Challenging the norm in engineering education: Understanding organizational culture and curricular change

Abstract

In the study of organizational behavior, several linkages have been made between organizational change and organizational culture. One link suggests that a "strong" culture is a prerequisite for corporate success, and attaining "excellence" often requires culture change. In the study of change in higher education, there have been suggestions that an institution must have a "culture" that facilitates change, and that change strategies are often shaped by organizational culture. Recently, as presented in the 2003 ASEE conference, Godfrey 1 made a considerable contribution to understanding the culture of engineering education by providing a theoretical model that may assist change leaders in understanding the dimensions of their own school's engineering education culture. She suggests that if the espoused values inherent in any proposed change do not reflect the existing culture at an "operational level," change will be difficult to sustain. In the Foundation Coalition (FC) we have been studying the change processes FC partner institutions went through to restructure freshman and sophomore curricula. The six diverse FC institutions attempted major curricular changes based on an identical set of principles using similar change models. We noticed that similar change strategies produced different results. Using two examples from the same institution from our study, this paper will examine change strategies through the framework of organizational culture, a framework in which engineering education culture is subsumed. In showing how organizational culture was a critical variable in curricular changes undertaken by one FC institution, we will show how essential cultural analysis is to any change attempt.