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Retention is one of the key performance indicators in university quality assurance processes. The purpose of this paper is to identify the causes leading to low retention rates for first-year undergraduate computing students in a UK higher education institution (HEI).

The study applies Tinto’s student integration theory, and connects it with the behavioural patterns of students. Data were collected from 901 students using Pascarella and Terenzini’s questionnaire (integration scales). This data were combined with student enrolment information and analysed using the structural equation modelling technique.

The study results indicate that Tinto’s student integration theory is useful in analysing student retention, but this accounts for only a modest amount of variance in retention. Nevertheless, important relationships amongst student’s initial and later academic goals and commitments have been identified through this new approach to analysing retention. The largest direct effect on retention was accounted for by initial goals and institutional commitments, followed by later goals and institutional commitments. In addition, the results show that academic and social integration constructs can have an influence on the student retention processes. When all, or some, of these relationships are operating towards students’ benefits, appropriate services or programmes, such as student support systems, can have their maximum benefits.

The authors mapped behavioural-related retention factors using a learning community lens. The study explored students’ social and learning experiences within the context of a UK HEI by employing Tinto’s model. This is the first time the model has been tested in this context.

This study aims to explore the relationships between learning organisation dimensions, institutional characteristics and knowledge performance among Malaysian private higher learning institutions.

The researchers sought managers' responses to the dimensions of the learning organisation questionnaire (DLOQ) together with perceived measures of private higher learning institutions' knowledge performance to determine relationships.

It was discovered that there were positive, medium to high, and significant relationships between the seven dimensions of the learning organisation and the dependent variable, perceived knowledge performance. The three dimensions that demonstrated strong relationships were team learning, embedded systems and provision of leadership. The institutional characteristics that jointly affect the private higher learning institutions' performance were perceived level of institutional commitment to institutional/professional service and institutional level of commitment to effective teaching and learning.

On the whole, the findings of this study provide empirical information, which supports the concept of the learning organisation and their positive influence on the knowledge performance, especially in the private higher education industry. Implications for research and practice as well as recommendations for future studies were highlighted to facilitate those who were involved in learning research.

Purpose – This chapter draws on the previous chapters and institutional case studies to identify and discuss the necessary conditions and facilitating factors which contribute to institutional transformation to engage a diverse student body.

Methodology /approach – This chapter is based on thematic analysis of the previous chapters and institutional case studies. It utilises national contextual information, details of changes undertaken and reflections on the process of change. The key ideas are illustrated by quotes from the case studies.

Findings – The following necessary conditions and facilitative factors are identified and discussed:i.Commitment to a transformational approachii.Sharing understanding and meaningiii.Institutional strategy for change: senior leadership, policy alignment, creating a facilitating infrastructure across the student lifecycle and co-ordinating changeiv.Engaging staff and creating an inclusive culturev.Developing students' capacity to engagevi.Taking an evidence-informed approachvii.Linking change to other institutional priorities and developmentsviii.An enabling policy and funding context

Research limitations – It is based on the chapters and case studies presented in this book rather than a wider analysis.

Practical implications – This chapter offers institutions insight into the conditions and factors that enable and smooth institutional transformation.

Social implications – This chapter is designed to support the promotion of social justice in higher education.

Originality/value – This chapter draws on international research and institutional examples and identifies common conditions and factors which contribute to managing change to engage a diverse student body. Its value is practical insights into change from an international perspective.

Purpose – This chapter provides an overview of the book and discusses student diversity and institutional responses.

Methodology/approach – The chapter draws together literature and conceptual thinking about what student diversity is. It then analyses the drivers for increased diversity within higher education in the case studies in this book. Alternative approaches to diversity are presented, drawing on a synthesis of approaches identified in the literature. Finally, the chapter provides a summary of the other chapters and the associated case studies.

Findings – The chapter finds that diversity incorporates difference across a number of dimensions: education, personal disposition, current circumstances and cultural heritage. There are a wide range of reasons prompting institutions to recruit a diverse student population: a commitment to social justice, expansion and access to new markets, tapping the pool of talent, enhancing the student experience, national and/or regional policy, funding incentives, conforming with equality legislation, institutional research and personal commitment of staff. Institutions can respond to diversity in different ways. The idealised types are: altruistic (no institutional change), academic (little or no change), utilitarian (special access and additional support mechanisms) and transformative (positive view of diversity resulting in institutional development).

Research limitations – This chapter draws largely on the author's work in England and the United Kingdom and the case studies presented in this book.

Practical implications – This chapter is important as an introduction to the book, and providing frameworks to think about diversity.

Social implications – The framework for institutional change assists institutions to critically consider the response they make to a more diverse student population.

Originality/value – The paper provides original perspectives to conceptualising and responding to diversity.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the development and implementation of how a greenhouse gas (GHG) reduction target at Yale University has resulted in broad and long‐term institutional commitment.

Interviews are conducted with key individuals representing those most directly involved in developing and implementing Yale's GHG target.

The development of an institutional GHG reduction target calls upon a recursive process. A goal starts with a vision, followed by development, endorsement and implementation, and leads to institutional change. With change, comes new perspective to define a new vision. Upfront development of an implementation plan is critical not only for successful goal implementation, but also for endorsement from institutional leadership.

