Change in community colleges through strategic alliances: a case study

Community College Review, Spring, 2003 by Pamela L. Eddy

Institutions of higher education currently face numerous change initiatives and pressures on operations. Diversification of the student body, decreased state funding, societal demands for accountability, and the thrust for student-centered classrooms are just a few of the catalysts pushing change. A recent popular response by colleges to external pressures is the formation of strategic alliances between or among two or more institutions of higher education with the intent to address outside environmental influences systematically (Martin & Samels, 2002). Community colleges may form these relationships with other community colleges, high schools, community groups, businesses, or four-year institutions.

Increasingly, colleges and universities are taking a proactive stance to form collaborative efforts that enhance both the quality and breadth of their services (Martin & Samels, 1994). Collaborative efforts can take different forms ranging from a casual exchange of information to formal mergers of institutions, with strategic and academic reasons driving these efforts of coordination (Rowley, 1997).

Strategic alliances differ from mergers in that institutions in an alliance retain autonomous individual administrations and governance structures. The rationale for mergers in seeking improved financial health and bottom-line savings in resources also applies to the formation of strategic alliances. Alliance relationships, however, do not have the permanence of a merger. Moreover, Martin and Samels (2002), authors of Merging Colleges for Mutual Growth: A New Strategy for Academic Managers, have recently admitted that they were wrong in predicting that mergers were the wave of the future. Instead, they currently posit that "over the coming decade, strategic alliances will outnumber mergers by at least 20 to 1" (Martin & Samels, 2002, B10).

Given the past emphasis on mergers, higher education literature more often investigates the impact of mergers between colleges (Breuder, 1996; Coffman, 1996; Wallace, 1998) rather than interinstitutional alliances. To fill this gap in our understanding, this study investigated the formation of a strategic alliance among five two-year institutions within the same state. An analysis of the formation of the consortium examines the effects of the alliance on the institutions from the perspective of Kotter's (1996) model for planned change. Pseudonyms protect the confidentiality of the names of the participating organizations. The findings of the case study highlight intersections of theory and practice and provide an example of alliance formation for other community colleges contemplating participating in a consortium with another institution or institutions.

Theoretical Framework

Given the complexity of the change process and the variety of definitions associated with organizational change, it is important to provide a clear indication of what is meant by change within this research study. Concepts regarding change can examine why change occurs, focusing on the forces and sources pushing for change (Peterson, Dill, & Mets, 1997; Pfeffer, 1982), or focusing on what changes (Levy and Merry, 1986), or looking at how change occurs, namely planned versus unplanned change (Kotter, 1996). Kezar (2001) further outlines six main categories of theories of change (evolutionary, teleological (planned change), life cycle, dialectical, social cognition, and cultural), arguing that organizational change within higher education has best been explained through political, social-cognition, and cultural models. Rather than focusing on political or cultural issues, this research study sought instead to discover what happened during the process of planned change with a desire to examine the how of change. The planned change was the formation of a strategic alliance among five institutions.

Organizational change can be viewed as either first-order (incremental change) or second-order (planned and intended change) (Levy & Merry, 1986). Second-order change views change from three perspectives. The first perspective concerns the source of the driving force behind the change, the second perspective regards the process of change, while the third perspective focuses on the content of change.

In practice, planned change often results in a model with specific steps to follow (Kotter, 1996; Rowley, Lujan, & Dolence, 1997; Trahant, Burke, & Koonce, 1997). The American Council on Education's (ACE) (1998) recent investigation of change in 26 institutions described the process of intentional change. One of their findings is that radical change in most institutions is unlikely given the historical culture of higher education and its grounding in teaching and scholarship. Subsequent investigation by the ACE (1999) finds that the success of change initiatives is dependent upon taking intentional action, reflecting upon initiatives, learning from results, and making appropriate adjustments in plans.

Institutions of higher education often turn to business when considering models to employ during periods of change since other planning models are lesser known or available. The model of planned change investigated in this study came from John Kotter's book Leading Change. Kotter (1996) outlines an eight-stage linear framework as a roadmap for change. While the book primarily addresses the corporate sector, it provides a template from which institutions of higher education can draw strategies and then apply them to their own situations. Kotter's eight-stage process for change employs the following steps: