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This is to certify that the
dissertation entitled

BLENDED FAMILIES: THE INFLUENCE OF
ORGANIZATIONAL AND MANAGERIAL CULTURE IN
MERGERS OF CAREER-ORIENTED COLLEGES

presented by

Michael W. Wambach

has been accepted towards fulﬁllment
of the requirements for the

Ph.D. degree in Higher, Adult, and Lifelong
Education

 

 

MW ”KQW

Majorkﬁ’rofessdr’s Signature
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MSU is an Aﬂirmative Action/Equal Opportunity Employer

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BLENDED FAMILIES: THE INFLUENCE OF ORGANIZATIONAL AND
MANAGERIAL CULTURE IN MERGERS OF CAREER-ORIENTED COLLEGES

By

Michael W. Wambach

A DISSERTATION
Submitted to
Michigan State University
In partial ﬁﬂﬁlhnent of the requirements
for the degree of
DOCTOR OF PHILSOPHY
Higher, Adult, and Lifelong Education

2009

-_4- ,,....4 .

ABSTRACT

BLENDED FAMILIES: THE INFLUENCE OF ORGANIZATIONAL AND
MANAGERIAL CULTURE IN MERGERS OF CAREER-ORIENTED COLLEGES

By
Michael W. Wambach

This qualitative case study is constructed to offer insight on the infrequently
investigated inﬂuence of organizational culture before and after a merger between higher
education institutions. Respondents were selected from volunteers to form three strata of
employees; staff, mid-level management which included some faculty members, and
upper level administration. Each subject was a member of the pre-merger organization
for at least three years to establish full enculturation. The interviews were conducted four
years after the merger. The methodology included having each respondent draw a picture
of how they perceived working at the pre-merger organization and another picture
depicting how they perceived working in the merged organization.

The results show that communication, especially incongruence between
administrative actions and the values espoused by leadership, during a merger process is
crucial to assimilation of pre-merger culture and development of the merged entity’s
culture. In addition, employees lower in the organizational hierarchy demonstrated
greater concern for the personal effects of retrenchment actions than did those in middle
and upper administrative levels. Another salient ﬁnding is that leadership should treat
culture as a constantly evolving element within an organization. When leadership treats
culture development as simply another project, separated from other aspects of

organizational life, it is less likely to meet with success.

Cepyﬁght by
MICHAEL w. WAMBACH

2009

TABLE OF CONTENTS

List of Tables ...................................................................... vi

List of Figures ..................................................................... vii

Chapter 1: Introduction ......................................................... 1
Problem Statement ............................................................. 4

Chapter 2: Review of the Literature .......................................... 7
Organizational Culture ........................................................ 7
Organizational Culture in Higher Education ............................... 19
Organizational Culture, Management, and Leadership ................... 22
Similarities Between Higher Education and Health Care ................. 27
Mergers in Health Care ........................................................ 29
Financial and Societal Changes Faced by Higher Education ............. 31
Institutional Culture and Higher Education Mergers:

The United States ........................................................ 33
Institutional Culture and Higher Education Mergers: International. 36
The Under-appreciation of Merger in Higher Education .................. 44
Review of the Literature: Summary ......................................... 49

Conceptual Framework ................................................. 51

Chapter 3: Design and Methods .............................................. 56
Methodology ................................................................... 56
Ethnographical Interview Data .............................................. 57
Participant Drawings .......................................................... 61
Document Analysis ............................................................ 63
The Setting ...................................................................... 64
Research Participants .......................................................... 67
Limitations of the Study ....................................................... 69
Organization of Data Presentation ............................................ 71

Chapter 4: Results ................................................................ 74
The Pre-Merger Phase ......................................................... 74
The Pre-Merger Phase: Summary .......................................... 100
The Post-Merger Phase: Merger Related Documents of the

Organization ..................................... 103
The Post-Merger Phase: Respondent Description of Drawings. . . . 109
Additional Post Merger Topic: Good to Great ............................ 139
The Post Merger Phase: Summary .......................................... 144

Chapter 5: Discussion ........................................................... 147
Introduction .................................................................... 147

iv

Research Questions Two and Three ........................................ 149

Research Question One ...................................................... 157
Limitations ..................................................................... 161
Summary ........................................................................ 161
Appendices
Appendix A ..................................................................... 163
Appendix B ..................................................................... 166
Appendix C ..................................................................... 168
Appendix D ..................................................................... 171
References .......................................................................... 183

LIST OF TABLES

Table 1. Campuses Associated with the Pre-Merger Colleges ................. 100

vi

LIST OF FIGURES

Figure 1. Redeye: Pre-Merger ...................................................... 76
Figure 2. Tim: Pre-Merger ......................................................... 78
Figure 3. Mary: Pre-Merger ........................................................ 80
Figure 4. Jordan: Pro-Merger ...................................................... 82
Figure 5. Bobbi: Pre-Merger ....................................................... 84
Figure 6. Betty: Pre-Merger ........................................................ 87
Figure 7. Madge: Pre-Merger ...................................................... 91
Figure 8. Rick: Pre-Merger ......................................................... 94
Figure 9 Jack: Pre-Merger .......................................................... 97
Figure 10. Redeye: Post-Merger ................................................... 110
Figure 11. Tim: Post-Merger ....................................................... 114
Figure 12. Bobbi: Post Merger ..................................................... 118
Figure 13. Madge: Post-Merger .................................................... 121
Figure 14. Betty: Post-Merger ...................................................... 124
Figure 15. Rick: Post-Merger ...................................................... 126
Figure 16. Jack: Post-Merger ....................................................... 129
Figure 17. Jordan: Post-Merger .................................................... 131
Figure 18. Mary: Post-Merger ...................................................... 13S

vii

BLENDED FAMILIES: THE INFLUENCE OF ORGANIZATIONAL AND
MANAGERIAL CULTURE IN MERGERS OF CAREER-ORIENTED
COLLEGES
Chapter One: Introduction

It has become almost cliché to refer to the present pressures, conﬂicts, and
changes that confront American higher education as posing a unique set of
circumstances, which threaten the very foundations of this venerable industry. Cliche
perhaps, but it is not hyperbole to say that an array of both internal and external factors
has aligned in a fashion that foretells an imminent and seminal reorientation of higher
education to its societal stakeholders. In essence, a “perfect storm” has formed,
characterized by increased demand, decreased resources, calls for greater accountability
of its product, change in the economic basis of our society, and questions relative to the
core of higher education’s mission of research, teaching, and service to the community it
serves. Indeed, the very nature of what constitutes the “community” of any one college or
university can be called into question. Whatever the outcome of this transformative
process, the industry emerging on the lee side of this gale will be quite different than the
one that entered on the windward.

Industries in other sectors of our economy like banking, pharmaceuticals, retail
grocery, hospitals, and manufacturing have been, and continue to be, buffeted by
competitive and economic factors just as profound to their survival as the ones currently
facing higher education. One of the methods frequently used by other industries to adapt
and grow in a hostile environment is a full-asset merger (Augwin, 2001; Post, 1994;
Weston, 1999). Despite ﬁnancial circumstances that have organizations in other

industries utilizing merger to a greater extent, higher education has not often embraced

this organizational coping tool as a method of institutional survival or growth. It would
seem that the unique culture of higher education organizations makes them more resistant
to embracing merger as a strategy either to avoid ﬁnancial adversity or to grow in
diversity (Cannon, 1983).

The facet of organizational life that provides signiﬁcant insight to the mechanisms
of how its members make sense of the events taking place is its culture. This ability of a
group’s culture to help make sense is important for it allows the individual and the group
to deal with environmental turbulence and internal irrationalities, thereby responding and
accommodating the organizational change that results. Edgar Schein (2004) argues that a
better understanding of the deeper, complex anthropological models of culture will allow
greater insight into the hidden and intricate nature of organizational life. Although
organizations may exist in physical structures, be legal entities, operate as economic
engines, or occupy a place in the civic community, they are created, populated, and
operated by people. I propose that the stories and experiences of the organization’s
people as they deal with the abrupt and far-reaching cultural events brought about by
merger are the methods to deciphering the culture of the organization in ﬂux.

Organizations undergoing mergers have their cultures affected in ways that might
be called a “shock to the system.” It is even more traumatic than organizational closure,
since, with the closure, the culture ceases and its remnants are carried by members to new
organizations. It is as if the action of merger to an organization’s culture is like a proton
that has been accelerated to nearly the speed of light in a cyclotron. When the proton hits
the target nucleus, that nucleus displays its elemental particles, which, without the

collision, would never have been seen. Both the proton and the nucleus are changed. So

too can the disruption of merger display aspects of organizational culture that might have
remained hidden or barely perceived without the merger action. It must be appreciated
that the organizational disruptions inherent to merger are not simply affecting this
abstract construction we call an organization, but they affect the people who occupy the
organization and, through whose actions, make the organization come to life.

Insights into the development of organizational culture in mergers between
American higher education institutions are under-developed in the literature. Indeed, the
ethnographic or anthropological approach to investigations in higher education
administration itself are so sparse that Wisniewski (2000) calls for a renewal of
ethnographical research having to do with the operation of the academy. Some of the few
who have contributed include, most notably, an examination of institutional culture on
change strategy ((Kezar, 2002) and the same authors’ investigation into the institutional
transformation process (Kezar, 2000). Siege] and Carchidi (1996) use an ethnographic
approach to study the creation of a boundary spanning organization within a major
research university and Goldsmith (1995) also used ethnographic techniques to describe
the start of a new university. While organizational culture played an important role in the
aforementioned studies, they were not undertaken for the study of higher education
culture per se. When the development of institutional culture during mergers in higher
education is addressed, it is usually tangential to the primary investigation of ﬁnancial or
policy implications or without the conceptual grounding found in the work of leading
investigators of organizational culture.

There are many perspectives that can be taken to examine a merger event between

organizations. Among these perspectives are the ﬁnancial, managerial, policymaking,

strategic planning, and governance dimensions. I posit that a cultural approach, one that
examines the actual perceptions and stories of the people involved, offers the best
opportunity to perceive the event’s realities for organizational culture. At its deepest
levels, organizational culture manifests those things that are “taken for granted and are
treated as nonnegotiable” (Schein, 2004 p. 16), forming the basis through which the other
aforementioned dimensions is perceived. The purpose of this study is to qualitatively
explore the development of organizational culture in higher education institutional
mergers by examining the shared experiences of strata of executive, mid-level academic
and staff professionals. Despite a low incidence of mergers occurring in American higher
education, they do take place. This study investigates the organizational culture
development that takes place from the perspective of this cross-section of people. The
signiﬁcance of this study is that it gives higher education institutions a better
understanding of organizational culture development in the merger process. This is likely
to have greater importance for if the current ﬁnancial hardships worsen or continue for a
longer period, exigent colleges and universities may be forced to use merger as a survival
tool with more frequency than it has been traditionally used in American higher
education.
Problem Statement

Mergers in American higher education are not a frequent occurrence, yet they
could become more common if the present pressures of decreasing state funding,
increasing student demand, societal expectations of greater access, increased calls for
accountability, sharper competition, and the maturing of the information age in the

context of a global economy continue at their present pace. Colleges and universities will

seek to use new learning technologies, re-orient their internal programs and processes,
and eliminate perceived waste in the pursuit of meeting those demands. Those institutions
that ﬁnd themselves unable to accommodate the new environment through these actions
may ﬁnd that merger with another institution is necessary or desired in order to compete
and survive.

Despite the fact that few mergers between higher education institutions have
occurred in the United States, they could reasonably increase in number in the future.
There are few investigations into the development of organizational culture in the merger
between higher education institutions in the United States and there are no studies
identiﬁed that take an ethnographic approach to the stories, representations, and
experiences of those involved in the merger process. The purpose of this study is to
explore the organizational culture development that occurs when there is a merger
between higher education institutions from the perspective of academic and operational
professionals’ experiences with the event. The questions to be addressed are:

1. When higher education organizations merge, what is the inﬂuence of
organizational culture?

2. What are the perceptions of the academic and operational professionals to the
cultural changes of a merged higher education institution?

3. How do these professionals deal with the congruence and incongruence between
artifacts, espoused values, and the basic assumptions of organizational culture?

In the next chapter of this study I will explore the literature related to higher
education culture that might bear on merger situations, the analogies of health care

mergers to those in college or universities, and mergers in higher education, both in the

US. and internationally. Chapter Three will detail a three-part methodology, which
includes interviews, respondent drawings, and institutional document analysis, used to
investigate the research questions at three separate colleges that recently merged into a
university. In Chapter Four I will present the data derived from this methodology in a
narrative format. The last chapter will present analysis of the insights derived from the
data in a manner consistent with the conceptual framework and recommendations for

future research.

Chapter Two: Review of the Literature

The few investigations into the development of organizational culture in higher
education mergers require a reorientation to the literature on organizational culture in
general, speciﬁcally in higher education, a search for analogous situations in other
industries that can reasonably be inferred to higher education, and then an exploration of
investigations into higher education mergers themselves. The literature will be reviewed
to establish the need to explore the culture of merged higher education institutions in an
ethnographic manner in the following way: (1) a review of organizational culture; (2)
how organizational culture is perceived in higher education institutions, together with an
examination of whether higher education resembles other industries or not; (3) an
extension into mergers and cultural change in the health care industry under the
supposition that health care closely resembles higher education as an industry; (4) an
exploration of those investigations dealing with higher education mergers and the
inﬂuence of organizational culture, both in the United States and internationally; and (5)
an examination of the current ﬁnancial and competitive pressures facing higher education
and how institutional merger is under-appreciated in American higher education.
Organizational Culture

The culture of any institution is an unusual construct. The term culture is useful
only if it helps shed light on the complex and buried features of organizational life. Given
the often-abstract nature of organizational culture, it is necessary to review what leading
scholars and theorists say about organizational culture and how it is manifest in
organizational life. Several orientations exist in attempting to answer the question “what

is culture?” Each orientation depends on the discipline through which the investigator

views the question. Ironically, how one deﬁnes culture depends on the culture of the
person.

From a more historic aspect, the social science and anthropological disciplines,
Kroeber (1958) calls culture, “transmitted and created content and patterns of values,
ideas, and other symbolic meaningful systems as factors in the shaping of human
behavior and the artifacts produced through that behavior” (p. 583). Smircich (1985)
describes culture as “an attribute or quality internal to a group. In this sense culture is a
possession - a fairly stable set of taken-for-granted assumptions, shared beliefs,
meanings, and values that form a kind of backdrop for action” (p. 58). Kunda (1992)
aligns with the synthesis of other authors by saying that culture is “a learned body of
tradition that governs what one needs to know, think, and feel in order to meet the
standards of membership” (p.8).

Hofstede (1984) deﬁnes culture as “the collective programming of the mind
which distinguishes the members of one human group to another” (p. 25). He constructs a
hierarchy of culture distribution that he terms “mental programs”, which are described as
similar in construct to intangible forces of physics (p. 14). On the universal level there are
mental programming commonalities that are shared by nearly all people. The generally
held human prohibitions against cannibalism or incest might ﬁt this universal category.
The collective levels of mental programs are shared by those in a certain group or
category, which could be regional, ethnic, or organizational. Lastly is the individual level;
the mental programs of no two people are exactly alike. Hofstede differentiates the

individual level as being populated by a person’s values, which are “a broad tendency to

prefer certain states of affairs over others” (p. 19). Hofstede uses culture as the term
applying to expressions of commonality at the collective level.

These earlier social science and anthropological meanings of culture have exerted
inﬂuence over those who have investigated culture as it applies to organizations. Schein
(2004) deﬁnes culture as, “A pattern of shared basic assumptions that the group learned
as it solved its problems of external adaptation and internal integration, that has worked
well enough to be considered valid and, therefore, to be taught to new members as the
correct way to perceive, think, and feel in relation to those problems” (p. 12). This
deﬁnition of organizational reality is then divided into three elements that Schein
describes as (1) the procedures of socialization (how a new member learns about the
culture), (2) the display of behavior (how behavior becomes the overt indicator of
organizational culture as detected by identiﬁcation of behavioral artifacts), and (3)
multiple cultures within a single organization (organizations, especially large ones, do
have common assumptions about responses, but can develop subcultures that may be in
conﬂict with each other). This last element has increased signiﬁcance for higher
education with its divisions along lines of governance, administration, staff, faculty,
disciplines, and students, which can create strong subcultures. Schein also introduces a
comprehensive description of the processes by which the levels of culture become
established. These elements are: (1) artifacts — the visible organizational structures,
symbols, and processes; (2) espoused values — the strategies, goals, philosophies, and
other espoused justiﬁcations for an organization’s actions; and (3) basic underlying
assumptions - those unconscious beliefs, thoughts, and feelings that become the source of

values and actions.

Gareth Morgan (1997) elaborates on the creation of an organizational reality
theme by stating that organizational culture is, “a process of reality construction that
allows people to see and understand particular events, actions, objects, utterances, or
situations in distinctive ways” (p. 138). These aspects of organizational life are then
either followed or enacted by the members as a basis for making their behavior sensible
and meaningful. Both Schein’s (2004) and Morgan’s viewpoints appear to be inﬂuenced
by earlier investigators in the ﬁeld of anthropology, who derive their perspective on
culture from the studies of communities, ethnic groups, and regional societies.

The perspective used to study culture is also important for it provides a basis on
which interpretations and conclusions are made. Myerson and Martin (1987) describe
several perspectives on culture. The ﬁrst is the integrative perspective, which looks for
the consistencies across cultural features. The second is the differentiation approach,
which views cultural features as mainly inconsistent with each other. The third is the
fragmentation perspective, which accepts that pure consistencies and pure inconsistencies
are seldom found in cultural features, resulting in a focus on the ambiguities within the
features (Meyerson, 1987). Taking this idea one step further, Wilson (1997) adds that any
culture has parts that can only be understood when all three of Myerson and Martin’s
perspectives are used, although some subcultures may view events from a particular
perspective. The culmination of these three cultural perspectives is that there is general
agreement by all on only a few, fundamental issues (integrative), while only certain
subcultures agree on others (differentiation), and a state of ambiguity exists for the

remainder (ﬁagmentation).

10

In the loosely bounded organizational behaviorist discipline, the idea to view

organizational culture through the perspective of frames was introduced by Bolman and

Deal (1997). As such, each frame suggests the orientation, interpretive basis, and biases

of its particular school of thought. The ﬁames consist of:

l.

The structural frame — derived principally from sociology with an emphasis on the
formal roles and structures as illustrated by divisions of labor, rules, policies, and
hierarchies used to coordinate and control activities.

The human resource ﬁarne — originating primarily from social psychology that
suggests the individuals of an organization have feelings, needs, skills,
limitations, and prejudices. From this ﬁame the organization needs to be formed

around these attributes in a manner that will get the job done.

. The political frame — contribution ﬁom the ﬁeld of political science that views the

culture as a competition between interest groups for power and resources. Actions
are interpreted as bargaining, negotiation, coercion, and compromise both within
and between these interest groups.

The symbolic frame — Started through social and cultural anthropology, it
minimizes the rationalism of the other frames and views culture more through the
rituals, ceremonies, stories, heroes, and myths than by rules, politics, or authority.
In essence it is the organization as theater where the actors either play their parts
well or poorly, symbols gain or lose meaning, and rituals conform to or are
incongruent to the processes they represent. Rituals and ceremony provide ways
of taking meaningful action in the face of ambiguity, unpredictability, and threat.

(p. 270)

11

It should be stressed that Bolman and Deal (1997) do not describe the frames as
discrete entities onto themselves, but as a set of lenses through which events or
circumstances are viewed. A particular event receives four different interpretations,
depending on the ﬂame used. A more sophisticated interpretation of the ﬂames is that the
manager or researcher needs to use multiple, overlapping frames to view or shape
organizational actions. Bolman and Deal call this deeper cognitive and affective activity
the development of stencils, stating that, “With multiple stencils, managers, consultants,
and policymakers can make use of different frames, blending them into a coherent,
pragmatic, personal theory of organizations” (p. 19). While ﬂames and stencils are a
valid and powerful synthesis of multiple concepts, Bolman and Deal portray
organizational culture primarily as symbols, myths, rituals and theater. Schein (2004)
calls these more superﬁcial features cultural artifacts, which form the ﬁrst part of a
deeper mosaic that includes espoused values and basic underlying assumptions. These
deeper elements form the actual manner by which a person perceives and makes sense of
reality, in other words, a person’s paradigm. What Bolman and Deal underemphasize in
their description of cultural ﬂames is the powerful effect culture can have in creating the
reality and shaping the lens of the other three ﬂames.

What the organizational behaviorists, the social scientists, and the anthropologists
have in common regarding the deﬁnition of culture is that it involves commonalities of
thought and perception that lead to certain ways of behavior, and these thoughts or
perceptions are often formed and/or represented through values, assumptions, or symbols.

In addition, the manner by which culture is perceived inﬂuences its perception. This

12

could be through viewing culture as differentiated, integrated, or fragmented (Myerson
and Martin, 1987) or through ﬂames and stencils (Bolman and Deal, 1997).