A process for the development of a GHG reduction target is extrapolated from only one case study. Further case examples would be helpful.

This case study relays an experience that may help other institutions to implement their own GHG reduction targets, and other sustainability goals more generally.

This paper highlights the importance of institutional goals in creating sustainable universities. A process by which institutions can follow to achieve GHG emission reductions is suggested.

Contingency and institutional theories of organizational development are used to describe and interpret the 100‐year history of a health science university and to then make a case for teaching organizational sociology in administrative preparation programs.

Primary and secondary documents were analyzed to delineate the university's history.

Results indicated that organizational development was the result of complex institutional commitments that were challenged by and reinterpreted in the face of controversial and unanticipated contingencies. Both contingency and institutional theories help explain organizational processes. Organizational sense‐making theories from Karl Weick explain conflicting findings related to the tensions between old and new, the known and unknown, and the set and novel environmental and organizational processes.

This research shows the usefulness of organizational theory in helping administrators develop more elaborate ways of thinking about their schools. The process of theory crafting and testing encourages essential openness and curiosity in administrators.

Administrative candidates should be introduced to the content and processes of organizational sociology as a way of thinking about their leadership and organizational processes.

Organizational theory, including organizational sociology, contingency theory, institutional theory, and sense‐making remain viable in the study of educational organizations and can provide new administrators with a guide for their own meaning construction.

The healthcare system is undergoing rapid change as medical centers are confronted with constricted reimbursements for healthcare services while adapting to growth in medical knowledge, major technological advances in medical practice, and a changing regulatory environment. Academic medical centers thought themselves immune to the forces that shape most service enterprises but are forced to compete based on customer service and the efficiency, quality, and safety of medical care, while continuing to compete in the academic world. These challenges are not unique to academic medicine, but these institutions are, perhaps, least suited to the leadership challenges posed by this environment. Certain attributes of these centers raise barriers to successful adaptation to the changing healthcare environment. The need for systemic change in academic medicine requires commitment to programs that create change agents willing to assume leadership roles and to guide institutional evolution. In academic medicine, traditional one-on-one relationships between mentors and trainees do not provide the breadth of guidance needed in the complex environment of research, medical practice, and teaching. A structured system of “matrix mentorship” and structured evaluation will advance institutional values, provide leaders with an essential set of skills and values consistent with institutional goals, and provide competitive advantage for medical centers in academic healthcare.

In this paper we question whether we know enough about organizational theorizing to be able transfer it to the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) countries. The researchers in general see that our organizational theorizing is heavily contingent on the social institutions of Western society. While we think of the CIS situation as one of political, economic, and social collapse, it is really more a matter of institutional collapse. Thus, given the contingencies noted above, it is not at all clear why we expect our organizational theories to apply to them. We propose an institutional analysis at three levels: universal, contingent, and developmental. At the universal level, there is no difference between the institutions of the CIS and the West. At the contingent level, the institutional fabric differs in ways that can be accommodated. At the developmental level, the most crucial, the CIS will have to develop their own new social institutions before their economies can gather momentum. We argue that such institutions are built up as organizational teams work on unresolved problems and build up the knowledge that is gradually institutionalized outside the originating organizations.

In 1997, the University of British Columbia (UBC) adopted a sustainable development policy stating that the campus should adhere to sustainable practices in all of its actions and mandates and that all students who attend UBC will be educated about sustainability. The purpose of the paper is to consider how far UBC has moved in the last six years in the direction of sustainability education, what has been accomplished, what lessons have been learned and what challenges lie ahead.

This paper is a collaborative inquiry created by a number of faculty, staff and one doctoral student working on sustainability education issues at UBC.

The shift to sustainability involves: a fundamental thinking‐through of basic issues about the role of the university in society, creating a strong relationship between sustainability principles and the core goals of the university. It also will require a reworking of the design and operation of institutional reward systems, creating an appropriate linkage between the operational and academic functions of the university, and finding an appropriate mix of disciplinarity and interdisciplinarity. The collaborative writing process helped to bring people together to reflect on the projects of the past and consider the plans for the future.

The intention of the paper is to summarize the sustainability education initiatives at UBC, and address barriers and pathways to creating sustainability education programs at the university level. The collaborative stories aim to help other individuals and groups implement sustainability in higher education and contribute to a process of institutional learning for sustainability.

Although the concept of institutional entrepreneurship has been developed in the institutional theory literature to explain change in the normative context of organizations, little attention has been given to understanding what institutional entrepreneurs actually do to create change. The purpose of this paper is to begin to address this gap in the literature by drawing on the process, challenges, successes and lessons learned when a large multilateral organization (the United Nations Development Program) launched a new international multi‐stakeholder initiative to facilitate inclusive business development.

This case study gathered qualitative data through key informant interviews, participant observation and a review of project documents and e‐mail correspondence.

Drawing on institutional theory and the literature on dynamic capabilities, the research found that highly institutionalized organizations acting as institutional entrepreneurs need to manage two key tensions – legitimacy management and change process management – in order to influence change in their institutional fields.

This paper is the first to combine institutional theory and the dynamic capabilities literatures to understand the question What capabilities are required by organizations to succeed in changing their institutional fields?