EDD-FPX8526_JudeRoss_Assessment2-2

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Capella University *

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8526

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Jan 9, 2024

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1 Case Study: Kingsborough Community College Jude Ross School of Public Service and Education, Capella University EDD-FPX8526 - Change Leadership in a Learning Organization Stanley Crawford Date

2 Aspects of a Cultural Web The idea of the cultural web model was first presented by Gerry Johnson in 1988 when he wrote a paper on incremental strategic management. This was a model for visualizing the cultural paradigm of an organization, which Johnson described as “the set of beliefs and assumptions, held relatively common through the organization, taken for granted, and discernible in the stories and explanations of the managers” (Johnson, G. 1988). Shili Sun took this idea a little further in 2008 with his article ‘Organizational Culture and Its Themes’, stating that it is a useful model to both identify the culture of an organization and for developing a strategy of improvement due to its seven elements being key areas of cultural change (Sun, S. 2008). One of the best-known definitions of organizational culture is “the way we do things around here” (Lundy & Cowling, 1996). Kingsborough Community College has many different aspects that make up its organizational culture. It is a complex cultural web comprising various aspects that exist upon and around the campus. A paradigm of an organization is the lived reality of that organization, and the cultural web surrounds this central aspect (Cultural web model: A strategy for corporate culture, 2022). In this case study, we can see the paradigm as the set of assumptions the college currently holds in common. These are aspects of how the college was run, classes taught, and community thought about before the disaster of Hurricane Sandy hit in 2012. The routines are how the members of this college community behave towards each other. Rituals and routines are commonly defined as the various behaviors and actions that are acceptable within an organization (Cultural web model: A strategy for corporate culture, 2022). At the beginning of the study, there is more of a traditional college atmosphere, where professors

3 and students have a relationship that mirrors other institutions around the country and community is a narrow definition of what happens on the campus. There are what are called stories, these are what is told by members of the college to each other, to outsiders, and to new members of the community. Within a cultural web, stories are normally defined as what is told by members of the organization to each other, to outsiders, or to new recruits (Morris, J. P. 2018). These stories represent the community at Kingsborough, one of working-class students, many of whom come from an immigrant background. The symbolic aspects of this community are dealt with very little in this study. Symbolic aspects of organizations are the “shorthand representations of the organization such as logos, offices, cars and titles” (Morris, J. P. 2018). These types of attributes of Kingsborough were not brought up in the study The power and organizational structures are spoken about, especially where the support for service learning projects was concerned. “The power structures are the most powerful managerial groupings and are likely to be associated with the core assumptions of the organization” (Morris, J. P. 2018). Organizational structures, on the other hand, are informal ways in which members of an organization work, which can include “important relationships and what is important in the organization” (Morris, J. P. 2018). At the beginning of the study, it is found that there are no structures in place to support this type of work, so individuals are doing these types of projects on their own. This leads to formalized control systems. Control systems are those measurements and rewards that are used within organizations to monitor and emphasize the different aspects that are important to the organization (Morris, J. P. 2018). There were no formal models of

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4 compensation or rewards for professors seeking to move their courses in the direction of the service learning models. Looking at the original cultural web of Kingsborough Community College, it was not set up in a way as to fully support a transition to more civic engagement for students. The control systems, organizational structures, and power structures were not set up in a way to help with this transition. There is also work that needs to be done within the stories and routine areas of the organization to facilitate this shift in thinking and doing. Leadership Behaviors The leadership of Kingsborough Community College noticed as early as 2008 that they wanted the students to become more engaged through various types of educational experiences and service learning opportunities. They became interested in creating more opportunities for civic engagement, noting that this should be a requirement for some of the courses. Of course, faculty had concerns about how they would be supported in this change and what this would actually look like. After the tragic events of Hurricane Sandy in 2012, the leadership of Kingsborough saw an opportunity and forged ties with other organizations that could help with this transition to more civic engagement. They created Brooklyn’s Public Scholars (BPS) project with the help and partnership of the Public Science Project (Graduate Center, CUNY). This project aimed to help the community of Kingsborough Community College engage with the issues that were facing their students and the larger working-class immigrant community that the college resided in and catered towards. The leadership team saw that the school needed to transition to a new model of teaching and reaching its clientele, the working-class immigrant community. Having wanted to create this