Schein (2004) asserts that an organization’s culture is a powerful, often
underappreciated force. It is a force that shapes the actions, behaviors, and senses by
which the organizational member develops a version of reality. Thus, culture becomes a
metaphor for viewing and interpreting events in an organization. There are both strengths
and limitations to the use of culture as a metaphor. An examination of those strengths and
weaknesses is necessary to support the use of culture identiﬁcation, change, or conﬂict as
a valid ﬂamework in the investigation of profound organizational events like merger.

One of the strengths in using culture as a metaphor is that it takes the most
concrete and rational aspects of organizations such as hierarchies, rules, and routines, and
recasts them as social constructions that are indispensable for people to understanding of
how the organization ﬁmctions on a daily basis (Morgan, 1997). Without the symbolism
of culture, the member is left without a guide to the human element behind the technical,
the rational, and the statistical. Not knowing, or worse, not understanding the cultural
framework for behavior lessens the member’s effectiveness.

A second strength of the cultural metaphor is that it demonstrates the need in any
collective activity for a shared system of meaning to ﬂame and continuously reﬂame the
meaning of the organization’s interpretive schemes and actions. Morgan (1997)
demonstrates the advantage of the cultural metaphor when he concludes that, “Under
mechanical and organismic metaphors, primary emphasis tends to be placed on the
importance of organizational design: the design of organizational structures or the design

of adaptive processes. The culture metaphor points toward another means of creating and

13

shaping organized activity by inﬂuencing the ideologies, values, beliefs, language,
norms, ceremonies, and other social practices that ultimately shape and guide organized
action” (p. 147). Senge (1990) makes the point that it is not enough for the shared vision
of the organization to be held by each person individually, but that the vision must be
shared collectively so that the members gain an important interpersonal connection with
each other. It is by this act of being shared by all members that vision becomes a
legitimate part of an organization’s culture, consistent with Schein’s (2004) deﬁnition of
culture.

A third strength of the cultural metaphor is that it highlights the socially
constructed connections between the organization and its external environment (Morgan,
1997). In other words, organizations do not simply respond to the environment. They act
purposefully, regarding the nature and structure of society and, through these actions,
inﬂuence their external environment. For example, a university that decides to open a law
school believes that it is responding to a real need for that school in its community. But,
by opening that school it also changes the social environment of both the legal industry
and the larger public community in its region. The university is a contributor to the shape
of change in its external environment, not merely a reactor to it. Other ways that
organizations shape their external environments have to do with the pronouncements on
what they choose to do or how they intend to operate. Organizational statements of
mission, goals, and values are not only choices about ﬁelds of operation, but goal-related
statements of what are to be achieved in those ﬁelds. By making these goal statements,

the organization is placing a certain shape and inﬂuence on the external environment.

14

Simultaneously, other organizations are shaping their external environments by making
qualitative statements related to their mission, values, and goals.

By linking Morgan’s (1991) third cultural metaphor strength of socially shaping
the environment through extensions of organizational culture to his ﬁrst strength of
culture as metaphor, the inﬂuence of social construction over concrete, rational thought,
one can better appreciate the effects of story, rumor, myth, or shared perception, whether
rational or not, upon the undulations in the stock market. A second, even more powerful
example, of organizational culture inﬂuencing society is illustrated by the company
Newman’s Own. All post-tax proﬁts of the company are donated to charity. Before
Newman’s Own, the idea of a company donating all of its post-tax proﬁts to charity was
not seen as rational in business circles. Not only has the social landscape been shaped
through the direct effects of contributions to the charities involved, but also the very idea
of a company operating in this fashion has created a new mode of philanthropic
operations between private industry and charitable organizations. Thus, the particular
cultural attributes of an organization inﬂuence the larger society (Blumenthal, 1999).

The last strength of using organizational culture as a metaphor is it provides
insight into organizational change. The change process has been thought of as a ﬂmction
of modifying technologies, structures, and/or abilities of employees (Morgan, 1991).
While these are certainly factors in the change process, they would likely be ineffective
without the changes in the symbols and attitudes that accompany cultural change
(Morgan, 1997). I offer the experience of the railroad industry of the United States as an
example of the inability of changing technologies and environmental structures to

produce industry change due to the symbolic and attitudinal culture of that industry. From

15

its inception in the 1830’s to the early 1900’s, railroads held the premier position as the
mover of people and ﬂeight in this country. By the early years of the twentieth century,
two entirely new technologies consisting of automobile and air travel were emerging. The
dominance and ﬁnancial resources of the railroad industry made it a natural to transform
itself and enter these new markets. However, the organizational culture and social context
of railroads were wholly centric on railroading itself. The newcomers were viewed as
competitors or fads, not potential partners. Had railroads seen their cultural context as
that of a transportation industry, of which trains were simply one component, we might
be living in an entirely different country — driving a B&O and ﬂying on Chessie Airlines.
While culture as a metaphor for the shared values, vision, and social architecture
of an organization has its advantages, there are also limitations to the concept. First is the
use of organizational culture change as a tool to manipulate the ideology of the
organization. Instead of attempting to develop a network of shared meaning with linkage
to values, visions, and patterns of behavior that embraces the collective knowledge and
beliefs of its members, culture is sometimes used to impose a managerial hegemony on
its members. This becomes, in essence, a values engineering process (Morgan, 1997).
Actions like this can be seen in organizational leadership attempts to impose a lexicon of
terms or labels that run counter to the perceptions of the members and actually change the
rule of social interaction. As Ogbor (2001) states,
When loyalty to the organization becomes a substitute for living one’s own life,
when the organization enhances its centrality in the lives of its employees, and
when we accept unﬂeedom as ﬂeedom, the indoctrination can become so

powerful that the emotional refusal to go along appears neurotic. (p. 605)

16

One glaring illustration of this is the overuse of the term team and its various
connotations of teamwork and being a team player. An over-emphasis on the notion that
teams should always be cooperative can lead to cynicism and the suppression of conﬂict
necessary to develop the best response to a particular problem or situation. Thus, the
eventual inability to discern true conﬂict ﬂom phony conﬂict (the failure to manage
agreement) leads to decisions and actions that hinder the organization’s attainment of
goals (Harvey, 1988).

A second limitation comes ﬂom the very action of attempting to observe,
describe, and relate to phenomena. Since organizational culture is self-generating and
will occur regardless of either conscious or unconscious attempts to shape it, any
observation of it will be a snapshot abstraction (Morgan, 1997) where the outside
observer imposes an interpretation on the discernible pattern of events, symbols, and
behaviors. Observations ﬂom outside the organization cannot convey exactly the same
sense of culture that one has ﬂom living it.

The third limitation has to do with the ability of the observer to discriminate
between the “hype” of organizational culture and the deeper richness of meaning that
surrounds the fundamental behaviors, symbols, language, stories, and rituals embodied by
the underlying cultural patterns of the institution ((Morgan, 1997). Morgan concludes
that,

In studies of organizational culture, enactment is usually seen as a voluntary

process under the direct inﬂuence of the actors involved. This view can be

important in empowering people to take greater responsibility for their world by

recognizing that they play an important part in the construction of their realities.

l7

But it can be misleading to the extent that it ignores the stage on which the
enactment occurs. We all construct or enact our realities but not necessarily under
circumstances of our own choosing. (p. 152)

In spite of the speciﬁed limitations of culture as a metaphor for organizational
activities, the literature shows that examining an organization’s culture provides a reliable
indication of its purpose, values, vision, and operational dynamics. The primacy of using
culture as the lens through which to view an organization’s constructed realities is given
additional credence by Rosen (1991). Rosen comments on the perception of reality in any
social process in saying that,

Culture is built on the edge. That which appears to be objective - the naturalness

of formal organization, the structuring of hierarchies, the irnmutability of

economic laws, nine innings to a baseball game, the stability of order — is only
illusionary so, where ﬂonts are actively maintained through management of

common backstages of meaning. Reality is actively socially constructed. (p. 273)

Certainly there are other methods of examining these facets such as organizational
design, hierarchy, ﬁnancial statistics, and operational processes, but the reality-making
lens of organizational culture shapes these facets. These other methods also tend to ignore
the human dimension of the enterprise. In that human dimension lie the intrinsic social
connections and interactions that characterize the uniqueness of the organization, both
internally and externally through its relationships to a larger society. It is that uniqueness
that sets one organization apart ﬂom others and provides for the rich diversity of human
groupings we call organizations. Because of its ability to discern a reliable form of

organizational realities, the examination of organizational culture can serve as a valid

18

metaphor and method of ascertaining what happens to institutions that engage in a
merger.
Organizational Culture in Higher Education

The discussion of organizational culture to this point has been generally ﬂamed as
applying to commercial organizations. However, colleges and universities are
organizations, too. Presumably, they are subject to the same internal and external forces
that create, develop and change organizational culture in other categories of enterprise.
Indeed, an ongoing controversy in postsecondary education is the extent to which
colleges and universities resemble their non-academic counterparts. First, I will examine
key research investigating higher education culture. Second, since this study looks at how
mid-level administrators perceive institutional culture in a merger, I will discuss
organizational culture’s effects in leadership and managerial processes. Third, I will
explore both those who view the academy (and its culture) as not resembling its
commercial counterparts and those who feel that higher education resembles
conventional business.

In the literature more speciﬁc to the overall study of culture in higher education,
Tierney (1988) states the organizational culture of a college or university “as if the
institution were an interconnected web that cannot be understood unless one looks not
only at the structure and natural laws of that web, but also at the actor’s interpretations of
the web itself” (p. 4). Masland (2000) describes higher education institutional culture
saying, “Organizational culture induces purpose, commitment, and order; provides
meaning and social cohesion; and clariﬁes and explains behavioral expectations” (p.

145). As such, Tiemey’s and Masland’s deﬁnition of culture, as they apply to institutions

19

of higher education, are consistent with those of the sociological and anthropological
literature.

In a study that examined institutional culture, decision making, and institutional
effectiveness, Smart, Kuh, and Tierney (1997) relate four culture types. First is the clan
culture, which encourages afﬁliation and participatory decision making. Second is the
adhocracy culture, which concludes that change is inevitable and individuals are
motivated to address tasks by their importance or appeal. Third is the bureaucratic culture
that seeks stability and is governed by rules and linear strategy. Fourth is the market
culture, which emphasizes an achievement orientation, planning, productivity, and
efficiency in decisions. Smart et al. found that the clan and adhocracy cultures were better
associated with effectiveness in higher education organizations, while the bureaucratic
culture was least effective. This can have implications in a higher education merger
situation for incompatibilities in the culture between merging partners could inﬂuence
how the merger plays out.

Although there are many and varied references to the theoretical underpinnings
that describe higher education organizational culture in the literature, the one that I
believe best captures the depth and comprehensiveness is Weick (1976) and his use of
loose coupling as a way to conceptualize the culture of the academy. The essential idea of
coupling is that each coupled event (an action, organizational unit, position, or person in
that position can be an event) not only interacts with other events, but each event retains
some aspect of distinction ﬂom the others. This distinction may be physical or
represented by a difference in function (Weick, 1976). For example, the university’s

accounts payable ofﬁce is coupled to the ofﬁce of admissions. The admissions office

20

needs the accounts payable ofﬁce to process invoices for the supplies it needs. The
accounts payable depends on admissions to enroll sufﬁcient tuition-paying students to
maintain cash ﬂow so that invoices can be processed. These offices interact; yet have
their own identities and logical separateness. The degree of coupling is based on the
ﬂequency and strength of the variables the two events (systems) share. If there are few
variables in common or the variables are weak, the coupling is looser. The element of
time must also be considered as events may be coupled to different degrees at different
points in time (Weick, 1976).

Loose coupling as a way of making sense of higher education organization and
culture offers many advantages. Among the more salient: (1) Loose coupling allows
some portion of the organization to persist even when there are disagreements among
other portions. In this way, the biology department is not likely to be immediately closed
because it is in disagreement with the provost. (2) Loose coupling implies that the more
semi-independent portions are to the organization, the better they can sense their
particular connections with the external environment. An academic discipline would not
sense this connection to its larger external discipline as well if it were tightly coupled to
other internal organizational units. (3) Loose coupling can be a good way for the larger
organization to meet widely variable external demands through the responses of its
components (Weick, 1976). For example, a university corporate service’s ofﬁce could
meet an immediate community need without undue disruption to the other parts of the
organization.

Another major contribution by Weick to the study of culture and organizations

comes ﬂom his description of a model for organizing (Scott, 2003). He postulates that

21

people organize to help manage the uncertainty of information in their lives. The steps
involved in this organizing process. The ﬁrst is enactment, where interacting individuals
construct a picture of their environment and their situation. The second is selection, in
which people selectively attend and interact with what is going on around them and make
sense of it through common interpretation and common meaning. The third is retention,
in which the common responses are selected and retained because they are more useful
than others. This model also appears to be compatible with Schein’s (2004) description of
culture as well as his three components of culture (artifacts, espoused values, and basic
assumptions). It can also be deduced that loose coupling in higher education makes the
development of subcultures, as suggested by Schein, more likely.
Organizational Culture, Management, and Leadership

The traits and behaviors of leadership in higher education have ambiguous
characteristics that inﬂuence institutional culture. This conclusion that “academic
management is an ambiguous process, highly dependent on ﬂows of inﬂuence and power,
and subject to the beliefs and values of the academic culture” is made by Dill (2000) (p.
106). Even early researchers recognized that leadership use of symbols and rituals (social
events) is important in deﬁning the cultural atmosphere of an organization ((Kroeber,
1958). Thus, leadership actions become inexorably intertwined with the determinations of
culture in an organization.

While there is a formidable volume of literature that breaks down the work of
leadership into various tasks and duties, Charns and Schaefer (1983) submits that all
duties distill down to one simple, yet profoundly meaningful, job: decision-making to

enhance the effectiveness and efficiency of the organization. Schein (2004) argues that

22

the creation and management of culture is the only thing of real importance that leaders
do and that leadership and culture are “two sides of the same coin” (p. 1). Leaders also
serve as symbols for representing causation of social events (Pfeffer, 1977). In this way,
all decision-making of leadership, whether it is directed toward an identiﬁable cultural
event like staging an awards presentation or deciding to revamp the accounts receivable
process, entails some kind of cultural afﬁrrning, neglecting, or change element.

However, decision-making in a loosely coupled organization like a college or
university cannot be easily compared to a business organization for decision-making in a
college is more participative (Tierney, 1988). This difference plays out in a number of
administrative arenas like strategic planning, leadership style, and change management.
Describing how organizational culture affects these administrative tasks is necessary to
understand the far-reaching impact of higher educational culture on the operation of the
institution.

Swenk (1999) describes the inﬂuence of culture on the strategic planning
processes of a university. While strategic planning is described as a managerial process
characterized by rational decision-making theory, the loosely coupled decision-making in
the university between faculty subculture and administration subculture (shared
governance) often thwarts this rationality. Swenk concludes that the failure of both
faculty and administration to recognize the cultural roles assigned to each prevents
meaningﬁrl adaptation of the institution to the environmental change it faces.

Organizational culture also plays a prominent role in other administrative and
managerial processes in colleges and universities. In a review of management theories

and their application to leadership styles and decision-making in higher education

23

organizations, Bensirnon, Neumann, and Bimbaum describes perspectives on the
management theories of (1) power and inﬂuence, (2) social power, (3) transactional, (4)
transformational, (5) behavioral, (6) contingency, (7) cultural and symbolic, and (8)
cognitive theories to characterize leadership adaptations to various management tasks and
duties. While all of these theories have their pros and cons, the cultural and symbolic
theory is “especially useful for understanding the internal dynamics of institutions in
ﬁnancial crisis, particularly in differentiating the strategies leaders use to cope with
ﬁnancial stress and to communicate with constituents” (p. 222). This salient comment
should be kept in mind because ﬁnancial stress is an area of keen interest to all in higher
education leadership today and may be a stated rationale for organizational changes like
mergers.

In complement to Bensimon, et al. (1989) is the conclusion of Kezar and Eckel
(2002) who ﬁnd that the success of change strategy is closely linked to the cultural
coherence of that strategy. Kezar and Eckel suggest that leaders become a form of
“cultural outsider” (p. 457) in order to gain the perspective of the institution’s culture in
its entirety and balance the “insider” perspective they already have. This approach
necessitates that a leader network with outside institutions, use external consultants, and
publicly explore assumptions by attending and presenting at conferences.

Taken as a whole, these investigators, both those who center on culture in higher
education and those more general organizational culture theorists paint a picture. This
picture explains the meaning and ramiﬁcations of culture in a manner consistent in both
higher education institutions and the wider commercial set of organizations. However,

there are those who argue that there are ﬂmdarnental differences, which by inference also

24

mean a difference of cultures, between higher education and other conventional business
entities.

Among those theorists who argue that there are signiﬁcant distinguishing
operating and cultural characteristics between the academy and other business entities are
Baldridge, Curtis, Ecker, and Riley (1977). These characteristics include goal ambiguity
due to a multi-faceted mission, services dedicated to development of a client who expects
input into the decision-making processes of the organization, and a problematic
technology that resists segmentation and standardization. Baldridge, et al. suggests the
manner used to integrate these disparate parts is to employ highly trained and skilled
professionals who have the expertise and autonomy to deal with these ambiguities. This
broad autonomy, as compared to employees in conventional businesses, leads to a kind of
organized anarchy. The academic organizational response to these professional autonomy
demands is to organize in a manner that yields an operation Weick (1976) describes as a
loosely coupled system. This type of organization where decision-making is diffused,
goals are multiple, and actions generally derive ﬂom consensus differs markedly ﬂom
those seen in the business sector where unity of purpose, hierarchical structure, and
streamlined decision-making are perceived as the best methods to achieve organizational
goals. If the above characteristics of higher education organizations are true, then it lends
support to the contention that profound organizational events, like mergers in colleges
and universities, are better examined through the cultural route as opposed to the more
business sector-like structural, human resource, or political ﬂamework of Bolman and
Deal (1997). The culture perspective takes these concrete and rational aspects of

organizations such as hierarchies, rules, and routines, and describes them as social

25

constructions that are indispensable for people to understanding of how the organization
functions on a daily basis (Morgan, 1997).

Simpson (2002) offers that in the higher education sector emphasis is placed on
effectiveness. This viewpoint results in an organization that values scholarship as its
product, rather than proﬁt. Simpson identiﬁes the major difference in higher education
and business as the way the two are governed; business has its “top down” structure and
higher education has its professional governance. In looking at the unique nature of
higher education in our economy, Simpson differentiates it ﬂom corporate America in the
following ways: (1) customer service is not the end-all in higher education, (2) higher
education favors effectiveness over efficiency, and (3) higher education shares
governance. Simpson’s same argument is made by Brook and Harvey (1993) in their
comparison of higher education to corporate business. Tierney (1993) goes so far as to
assert that colleges and universities are not businesses and'should not be expected to act
like them. Brook and Harvey (1993) note that merger is not usually a viable option for
higher education due to the relative powerlessness of its CEO compared with a business
CEO and because of higher education’s multiple and often conﬂicting goals.

In contrast to those who view higher education as distinctly different ﬂom
commercial business, there has been a slow, but inexorable move toward considering the
university as a business in the commercial sense and, as such, subject to the same market
forces that govern business enterprises where mergers are more commonly seen. In an
oblique gesture toward this new orientation, Levine (2001) suggests that colleges and
universities need to respond quickly and creatively to new ﬁnancial constraints, the calls

for accountability, and the social forces being applied today. The terms quickly and

26

creatively hardly reﬂect the picture of an organization described as an organized anarchy
or as a loosely coupled system, as originally penned by Baldridge and Weick in the mid
1970s. The concept of the academy as a business, together with the application of
business principles or strategies to its operation, is becoming more accepted (Brock,
1993; Lama], 2001; O'Neil, 1999).

Perhaps the reason that treating the university as a business is gaining acceptance
has to do with the increasingly hostile ﬁnancial and accountability environment present
today. From the operational side, the pressures to produce learning that is utilitarian or
required by an information age economy are dramatically increasing, together with
greater demand for services by larger numbers of students (Duderstadt, 1999). Yet, the
societal and governmental resources allocated to perform this greater work are decreasing
(Conklin, 2002; Duderstadt, 2003). Hence, the efﬁciency and productivity conventionally
demanded of commercial businesses is being translated to higher education, together with
the expectation of no loss in effectiveness. Higher education seems to have arrived at the
doorstep of do more with less. For the industry of higher education, and presumably its
culture, it appears that the romantic and modernist-derived explanations of organizational
construction, adaptation, and language are becoming seen as vestiges in a postmodernist
world (Gergen, 1993).

The Similarities Between Higher Education and Health Care

If similar industries are subjected to similar external pressures then they should
both react in a similar manner. There are more than passing similarities between the
position held by higher education in society and that held by hospitals. Hospitals have

been called the modern cathedrals of our civic life (Hurley, 1993). A similar relationship

27

could be argued for other manifestations of civic life like museums, orchestras, or
theatres. Like the cathedrals of medieval times, hospitals are objects of civic pride and the
community contributes in ways that are not common with mercantile or manufacturing
organizations. For example, how many people volunteer at Wal-Mart like they do for a
hospital?

