw into their comfort zones or personal "silos." While appearing to protect themselves from the effects of change, employees may also return to old conflicts--latent disagreements between individuals and groups may resurface (Balser and Carmin, 2009).

    As environments change, employees and their organizations reflect the effects of change in two areas, operations and people, over two time horizons, short term and long term. In the short term, few or no effects may be visible to managers. Profound, significant and potentially damaging effects of change may not be noticeable to managers at first. For example, change may compel employees to retreat to well-known processes--to the...

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