5 change as early as 2008, they used the community building that happened around the tragic events of Hurricane Sandy in 2012 to help catapult the college further into this direction. Using events like these to help schools transition is a great tool for leaders to harness. They noticed how the community worked together to clean up and help each other and were able to capitalize on this organic momentum to help shift the culture of the school further in the direction of civic engagement. The leadership of Kingsborough Community College demonstrated transformational leadership behavior during this study. Mesut Akdere and Toby Egan describe how an ideal transformational leader will encourage their staff “to enrich their knowledge, skills, and abilities in order to increase individual and shared learning to advance organizational performance” (Akdere, M. & Egan, T. 2020). They set an organizational goal to increase civic engagement and to help advance these organizational performance goals. To help reach these goals, they set up a system to help professors learn how to transform their courses in a shared learning atmosphere of cohorts and a seminar model, as well as involving the students in the learning process. Ethical Considerations This case study had some interesting ethical considerations to consider. One that comes to mind is how they chose professors to partake in the original shift to classrooms that would center their learning on civic engagement. Rather than assigning or requiring professors to do this paradigm shift, the ethical considerations were solved by asking for volunteers of faculty members who would be interested in spearheading this initiative. Leadership helped with this transition by creating a seminar that would help support the faculty with this transition. This also included a stipend for participating faculty, another aspect

6 that the college took into account that helped with ethical considerations, remuneration for participating faculty members. There was also a shift in how the school wanted the faculty to think of themselves. They wanted these participating faculty members to be partners in the process and the study. Faculty members were looked at as scholars, not just teachers. This was another shift in how community college faculty or thought about and treated. Another aspect that the study did not directly address was how the study might affect the larger communities that the students were going out into and participating in. This was the larger community of Brooklyn, New York, where the school is located. Students and classes, in order to create civic-minded courses, became active participants in the larger community. The study itself does not address how any ethical considerations were taken into account while doing these classes and studies within these communities. There is no mention of names and actual locations, so the community members are kept anonymous, but this is not specifically addressed in the paper. Solution Strategies Kingsborough Community College already identified some areas to continue to improve this initiative. The school was moving towards making civic engagement a graduation requirement for incoming freshmen. Included in this idea was creating the support that faculty members needed to enact these ideals. Continuing to improve an organization always requires buy-in and support of the initiative. To help with this continuation, leaders need to make sure that the support structures are in place to help everyone make the transition. Without the support structures to help the faculty

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7 learn more about how to create civic engagement classes successfully, this type of initiative will fail. In order to help create a continuation of this process, continuing the seminar model will be essential. This was seen as an important part of how the first stage of the project was a success, creating the space for professors to meet and discuss what was working and what was not. This helped build institutional trust and communication avenues that increased the success of the project. Another aspect that can be added to this seminar model is the addition of a mentor model. Having professors who are new to the experience of designing courses with civic engagement in mind should be paired with teachers who went through the process in a previous year. This will allow them to share their expertise and keep dialogue open with the new cohorts involved in the seminar. Finally, it would be advantageous to all involved to keep including the stipends for those professors involved in the transition to this teaching model. The extra time and energy that they are putting in to create this change should be recognized and rewarded as much as possible. It also will help to show that this is a priority for the school and that the organization appreciates the work that the individuals are doing to help with this transition. Key Themes There are several key themes that crop up during this case study on Kingsborough Community College. One theme that is also supported by research is how the college used community engagement and civic-minded courses in order to create a sense of belonging for students. It is generally recognized that students are constantly evolving due to their experiences and learning to be someone who belongs in higher education (Groves & O’Shea, 2019; Meehan

8 & Howells, 2019). Hoffman et al. (2003, p. 234) also note that a sense of belonging among college students is directly associated with the quality of relationships with peers and staff, especially in regard to perceptions of support, comfort, compassion, and being valued. Using community engagement and civic-minded courses, Kingsborough Community College was able to provide a fertile ground for students to be supported by faculty in an environment where they were comfortable (their own communities) as well as valuing the contributions that these students can make to these areas of life both on and off the campus. Similarly, T. L. Strayhorn (2018) felt that belonging also related to the idea that students needed to find support through interactions on campus. This idea can also be extended to the faculty themselves and the support that was provided to them through the faculty seminar and ongoing meetings to help support the project of moving education at Kingsborough in the direction of civic engagement. Students were also paired with other students to create mentoring types of relationships, where stronger students could with weaker ones in order to foster a community of learners. This was another example of how the school created instances of students finding support on campus and thus increasing belonging for their students. The college also made a concerted effort to tap into the student’s background and demographics. Individual attributes such as students’ geographic location and identities as well as shared interests are known to give students a better sense of belonging (Ahn & Davis, 2020). Recognizing that the school was full of working-class students, students of color, and immigrant students, they were interested in fig=ring out a way to leverage this internal community so that the skills and experiences that they brought to the college could be appreciated and cultivated in the classroom, thus intentionally building belonging for their student community.

