Towards Leading Adaptable Colleges: A Description of the Potential for Experimentation in Three British Columbia Colleges

In this research, three British Columbia colleges were studied to understand how executive teams led innovation and enabled or failed to enable experimentation in an economic climate of decreasing funding. By creating a description of these teams, the author then concludes about the generative adaptive capacity of the colleges in the context of a challenging economic environment. Each college was described and interpreted as a separate case, and the researcher presents an integrated framework from an analysis of the findings and relevant literature on leading high capacity institutions. The most relevant literature for a study of this context was found to be complexity theory. Here, the author uses a new conceptual frame applied to describe and to interpret organizational culture and leadership approaches. The research found that none of the cases studied provide strong evidence of an executive team succeeding in creating adaptation through innovation via novel experimentation. As a consequence, the author developed a new conceptual model and presents implications to help guide executives to meet the challenges related to organization adaptability when they face change in the future.

Name thesis:degree_name

Doctor of Education (EdD)

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Education Graduate Program – Educational Research

Grantor dc:publisher.institution

Werklund School of Education

Year dc:date.issued

2019

Author dc:creator

• Donaldson, Bradley William

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Kowch, Eugene G.

Committee members dc:contributor.committeemember

• Winchester, Ian
• Woodrow, Robert E.
• Clark, Douglas B.
• Bishop, Pamela R.

• adaption
• complexity
• college
• experimentation
• leadership
• innovation

Statement dc:rights

• University of Calgary graduate students retain copyright ownership and moral rights for their thesis. You may use this material in any way that is permitted by the Copyright Act or through licensing that has been assigned to the document. For uses that are not allowable under copyright legislation or licensing, you are required to seek permission.

Language dc:language.iso

eng

DOI

http://dx.doi.org/10.11575/PRISM/36774

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:ucalgary.scholaris.ca:1880/110674