I propose that colleges and universities hold a similar position, that colleges and
universities are essentially cathedrals of learning that hold special signiﬁcance for our
communities and for society in general. In addition, because of this societal similarity, I
contend that health care and higher education resemble each other in more operational
terms as well. One demonstration of this societal signiﬁcance is that governments allow
tax exemptions for most hospitals and colleges. Hospitals and colleges certainly have
their differences, but these differences are more of application than of ﬁrndamentals
(Goedegebuure, 1992).

On a more individual level, members of the community express support for
hospitals primarily through volunteerism and, secondarily, through monetary
contributions. For a college this appears reversed where monetary support ﬂom alumni
and patrons forms the major expression of support while volunteerism seems secondary.
The higher education institution performs a quid pro quo by incorporating community
service into its mission. It is this personally identiﬁable extension into the hearts, minds,
and wallets of community members that may be one of the reasons why merger activity is
lower for colleges and universities. The community identiﬁes with the institution and for
that institution to essentially disappear in a singular sense to become something else with

another institution, upsets the community’s vision of its identity. The special

28

consideration given by the community for both hospitals and colleges can manifest itself
in community attempts to inﬂuence the decision whether each should merge with its
respective counterparts or not. Such inﬂuence is usually seriously considered. However,
the decision is ultimately made by either the hospital or college board of governance in
what they feel is in the best interest of the organization.

The health care industry forms a substantial segment of the economy,
approximately 13 percent of the gross domestic product (Sultz, 2004). Health care has
more than casual similarities to higher education, yet the response of health care
organizations to the pressures of the marketplace occur in much the same manner as the
archetypical American corporation (Bazzoli, LoSasso, Amould, and Shalowitz, 2002).
However, a casual comparison of these two industries is made by Goedegebuure (1992)
where he identiﬁes that both have professional bureaucracies, as described by Mintzberg
(1979), both have professional authority combined with a separate administration, both
deal with the handling of knowledge, and both have a loosely coupled structure with
structural differentiation along the lines of professional disciplines. If one accepts that
these similarities hold prima facie validity, and many in both sectors do, then it is
reasonable to suppose that the economic forces exerted on health care, together with the
responses it took might form a template for higher education responses in similar
circumstances.

Mergers in Health Care

Health care has experienced a wave of hospital mergers during the 1990’s and

early years of this century. Hospital and health care merger activity has significantly

increased in the 1990’s. In the period of 1983 — 1988 a total of 74 mergers occurred in the

29

hospital sector while in the period 1989 —- 1996 that number was 174 Bazzoli, LaSasso,
Amould, and Shalowitz (2002).

Many of the same factors that drive mergers in business also motivate hospital
mergers. According to Bazzoli et al. (2002) reasons given for mergers in business and
hospitals were to strengthen ﬁnancial position, achieve operating efficiencies, and
consolidate services. Wilke and Choi (1988) found essentially the same motivations for
hospital mergers.

The advent of managed care also produced circumstances that promote mergers in
health care organizations, primarily by accelerating the price competitive comparisons
between hospitals and other health care providers (Brown, 1996). These competitive
pressures result in both horizontally and vertically integrated mergers, particularly in long
term care (Gordon, 1998). (Morrisey, 2001) argues that price competition is a factor
motivating hospital mergers and goes on to ﬁnd that, as in other businesses, mergers in
health care generally do not signiﬁcantly reduce prices to customers. This ﬁnding of
health care price increases following not-for-proﬂt hospital mergers was also conﬁrmed
by (Vita, 2001). As opposed to customer prices, it is not known if hospital mergers
succeed in reducing organizational costs. Reduction in costs is one of the driving
motivations for hospital mergers and, presumably, it would also be so in higher education
mergers.

Unfortunately, the development of organizational culture in hospital mergers is
also an under-studied area of investigation. What small mention there is in the health care
literature shows some consistency in stating the under-appreciated nature of culture to the

success of, process of, or failure of hospital mergers. Missteps in managing culture or

30

failure to take the organizations’ cultures into account when undergoing large amounts of
change are usually realized in hindsight (Bruhn, 2001; Shield, 2002; Vestal, 1997;
Waldman, 2003).

The resemblance of health care to higher education allows some general
circumstances surrounding mergers in the former to be prospectively attributed to the
latter. The ﬁrst is that mergers in health care are driven by either (1) one partner being
ﬁnancially disadvantaged versus the other(s), (2) the desire for economies of scale that
can accrue to a larger, merged organization, (3) enlarging the diversity of services offered
by each organization through combining, and (4) reducing expensive start-up expenses
for new services. However, the role of organizational culture in health care mergers is
underdeveloped in the literature.

Financial and Societal Changes Faced by Higher Education

Even though higher education and health care seem to resemble each other as
industries, are the environmental stresses facing the two similar? Health care faces rising
costs, decreasing governmental payments (Medicare and Medicaid), questioning of the
quality of its outcomes, and decreasing the public’s trust for it to do the right thing (Sultz
and Young, 2004). Are similar pressures facing higher education?

The major trends of societal change affecting higher education as identiﬁed by
Sporn (1999) include the development of an information economy, diminished state
support, increased demand for higher education, expansion of learning technologies, and
economic globalization. The increased demand for higher education is particularly
signiﬁcant. (Duderstadt, 2003) calls this a “massification” of higher education’s

population. (Duderstadt, 1999) adds an additional societal inﬂuence, market force, which

31

runs counter to the traditional public perception of higher education in this country. By
market forces, Duderstadt means the competitive actions that demand nimble response to
the needs of constituents in a manner that provides high value within a price that
constituents can sustain. It is a system capable of rewarding those who can rapidly
respond to a change and punishing those who cannot.

The effect of these societal and global economic changes on higher education is to
produce an operating environment where turbulence, decreasing resources,
competitiveness, rising costs, unpredictability, and demands for higher quality (value)
have formed a post-industrial chaos (Cameron, 1992). Indeed, the decrease in state
monetary resources devoted to public higher education cannot be seen as something that
will correct itself when the current economic downturn corrects itself. The previous ebbs
and ﬂows of state support, corresponding to economic good and bad times, is not
realistically expected to occur (Duderstadt, 2003).

The societal and ﬁnancial situation in which higher education currently ﬁnds
itself can be characterized as one encompassing increasing demands for performance
with a decrease in the resources conventionally thought necessary to achieve that
performance. Higher education’s product quality is being called into question and the
cost effectiveness of its efforts is not perceived by society to be sustainable. The situation
is strongly reminiscent of that facing the health care industry in the late 19808 and early
19903 (Sultz and Young, 2004). The result of those pressures on health care was the
creation of managed care, which spun-off hospital mergers as a partial response to
economic pressures. If the suggestion that the resemblance between higher education and

health care is plausible, meaning that more mergers in higher education will occur in the

32

future, the question to ask is, “will organizational culture in higher education mergers be
under-emphasized and under-investi gated as it has been in health care?” An examination
of the literature pertaining to higher education mergers, both in the United States and
internationally, suggests it will be.
Institutional Culture and Higher Education Mergers: The United States

In contrast to the relatively frequent use of merger in business and health care,
higher education mergers, at least in the United States, have not been commonly used as
an organizational too]. However, higher education is dealing with the same scenario of
rising costs, an over—built inﬂastructure relative to the advent of distance learning
technologies, increasing prices for its services, decreasing affordability to its customers,
decreasing government funding, and questions about the quality of its services. What
follows in the next two sections is an examination of the extant literature covering
mergers of higher education institutions in this country and how higher education merger
activity appears internationally, where differences in the state-to-institution governance
have led to greater levels of government mandated mergers. Emphasis is placed on those
studies that address culture in higher education mergers and the perceptions of people
involved in such ventures.

(Cannon, 1983) argues that the strong culture of higher education organizations is
a reason they are reluctant to surrender one or both charters and to form a new entity that
has one board, one faculty, one administration, and one organizational structure. She also
asserts that the language used in college or university mergers (consolidation, affiliation,
absorption, acquisition) implies that stakeholders view the event ﬂom different

perspectives. Merger is mentioned as a viable option, but not exactly promoted, to college

33

board members in ﬁnancially troubled institutions (O'Neill, 1980). Millett (1976)
attributes the primary cause of merger in colleges and universities to ﬁnancial stress. In
his case study of 10 mergers in higher education, organizational culture is not addressed.

Martin and Samels (1994) conﬁrm that merger is inﬂequently done due to the
strong tradition of institutional autonomy. They trace organizational responses to the
demands of growth and change in higher education to (1) build larger, more complex
individual institutions, (2) systems of linked institutions being developed in the public
sector, and (3) the development of consortia or alliances, and mergers. Martin and Samels
are comprehensive and meticulous in their coverage of the administrative, ﬁnancial,
legal, leadership, governance, physical plant, and faculty issues attendant to higher
education mergers. They are the ﬁrst researchers to address the problems of alumni and
institutional foundations in mergers. However, the only attention to institutional culture is
to the subculture of students (Martin and Samels, 1994). There is no discussion of the
larger organizational culture, or the psychological or behavioral issues associated with
merger. The subject of human resources management comprises two pages. Although
Martin and Samels offered a detailed business oriented approach to mergers in higher
education, it is of limited use in examining how organizational culture emerges to play a
role in mergers. It should be noted that the failure to see a rise in merger activity in the
late 19905 prompted Martin and Samels (2002) to say they were wrong about merger
activity increasing and that they now favor alliances between institutions, rather than
merger.

There is some indication that colleges and universities see the value of merger as

an answer to weakness in their ﬁnancial situation (Van Der Werf, 2001);(V an Der Werf,

34

2002). However, these Chronicle of Higher Education articles make no mention of the
organizational culture implications of mergers. The most interesting development in the
higher education merger arena is coming ﬂom the actions or intentions of state
legislatures and state education agencies that ﬂmd public higher education by
consolidation of certain public colleges and universities like the Minnesota State Colleges
and Universities system, in order to reduce duplicative programs (Sirnsek, 2000);
(Wallace, 1998). The same type of government initiative toward merger is seen in New
Jersey with the New Jersey Institute of Technology, the University of Medicine and
Dentistry, and Rutgers University (Margulies, 2002), although that merger plan was
called off in 2003 because of the high estimated costs of $1 .25 billion over 10 years and
by the vociferous opposition posed by the institutions involved (Newman, 2003). Another
example is the merger talks started due to state government intervention between
Northwest Missouri State University and the University of Missouri system (Arnone,
2003). None of these references addressed issues relating to development of
organizational culture and the mergers.

In one of the very few investigations of higher education mergers in the United
States that addresses some aspect of culture change, (Misite, 1994) examines the merger
of Host College and Charles College. Misite looks at the merger process itself, ﬂom an
administrative and managerial perspective, and also examined the human dynamics
issues that evolved during those merger processes. Human dynamics issues are
subdivided along the domains of climate, culture, morale, and motivation. Misite ﬁnds
that while the enrollment and ﬁnancial aspects of the merger go reasonably well, the

human dynamics aspects, particularly the morale domain, are far less successful. Misite

35

calls for leaders contemplating a merger to pay more attention to the human dynamics
elements of the enterprise. This ﬁnding is consistent with the results of studies of post-
merger culture in health care organizations.

Parenthetically, one of the more interesting facets of Misite’s (1994) methodology
was the use of interviewees drawing how each person viewed the merger. Given the
difficulties and various interpretations that individuals can have in verbally addressing
the often-abstract features of organizational culture, drawings provide a reﬂeshing and
insightful mechanism for the investigator to gain additional information about
participants’ feelings, perceptions of events, relationships, and an overall ﬂavor for their
stories that might otherwise be missed. Together with the more conventional investigative
tools of rich descriptions taken ﬂom in-depth interviews and examination of pertinent
organizational documents, the use of drawings offers a keyhole through which previously
unattainable information can be perceived. This research design feature will be further
addressed in the methods chapter.

Institutional Culture and Higher Education Mergers: International

It is on the international stage where the greatest merger activity is occurring in
higher education, in terms of the number of institutions actually undergoing merger, the
scholarly investigations into the business-related mechanisms of merger, and also the
effects of institutional culture on those mergers. Examples of this are seen in The Higher
Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE), which is encouraging schools with
ﬁnancial difficulties to merge (Anonymous, 2001 ). There are currently two mergers
under way in England, one between the University of Manchester and Umist

(Anonymous, 2002a) and the other between the University College London and Imperial

36

College (Anonymous, 2002b). Direct government pressure for higher education
institutions to merge is seen in Norway (Kyvik, 2002), South Aﬂica (Cherry, 1997),
Hungary (Woodward, 1997), and Australia (Barcan, 1997).

International higher education also is the source of more robust scholarly
investigations into the phenomenon of institutional mergers. Yet, the inclusion of
organizational culture as an inﬂuence in the merger process is only alluded to in many of
these studies. Fewer still focus on culture and examine the phenomena as a central issue
to their research. However, reviewing the research where culture is treated in more
tangential ways does yield useful information that can be appreciated when examining
the more pertinent studies.

Goedegebuure (1992) constructs an exploration of several college and university
mergers in Australia and the Netherlands ﬂom the resource dependency perspective.
Despite being an innovative and well-grounded investigatiOn into the business elements
of mergers in higher education, Goedegebuure (1992) did not discuss organizational
culture as a factor in the mergers. There is tangential reference to culture in his discussion
of why a large number of mergers, about 50 percent overall between the corporate and
public sectors, do not succeed. Goedegebuure states, “almost without exception, the large
number of case studies undertaken with respect to public sector mergers indicates that
they are intimately associated with problems, stress, and anxieties at both the inter-
institutional level, the basic unit, and the individual level” (p. 223). It is reasonable to
conclude that these problems are inﬂuenced in some way by the differing cultures of the

institutions.

37

Mahony (1994) looks at the interactions between government policy makers and
institutions of higher education in Australia during a reorganization of their system in the
late 19805 and early 19903 that resulted in several mergers. Mahony does not address the
effects of institutional culture in the resulting mergers or in the institution to government
communication that takes place.

Broadbent (1997) details the merger of four Catholic higher education institutions
in Australia into the Australian Catholic University in 1991. In describing faculty
perceptions about the merger, it appears that despite some work routine disruptions, most
faculty either welcomed the merger or were resigned to its inevitability. One can
reasonably infer that the lack of cultural conﬂict among faculty might be due to the
relatively homogenous nature of the basic cultural assumptions (Catholic doctrine) that
reside in these similar colleges.

In discussing the creation of Charles Strut University in Australia, Hatton (2002)
relates a case study describing the various economic, political, and leadership
characteristics associated with the merger. Certain staff and faculty of the technical
schools that formed Charles Strut University indicated they were not hired with a
“university” type of position in mind. While this caused some problems, the overall
impression was that the more qualiﬁed faculty and staff were actually liberated by their
new affiliation with a more research-oriented university. One person remarked that it was
a mistake to keep anything like school names and coats of arms, which apparently were
retained by some of the technical college facilities. This speaks to the power of symbols

that can emerge in an organization’s culture.

38

In yet another case study of mergers in Australian higher education, Curri (2002)
looks at the uniﬁcation of the Colleges of Advanced Education (CAE) into the Uniﬁed
National System (UN S). Although culture was not a focus of this case study, Curri asserts
the greater the age of the institution the more difﬁcult it is to change its culture. This
corresponds to Schein’s observation (2004). It is interesting that Curri found that loose
federations among institutions tend to become more bureaucratic and less efﬁcient. That
seems to contradict the observations made by Martin and Samels (2002) that alliance or
other type of inter-institutional cooperation, short of merger, is now the preferred method
of ﬁnancially dealing with a turbulent and hostile environment.

Shifting the investigatory scene to higher education mergers in South Aﬂica,
Jansen (2003) looks at the curriculum integration implications that resulted when three
pairs of institutions are brought together. While the focus of the study is clearly on
curriculum issues, many of the interviewees’ excerpted comments speak to the
ﬂustration, confusion, and conﬂicts arising in the faculty and student subcultures. As
such, Jansen provides anecdotal evidence of culture strains because of mergers.

Hay and F ourie (2002) looked at staff perceptions of a possible merger with
another institution in the face of decreasing funding and increasing competition. Hay and
F ourie reported that staff was generally accepting of factors that could lead to mergers
and would accept the necessity of merging so long as other alternatives are thoroughly
explored. Factors that promoted acceptance of a merger option were clear statements of
mission and goals, leadership and commitment at the highest levels, clear lines of
communication, and quality assurance mechanisms in place for measuring success. Hay

and Fourie’s study does not identify the potential merger partner to participants in their

39

survey. As inferred ﬂom Broadbent (1997) and Hatton (2002), knowing who the merger
partner is can inﬂuence organizational members to be more or less accepting of the
merger action.

Kyvik (2002) studied the 1994 Norwegian merger of 98 vocationally oriented
colleges into what became 26 new state colleges. The focus of this investigation was not
on organizational culture, but the government motivations, government policy,
institutional ﬁnancial conditions, academic work, and administrative effect of the
mergers. Kyvik mentions institutional culture as an important factor to keep in mind
when proposing and undertaking a merger operation. An oblique glimpse of culture’s
development in the merger can be seen in comments that the “weakly developed social
and professional networks appear to be a major obstacle to the development of academic
co-operation across disciplinary boundaries” (p. 66).

Eastman and Lang (2001) perform an extensive investigation into the
circumstances surrounding the merger of the Technical University of Nova Scotia with
Dalhousie University and the merger of the University of Toronto with the Ontario
Institute for Studies of Education. Although the role institutional culture plays is not the
focus of these two case studies, Eastman and Lang (2001) offer many suggestions in
managing the human dimension of a higher education merger which speaks to culture:

1. Given the collective power and the individual autonomy enjoyed by faculty
members, and the extent to which institutional success depends on their
performance and achievement, it is especially important to attend to the human

side of higher education mergers.

40

. Although the emergence of ‘stories’ cannot be controlled, those involved in
negotiating and managing mergers should consider how potential decisions and
actions may be perceived and to what stories about the new organization they may
give rise.

. Changes that give people additional status or prestige are likely to be accepted
much more readily than changes that deprive them of it.

. It is important that those people appointed to leadership roles in the negotiation
and transition processes enjoy the trust of administrators, faculty members, staff,
and students at their institution.

. Distrust works against effective communication and, hence, collaboration.

. Managers should recognize that mergers can be difficult for faculty and staff
whose objective situations appear relatively unchanged, as well as for those who
experience job loss or change or other dislocations. They should be alert for signs
of psychological damage and offer assistance to the afflicted. V

. When enlisting individuals in building the new unit or institution, transition
managers should bear in mind that individuals who were not at the center of the
old order may have the most enthusiasm for the task.

. To the extent that integration, rather than co-existence, is sought, design
administrative structures and organize processes whereby people choose or are
assigned to departments, in such a way as to increase the likelihood of day-to—day

interaction between members of the groups that are merging.

41

9. Think through how institutional relationships will change as a result of a merger;
identify constituencies with which you need to communicate and put in place
vehicles and resources that will enable you to do so in a timely fashion.

10. Formal communication should come ﬂom institutional leaders and should be
coupled with the dissemination of information through personal communication
up and down the organizational chart.

11. Begin communicating immediately and keep communicating oﬂen.

While Eastman and Lang’s (2001) suggestions relate to the characteristics of trust,
stories, communication, and collaboration within an organization. These are the same
terms often used in describing aspects of organizational culture.

In one of three studies directly dealing with the subject of culture change in higher
education mergers, Harmon (2002) looks at Australian institutional mergers that occurred
between 1987 and 1991. She relates that, “when embedded cultures of un-complirnentary
institutions collide, they become a potent force that can retard or prevent organizational
change” (p. 110).

In the second investigation into the effects of culture on mergers, Harmon and
Harmon (2003) more speciﬁcally comment on the effects of institutional culture on
mergers in higher education. Harmon and Harmon reiterate that the development of
culture in higher education is not well understood, secondary to the small numbers of
investigations into the subject. They suggest that, “Mergers appear to work better where
there exists greater possibility of integration and articulation between the goals and
visions of the institutions in question that is horizontal mergers between institutions

whose missions and cultures are complimentary” (p. 38). Harmon and Harmon also

42

express the high degree of difficulty posed by merging even complimentary cultures and
that the effects of mismanaging even similar cultures can be devastating to the morale of
the people involved.

The third study examines institution culture effects on mergers in Norwegian
higher education (N orgard and Skodvin, 2002). This research adds the dimension of
geography to a higher education merger. In the same series of mergers studied by Kyvik
(2002), Norgard and Skodvin analyze the cultural interaction of the participating
institutions ﬂom the perspective of network theory. Network theory posits that networks
are composed of nodes connected by ties. The three types of networks are: (1)
Inﬂastructural — the physical ties that constitute the geographic space of the organization;
(2) Organizational — ties among individuals, groups, and workplaces in production
systems; and (3) Social -— the ties that transmit ideas, impulses, and inﬂuence to a network
of people known to each other, creating an informal connection. Norgard and Skodvin
also use the concept of structural holes, places where the connections between
participants in a network are missing. This is more likely to occur in loosely coupled
organizations like colleges and universities that have a tradition of intra-institutional
autonomy populated by disciplines and faculty that often do not interact meaningfully
outside those disciplines. Norgard and Skodvin propose that structural holes will appear
in mergers when there are weak organizational and academic ties, weak inﬂa-institutional
links, and lack of social connections between different people in the organization due to
geographic distance.

