Abstract
Session presented on: Thursday, July 25, 2013:
Purpose: Changing an organization's culture is challenging and requires comprehensive assessment and purposefully deploying organizational tools. This paper will present a model of engaging a process to ramp up a research culture in a College of Nursing where teaching was heretofore the primary focus.
Methods: To purposefully engage in transformational change, an organizational consultant was utilized to conduct a systematic assessment of the college's work culture and climate. The consultant used a case study approach to collect interview data from key individuals and teams, observe meetings of standing committees, and examine external forces and college documents such as the strategic plan. The core leadership team (e.g., Dean and Associate Deans) analyzed the consultant's report to identify the college's strengths and target areas that required change.
Results: The process of changing the college's culture included communicating leadership messages about culture change as well as using management tools and persuasion to reinforce and reward new expectations. The process of conducting a systematic case study and subsequent actions resulting from the case study effectively communicated the leadership message. Management tools and persuasion included a new structure for enhancing shared faculty governance, additional resources to support scholarship, and incentives and policies to reinforce new expectations. Faculty members willingly embraced the new expectation and the increase in scholarship activities was readily apparent.
Conclusion: Successfully changing a culture to ramp up research requires engaging organizational tools at three levels - leadership, management, and persuasion. Leadership must seize the moment to swiftly and forcefully reinforce messages about new expectations for research. Management practices need to systematically drive the vision and reward research and scholarship activities. Persuasion requires being responsive to faculty concerns and realities and providing them with the resources to meet new expectations.
Sigma Membership
Theta at-Large
Type
Presentation
Format Type
Text-based Document
Study Design/Type
N/A
Research Approach
N/A
Keywords:
Organizational Culture, Research Productivity, Culture Changes
Recommended Citation
Leuner, Jean D. and Aroian, Karen, "Engineering organizational change to ramp up research culture in schools of nursing" (2013). INRC (Congress). 146.
https://www.sigmarepository.org/inrc/2013/presentations_2013/146
Conference Name
24th International Nursing Research Congress
Conference Host
Sigma Theta Tau International
Conference Location
Prague, Czech Republic
Conference Year
2013
Rights Holder
All rights reserved by the author(s) and/or publisher(s) listed in this item record unless relinquished in whole or part by a rights notation or a Creative Commons License present in this item record.
All permission requests should be directed accordingly and not to the Sigma Repository.
All submitting authors or publishers have affirmed that when using material in their work where they do not own copyright, they have obtained permission of the copyright holder prior to submission and the rights holder has been acknowledged as necessary.
Acquisition
Proxy-submission
Engineering organizational change to ramp up research culture in schools of nursing
Prague, Czech Republic
Session presented on: Thursday, July 25, 2013:
Purpose: Changing an organization's culture is challenging and requires comprehensive assessment and purposefully deploying organizational tools. This paper will present a model of engaging a process to ramp up a research culture in a College of Nursing where teaching was heretofore the primary focus.
Methods: To purposefully engage in transformational change, an organizational consultant was utilized to conduct a systematic assessment of the college's work culture and climate. The consultant used a case study approach to collect interview data from key individuals and teams, observe meetings of standing committees, and examine external forces and college documents such as the strategic plan. The core leadership team (e.g., Dean and Associate Deans) analyzed the consultant's report to identify the college's strengths and target areas that required change.
Results: The process of changing the college's culture included communicating leadership messages about culture change as well as using management tools and persuasion to reinforce and reward new expectations. The process of conducting a systematic case study and subsequent actions resulting from the case study effectively communicated the leadership message. Management tools and persuasion included a new structure for enhancing shared faculty governance, additional resources to support scholarship, and incentives and policies to reinforce new expectations. Faculty members willingly embraced the new expectation and the increase in scholarship activities was readily apparent.
Conclusion: Successfully changing a culture to ramp up research requires engaging organizational tools at three levels - leadership, management, and persuasion. Leadership must seize the moment to swiftly and forcefully reinforce messages about new expectations for research. Management practices need to systematically drive the vision and reward research and scholarship activities. Persuasion requires being responsive to faculty concerns and realities and providing them with the resources to meet new expectations.