Tacit Culture and Change: A Model of Change Constructed From Institutional Assumptions and Beliefs

Abstract

Higher education today faces a conflict between

increasing societal demands and decreasing

budgets. Innovation and change in higher

education occur in the face of limited

institutional resources. Meeting the challenges

confronting colleges and universities is best

accomplished by applying planned change

efforts that recognize tacit culture (underlying

assumptions and beliefs) and incorporate these

cultural components into the change process.

To date, however, change theory in higher

education provides limited insight into

institutional culture and how culture interacts

with change. This is complicated by the fact that

there are very few acknowledged methods for

revealing tacit components of culture in higher

education. This study provides the fields of

change theory and institutional culture with, first,

knowledge about revealing culture in higher

education and, second, a model of change

grounded in a single institution's assumptions

and beliefs. Using a variation of Sackmann's

(1991) open-ended, issue focused interview

method for uncovering tacit components of

culture in corporate organizations, this study

reveals cultural assumptions and beliefs about a

planned change project in a two-year

community college. Further, a model of change

is constructed from the revealed assumptions

and beliefs that explains the role of this tacit

culture in the probable outcomes of the change

project.