Norgard and Skodvin’s (2002) conclusions are that in the Norwegian institutional

mergers, weakly developed social networks prove to be the greatest obstacle in the

43

creation of cooperation across disciplinary boundaries. Social networks are best created
when there is a common culture. Two merged cultures where the parts separately vie for
attention, resources, and recognition makes the social network much more difficult to
create in merged institutions. Without the support of the social network, the work of the
organizational network is hindered. Another constraining factor on the development of
the social networks is the geographic distance between most institutions, usually of 20
kilometers or more. Fewer opportunities to meet mean that personal relationships
necessary for the social network to form take longer to mature or never take place at all.

The relatively small volume of literature related to mergers in higher education
focuses on the operational, managerial, governance, and legal issues that such
undertakings involves. An even smaller ﬂaction of the literature deals with the
development of organizational culture in merging colleges or universities. The most
salient literature on mergers originates internationally. Since the culture of any
organization is derived, in part, ﬂom the culture of the society in which it resides
(Hofstede and Hofstede, 2005), a literal transfer of ﬁndings discovered internationally to
American higher education should be viewed with caution. Additional research on the
interactions between organizational culture and higher education mergers in the United
States is necessary before robust comparisons to international events can be made.
The Under-appreciation of Mergers in Higher Education

As much as the societal climate for higher education is changing, there are many
leaders within colleges and universities who offer informed punditry as to what responses
and directions the industry should take in order to cope with an increasingly hostile and

turbulent future. Most of these proposals or suggestions do not emphasize institutional

44

merger as an organizational coping mechanism (Alﬂed, 2000; Blustain, 1999; Conklin,
2002; Duderstadt, 1999; Irnmerwahr, 2002; Levine, 2001). Duderstadt (1999) states, “we
could expect to see a signiﬁcant reorganization of higher education, complete with
mergers, acquisitions, new competitors, and new products and services” (p. 39). And
Levine (2001) makes a rather oblique reference that merger activity may be in the offing
when speaking of a future reduction in the number of physical campuses. He states,
“States are likely to begin asking why we need all of this physical plant. California, for
example, might ask why any state would need 9 public research universities. Or New
York might wonder if a state really needs 64 separate state universities” (p. 263).
Although closing is as sound an interpretation of this quote as merger would be.

One possible reason why research on the development of culture in college or
university mergers does not receive more attention is that there are simply not a lot of
mergers occurring. There are prominent exceptions such as the mergers of Carnegie Tech
and the Mellon Institute to form Carnegie Mellon University, and of Western Reserve
University and the Case Institute to create Case Western Reserve University. Somewhat
less prominent is the merger of Tilt College with Mercer University and the Delaware
Law School and Boston State College with the University of Massachusetts, Boston
(Martin and Samels, 1994). While this is not intended to be a comprehensive listing, still,
considering the number of colleges and universities in the United States, the amount of
merger activity is, and has been, relatively small.

The reasons for the lack of merger activity in an industry beset with institutional
challenges are unclear. In the late 19903 higher education leaders seemed to recognize

that mergers would become a more common method of dealing with ﬁnancial and growth

45

problems. So much was the interest that the Chronicle of Higher Education devoted a
cover story to mergers on March 23, 2001 (Van Der Werf, 2001). However, the “mania”
appears to have worn off rather rapidly. To date, the number of mergers has not risen
appreciably, prompting (Martin and Samels, 2002) to state that they were wrong about
the anticipated increase in higher education merger activity and that they now prefer
institutional alliances.

Among the reasons Martin and Samels (2002) now favor alliances over mergers is
that alliances preserve the institutional mission, enrich ﬂmdamental objectives, maintain
the academic governance system, create new income streams, and cut costs. However, the
examples Martin and Samels use to illustrate these points are rather narrow. For instance,
under the headings of creating new income streams and enriching fundamental
objectives, the examples offered only deal with alliances between higher education
institutions and for-proﬁt corporations, not between two or more higher education
organizations. Their heading of cutting costs uses the example of money saved by not
having to deal with the complex legal proceedings associated with the merger of
endowments and institutional scholarships. What is missing ﬂom their analysis is what
could be saved in a merged organization by having only one office of admissions,
ﬁnance, human resources, and marketing where previously there was two of each, thus
achieving economies of scale. Another factor not alluded to by Martin and Samels is the
cost savings realized when two institutions merge in order to diversify and broaden

program offerings, rather than each incurring the start-up costs of separate and competing

programs.

46

There is empirical evidence that it is more common for colleges and universities
to close rather than seek merger as a strategy to overcome ﬁnancial adversity (Williams,
2001). This paradigm for closure seems quite strong (Ehrenberg, 2000) and is supported
by the earlier ﬁndings of Fadil and Thrift (1978) that among independent colleges and
universities between 1970 and 1978 there were 64 new organizations founded, 129
closed, and only 42 merged. Of those institutions that closed, it is not known whether
they considered merger and rejected it or simply failed to recognize merger as an option
at all.

I propose that there are three factors that have held higher education mergers to a
low number thus far. One is that ﬁnances are not sufficiently exigent for many colleges
and universities to consider merger a viable option. Most colleges and universities are
embarking on cost cutting and other efficiency measures under the present models of
operation, essentially cutting the “fat” out of the system. That may soon change, as the
pressures of the competitive, revenue-scarce environment become more severe or
prolonged, forcing not just the trimming of fat but also the cutting of bone and muscle.

The second factor limiting mergers is the unique relationship a college or
university has with its community. As I previously proposed, a university is a cathedral
of learning and is the recipient of civic pride and resources ﬂom the community in the
same manner as the medieval citizens related to their religious cathedrals. The
community would perceive its investment in the university to be in jeopardy in the event
of a merger. Moreover, universities have large numbers of alumni who identify with their
institution in a way that only happens when an organization contributes signiﬁcantly to

the growth and maturation of young adults.

47

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The third factor limiting merger activity is the culture of higher education
organizations that emphasizes independence, autonomy, and individuality. I suggest that
the interplay between still being able to trim operations and institutional autonomy is
such that the resulting culture darnpens or thwarts recognizing the advantages of merger.
For colleges or universities that are ﬁnancially ﬂagile, sometimes that recognition comes
too late, resulting in more institutional closures than mergers (Williams, 2001).

The resistance of higher education to merger as a remedy for the ﬁnancial
difficulties resulting ﬂom a turbulent competitive environment and diminishing
private/public resources can be appreciated as resulting ﬂom: (l) the current ability to
employ revenue generating or cost-cutting mechanisms short of merger; (2) the insular
culture of higher education itself; and (3) the resistance to identity loss of the institution
by the community and the alumni. The perception in the19903 was that more mergers
between higher education institutions were imminent (Martin and Samels, 1994). When
increased merger activity did not happen, Martin and Samels (2002) admitted they were
wrong. I assert that they were not wrong, but premature. The greatest motivation for
merger is an organization’s ﬁnancial exigency (Millett, 1976). As long as colleges and
universities perceive that they can survive solely by cutting costs and increasing tuition in
the face of declining public and private funding sources, then mergers will remain an
inﬂequent option. However, if the traditional ﬁrnding sources continue to decline, a
certain tipping point will inevitably be reached where tuition increase is not possible and
cost cutting will no longer suffice. Mergers between higher education organizations will
then be more often considered and enacted, despite the cultural resistance within the

institution or the community. If funding resources continue to decline and costs continue

48

to increase as they have in the past ﬁve years, I believe that tipping point is palpably
imminent.
Review of the Literature: Summary

The study examines the inﬂuence of organizational culture in a merged higher
education institution. Since there is currently little higher education merger activity in the
United States, it was necessary to examine the subject of culture in organizations, culture
in higher education organizations in the United States, merger in business and health care
(as an analogy to higher education), and then the literature on mergers in higher
education, particularly international higher education, in order to narrow the research
focus.

The literature on organizational culture orients the reader to the importance of
culture in the events, processes, and life of any coherent group of people engaged in
collection actions. Schein (2004) relates that the real job of any leader is to deﬁne,
change, and focus the culture of his or her organization. Tangential support for this view
is made by Morgan (1997), who suggests that leaders are central in deciding which lens is
used for interpretation of organizational actions, and therefore, are instrumental in
shaping the reality and culture of the organization.

Schein (2004) also provides a powerful, yet readily understandable process
through which artifacts become espoused values leading to basic assumptions, and
creating the culture of an organization. In spite of all the managerial theories, planning
mechanisms, calculations, and procedures that form a ﬁne patina overlaying
organizational rationality, it is the culture of the organization that ultimately dictates

which directions are taken and the managerial technologies used to reach them. As such,

49

organizational culture becomes the light that shines on all aspects of the institution in a
manner that cannot be replicated by examination of ﬁnance, managerial style,
governance, strategic planning, quality assurance, or policymaking alone. Therefore,
using culture as a means to focus investigation and analysis is justiﬁed as the most
comprehensive approach to explore the pervasive and far-reaching implications of an
organizational merger.

The ﬂequency of mergers in American higher education is low and they are not
studied often. When merger is studied in higher education, research often focuses on
particular administrative, managerial, governance, curricular, or ﬁnancial aspects. Even
when a more comprehensive treatment is made, the inﬂuence of organizational culture is
under-represented or commented on in an informal manner. That serves as additional
justiﬁcation for this study investigates the inﬂuence of organizational culture in higher
education mergers.

There is greater attention paid to mergers occurring in other countries and,
therefore, a greater and more systematic depth of investigation, particularly in the realm
of institutional culture. Even here there is a paucity of studies that utilize a robust
research methodology. In addition, international evidence for higher education
organizations culture impact when merging with another institution might be viewed
differently through American culture. The general culture of American higher education
has developed within the larger American national culture, which then makes
comparisons to mergers of colleges and universities in other countries inexact.

The last, and most compelling justiﬁcation for this study is the sparse attention

given to the development of organizational culture with a more ethnographical or

50

anthropological approach that explores the experiences, representations, and narrative
stories of those involved. This is notably missing ﬂom our understanding of higher
education administrative practices as they relate to institutional mergers. Examinations of
how higher education academic and operational administrators make sense out of the
profound cultural upheavals attendant to institutional merger will provide insights for
organizational leadership embarking on an endeavor like institutional merger or other
institutional change that carries the likelihood of extreme organizational culture
rearrangement.
Conceptual Framework

It is helpful, at this point, to reiterate Schein’s (2004) deﬁnition of a group culture
as, “A pattern of shared basic assumptions that the group learned as it solved problems of
external adaptation and internal integration, that has worked well enough to be
considered valid and, therefore, to be taught to new members as the correct way to
perceive, think, and feel in relation to new problems” (p. 12). The conceptual ﬂamework
for this study derives ﬂom Schein’s (2004) levels of culture that are subordinate to this
deﬁnition. These levels include: (I) artifacts - the visible organizational structures,
symbols, and processes; (2) espoused values — the strategies, goals, philosophies, and
other espoused justiﬁcations for an organization’s actions; and (3) basic underlying
assumptions — those unconscious, often taken-for-granted beliefs, thoughts, and feelings
that become the source of values and actions. As such, a snapshot description of these
cultural components does not provide sufficient information to construct the rich mosaic

of interactions between them. A more detailed explanation is necessary.

51

Cultural artifacts are readily observable, but it is difficult to assign deeper
meaning to them simply through observation alone. These artifacts include the
vocabulary used by members, the technology used, the observable behavioral routines,
the appropriate dress, the myths and stories told, and the rituals enacted. The diﬂiculty
lies in the variable meaning that can be given to visible symbols, processes, and
structures. Schein (2004) states, “one can only test one’s insight into what something
might mean if one has also experienced the culture ﬂom the level of its values and basic
assumptions” (p. 18). An illustration of this is the observable image of the blue suit, white
shirt, and conservative tie worn by executives of IBM in the 19503 and 603. Alone, this
observation conveys little meaning, but with additional insight into the formalized,
conforrnist business atmosphere of the company, the dress becomes emblematic of the
conservative nature of the company’s values at the time.

Schein (2004) cautions that one should not attempt to infer deeper aspects of
espoused values or basic assumptions using artifacts alone. This limitation is based on the
realization that the researcher will interpret artifacts on the basis of his or her feelings and
experiences, which may not be a valid interpretation for the members of the organization.
Thus, in order for the observations to gain validity the observer must either already be a
member of the group, spend a sufficient amount of time with the group in order to more
correctly interpret the artifacts, and/or conduct further investigation into the espoused
values and basic assumptions represented by the cultural artifacts. Schein relates that
researchers are likely to note artifacts as the observable manifestations of culture, but like
the visible portion of an iceberg, artifacts alone do not give much information as to the

shape and texture to the majority of the culture remaining under the surface.

52

Espoused values begin their formation process when an organizational group is
faced with a new or unique problem or issue. Schein (2004) reveals that the ﬁrst person
to suggest a solution or course of action to the new situation does so based on his or her
own idea of what is correct. If this person’s approach prevails in the group, he or she is
considered to have taken a leadership role with regard to the new situation. However, the
group does not yet share the presumption of correctness with the leader until the course
of action implemented deals successfully with the problem. It is the sharing of the group
in the success of the action taken that begins the creation of a shared value or belief.

Schein (2004) calls this evolution of the implemented action and the group’s
perceived success of the action into a shared value a “cognitive transformation” (p. 19).
Not all successful actions undergo the transformation. The factors inﬂuencing this
cognitive transformation process include whether the results of the action taken are
subject to either physical or social validation. Physical validation can be equated with
some form of empirical quantiﬁcation such as enrollment increases, attainment of
accreditation, or increase in graduation rates. Social validation is characterized by Schein
as “where the test of whether they [the actions] work or not is how comfortable and
anxiety ﬂee members are when they abide by them” (p.20). Another factor is whether the
actions work reliably in similar situations. Those that are inconsistent in being successful
with what the group considers to be similar problems or situations will not become a
shared value. The group’s ability to identify accurately the similarities between the
problems or situations is an obvious limitation here. A third factor is that the action must

continue to work reliably over time. Only those actions that are successful, according to

53

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the factors noted above, will be ﬁrmly rooted as espoused values and will begin the last
stage in the transformation process to a basic assumption.

Basic assumptions are formed ﬂom those espoused values that are subject either
to physical or social validation, work reliably in similar situations, and work consistently
over time. Schein (2004) differentiates basic assumptions ﬂom what the anthropological
community calls dominant value orientations on the basis that a dominant orientation is
the preferred action in a culture that still entertains other viable alternatives. Members of
the group could use, with justiﬁcation, a different alternative and still remain coherent
with the overall culture of the group. Group members would ﬁnd actions based on any
other supposition unthinkable. Indeed, for group members to have suppositions other than
the basic assumption may not even be possible. This could be the psychological
underpinning of patterned thinking associated with the term paradigm and the inherent
difficulty posed by attempting to think in a different paradigm or what is currently termed
“thinking outside the box.”

Basic assumptions are those almost subliminal modes of behavior that are neither
questioned nor conﬂonted. To do so causes a disruption in our cognitive and
interpersonal world, unleashing considerable anxiety. Schein (2004) asserts that the
human mind seeks a cognitive and interpersonal safe harbor. An assault on a person’s
basic assumptions creates anxiety and defensiveness. Schein relates, “Rather than
tolerating such anxiety levels, we tend to want to perceive the events of the world around
us as congruent with our assumptions, even if that means distorting, denying, projecting,

or in other ways falsifying to ourselves what may be going on around us” (p. 22).

54

Schein’s (2004) use of a three-tiered process to characterize and examine
organizational culture provides a valuable and ﬂexible approach upon which to ﬂame this
study of culture’s inﬂuences in a higher education merger. What Schein does not address
are the effects of congruence between the aspects of artifacts, espoused values, and basic

assumptions, which forms a signiﬁcant part of the study presented here.

55

Chapter Three: Design and Methods

Despite the fact that few mergers between higher education institutions have
occurred in the United States, they could reasonably increase in number in the future.
Few investigations have been conducted into the effects of merger on the cultures of the
institutions involved and there are no identiﬁable studies that take an ethnographic
approach to the stories, representations, and experiences of those involved in the merger
process. The purpose of this study is to explore what is the inﬂuence of organizational
culture in higher education institutional mergers ﬂom the perspective of academic and
operational professionals’ experiences with the event. The questions to be addressed are:
1. When higher education organizations merge, what is the inﬂuence of
organizational culture?
2. What are the perceptions of the academic and operational professionals to the
cultural development of a merged higher education institution?
3. How do these professionals deal with the congruence and incongruence between
organizational symbols, espoused values, and the basic assumptions of cultural
features?
Methodology

This study took a qualitative case study approach to the examination of culture in
a merged higher education organization because narratives of those involved bring to
light more subtle ﬁndings that can be related to artifacts, espoused values, and basic
assumptions (Schein, 2004). This means that the experiences and accounts of the
participants were used to develop rich descriptions of what inﬂuence organizational

culture played in merged higher education organizations. Three sources of data were

56

collected to address the research questions. The ﬁrst is semi-structured interview data, the
second is drawings created by the interviewees’ of how they saw themselves and their
situation during the merger process, and the third is document analyses ﬂom the merged
university and its antecedent institutions, particularly documentation of mission, values
and merger plans regarding operations or human relations and the strategies devised to
shape or inﬂuence the organization during the merger.

Case Study Participant Data: Narrative Inquiry in a Native-View Paradigm

In describing an anthropological approach to corporations, Gregory (1983)
comments that it entails studying participants’ views about all aspects of life in the
corporation. These aspects include work, work practices, technologies, terminology,
physical settings, and myths/stories promulgated in the workplace. Gregory cautions that
for the researcher to “select these for special emphasis says more about the culture of the
researcher than the researched, for whom all culture is equally taken for granted” (p.
359). In the native-view, the participants’ culture becomes the theoretical underpinning
through which behavior is studied, not through the external culture of the researcher.
Gregory’s rationale for the study of native-views “comes ﬂom the belief that meanings
are linked to behavior, and those who take this perspective deﬁne culture as a system of
meanings” (p. 163).

Merriam (1998) describes case study as an in-depth, comprehensive analysis of a
single episode in a social unit where the episode or unit is “a single entity, a unit around
which there are boundaries” (p.27). Merriam draws three distinctions when it comes to
case study. The ﬁrst is case studies are particularistic in what can be revealed about a

certain phenomenon arising ﬂom puzzling situations in everyday practice. The second is

57

that case studies are descriptive in a thick manner, exploring many variables and their
interaction over a period of time. Third, case studies are heuristic by expanding the
reader’s knowledge about the phenomenon with the discovery of new meaning.

Merriam (1998) stresses the use of categorizing elements of the data obtained 30
that the researcher can reach across data sources, condense the data, and arrive at
similarities or dissirnilarities without an emphasis on their theoretical meanings. Schein
(2004) questions the use of such categorization or classiﬁcation systems on the basis that
“these tend to be so vast and detailed that cultural essence becomes difﬁcult to discern”
(p. 18). Rosen (1991) seems to compliment Schein’s assessment when he states, “Instead,
understanding social process involves getting inside the world of those generating it”
(p.280). Instead of categorization schemes, this study utilized narrative inquiry as a more
appropriate technique both to gather and analyze the interview data.

Connelly and Chandinin (1990) describe narrative inQuiry as, “the study of the
ways humans experience the world” (p. 2). The narrative inquiry is a way for the
researcher to take a person’s story about his or her experiences in a situation and
construct a narrative of that account, essentially allowing a reader to live vicariously that
experience as though it were his or her own. The semi-structured interview protocol is
found in Appendix A. I also used respondent drawings of their pre and post-merger
perceptions as part of the data collection process, so the questions refer to drawings. The
use of drawing is further explained later in this methods section.

In commenting on narrative inquiry with a native view, Schwartzman (1993)
writes, “this approach recognizes that anthropologists must both understand and work

within native cultural systems, but they must also question and attempt to go beyond

58

them by adopting a comparative and critical perspective on their research” (p. 35).
Merriam (1998) relates, “The text is analyzed by the techniques of a particular discipline
or perspective” (p. 158). Qualitative case study data are interested in how the “story
narratives vary across cultures, together with the cultural patterning of customs, beliefs,
values, performance, and the social contexts found in the narrative” (Merriam, 1998 p.
158). The perspective Merriam calls for was, in this case study, the narratives of
participants’ patterning of customs, beliefs, values, performance, and social contexts in
the merger process through the view of Schein’s (2004) process of establishing cultural
features. This means the narratives were analyzed to elicit the themes of culture ﬂom pre-
merger to post-merger. These themes were described through Schein’s idea of artifacts,
espoused values, and basic assumptions.

The ﬁrst research question, “When higher education organizations merge, what is
the inﬂuence of organizational culture?” will be addressed by a synthesis of information
gathered ﬂom addressing research questions one and two, and the other two portions of
the methodology, participant drawings and the organization document review. See
Appendix A. for a listing of questions that will be explored with participants; these
questions could be modiﬁed somewhat depending on the participant’s responses and
depending on the information received ﬂom the participant drawings. I recognize the
ﬂuidity of data and analysis attendant of an ethnographic approach and I will allow the
questions, analysis of data, and the development of themes to go where the data take me.