9 It is easy to see a connection to Tinto’s (1993) integration model as well. Tinto proposed that student retention can directly be related to their identification with the university or ‘institutional commitment’. His framework proposes that where integration occurs and these commitments endure, there will be less likelihood of ‘dropping’ out, thus improving student retention and graduation results. By Kingsborough shifting the focus of classes to this civic-minded approach and directly engaging the communities that students live in and come from, they increased the opportunity for students being able to identify with the college. Ensuring the shift in focus of these classes continued to be supported and increasing the opportunities for students and faculty to make this shift also showed to all involved that the institution was committed to this course. This all shows how Kingsborough took steps to help increase student retention and graduation results, even though they already had high numbers in this regard. Another aspect that the college was able to tap into to increase student engagement was to utilize student interest. It has been shown that when students are interested in academic topics they are more likely to be engaged and process information effectively (Hidi & Harackiewicz, 2000). Kingsborough tapped into this idea, giving students a chance to engage with areas of interest that intersected with their own personal lives. Immigration reform is a great example of how the school did this in a particular class. Students were also given opportunities to use their own interests and their own communities for classes. They were even allowed to choose how to demonstrate their knowledge by writing a poem, creating a video, or drawing a political cartoon. Student interest is a powerful motivational process that can energize learning as well as guide academic and career trajectories (Renninger & Hidi, 2016).

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11 References Ahn, M. Y., & Davis, H. H. (2020). Four domains of students’ sense of belonging to university . Studies in Higher Education (Dorchester-on-Thames), 45(3), 622–634. https://doi.org/10.1080/03075079.2018.1564902 Akdere, M., & Egan, T. (2020). Transformational leadership and human resource development: Linking employee learning, job satisfaction, and organizational performance . Human Resource Development Quarterly, 31(4), 393–421. https://doi.org/10.1002/hrdq.21404 Cultural web model: A strategy for corporate culture . Personio. (2022, April 12). https://www.personio.com/hr-lexicon/cultural-web-model/ Johnson, G. (1988) Rethinking incrementalism . Strategic Management Journal 9(1): 75–91. Groves, O., & O’Shea, S. (2019). Learning to “be” a university student: First in family students negotiating membership of the university community . International Journal of Educational Research, 98, 48–54. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijer.2019.08.014 Hidi S, Harackiewicz JM. Motivating the academically unmotivated: A critical issue for the 21st century . Review of Educational Research. 2000;79:151–179. doi: 10.2307/1170660. Hoffman, M., Richmond, J., Morrow, J., & Salomone, K. (2003). Investigating ‘sense of belonging in first-year college students . Journal of College Student Retention: Research, Theory & Practice, 4(3), 227–256. https://doi.org/10.2190/DRYC-CXQ9-JQ8V-HT4V

12 Lundy, O., & Cowling, A. (1996). Strategic Human Resource Management . London: Thompson. Meehan, C., & Howells, K. (2019). In search of the feeling of “belonging” in higher education: Undergraduate students transition into higher education . Journal of Further and Higher Education, 43(10), 1376–1390. https://doi.org/10.1080/0309877X.2018.1490702 Morris, J. P. (2018). Is this the culture of Academies? utilising the cultural web to investigate the organisational culture of an academy case study . Educational Management Administration & Leadership, 48(1), 164–185. https://doi.org/10.1177/1741143218788580 Renninger KA, Hidi S. The power of interest for motivation and engagement . New York, NY: Routledge; 2016. Sun, S. (2008) Organizational culture and its themes . International Journal of Business and Management 3(12): 137–141. Strayhorn, T. L. (2018). College students’ sense of belonging: A key to educational success for all students. Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203118924 Tinto, V. (1993). Leaving college: Rethinking the causes and cures of student attrition (2nd) ed.). The University of Chicago Press.

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