The synthesis of the stories will also relate whether the participant thought
particular organizational action(s), as described in his or her story, was successful or not,

or whether the organizational action produced heightened levels of anxiety for the

59

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participant. The expression of anxiety will indicate whether the participant felt
comfortable with the “ﬁt” in the direction of culture reinterpretation in the merger
process. These elements of the participants’ narrative will be used to address the second
research question, “What are the perceptions of the academic and operational
professionals to the cultural development of a merged higher education institution?”

The narrative of each participant’s story will be related in a manner that notes
their perception of these artifacts, espoused values, and basic assumptions ﬂom pre to
post-merger. Together with documentation ﬂom the merged organization, these
narratives provide information to address the third research question, “How do these
professionals deal with the congruence and incongruence between organizational
symbols, espoused values, and the basic assumptions of culture?”

Connelly and Clandinin (1990) deemphasize the use of the terms reliability and
validity in the analysis of narrative inquiry data, preferring to use the terms apparency
and verisimilitude. Apparency is something that is readily understood, evident, or
perceived. Verisimilitude is the appearance that something is true or real and is a more
appropriate gauge of the narrative’s strength. Rosen (1991) reinforces that ethnography
involves both data collection and analysis being intertwined with each other, with
interpretation of the events described serving as the source of meaning. This is not to say
that the results of this study will be satisﬁed solely with the appearance that something is
right or true. The narratives of the participants will be viewed through the conceptual
ﬂamework for themes that address the research questions.

An independent peer-debriefer assessed all participant recordings to the

transcripts to verify the accuracy of the transcripts.

60

Participant Drawings

The old adage goes “a picture is worth a thousand words.” Yet, the use of
participant drawings is a relatively new technique in qualitative research in which adults
are the subjects (Haney, Russell, and Bebell, 2004). The rationale to use this technique
derives ﬂom the inexact deﬁnition or conception of the term “culture.” The
methodological conundrum in gathering the stories of participants engaged in activities
that have cultural meaning is that each person has his or her own conception of what the
term culture means. The participant may not even use the word culture in that conception.
In one sense, for this type of ethnographic research, that is a good thing, because the
purpose is to gather the perceptions and stories of people and look for commonalities or
dissirnilarities within a particular perspective or conceptual ﬂamework. The disadvantage
is, however, that the researcher can be met with questions like, “what do you mean by
culture, what do you mean by enculturation, or what do you mean by organizational
culture?” A concept like culture is easy to say, but not easy to associate to the events of
life. It is a reasonable expectation that any attempt to explain what I mean by the term
culture risks contaminating the participant’s own impressions or ﬂame of reference on
the subject. Having the participant draw a picture that portrays how he or she sees himself
or herself in a situation, without using the word culture, serves as a vehicle for the
researcher to engage the participant in ﬁrtther meaningful dialogue. The drawings were
completed prior to the interview portion, but during the same contact session with each
participant.

Drawing has been used for a number of years in research dealing with children in

both education and as a therapy following various types of trauma (Haney et al., 2004).

61

Yet, Haney et al. relate that drawing is seldom used in educational research relating to
adults or to the enterprise of education. This exclusion would reasonably include higher
education. The rationale for the efﬁcacy of what drawings offer the researcher is
summarized by Weber and Mitchell (1995) who said, “drawings offer a different glimpse
into human sense-making than written or spoken texts do because they can express that
which is not easily put into words: the ineffable, the elusive, the not-yet—thought-through,
the subconscious” (p. 34). Ely (1973) includes pictures along with words spoken, words
written, graphics, and numbers as symbolic representations of experience designed to
reduce uncertainty. Merriam (1998), when differentiating qualitative ﬂorn quantitative
research says, “words and pictures rather than numbers are used to convey what the
researcher has learned about a phenomenon” (p. 8).

Prior to the interview portion beginning, each participant was asked to draw, in
consecutive order, two pictures with prompts that do not use the word culture,

1. The organizational culture at the employer before the merger, using the prompt,
“Think about the work and atmosphere that you feel best represents your
workplace at (name of the prior institution). Draw a picture of yourself working
for (name of prior institution)”

2. The present organizational culture in the merged institution, using the prompt,
“Think about the work and atmosphere that you feel best represents your
workplace at (name of the merged institution)” See Appendix B. for a
representation of what the drawing pages and instruction looked like.

Each participant was asked to explain the meaning of the pre and post-merger

drawing. These explanations were then used to explore and elicit additional narrative

62

detail in the remaining interview. The coding system that was used with the drawings is
called holistic coding (Haney et al., 2004), which is based on “an overall judgment about
how some overall or holistic aspect of a situation is depicted” (p. 254). In this case the
holistic coding of the drawings was,

1. How does the participant describe the pre-merger drawing?

2. How does the participant describe the post-merger drawing?

3. What changes do they articulate between the two drawings?

4. What, if any, meaning does the participant attribute to the changes?

An independent peer—debriefer also assessed whether the interpretations I take
from the participant’s descriptions of the drawings were consistent with those
descriptions.

Document Analysis

The documents that were of special interest for this project are those having to do
with surveys of employee satisfaction, reports ﬂom consulting ﬁrms having to do with
culture management during a merger, and public pronouncements of intentions such as
mission, vision, values, goals, or written materials that sanction the organization’s
intentions. Despite pledges of cooperation with this study by the executive management
of the subject institution, my relationship with the institution changed during the
preparation of this proposal (see the limitations of the study section). The willingness of
the institutional leadership to be wholly forthcoming with a complete listing of the
previously detailed documentation is impossible to gauge for I was not privy to written
sources such as meeting minutes or ﬁnancial statements. What documents are provided

was used to gain a better idea of institutional intentions regarding culture management

63

during and after the merger. This was then compared to the narrative interviews and the
drawings in an effort to address, primarily, the ﬁrst research question, “When higher
education organizations merge, what is the impact on organizational culture?” However,
the documents were also able to address aspects of the other two research questions.
The Setting

All the names for people and locations in this study are pseudonyms. The setting
for this study was Davis University, a large (approximately 13,000 students), private, not-
for-proﬁt university that offers associates’, bachelors’, and masters’ degrees, primarily in
business and accounting, but also in allied health, nursing, and computer information
systems. The university has 30 locations in the Midwest. Davis University traces its
origin back to the Culvertown Business College in 1866 and has developed a reputation
of providing a practical, real-world business education for its students (Moceri. 1990).
Davis University was formed in 2000 ﬂom the merger of three legally distinct and
separately accredited (North Central Association) private, not-for-proﬁt colleges: Glen
Lincoln College, located primarily in the Clare City/Huntington region; and Davis
College, located primarily in western Michigan. The third partner in the merger was the
Decatur College of Business, located primarily in the Decatur, Michigan area, which had
“merg ” with Davis College through the governance mechanism of a shared board of
trustees, but not through Internal Revenue Service designation, operations or
accreditation, in 1985. The central administration and executive management oﬂices of
the merged Davis University are on the campus located in Culvertown, Michigan.

To put the merger of these three schools into a more accurate context requires

delving into the history and relationships of these institutions in greater depth. From its

64

inception in 1866, the Culvertown Business College operated as a proprietary, for-proﬁt
company. In 1910 the struggling school was deserted by its then present owner Aaron E.
Parrish, who also stripped the operation’s bank account (Moceri, 1990). Michael E.
Davis, then a faculty member, rescued the school and became its owner and president a
short time later. M. E. Davis’s tenure as president continued until his death in 1959.
During this time period there were several changes in the school’s name that reﬂected
Davis’s ownership, eventually settling on the Davis Institute immediately after World
War 11. Davis Institute converted ﬂom a for-proﬁt to a private, not-for-proﬁt corporation
in 1954 and changed its name to Davis College in 1964 (Moceri, 1990).

The hairbreadth escape ﬂom bankruptcy in 1910 formed a survival story that had
profound effects on ME. Davis and the protégés he developed within the organization. It
is signiﬁcant that his long tenure of 49 years allowed this ethos of ﬁnancial growth and
ﬁscal responsibility to permeate all aspects of the school.

Under Davis’s leadership, the family-owned business acquired numerous other
proprietary business schools in other Michigan locations. Many of these later became
campuses of Davis College (Moceri, 1990). In 1957, ME. Davis purchased the Saginaw
Business Institute and added campuses in Clare City, Manorville, and Amity. The
Saginaw Business Institute was renamed as Glen Lincoln Junior College in 1986.
Another of the many proprietary school purchases made by M. E. Davis during the period
of expansion following World War II was the Decatur Business Institute in 1954. The
Institute continued to operate as a private, for-proﬁt corporation, changing its name to the
Decatur College of Business in 1962, until its accreditation by North Central in 1974.

Davis College’s accreditation with North Central followed in 1976 (Moceri, 1990).

65

The institutional relationship between Davis College and the Decatur College of
Business is complicated by the fact that M. E. Davis’s successor, Robert Smith (who
married M. E. Davis’s daughter, Margaret, in 1944) was named the president of both the
Decatur Business Institute (for—proﬁt) and the Davis Institute (not—for-proﬁt) after taking
over ﬂom M. E. Davis, upon his passing in 1959. Smith continued as president of both
organizations until his retirement in 1977 (Moceri, 1990).

Donald Jones was named president of Davis College following Smith’s retirement
and began the task of drawing together the disparate elements of the Davis/Smith family
enterprise. In 1985 Davis College acquired the Decatur College of Business. This
acquisition was a merger in one sense for there was a connection between the boards of
trustees of each organization and a common chief executive officer in Donald Jones, yet
the Decatur College of Business maintained its own president, James Wright. The boards
coordinated together and acted as a policymaking body, but remained distinct. Each
institution maintained legal autonomy as separate non-proﬁt corporations and maintained
autonomous accreditation through North Central. Glen Lincoln Junior College
governance continued under the Davis family corporation called Davis Schools, Inc.
(Moceri, 1990).

In 1997 Jones, together with the boards of Davis College, the Decatur College of
Business and Davis Schools, Inc. gathered the three parts of the enterprise under a non-
proﬁt corporation called Davis Educational System, Inc. (DES). At the same time the
“junior” was dropped ﬂom the name of Glen Lincoln Junior College. The “super board”
of DES actually consisted of selected board members ﬂom the three schools and the

Davis/Smith family, and served as a holding company and central policymaking body for

66

the three institutions with Donald Jones as chancellor. Plans for the eventual
consolidation of all boards of trustees and separate foundations continued through the
remainder of the 19903, culminating with the actual full-asset merger of all three schools
under one board in 2000. Donald Jones retired in that year and Gregory Deemer, a former
member of the Glen Lincoln College Board of Trustees was named president of the
newly created Davis University. Since the merger in 2000, the university combined
curricula and business operations resulting in the start of uniﬁed programs, courses, and
administration in the fall of 2003. The university received its ﬁrst, united accreditation
ﬂom North Central as Davis University in the fall of 2004.
Research Participants

The members of Davis University who were asked to volunteer as participants in
this study were obtained ﬂom three hierarchical categories in the organization:

1. Staff - generally those who are hourly workers or those who do not
manage others.

2. Middle management — those who supervise others, but do not have
decision-making responsibilities for strategic directions. Persons in this
category might also have teaching responsibilities.

3. Executive management - those who supervise others as leaders of a
campus or university-wide area of responsibility. Persons in this category
would have titles such as “vice president of. . .” or “dean of...”

The rationale for this selection was to obtain a vertically stratiﬁed sampling of
persons ﬂom different hierarchical levels of the organization. It is possible that the same

events could be created or enacted differently at different levels of the hierarchy,

67

depending on a persons’ access to information and contacts. The goal is to have a
representative ﬂom each of the three pre-merger schools in each of the three hierarchical
categories.

All persons asked to participate had at least three years of employment with one
of the pre-merger schools prior to 2000. In this way, it can be reasonably assured that
each person was acculturated to the norms and culture of the pre-merger school. Every
effort was made to assure approximately equal representation ﬂom all three pre-merger
institutions. The Davis University Human Resources Department had informed me that
80 to 90 persons in the system met the criteria of positions held and length of service with
one of the three pre-merger institutions. Invitations to participate in the study were
mailed with a self-addressed, stamped reply envelope to all those who qualiﬁed. I
disclosed my prior contact with and past working relationship with each person agreeing
to be interviewed. Where possible, I did not interview those who I have worked with
closely in the past. Letters of permission were mailed to those selected with a self-
addressed, stamped return envelope to me. Please see Appendix C for sample of the
letters of invitation and permission form that was used.

The methods to assure conﬁdentiality used in this study were designed to make
every effort that no user identiﬁable information is used. All participants were identiﬁed
simply by job category, or a description that is participant unidentiﬁable, and his or her
former association with one of the pre-merger institutions. When referred to in the
ﬁndings of the study, each person had a pseudonym assigned which did not correspond to
the actual gender of that person. Exceptions to this were made only if the stories or

drawings of a person are conveyed in such a way as to make necessary a female or male

68

voice. Those pseudonyms were used throughout all materials such as transcripts and
labels on drawings. No participant was told the name of any other participant. All
interviews were also audio recorded and I retained the tapes. There was a peer debrieﬁng
of the written transcripts to the recorded conversations to assure the accuracy of
transcription.

Any other areas of conﬁdentiality or protection of the participant’s rights
necessary were consistent with and approved by the University Committee on Research
Involving Human Subjects (U CRIHS) as per Michigan State University policy.
Limitations of the Study

I am a former faculty member of Davis College from 1994 to 2000 and served as
Director of Faculty Development for Davis University ﬂom 2000 to June 2004. The
university reorganized its administrative structure in June 2004, resulting in the
elimination of the faculty development director position along with 11 other positions at
that time. The planning for this study was already well under way. At the time of my
separation I received conﬁrmation that the previous consent given by Davis’s President
.Deemer regarding the University’s participation and the cooperation of the organization
would be honored, and my progress would not be impeded by the fact that I was no
longer working for the university.

It is quite natural and reasonable that an observer would have concern over my
objectivity in exploring the culture of this organization on two grounds. First, that I was
employed by that organization and second, that the organization recently severed that
employment relationship. In addressing the ﬁrst concern, studying the culture of an

organization to which I was employed could, indeed, present bias if that employment was

69

the only one I held with a college or university. However, I have also held faculty
appointments at the State University of New York at Stony Brook (ﬁve years) and with
the University of Pittsburgh (seven years) prior to joining Davis College in 1994. My
cultural paradigm of higher education is far wider than just Davis University or the pre-
merger institution of Davis College. This breadth of experience diminishes the chance
that I will have a bias toward the culture of either Davis University or College.
Familiarity with the institution can be considered advantageous when using a native-view
paradigm since the researcher is better able to decipher and interpret the cultural signals
of the organization due to a more intimate knowledge of the organization (Gregory,
1983)

The second concern is more difficult to deal with for no person whose job has
been eliminated can be said to enjoy the experience. It is natural to have resentment over
the action, if for no other reason than the disruption caused to one’s life and family. I was
not spared that disruption. I secured employment teaching health care administration, my
original discipline, at a public university in Michigan after ﬁve months unemployment. In
addition, I did not suffer severe ﬁnancial hardship since the separation package ﬂcm
Davis University was sufﬁcient until new employment was obtained. A3 a self-reﬂective
person, I psychologically put my job 1033 into the context of my wider career, and
although it was not wanted, I “made my peace” with the event.

At the same time, my observations and experiences as an insider to the cultural
patterns and events of the merger are something that cannot be dismissed ﬂom the
research and analysis of this study. The fact of I, as an insider, have a perspective upon

which to reﬂect on the data obtained is noted by Gregory (1983) and Schein (2004) as an

70

insight that Schein says allows the insider to offer, “learn[ed] semantic nuances, how one
set of categories relates to other set of categories, how means are translated into behavior,
and how such behavioral rules apply situationally (p. 170).” Morgan (1997) relates, “It is
difficult to judge a culture ﬂom the outside (p. 125).” In order to provide a counterpoint
to my bias, I focused descriptions and translations of events without ascribing judgments
of right or wrong to them.
Organization of Data Presentation

A number of options are available to convey the results of information gleaned
ﬂom document analysis, participant drawings, and participant interviews. The
perspective that offers the clearest presentation of the data is a simple time line that
presents the data on a continuum ﬂom prior to the merger to events that are
approximately through the time of the interviews. A chronological approach allows for a
recounting of the events as the participants remembered them together with incorporation.
of any institutional documents that pertained to those events. As such, a time line also
allowed for the identiﬁcation of themes, differences in participant perceptions of pre-
merger organizational culture, and variations that might account for level of employment
status. The simplicity of a time line allows a correlation of information that is not readily
available to the other perspectives previously mentioned, for this is how the participants
experienced the events. For these reasons the data will be described in a chronological
fashion. However, I will use associations of stories and events relating to participant
hierarchical level in the organization or pre-merger afﬁliation, but the chronological

approach offers the framework for the overall presentation of the conversations.

71

The participants were not able to always provide exact dates to the events they
related, owing most likely, to the ftmction memory plays in recounting events of several
years past. For that reason the data time line will be comprised of two phases; the pre-

merger phase of 1997 to 2000 and the merger phase of 2000 to 2005.

72

Chapter Four: Results
It is necessary to introduce the interview participants and their pre-merger
institution affiliation. All participants either chose their own pseudonym or accepted the
one I chose. I have also included a comment on the prior relationship that I had with each
participant.

Betty: A staff level member afﬁliated with Davis College (DC). I met Betty
several times prior to the interview, although we worked on different
campuses of DC. I solicited her help with a faculty development project
about six months prior to my departure ﬂom Davis.

Redeye: A staff level member affiliated with the Decatur College of Business

(DCB). I never met Redeye before the interview.

Madge: A staff level member affiliated with Davis College. Madge and I knew
each other for approximately eight years. I worked with Madge at an
admissions event in 1997. Otherwise, we were only acquaintances.

Jordan: A middle management member affiliated with Glen Lincoln College
(GLC). Jordan and I met a few times at large, combined academic
meetings for faculty of all three schools.

Bobbi: A middle management member affiliated with Glen Lincoln College.
Bobbi and I meta few times at large, combined academic meetings for
faculty of all three schools.

Tim: A middle management member affiliated with the Decatur College of

Business. I never met Tim prior to the interview.

73

 

 

 

 

Mary: A middle management member affiliated with Davis College. Mary and I
knew each other for approximately seven years and attended many
academic meetings together. Mary worked on a different campus and
taught in a different discipline than mine, so we had little day to day
working contact.

Jack: An executive/vice president level member affiliated with Davis College.
Jack and I knew each other for almost 11 years and had ﬂequent contact
with each other, even though we worked in different areas.

Rick: An executive/vice president level member affiliated with the Decatur
College of Business. Rick and I knew each other for about ﬁve years and
we both participated in the Davis Leadership Institute one year.

All participants chose the location of the interviews. There were four interviews
conducted on the campuses of Davis University. Three interviews took place in private
residences, one occurred in a church, and one was located in a public library. All of the
participants except Redeye and Jack expressed some concern for anonymity either in
setting the interview appointment or at some point in the interview itself.

The Pre-Merger Phase

When I asked the ﬁrst participant to choose a pseudonym to protect his
conﬁdentiality, the last name I would have guessed is "Redeye." Redeye explained that it
was a nickname ﬂom his childhood and that no one at Davis would know to whom it
referred. Overall, Redeye did not appear to be too concerned with being seen with me for

the interview took place at one of the Sparkstown campus of Davis University’s. I asked

74

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Redeye to describe the pre-merger drawing (Figure 1) he made. After again apologizing
for the crudeness of his artwork he said,

Well, to me it was family. When you'd come to work in the morning or afternoon

or evening or whatever it was, you'd walk into the Dean's office and the secretary

would always greet you with a smile and act like she was happy that you were

there, made you feel comfortable, and that's probably one of the reasons why I'm

still here, is because of the fact that it was always comfortable.

Redeye started with the Decatur College of Business in 1990 on a part-time basis and his
employment continued as part-time in a non-teaching staff position to the present. He
liked the hours since when he started Redeye had retired ﬂom another profession. Redeye
related that in his DCB staff position, he was initially responsible for 13 other people, all
of whom were also part-time.

When I ﬁrst mentioned "Davis" to Redeye his eyes squinted a bit and I asked
when he ﬁrst heard of Davis College. "Ninety-eight I believe it was. Then we started
decreasing in numbers, after we became Davis. That's when they got rid of 29 people; it
was sprung on everyone." Redeye continued, "It was shocking. So my initial take on
Davis was cold the way it happened. You clean house and don't let people know ahead of
time they are losing their jobs." Redeye said he was designated to tell the people
involved. He declined to do that and apparently did not suffer any repercussions owing to
his refusal to perform that notiﬁcation. When I asked Redeye how this mass termination
of people all at once made him feel he said, “This thing was utterly shocking to me. I’m
looking at these people and thinking ‘wow’, what’s going on here?” Redeye then related

that he was at a golf outing later that afternoon when he was called back to the campus

75

     

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76

because they were receiving bomb threats. “That was just people that were upset with
what happened,” Redeye said. He seemed to say this in a way that indicated more
sympathy with, rather than recrimination towards those who had made the bomb threats.

Redeye’s reference to personnel cuts in 1998 came before the formal merger
occurred in 2000. We did not talk ﬂrrther as to whether these actions were planned by the
Decatur College of Business before the establishment of DES or if the cuts were a result
of DES directives. Either way, large scale personnel cuts were not mentioned by any
other participant ﬂom any of the pre-merger institutions.

Tim also used the idea of family when drawing his pre-merger perception of DCB
when I met him in his home (ﬁgure 2.). In describing the pre-merger drawing Tim said,
“First off, happiness, receptive, productive, a family type business where everyone works
together to accomplish goals. A nice, pleasant place to work, but with that also very
effective.” I then asked, “I see the sun is shining here. Is that a kind of sign of happiness?
Did you feel satisﬁed and fulﬁlled in working at DCB before the merger?” Tim answered
“yes.” He continued by saying that his perception of the highest value for the
organization at that time was customer service.

There’s no way you can just preach someone customer service. I think the

customer service goes back to the resources. I had the resources to give them the

answers. I can be helpful to them. I can take the question and go beyond what
they ask me and assist them and give them what they need. That, to me, is good

customer service.

77

 

Ti

 

/

 

. / “I
Name Pseudonym l [/11 Date T‘ ’- Premerger

Figure 2. Tim: Pre-Merger (drawn by interview participant)

78

Tim’s perception of the pre-merger DCB seems to be one of being provided the support
(resources) necessary to do his job of career counseling and student internship placement
in local companies.

I met with Mary in a public library conference room in Culvertown. The setting
was at her request to better assure anonymity. Mary had a similar impression of an
organizationally supportive pre-merger environment at Davis College; except she
described her pre-merger drawing (ﬁgure 3) as a more work-oriented, collegial place
where, “It’s colorful, it’s open, it’s fun! It is supposed to represent the way it used to be
where risk taking was good, everyone was on an equal plane. There really weren’t any
barriers. We had fun. We tried stuff. It was a good thing.” Mary went on to add,

We were encouraged not to take the old business school model. At least in my

experience, it was go ahead and take a risk, be creative feeling no barriers. The

campus, in particular that I was on was like a skunk work campus. We were
always trying new stuff. Doors were open. That’s why I have lots of curly Q’s and
lines going over each other, because there was no real hierarchy. Suits were an
antithesis, you know, we were more like we wore blue jeans and Davis tee-shirts
and sweatshirts more than anything else. We had toys in our ofﬁces. All sorts of
personal stuff... [student] learning was the key.

Mary’s comment about toys and personal items was apparently made in a manner

to draw a contrast to the current environment, stated later in the conversation. Offices on

79

 

 

 

 

Figure 3. Mary: Pre-Merger (drawn by interview participant)

80

the campus where she works had, within the past year, mandated that personal effects be
removed. The only exceptions were diplomas and a few family pictures.

Jordan’s comments about the working environment and culture were derived ﬂom
his description of the Glen Lincoln College (GLC) pre-merger drawing (ﬁgure 4).

There is an obvious leader. The leader is a little bit bigger than the other ﬁgures,

not signiﬁcantly 30. Overall people look towards the leader, most of the people.

They are relatively happy, as far as the work environment. They have pretty good

times. You see that they all have their hands joined or they are close to each other

indicating that for the most part, people get along. There seems to be a working
relationship. Everyone seems to be going in the same way. There are a couple of
people who are looking away ﬂom the leader and on occasion people come and
go and have other avenues to pursue. It doesn’t seem to be upsetting the other

people. There doesn’t seem to be anger or so forth that they are leaving. It is a

somewhat family-type of an environment. Disagreements were handled openly

and could be handled on the spot.

When I asked for an example of a disagreement, Jordan replied that wages and
ﬁnancial compensation for the staff and faculty was a point of contention for several
years prior to the merger, but that disagreement did not unduly inﬂuence the working
environment in a negative fashion. Jordan said the reason for this was the ability to
communicate with leaders. “It (salary) was a big factor, but you had easy access to the
decision makers,” Jordan said.

You were involved in the decision-making that went on even though sometimes it

was overridden, you still had a piece. You knew what was happening. There

81

 

 

aft. 62
(4* /\\\/, WV «r.

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Name PseudonymmLZQb Date gg/Zéﬁ Premerger

Figure 4. Jordan: Pre-Merger (drawn by interview participant)

82

wasn’t uncertainty day to day of what the work environment was like. I would
particular role. Certainly, that had limits, but you had a say, your voice was heard,
say, to my knowledge, everyone on the campus felt empowered over their own
let me put it that way. Not always agreed, which was the day to day ﬂustration of
anyjob.
Bobbi initially described a somewhat different aspect of GLC prior to the merger
(ﬁgure 5), the physical setting prior to 1990.
It is a very traditional high school setting. Teacher in the ﬂont, chalkboard behind
him, student sitting in rows, made up for a very left-brain learner, you know what
I mean. We did the traditional classroom setting even though the work we were
doing was college material and we were using college textbooks. Our oﬂices,
where the faculty work, were very small, they weren’t very user-ﬂiendly. We had
a lot of desks with very little room because the desks were real close together.
There wasn’t a whole lot of thought put into the instructor’s work space, but we
got along. There were probably six of us in a room smaller than the one we are in
now, nah, it had to a little bigger.
Bobbi and I met at the Manorville campus building. The office we met in was
approximately 8 by 11 feet and was Bobbi’s office exclusively, owing to her present
position as a coordinator. When reﬂecting on what it was like to work for GLC
personally. Bobbi replied,
It was strict. I felt a little constrained because we were all supposed to, well, we

didn’t use a lot of different methods of teaching and we were supposed to be

83

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Figure 5. Bobbi: Pre-Merger (drawn by interview participant)

84

:1-

pretty straight and narrow. We wore skirts and nylons and high heels and it wasn’t

a real relaxing situation. It was academic, but it wasn’t very relaxing.

Business attire was the norm and was expected because GLC was a career oriented
school. When asked how this expectation was communicated to new people at GLC,
Bobbi said, “I deﬁnitely think it was administratively conveyed. It was expected that you
dress up a little more. I don’t recall of it was written down, but yes, there was a dress
code.” She later called the atmosphere very regimented.

The other area that impressed Bobbi about GLC before the merger was the
support the institution gave to people who wanted to advance their own education. When
GLC was a junior college (called Glen Lincoln Junior College until 1996), Bobbi had the
academic credentials to teach at an associate’s degree level. When GLC began its quest to
offer baccalaureate degrees after 1996, Bobbi was encouraged and ﬁnancially supported
through tuition reimbursement to obtain Masters degree, which was needed to teach in a
four-year school. Bobbi described the support as generous and unexpected, given the
part-tirne employment status she had at that time.

All three of the pre-merger schools relied heavily on adjunct faculty as has Davis
University after the merger. Bobbi mentioned that when teaching, she was often at the
Gearson Campus in the morning and the Manorville Campus in the afternoon. Her feeling
was that, at GLC, cooperative faculty sharing between campuses was common. Now, at
DC, faculty only taught on one campus; they were not allowed to teach on another
campus.

I met with Betty in her home for the interview. She described the pre-merger

drawing (ﬁgure 6) of her campus within Davis College (DC) as having a throne room,

85

which represented the Admissions Office. “Whatever they wanted we were supposed to
supply for them and the rest of us, whether it was the Business Office or the Registrar’s
Office, where I was associated back then.” Betty’s present functions centered in the
systems support area of Davis University and that was how I came to know her in our
few contacts since the merger.

In looking at Betty’s pre-merger drawing, another area, the slave’s quarters, stood
out and gave greater appreciation to the meaning of that phrase listed directly under the i

Registrar’s Office notation. Betty continued, “That’s kind of the way it was because we

 

had to work for the man. I just remember different things about what we had to do.” :
Betty spoke in a slightly different tone, presumably imitating a person ﬂom the

Admission’s Office, “We need this information and we need it right now.” Returning to

her identity Betty said, “Well okay I have this stack of diplomas for graduates and they

want their diplomas right now, too. I got into trouble with the dean a couple of times

because I refused to drop what I was doing for the student to answer the call to

Admissions.” Again taking on the voice of someone ﬂom Admissions Betty said, “If we

don’t get them in they’re not going to graduate.” “That was always the threat they held

over our head,” Betty continued, “enrollment was the goal.”

Betty related that there were a number of questionable enrollment practices that
were condoned, and in many cases actively encouraged by local campus leadership to
“hike” (Betty’s term) the numbers. Betty attributed this to the intense enrollment
competition fostered between campuses by the executive administration. The most

prevalent dubious enrollment practice for Betty was to admit students who had

86

 

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Figure 6. Betty: Pre-Merger (drawn by interview participant)

 

87

marginal or inadequate academic preparation. She emphasized that the idea was, “get
them in the door; get those numbers up. We don’t care what happens to them after you
get them in the door!” Attention to retention was eventually given, but Betty
characterized it as almost an afterthought, something that simply had to be done because
of the poor academic quality of the incoming students. She described the relationships
between co-workers as being quite departrnentally centered. “There wasn’t a lot (of
interaction). If you were in Financial Aid you didn’t go out with people ﬂom
Admissions.” Admissions had the attitude of “the serfs don’t dinner with the ladies in
waiting.”

Betty spoke of a feeling of estrangement between Admissions and the Registrar’s
Ofﬁce that was keenly felt, in her mind, because the Registrar was often a stumbling
block to the enrollment objectives of Admissions. She shared that it was not uncommon
for the Registrars, who were responsible for transcript evaluation and the acceptance of
prior credits, to deny credits that were not earned at an accredited institution or presented
with a grade less than “C.” A student may have been previously assured by the
Admissions specialist that a certain number of those credits were transferable and based
the decision to enter DC on that assurance. When the Registrar’s Office informed the
student that the credits were not acceptable, the disappointed student complained to
Admissions. Instead of reforming how they counseled prospective students, Adrrrissions
staff complained to the Registrar and to the dean to allow the credits and maintain the
enrollment count. Betty did not say what the results of these complaints were, but I
surmised ﬂom the scowl on her face that the Registrar’s Office was often told to accept

the transcript as promised by Admissions.

88

I met with Madge on one of the Davis University campuses at a date and time of
her request. It happened there was a fund-raising event that same evening on the campus
with a large number of central administration executives present. When Madge arrived, I
immediately asked if she would like to postpone the meeting to another time to protect
her conﬁdentiality. Although Madge insisted we proceed, her attention seemed often
diverted throughout the interview when people passed by the glass door of the conference

room.

3‘1 ‘

Figuring prominently in Madge’s description of the pre-merger drawing (ﬁgure 7)

[-11 M

of Davis College was the school’s drive and competition to meet enrollment goals. The
term “numbers” and a representation of what can be described as a line graph displaying
an up and down, but a clear overall upward trend played a central aspect to the
illustration. Madge was working in a staff level position in Admissions at a different
campus of DC than Betty. As Madge put it,
We were focused on what our speciﬁc campus was doing at the time. We were
very focused on recruiting and getting numbers to meet goals. We were really
focused on meeting our budget and recruiting and eliminating [the] competition
with other campuses within the system. They (the pre-merger campus) used a
competitive edge within the system with the employees to get us to strive toward
goals.
Madge explained that this competitive atmosphere was not only between different
Campuses of the DC system, but also between individual representatives on the same
Cammrs. Each admissions representative was measured weekly in the attainment of

admissions goals. However, Madge added, “that competition actually used to be a

89

positive incentive to encourage us to strive much harder for reaching those goals in a
deadline period.” The competitive structure that emerged ﬂom Madge’s description was
between individuals with a given campus to the larger aspect between campuses. This
culminated in twice yearly meetings of Admissions representatives ﬂom all the campuses
in DC where results were compared and awards given to those who exceeded the goals
set for them.

Madge’s positive impression of the competition between admissions individuals
within each campus and between campuses became somewhat more qualiﬁed when she
spoke of how the competition was manifested.

Well, as it became more and more of a ﬁght for meeting numbers and getting

goals, it caused anxiety between the employees and across the campuses. We

weren’t willing to help the other campuses with the best interests of the students;
we were just so focused on getting our own goals... You had to be very protective
and very guarded with any student you met with because if a student came to
meet with you to get information and [then] go home and think about it and talk to

a partner, they were designated as your student. You were very prompt in coding

that visit (entering it into the computer database) you had and entering notes on

the screen so you were territorially setting yourself to meet with this person
because if they’ve been privately applied with someone else then that person

would get the credit.

90

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Name Pseudonym Mtg/f C Date_{%tI #0; Premerger

Figure 7. Madge: Pre-Merger (drawn by interview participant)

91

 

Madge saw situations when claiming prospective students caused rifts between
admissions representatives and felt that these disputes were often a source of conﬂicts
between representatives. When asked how the management of the admissions department
dealt with these conﬂicts, Madge indicated that there were not speciﬁc policies in place
to bring order to the conﬂicts that arose. She said that each representative maintained a
private dialogue with his or her manager to indicate when there might be a conﬂict with
someone else and, thereby, express their “ownership” for a particular prospective student.

It seemed that there might be two things happening: competition between
representatives and the cooperation needed'to meet collective campus goals that were
potentially at odds with each other. I asked Madge for her overall impression of which
current approach, competition or team-work, predominated at her campus, and she said it
was more of a team spirit atmosphere.

Shifting focus to those who worked at an executive leadership level found a
general agreement with the preoccupation of enrollment numbers. I met with Rick on a
Sunday at his home in suburban Big City. Rick’s afﬁliation was with DCB, functioning
in an academic leadership position.

Rick began describing his drawing (ﬁgure 8) by recounting the overall
arrangement of the three schools to each other and to the Davis Educational System
(DES).

DES was a broad umbrella that oversaw Davis College, Glen Lincoln College,

and the Decatur College of Business. That structure had existed back into the

1980’s and possibly a little before that, however, they all operated as independent

entities with their own governing boards locally, their own inﬂastructure under

92

local management, faculty, curriculum, and so on. DCB was a cash cow for the
DES, signiﬁcantly so. They made good money for DES, more than the other two
entities did combined. However, their business model was predicated on
enrollment at any cost. They brought people in who had very little hope of
actually succeeding and loaded them up with ﬁnancial aid. They may have stayed
ﬁve classes and ﬂunked out or, unfortunately, some of them did graduate. Grades
were wildly inﬂated. GPA’s were wildly inﬂated, so they had very little meaning.

Sometime in 1997 [enrollment] started to fall off and it is my supposition that the

 

business model came back to bite them in the butt, because they did not have the E

quality. The word was out there. DCB was considered to be somewhat of a

diploma mill, 3 second rate, the school of last resort.
Rick went on to describe his disappointment with the quality of the employees he found
there. “There was an incestuous sense to it,” he added. “Many of the employees had their
degree ﬂom DCB. I know their faculty had their degree ﬂom DCB. They may have gone
on to get other degrees elsewhere, but their generic education was with DCB.” Having a
leadership position in academics meant Rick had especially close contact with the
faculty. He described situations where some faculty were coming in to work, turning on
their computer, and then leaving for another job. One faculty member ran an accounting
tutoring lab for additional compensation and accounting was not his credentialed ﬁeld.
No records were kept of his tutoring activities.

Rick indicated that executive management of DCB also had lucrative beneﬁts,
saying, “Yes, top management enjoyed the birth of their success. They had generated a

lot of cash and revenue for DES and they were compensated handsomely, enjoyed their

93

 

 

 

 

 

Figure 8. Rick: Pre-Merger (drawn by interview participant)

94

perks, time off, social outings, and had networking expenses if they were in the Big City
community.” Rick quickly added, “I found out later that most of that network was based
on a quid pro quo kind of arrangement. No one [in the Big City community] really had a
lot of respect for the product that DCB was putting out.”
The last of the nine respondents to be presented in this phase of the study was
Jack, who held an executive leadership position at DC, leading a support ﬁrnction that
provided services across the entire university. His was among the ﬁrst areas to be
consolidated between the three schools in the early days of the merger. Jack’s perspective
on the organization before and after the merger is also unique among the respondents for
he reported through DES (Davis Educational System) after it was formed in 1997 as a
kind of holding company for DC, DCB, and GLC. As such, he was not technically
affiliated with a particular campus, but worked out of the DES headquarters in
Culvertown. Prior to DES he worked for the Culvertown Campus of DC. We met in a
conference room on one of the campuses of Davis University. When asked to describe his
pre-merger drawing (ﬁgure 9), Jack began,
Since I’ve been around for quite awhile (just over 20 years), I understand a lot of
the acquisitions that we have had over time. To me, DC was [the] Culvertown
[campus] for the most part with those outlying campuses who were all
autonomous. They really didn’t talk to each other too much. They, in fact,
competed with each other for students. They each were their own almost
individual company, so being on this location to me DC is Culvertown and that is
what is represented by these orange circles here. As each one was their own entity

and there wasn’t a whole lot of collaboration. There wasn’t a whole lot of

95

 

communication. There wasn’t a lot of ‘this is the way we do things at Davis.’

They were left up to their own to do things the way they wanted to. Best practice

was never necessarily communicated to the others.

Jack then moved his ﬁnger to the portion of the drawing showing DCB and said,

And then we had this thing (italics added) they called DCB that we sort of had a
relationship with even way, way back and they somehow acquired a name of their own, a
separate entity. 1 mean even more so that the Davis entities were (independent). Very
formal culture here (still pointing at DCB), very resentful that Davis was even associated
with that and so there was deﬁnitely a difficult relationship there between what was DCB
at that time and Davis on the other side of the state. From the way he talked, it seemed
Jack had some feelings of antagonism toward DCB, also.

I asked how long ago be perceived these hard feelings between DCB and DC,
trying to understand the tirneﬂarne. Jack replied, “I would say probably more prevalent in
the early to mid-903,” but then he quickly added that, “the DCB culture being very formal
[had] almost a union mentality amongst many of the workers was prevalent up to three
years ago (2002).” There were formally recognized collective-bargaining units for faculty
at the Muskego and Coram campuses of DCB, the two largest campuses. The only other
recognized unionized, collective bargaining unit was a faculty organization in

Culvertown, also the largest campus of DC.

96

 

 

 

/" 4
Name Pseudonym \j/h: Date T], IQ/pg' Premergcr

 

 

Figure 9 Jack: Pro-Merger (drawn by interview participant)

97

As in Rick’s pre-merger drawing, Jack’s drawing featured several dollar signs.
Jack’s description of these dollar signs began,
I also felt that the dollar signs here represent dollars going out to who knows
where. In other words, there wasn’t a lot of reinvestment into the university,
whether it be into physical plant, IT, inﬂastructure, and development of people. It
seems that dollars came in, and they may have come in ﬂom these outlying
regional locations into Culvertown and then they went out. You didn’t know
really for sure where they went out to. My sense is that they would spend money
on things like this boat -— Poor Dad and had little parties out there. Not necessarily
just for executives, but departments could go out there and use the boat, maybe
once a summer. Then there would always be these junkets and thing that would
cost quite a bit of money, like buying a suite at the Culvertown Arena or having a
suite at the Big City Arena and the exec-types would'use them to the extreme in
terms of large bills coating in for just one night at Big City Arena. And other
things like that — bonuses to them and what not. I don’t begrudge certain execs
making money. They are the top people and they certainly deserve what they
earn. I just feel, under the old regime and old culture there was not a lot of
investment into the university, (pause) at that point and time, the college.
Jack returned to the subject of resentment of DCB personnel towards DC and told
a story of what he observed in 1995-96 when DCB needed to upgrade their central
mainframe computer system. The Clear Water Campus of DC had a mainﬂame computer
called the AS400 to which none of the other DCB campuses were connected. David

Schmidt, the long-time executive leader of the Clear Water Campus offered to have DCB

98

connected to his campus mainﬂarne. Jack recalled, “[Schmidt] said, ‘OK, we want you
guys on board.’ It was a decision made by David Schmidt, not the leadership in
Culvertown. He could do that and so DCB begrudgingly went along with it. They
actually went along kicking and screaming. It was ugly.”

Jack saw the general animosity between DCB and DC spread throughout the
campuses saying, “But this culture of, not just [DCB] formality, but this future of
resentment toward Davis permeated DCB ﬂom the top down to the average admissions
recruiter.” He pointed out that the animus held by DCB personnel toward DC was also
held by many of the local campuses in the DC system towards the Culvertown campus,
although to a lesser extent. He explained,

Let’s say, a North Fork or a Clear Water [person] didn’t have the resentment

towards Culvertown that a DCB did. They still didn’t always take kindly to edicts

that came ﬂom Culvertown. I was always told that when I was on another
campus, for whatever the reason, I was just a Davis employee; not a Culvertown
employee. I would be perceived differently if I was ﬂom Culvertown.

When asked if he perceived the same kind of resentment or hostility ﬂom GLC
personnel toward DC or, more speciﬁcally, the Culvertown Campus of DC, Jack said,
“Not so much ﬂom GLC as ﬂom DCB. Great Lakes were facilitated by the fact that
when we took over Glen Lincoln, we moved an individual over there that was ﬂom Davis
to become President of Glen Lincoln.” After the merger, this President of Glen Lincoln
was named Executive Vice President for Operations for Davis University. Jack
continued, “With bringing the Davis culture to Glen Lincoln, they were much more open

to Culvertown ideas, I guess, than DCB was.”

99

Campuses Associated with the Pre-Merger Colleges

 

 

Davis College Decatur College of Business Glen Lincoln College
Culvertown Coram Clare City
Clearwater Muskego Manorville
North Fork Sparkstown Amity
Middleville Stoystown
Peninsula Point Port Jefferson

Only those campuses referred to in the text are listed
Table 1

 

The Pre-Merger Phase — Summary

There appear to be several recurring themes in the data relating to respondents’
descriptions of working for the pre-merger organizations. The feeling of family expressed
by Redeye, Jordan, Tim, and Mary is one of these. While the idea of family evokes
thoughts of cooperation, trust, and mutual support, families also have conﬂicts. From a
staff and middle management perspective, Jordan and Mary indicate that many lower
level conﬂicts were handled in an open and collegial manner at GLC and DC,
respectively. However, Madge spoke of conﬂict situations related to information and
practices between different staff departments on her DC campus. This apparent difference
needs to be considered, at least in part, through the roles played by these respondents.
Both Jordan and Mary had teaching duties in addition to their academic administrative
work, leading to overlapping administrator and faculty roles. Madge and Redeye, who
had roles as non-teaching staff members, related a negative reaction to the mass

terminations.

100

A relative ease and Openness of communication is another commonality found in
the comments of Jordan saying that disagreements were handled promptly and openly
and of Mary who related that the atmosphere was open and fun. Redeye felt ﬂee enough
to decline telling others that their jobs had been eliminated without fear of sanctions
towards himself. Conversely, Betty relates a situation on her campus of DC where
communication between the Registrar’s and the Admissions offices is strained by
Admissions personnel demanding a one-way acquiescence to their needs. Betty’s
perception is that the campus leadership of the campus sided with Admissions, thereby
limiting her ability to communicate on the appropriateness of some actions taken by
Admissions. Overall, participants seem to indicate a fairly open communication process
at all three of the pre-merger schools, more so at DC and GLC than those at DCB

Perhaps the most sharply drawn similarity among the merger partners is attention
to a proﬁtable bottom-line. The common euphemism for making money is enrollment, for
in all three of these a private colleges, tuition ﬂom enrolled students comprises the vast
majority of revenue. Madge and Betty from DC commented on the pressure for
admissions recruiters to meet goals and for other personnel to facilitate that effort was
intense. From DCB, Rick clearly believed that the prime issue was to get people enrolled,
regardless of their academic preparedness. Rick put it very succulently when asked about
the primary organizational value DCB, saying, “Cash!” From GLC, Jordan spoke of a
common dissatisfaction with salary, which reﬂects the other side of the bottom-line
formula — control of expenditures. Rick echoed this when commenting on the under
funding of inﬂastructure by DC. Jack’s drawing displayed prominent images of ﬁnancial

distribution between the premerger schools towards DES.

101

A point of departure in the way the three pre-merger schools operated was how
participants perceived the level of formality used in conducting business. Bobbi made a
point of saying that GLC was a somewhat formal organization, as indicated by the
unwritten dress code, which was indirectly, but effectively enforced. Both GLC and DCB
maintained more formal business professional appearance for both men and women,
while faculty and staff at DC wore more casual attire. Similarly, Jack stressed his
perception of how formal DCB was in comparison to DC. The titles “doctor” and
“professor” were routinely used by GLC and DCB personnel in meetings, both while
conducting business and during breaks. That was a sharp contrast to DC where familiarity
on a ﬁrst name basis was the norm, even between the building custodian and the college
president.

There appears to be a co-mingling of trust and distrust within elements of the pre-
merger organizations. On one hand, there is familial-type trust expressed by Redeye,
Jordan, Tim, and Mary where members are permitted to communicate ﬂeely about the
speciﬁcs of curricula, quality, and efficiency. In return, these members derive some
stability and reward ﬂom the familial caring of the organizations. On the other hand, Rick
describes some level of distrust between organizational leadership and faculty as noted by
the presence of unionized campuses. [At DCB there was unionized faculty on two
campuses and on one campus of DC]. In addition, Rick and Jack perceived a signiﬁcant
amount of distrust by DCB personnel towards those at DC. Leadership distrust is also
evident by the DES creation of programs or formats of curriculum delivery that bypass
existing faculty mechanisms for governance and workload fulﬁllment. Another element

of leadership distrust in staff is displayed by the lack of any rationale for the merger

102

itself. There is no identiﬁable documentation from DES that detailed the elements driving
the decision to merge.
The Post-Merger Phase: Merger Related Documents of the Organization

Since one of this study’s purposes is exploring the inﬂuences of organizational
culture for mergers in higher education it is necessary to look at statements made by DU
that illustrate the espoused values of the organization. For example, there seems not to be
some type of written or verbal rationale for undertaking the merger in the ﬁrst place. In
the institutional history portion of the Higher Learning Commission Self-Study,
completed in December of 2003, there is no mention of why the merger was taking place.
The only reference was a statement in the introduction indicating the three schools of
DES began operation as DU in May 2000 (Anonymous, 2003).

Coinciding with the merger of GLC, DCB, and DC was the retirement of Donald
Jones, Chancellor of DES starting in 1998 and the President of Davis College ﬂom 1977-
98, for health reasons. The ﬁrst president of a merged DU, Gregory (Greg) Deemer, was
announced on September 14, 2000. Previously, Deemer served as chief executive officer
of a graduate medical education center and several managed health care organizations in
his career (Granderson, 2000).

In 2001, the mission and vision of DU was formulated. It was (and still is):

Mission

Davis University prepares individuals and organizations to excel in the

knowledge-driven environment of the 213t century.

Vision

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Davis University aspires to be a world-class business school, excelling in career
preparation, career advancement and professional development. With its
distinguished reputation for mentoring and practical learning, Davis will teach
students to think creatively and recognize opportunity in a dynamic economy. The
University will also instill in students an appreciation for civic responsibility in
the communities where they live and work (Anonymous, 2001b).
The mission and vision statements, in draft form, were distributed to the various
campuses of the DU system for comment prior to their official adoption. Accompanying
the mission/vision statement was a set of statements called the Guiding Principles
(Anonymous, 2001b).
Guiding Principles
Learning is our highest purpose and ﬁrst priority. Davis University fosters an
enviromnent that promotes shared learning for its students, faculty, and all
stakeholders.
Quality is the focus of all activity: Davis University is committed to high
standards meant to sustain and advance excellence in higher learning.
Integrity is the foundation of all behaviors: Davis University considers fairness,
respect, and honesty as the benchmarks for policies, practices and its relationships
with others.
Entrepreneurial Spirit drives action and innovation. Davis University
encourages its members to incorporate new knowledge, technology, and learning
approaches into the educational process.

Diversity enhances a strong and healthy organizational culture. Davis University

104

values the contributions of diverse populations, ideologies, and educational

perspectives.

Service is essential to a balanced life. Davis University seeks to instill a sense of

civic responsibility as a fundamental part of working and living in a community.

Accountability drives results. Davis University holds all employees accountable

for their actions and expects them to strive to improve themselves while working

to continuously improve the university.
The mission, vision, and guiding principles were printed on wallet sized, laminated cards
and distributed to all Davis employees in the fall of 2001 , just prior to the convocation
event. At the same time, plastic name badges with the new logo for DU were distributed.
The name badges purposely carried no reference to the person’s pre-merger school, nor
did they carry any information as to title, position, or academic degree attained; just the
name. The leadership of each campus was told by executive leadership to make clear that
everyone was to wear their name badge during work hours whereas before the merger,
name badges were most commonly used for attending off-campus activities.

Perhaps the most comprehensive statement of what DU would be, how it will
operate, and what the aspirations are of this merged institution is the Framework for
Success (see Appendix D). This 11 page document was distributed to the DU community
on November 16, 2001 during the ﬁrst university-wide convocation ceremony.
Convocation was an event held only by DC prior to the merger and the only
comprehensive ritual ﬂom one of the pre-merger organizations to become incorporated

into DU. During convocation, all faculty and staff of the school gather at the start of the

105

school year to learn of new university initiatives, programs, and to honor the
accomplishments of faculty and staff over the past year.

The Framework for Success was presented at convocation as the template for
what the university would be and as a guide to how it would actually merge operations.
As such, it requires some examination to bring out salient operational and cultural
information that pertains to this study. The introductory paragraph sets forth the goals for
Davis University.

The Uniqueness of ngis University

Learning is our highest purpose and ﬁrst priority. To that end, we will deliver

innovative academic programs that offer students a truly practical business

education. Davis University is in the business of education and as such will place
quality education at the core of our goals and strategies. We will be responsive to

a changing business environment and will prepare students for the world of work,

getting them where they want to be quicker than other higher education

institutions.
The Framework for Success emphasized a business focus for DU. Each of the pre-merger
institutions had programs in computer information science, paralegal, and allied health,
which are not traditionally thought of as business programs. Marketing and enrollment of
these non-business programs continued, but the Framework for Success document was
not modiﬁed to reﬂect the larger variety of program offerings.

The Framework then outlines a set of characteristics that will be used as a
yardstick to assess the accomplishment of organizational goals. These characteristics

include:

106

1. Quality programs

2. Flexibility and efﬁciency

3. Student services

4. Partnerships with business

5. Committed, thoughtful employees

6. Long-term commitment to the vision
While the speciﬁcs of these items can be seen in Appendix D, what is notable about the
Framework for Success is this is the ﬁrst time where the term culture, in an
organizational sense, is used in the merger process. The Guiding Principles, formulated in
the same time period also uses the term culture, but this is in reference to cultural
diversity, with its racial, ethnic, and gender overtones. The ﬁfth item contained in the
F rarnework for Success states, “[To] Recruit, reward, and retain employees dedicated to a
culture (italics mine) of customer service, innovation, and personal accountability. We
will create a culture in which Davis University employees will be encouraged to share
good ideas and best practices; this is essential to excellence (Anonymous, 2001a).”

The Framework for Success then details a number of subcategories for academics,
customer service, organizational development/excellence, campus operation,
recruitment/retention, marketing, advancement, ﬁnances, and facilities. Under each
subcategory there are several bullet points that explain what will be done, how it will be
accomplished, and what will be indicators used to monitor the progress. The subcategory
of organizational development and excellence demands further exploration here for it
directly deals with organizational culture. In its entirety the section on organizational

development says:

107

 

 

Organizational Development and Excellence

Davis University will create and maintain an exciting culture that is open and
creative, and where people have the skills and resources to excel in their work.
Faculty and staff will be encouraged to help improve the University. The Davis
culture will be founded upon integrity in all behaviors, exemplary customer
service, the embracing of change, and an abiding commitment to the quality of
education.

0 There will be a university program that will promote and enhance dialogue
on ideas. Regular and open communication will be a hallmark of Davis
University. Faculty and staff will be encouraged to help improve the University.
Processes will be put into place to bring leadership and employees together
regularly to share ideas and provide critical feedback on improving the
University.

0 The University will commit resources to employee education, ongoing
training in customer service, and team building.

0 We will be committed to excellence in every facet of operation. Davis will
be the best in its markets and practices, or it will exit those markets and change
operating procedures respectively.

0 Employees will be held accountable for performance and rewarded based
upon a merit system that will recognize risk taking, innovation, creative thinking,
decisiveness, customer service, teamwork, and personal initiative.

0 The University will develop systems to promote people into progressively

higher positions. Roles and responsibilities will be assessed regularly to assure

108

appropriate progress toward the highest quality education and exemplary

customer service. (Anonymous, 2001a, pp. 5 -6).
The other reference to culture occurs in the customer service subcategory, which says,
“The customer service culture will permeate every campus and level of the University.”

These DU documents ﬂom early in the merger process provide a comprehensive
strategic direction, complimented with attitudinal modes of operation that delineate how
the goals of the university will be attained. The lack of speciﬁcs on exactly how these
goals were to be reached was not a large concern at that time for participants because it
seemed understandable that speciﬁcs would be forthcoming.
The Post-Merger Phase — Participant Descriptions of Drawings

Redeye started the description of his post-merger drawing (Figure 10) by pointing
to himself in the lower left hand comer greeting people at the door. He described how,
before the merger, he would arrive at about 7:30 am. each morning and ﬁnd one of the
secretaries and the maintenance person already there. After the merger a time clock was
installed and staff was supposed to start at 8:00am. All of these people were now
expected to “punch-in.” Redeye accepted this new manner of managerial time monitoring
saying,

I didn’t take it personally. I knew why they did it... I realize that being a

supervisor the workers don’t always do what they are supposed to do or whatever

and if it became a problem then that is one way of you knowing whether people

are showing up.

109

 

 

  

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110

When asked how many people on campus had to use the time-clock, he said, “Pretty
much just about everyone other than some of what I would call the executive position
people.” Redeye added,

I don’t recall if faculty clocked in, I don’t think they clocked in. I could be

mistaken but, I don’t really recall anyone really complaining about it. I just had,

personally I just thought, well... if you don’t trust your people then something is
wrong here.

Redeye also described how, before the merger, he performed many tasks outside
the conﬁnes of his staff level job description. He had the expertise to perform these extra
duties and was consulted by both local campus and executive levels of leadership because
of his knowledge and experience. After the merger, Redeye was called upon less and less
to perform these tasks and approximately a year after the merger, stated he was
performing solely within the speciﬁcations of his job description. The other area in which
Redeye felt he lost empowerment was having input into hiring people reporting to him.
Prior to the merger, he had 13 people reporting to him and was an integral part of their
hiring process. After the merger, Redeye stated he was not consulted about hiring the
people reporting to him. He was also not a part of the process when it came to
retrenchment or reductions in the staffmg of his area. Lay-offs or failure to rehire those
who left through normal attrition whittled down the number ﬂom the pre-merger
contingent to one other part-time person by the time of the interview.

Thinking about the attitude of those who survived the cut-backs, Redeye did not

see much change:

111

 

 

Well not really. I think the ones that remained were, I think, happy that they are
still there and took advantage of their opportunity and survived that was by
doing... by jumping on board and doing whatever it took to get the job done.

When you have less people doing the same job you got to step up and do what

you got to do a little bit.

From Redeye’s perspective, the merger went fairly well. He thought some of the
staff was in a state of shock at ﬁrst, but after the executive leadership presented the
speciﬁcs of the transition plan, he could see that the institutional direction was good.
Redeye also thought the executive leadership did a good job of communicating the plans
to staff. The group vice president for the region and the provost ﬂequently held meetings
in the region to keep people informed. Redeye was not always included in those
meetings, but he knew they took place.

Redeye related that a family-like atmosphere was slowly returning to the
Sparkstown campus in part because, “There’s hardly anyone left working here.” He
explained it meant those still at Sparkstown have bonded through the act of surviving
previous retrenchment episodes. Redeye also felt the reemergence of a familial climate
was also due to a January 2005 social outing sponsored by the executive vice president
responsible for this region. All personnel working at the Sparkstown, Manorville, and
Clare City campuses were included. None of the other participants reported having a
purely social event conducted on their campus during the merger process.

Tim’s description of his post-merger drawing (Figure 11) was a little surprising
for he said, “The bottom line.” Tim’s drawing looked like a group of somewhat

disconnected and faceless stick people, one of which had a question mark. The only face

112

 

that appears is decidedly unhappy. Like his description of customer service as a prime
value of DCB, Tim continued with that subject by saying,
I think there is not a concern about the ultimate satisfaction of the customer and I
think this is reﬂected in the downturn in enrollment. It is reﬂected in the
frustration level of the students and it is reﬂected in the frustration level of the
people who are on the line, because we are the ones that give the satisfaction in
the students... We can’t change the structure. We don’t have the resources to
assist them because we don’t know what it is, the tweet that we’re doing.
Tension and ﬂustration were quite evident in Tim’s voice,
So there’s a big question mark here (referring to the drawing) and that’s
everybody looking on saying ‘Okay, do you know what this is and this is, the
current situation?’ Then the sadness (again referring to the drawing) is the
frustration level of the people on the ﬂont line of not having all the information
that we need. There’s a big communication gap where some of those things that
the people who are on the ﬂont line need the information in order to do our job.
They’d say there it would be an academic change, so the academic change has not
been ﬁltered down to those of us in which that information would be valuable.
In expanding on his perceived inability to obtain information pertaining to his immediate
job duties, Tim related one cause to be, “I have someone who I call my guru, my little
private guru. And when that person is on vacation I panic because that is the person that I

call. Now at one time DCB had 20 gurus. Now I have one.” Tim further explained that

113

 

 

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Figure 1 1. Tim: Post-Merger (drawn by interview participant)

114

the loss of what he characterized as good workers, dedicated to excellent customer
service also led to a grieving process. That grief connects with the tear on the face in the
drawing and the faceless stick people represent all those who are no longer with the
organization.

Tim seemed to think that there was a pre-judgment that personnel ﬂom DCB were
against change.

I don’t feel that people are opposed to change. I’m not opposed to change. I think

there is this stigma that because you were DCB you can’t change. So, I think the

ﬂustration is, not so much that we’re not willing to change, it’s if you have a

vision, that’s good. But take into account a plan of actions where the student

doesn’t lose. If you can do that transition without the student losing and the
customer service and the quality being diminished, then that’s successful. I think
the DCB people feel that they’re being discriminated against because you can’t
learn anything new.

Tim implied that personnel associated with DCB were directed to do things that
they felt compromised the quality of customer service for students. As employees
committed to the level of customer service earlier accepted by DCB, they questioned or
pointed out when directives lessened the quality of customer service. In doing so, the
perception of those in leadership was that people identifying with the pre-merger DCB
were obstructing a new and clearly better way of doing things, instead of collaborating to
affect the new goals of the merged university.

To illustrate the decline in customer service, Tim related the story of how co-

operative programs proceeded soon after the merger. The curriculum was still very much

115

 

a DCB one as the curricula uniﬁcation of the three schools did not occur until the fall of
2003. Tim worked collaboratively with local employers to help design positions for
which graduates of the school might be hired. Tim described it as quite rewarding work,
both extrinsically for assisting graduates obtain employment and intrinsically for himself.
'Ihis position was then allocated to a supervisor whose department was being eliminated.
Tim was transferred to coordinate the co—operative education effort. The co-operative
education program allowed students to work with a local employer in an area relating to
their major while still attending classes at school.

Within a year, Tim grew the program from just over 10 co-op sites to 46

ﬁnctioning sites. Tim enjoyed seeing the grth in the students saying,

...because I realized that there’s an awesome experience for students. That this
was very very important for the student, given it was a very good economy, I
mean, it was a very good experience for the students, and we had a coop
luncheon, invited their bosses, and such. So I did such a great job. They changed
the curriculum; the coop was taken out of my hands.
Tim recounted that, conceptually, the change made a certain amount of sense for it
provided greater continuity of learning from the classroom to the workplace. However,
tlie transfer implementation was not well thought out or executed. The faculty was busy
already with curriculum changes and the logistics of converting from a lO-week quarter
33’ Stem to a 15 week semester system of classes. The relatively small numbers of full-
time faculty were increasingly used to provide administrative oversight and manage the

large number of adjunct faculty who provided the vast majority of classroom teaching.

116

The faculty members were not provided support or information necessary to effectively
carry out the management of numerous co-op relationships. As Tim related it,
When the semester started, [the] management coordinator came in, and he found
this student, and he said the student had decided to co-op. And I said, well, I don’t
know how to tell you this, but I don’t do co-op anymore. And he said, well, who
does? And I said, you do. He goes, WHAT? (emphasis Tim) They had hired all
new faculty and not told him that that was part of his job responsibility.

Tim still had students coming to him to help straighten out problems occurring in
the co-ops. He was told ﬂatly by his supervisor that co-ops were not his job anymore.
Angry and ﬂustrated students, whose needs were now not being met by the school,
carried those feelings back to the sponsoring employers. The co-op program quickly
started to unravel. One company typically hired co-op participants ﬂrll-time after the
students completed their three month experience. Tim said, “that company no longer

participates in the co-op program at DU. There was no support ﬂom the school. . .Ask me
how many co—ops we have now? Maybe two.”
Bobbi described her post-merger drawing (ﬁgure 12) by pointing to herself and

Saying, “This is where I am right here. See I’m a little bigger. I’ve got bigger hair. With
the people under me I became a coordinator and manager of people as well as a manager
of my instructional duties.” Bobbi presently supervises 21 adjunct faculty and teaches
four courses per semester on three campuses. She is the only full-time faculty
member/department coordinator in her discipline for four campuses of what was GLC. In
addition to covering academic administration on several campuses, Bobbi seemed

Q'(>1'lfused about reporting lines, including her own and relayed that her reporting

117

 

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Structure had become three-way. Bobbi reported to the executive director who had

operational control of the campus, the campus academic dean who dealt with student

118

issues and local faculty scheduling, and the school academic deans who had charge of
curriculum matters in the broad discipline areas of general education, information

technology, business, allied health, and the graduate school. In describing who she turned

to and for what, Bobbi said,

There are not usually more than 2 people that I would be involved with at a time.
Now, I honestly don’t ﬁnd that a problem unless we are not getting any answers.
If I have a really big problem, it goes to 2 or 3 people. I will send it to all three
people.
When asked how she knew who to inform or talk with on any particular issue, Bobbi

said, “I think we all ﬁgured out there are other people who need to know. I don’t know if

I ’m doing it the right way or not. I’ve never been rebuked.”

The initial stress that Madge placed on describing her post-merger drawing was
uniformity (Figure 13). “I look at them as merging into one large uniﬁed organization
that has a management system that has just pulled all the campuses together with one
theme ﬂom start to ﬁnish,” she said. Madge went on to add, “So if a student takes an

English class here (Culvertown) they are going to take the exact same English class in

Coram, Middleville, or Peninsula Point.”
When asked how she knew who to inform or talk with on any particular issue,

Bobbi said, “I think we all ﬁgured out there are other people who need to know. I don’t

l(Flow if I’m doing it the right way or not. I’ve never been rebuked.”

I asked how the impact of the merger and uniﬁcation affected her on a personal

baSis. Madge said,

119

Well I think that it’s been a very positive change and that the competition and
competitiveness have disappeared. Having the university looked at ﬂom the
marketing standpoint and ﬂom the uniﬁcation as now one big school. Now
looking at this Culvertown branch as their main hub, this is the focus hub now
that the other campuses are campus locations to serve the students that it really
gives a unique focus and once again removes a lot of barriers for the other
campuses.
When asked if it was her perception that members of other campuses resented this new
role for Culvertown, she said,
No. What’s fairly nice is that the other campuses all look at us as the parent
campus now and they seem really comfortable calling us and asking questions and
whether it’s with ﬁnancial aid questions, whether it’s with academic questions,
there’s just a real nice overlap.
There was something about Madge’s body language and facial expressions that
gave me the impression she was getting uncomfortable with this aspect of the
conversation. It seemed that while Madge acknowledged that Culvertown was the main
campus, it was not something that she expected to discuss in a personal way. It was as
tllough she realized that this was not the kind of interview she thought it was going to be,
essentially admitting as much at the conclusion of the interview: “When we began talking

about the relationships in management and style I was wondering why you deviated some

120

of the questions away from like a merger and joining. Almost why it became 30
personal?”
I sensed that Madge was hesitant to talk about personal reactions to the merger, so
I put off exploring those issues until later. That opening occurred in a short time when we
discussed the restructuring changes Madge saw in her department and in the other
departments with which she worked. As Madge described it,
We were all handed a packet that with the packet was our new job description,
how much you would be making, what our hours would be, and what our job title
would be. That was on a Friday afternoon. We had to sign the job description and
turn it in on Monday and if we did not that would be a letter of resignation. So the
position then became this job and that to keep my job I had to accept.
I asked Madge how she felt about this process. She said, “First thought was a horrendous
sense of loss because of all the people that got ﬁred that day.” Madge‘s new
responsibilities involved working with ﬁnancial aid accounts, an area with which she had
I i ttle preparation, including how to use a 10 ten-key adding machine. No training was
provided by DU in this job skill, despite Madge asking for it several times. She also
'mentioned that there were many new people hired into her area within a short period of
time after the department was restructured. These new people tended to be younger and
l 683 experienced than the rest of those who were retained.
When asked how she changed during the merger process, Madge said, “You have
to be very. . . it’s a place where you have to be very politically correct. So there is a

ﬁ‘a-l'nework that you have to be in this environment that is expected.”

122

Betty described her post-merger drawing (ﬁgure 14) with the university in the center,
similar to Madge’s description. There was one system and one way of doing things. “It is
a university,” Betty said. “I’m reaching to satellites out there spinning around own little
vvorlds. Within each little world there are other satellites spinning around those.” Betty
related this to the idea that although it was now one university, there are still operational
areas, as represented in the drawing, which want to do things in a certain way or dislike
having a common method of operation imposed on them by the system. Dissenters
representing these areas, Betty said, were the ones that were let go during the merger
transition.
When you have all these different people leave and then have to turn around and
hire their positions to ﬁll again, you know there had to be something there. These
people were cut loose because they didn’t want to be on the team. We’ve lost a
great deal of knowledge and experience. Many, many years of knowledge and
experience. Now why would they get rid of that person if it wasn’t for money?

You know, a person is on board, as you say, they are doing their job. Why all of a

sudden are they gone now? I knew they were on board because I deal with this

before. I mean the morale in this whole deal is been really bad. You work your
butt off and think you’re doing, you’re on board and you know.

Betty told of a time when she spoke up at one of a series of town hall-like campus
meetings conducted by President Deemer, which started in the 2004-05 school year in
response to peremrially low employee survey ratings for organizational communication.
She asked of the president, “Do you know what kind of morale you have in this place? In

my of your places?” referring to those still on staff who saw many good, committed

123

 

 

 

 

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Figure 14. Betty: Post-Merger (drawn by interview participant)

124

employees dismissed. She also described telephone conversations with remaining
employees who expressed how scared they were that their position would be the next to
go. Betty remembered President Deemer saying, “They started to do a little more
advanced notice when people were leaving” and that he thanked her for speaking up at
the meeting. Betty went on to say that she was not encountering as many scared, crying
people now as she had a year earlier, and was hearing more laughter. Then she added,
laughing, “But who have they got left to ﬁre?”
The domination of Culvertown as the main campus continued as the theme with
Rick’s post-merger drawing (ﬁgure 15). The way he explained the drawing was,
Well, both DCB and GLC have been overshadowed signiﬁcantly by the
Culvertown campus, even though DCB (in Coram) was the largest campus in the
system up until this year, always the largest campus. After the merger Culvertown
became the main campus. That was one of the things the people in DCB feared
because they had been the main campus. Yes, a lot of resentment. They feel like
the red-headed stepchild with a new step-parent.
Rick said he believed in the need for one university, one way of doing things, and one
cmture. He attributed much of the resentment in the former DCB to the fact that
C ulvertown was now the central decision-making authority. The power was no longer
Centered in a former DCB campus like Coram or Muskego. As Rick put it, “It’s about
DOWer. That’s what it is about. It’s about power.”
Rick was also outspoken when talking about how he felt this evolution of the

Culvertown Lannon Campus to become the main campus was carried out. He said

125

 

 

 

 

Figure 15. Rick: Post-Merger (drawn by interview participant)

126

executive leadership performed the transition, “sloppily.” Rick expanded on what
he meant,
Well, there was unnecessary drama, derision, and division because of the way it
was handled. First of all, it is my personal opinion that Greg (President Deemer)
wasn’t prepared for the job and he’s been learning on the job. Unfortunately, there
are casualties when you have a chief-executive that learns on the job. The things
that will see him successful are also the things that get in the way of developing
relationships and trust. I think that if he had been more skilled in the beginning it
would have been less traumatic. But as it was, they (executive leadership) were
feeling their way along. (Greg’s) trying to hold on to his job, people are pissed
off, the board is asking questions, it (the merger) cost more than they expected.
They told the board it would cost so much for the transition and it was like 10
times that. I don’t know if the board even knows that now, but that’s the word on
the street. So there’s some faux pas’ along the way and heads are going to roll.
Greg’s wasn’t. Matt went [referring to C00 Matt Penning’s departure in February
2004]. Yes, scapegoats. I think he was sufficiently insecure in the beginning. He
didn’t surround himself with tough talent because it was too threatening, that’s
my opinion.
Rick went on to say that Greg is learning. “He wasn’t [open to learning] until
recently. He never was in the beginning. He was too insecure, but now I think he is more
Open about it.” Rick mentioned the effort to improve communication with “town-hall”

Style meetings begun in the 04/05 school year. In addition, Rick indicated the president

127

was starting culture transformation workshops for executive and some mid-level

managers in the fall of 2005.

Jack’s post-merger drawing was, like his pre-merger illustration, more global and
depicted the overall system (ﬁgure 16). He described it as,

This culture thing where we have these autonomous units that kind of have their

own culture now, I’m trying to depict here that there is a more of a current culture

and a common vision of where Davis University is going now, shared by all the

campuses. There is still a line around Coram because there is still an isolated

pocket there that hasn’t quite conformed, but we’re getting there.

Jack attributed much of the turmoil of the merger was not as much to movement
from a pre-merger state of things to a post-merger state, but more to the leadership
personalities pre-merger that essentially were replaced by an entirely new set of people
after the merger. It took away ﬂom the greater sense of family that was present before.
The focus was more local campus oriented, but the size of the new organization also

diminished the family-like atmosphere. “I deﬁnitely don’t feel quite the sense of loyalty
throughout the organization that I did when it was smaller and it was just [former
Chancellor] Jones in Culvertown,” he said. Jack commented further on the process of
how the merger transition proceeded.
I would recommend that we should try to ﬁgure out a way to get that [sense of
family] because for a lot of the time it was a difficult merger ﬂom the standpoint
of restructuring and jobs being eliminated and what not. There was a lot of fear,
maybe there still is, for the employees at all the campuses, for their jobs and

probably rightly so. They didn’t know what was happening. I think

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Name Pseudonym \/”C /< Date 9//‘/0’>/ Postmerger
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Figure 16. Jack: Post-Merger (drawn by interview participant)

129

communication of the process could have been better. They could have articulated
the vision of what Davis was going to be better earlier and I think today it is
pretty solid. If they don’t know [now] what the vision is and what the direction of
the university is, then they’ve been asleep. Also, I think the restructure or
realignments, or whatever you want to call them were pretty well done. I think
people now could be starting to feel more comfortable in where they are at Davis,
but during a four to ﬁve year period it was very difficult. There was a lot of fear
and anxiety among the staff.
Jack believed that the job eliminations that occurred in his area were due to the
implementation of what he called the effective staffmg model. The model had certain
metrics that had to be met in order to justify staff F TE’s. Early in the merger transition,
Jack’s area was combined ﬂom the three schools and judged to be rtmning in a lean
fashion. In the past couple of years (2004/2005) the use of the effective stafﬁng model
meant that there were several positions eliminated in his area. One was a person with 33
years service and with whom Jack worked for many years. Jack did not believe that the
recent reductions in staffing had to do with the bottom line or with personalities, but
because of the model’s use. However, when it came to how he was personally and
emotionally supported in performing those job eliminations, Jack said, “That was very
d i ﬂicult to have to go through something like that and not get really any help ﬂom
whether it be my boss or HR or whatever, to help me through that.”
Jordan’s depiction of working at DU after the merger (Figure 17) contrasted
Sharply with the happy togetherness portrayed in his pre-merger drawing. Jordan’s

explanation was,

130

 

 

 

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W"! " W

Name Psaidonym \EMZZQ: Date? [2 .s’ Postmagu’

 

Figure 17. Jordan: Post-Merger (drawn by interview participant)

l3l

This is a cloud up here. This is somebody putting out rules, they are dictating. No
connection, if you will, as what is happening on the ground. I see that today. You
see that they are writing out a rule here and then this person is behind closed
doors, a lot of secrecy going on, a lot of private agendas and this person is not
really happy, necessarily, with the rule that has been made, but this person felt
responsible to take that to the people that report under this person. You have one
person here that is just basically keeping to him or herself at the computer and
then you have some people — and that is where a lot of the communication, even
though it’s been a problem all the way through the uniﬁcation, it is now worse
than it ever was. Most of the communication is done by the grapevine. So that is
how I see the culture now. A lot of private agendas and not necessarily being
communicated and none of these people are overly happy.
To explain further, Jordan related an incident that occurred a few months earlier
in the summer of 2005. The discipline in which Jordan taught and had administrative
duties is subject to external accreditation, which is absolutely essential to the
employability and career development of its graduates. In an effort to decrease program
costs, executive leadership made decisions affecting the curriculum content and how it
was taught. Jordan, mid-level managers, and faculty in the discipline tried to
c()I‘nmunicate that the changes needed to be approved by the accrediting agency and it
Was likely, given past precedents, that the agency would not approve the changes. The
message from leadership on two occasions was, as Jordan put it, “Shut-up and just do
yollr job.” The changes were made. Jordan characterized the leadership’s attitude as, “We

can do this and it is our decision.” About six weeks later, just before the semester began,

132

the accrediting agency disapproved the changes forcing last minute revisions to syllabi
and schedules that resulted in errors in carrying out this intricate curriculum.

Deception and secrecy were also subjects Jordan raised in our conversation. For
example, Jordan told of faculty in his discipline hired on other campuses of DU for
salaries that were substantially greater than faculty with ten years longevity. The news of
salary differences got out causing great concern for Jordan and his colleagues, who
voiced several protests. Leadership promised to address the salary discrepancy. At the
time of Jordan’s interview, approximately six months had passed since college leaders
said they would address the issue. No salary changes for Jordan or his faculty colleagues
had been enacted. Jordan said the leadership’s actions in this situation conveyed, “A total
disconnect as far as I’m concerned up there. A total disconnect!”

In talking more about whether he thought this apparent problem in organizational
communication was a result of the system in place or leadership, Jordan said,

I don’t think it is the system. I have looked at organizational culture since this is

an area I teach. I think it starts at the very top and it is deﬁnitely the ﬁrst layer. If

anything, I think it’s going to get worse for some time now. Until that leadership
is gone and can bring in a much more receptive leadership.
Jordan then told a story of what happened to someone who spoke up at a recent town-hall
meeting to express concern about open positions that were advertised outside of the
I-lniversity, without a posting period for internal candidates to allow for early
Consideration. Jordan said, “He was walked out the next week and he is no longer with

Us,” and concluded, saying,

133

So the message out there is, ‘don’t speak up because you will be gone.’ Everyone
is fearful. Everyone appears to be sitting real close to their computer, (referring to
his post-merger drawing) minding their own business and all the talk is going on
behind everybody’s back.

The topic of Mary’s post-merger drawing was the feeling of DU as a place where

the major emphasis is on taking care with what you say (ﬁgure 18). As Mary described it,

At this point, it has become a very bureaucratic, very hierarchically structured

organization, very much chain of command. If you run into the President you

better not talk about anything more exciting than the football or basketball scores.

You deﬁnitely do not want to talk about anything that should go through the chain

of command, as it were. No substantive issues. You deﬁnitely do not want to call

the emperor naked.
Mary provided an example of such a situation when she was (part of a pilot team to
incorporate simulations into various classes. Discussions within the team disclosed that
there were many unanswered questions about using simulations. Mary asked those
questions and was later informed by her academic dean that the vice president for
academics did not like such questions to be asked.

Mary was very speciﬁc about when the change from the pre-merger world of DC
became the post-merger world of DU. “It was Friday December 20, 2002 that the change
Started.” The reason Mary knew the date so well turned out to be,

Because that was the blue folder day. That’s the day that everyone [faculty on her

campus] was marched into a room at the same time on the same day and [it] was

explained that faculty were given their blue folder and said ‘you either take on

134

 

 

 

 

Name Pswdonym /%ZA&Z4 Date 7 {.7113 /A"Postmerger

 

 

Figure 18. Mary: Post—Merger (drawn by interview participant)

135

this new role or you can say goodbye’ and that’s when we went away from an

educational culture to an HMO (health maintenance organization) culture.

Mary then related that this action came as a complete surprise to the faculty and
that not even the campus academic and operational leadership were aware that this would
occur. Faculty on Mary’s campus were always 12 month contract personnel. She
explained that the pre-merger mode of operation was that faculty did not take time off
when performing teaching responsibilities during terms, but they were not held to a strict
40 hour a week schedule. During the week, scheduled school breaks or the summer,
faculty were free to set their own hours, as long as they were fulﬁlling their work
obligations. Mary noted, “If you were efficient in performing your duties, you had
additional ﬂexibility in your working hours.” The information in the blue folder
stipulated that this arrangement was no longer in effect and that any time away from the
regularly scheduled work week had to be taken as paid time off, which is a combination
of vacation and sick leave time allocated on a length of service basis. Mary characterized

the effect of this change in working conditions as, “We immediately, overnight, went to a
Culture that not only didn’t reward efficiency, it punished it.” Mary also said that there
was talk of using time clocks for instructors until human resources realized that such a
practice might move the salaried faculty, now called department coordinators, into a non-
e)(empt employee category where overtime pay was required.
Mary felt that what the merged organization now valued most was, “Party line”

Ell-1d, “Singing the company song and doing so without question.” In noting what happens

136

when something goes wrong in this atmosphere of organizational hegemony Mary said,
“The lowest level will take the blame. You did it wrong.”

Mary described her reaction and the reaction she saw in others to the manner in
which DU was now operating.

It is across the land. [I] talk[ed] to people from today at Convocation, talked to

people from Coram, talked to people from Muskego, people I’ve known since

pre-merger or worked through the merger process and trust explicitly. Everyone is
talking about ﬂying below the radar... we said if we burrow any lower below the
radar we’re going to be mole people.

The attention paid to retrenchment and job loss by many of the participants
prompted me to investigate the attrition of personnel from DU, particularly from the
leadership positions. From organizational documents I reviewed such as college
newsletters and the website, I looked at the turn-over of DU executive leadership from
the merger to the time of the interviews. In reconstructing the original management team,
of the 23 people who held a vice president’s position or above at the start of the merger

process, only ﬁve remained at the time of the interviews for this study. Of the original
deans of the ﬁve schools organized after the merger process start (Technology, Allied
Health, Business, General Education — called the University School, and Graduate), only
one remains and that person was not hired until the fall of 2003, well into the transition.
ms represents a 74% attrition rate. A similar attrition rate could be found in the
e3“ecutive director and academic dean positions of each campus. Considering that this

C’QCEur-red over only a four year period (2001-2005), the turn-over is even more dramatic.

137

In an effort to see the potential relationship between enrollment patterns and the

personnel cuts, DU enrollment patterns during the merger process years were examined.

The school year enrollment ﬁgures for DU at the time of data collection are:

1999
2000
2001
2002
2003
2004
2005

14,836
14,277
14,387
15,083
13,531
13,124
12,700 estimate (Anonymous, 2004)

The reason for the small rise in enrollment in the 2002/2003 was an effort by students to

take as many courses as possible before the start of the semester system in the 2003/2004

school year. This assessment is strengthened by looking at the large drop of 1552

students in the 2003/2004 school year.

In total, DU saw its enrollment fall 15% from the pre-merger days to the

2005/2006 school year. When almost all of an organization’s revenue is derived ﬁom

tuition, a drop of 15% enrollment creates a serious ﬁnancial shortfall. This could explain

why additional employment cuts needed to be made even after President Deemer

declared at the fall 2003 convocation that no more job eliminations would occur. As

Betty commented, “Now why would they get rid of that person if it wasn’t for money?”

I«Oss of revenue can also explain the closure of some sites. When the interviews occurred

in the fall of 2005, DU had 23 locations, having closed seven very small “center” sized

locations since June of 2004. Tim commented that closure of these smaller sites forced

t1‘le students utilizing those centers to travel further in order to take classes at larger

Q«Eltnpuses. He also mentioned that students were not very happy about this development.

138

Additional Post-Merger Topic - Good to Great
President Deemer read Good to Great (Collins, 2001) in 2001 and was apparently

taken by the process Collins described to move an organization from a good one to a
great one. The word quickly spread ﬁ'om executive leadership to campus leadership to
eventually, staff and faculty that this book contained insights on how DU would
transform itself druing the merger uniﬁcation. Campus leaders ordered the book en masse
from the publisher. As such, Good to Great came to symbolize the process DU would
undertake in the merger and it forms part of the emerging cultural transformation.
Reading Good to Great (Collins, 2001) was supposed to give all DU faculty and
staff a common reference to how the organization was to achieve greatness. And during
the interviews, there were several respondents who used terms like “on the bus” or ‘the
hedgehog” that come from the book. However, I learned that not all of the participants in
this study actually read the book to the same extent or found value in it the way President
Deemer and other senior leaders intended. Madge said she had either not read it and gave
it only cursory attention. Redeye read parts of the book, but not all of it. Betty said she
read the book in much the same way a student reads a textbook for a course he/ she does
not like. Rick, Jack, Jordan, Tim, Bobbi, and Mary all read the book intently and referred
back to it several times during the ﬁrst two years of the merger process. According to
Tim and Rick, there was little effort apparent from executive leadership to further qualify
the concepts of the text to the merger process or to explain what elements or ideas in the
book meant to the people of DU.
Two themes evolved out of the interviews pertaining to Good to Great (Collins,

2 001). Both themes derived from metaphors Collins used to illuminate concepts in Good

139

to Great. The ﬁrst metaphor is that of the hedgehog. According to Collins, the hedgehog
concept is derived from three interlocking circles with each circle representing one of
three strategic questions:
1. What are you deeply passionate about?
2. What you can be the best in the world at?
3. What drives your economic engine? (p. 96)
The hedgehog metaphor represents a creature that knows one big thing very well.
That differentiates the hedgehog ﬁ'om the fox, which is cunning, calculating, and comes
up with myriad, intricate strategies to have the hedgehog for dinner. Despite the fox’s
numerous strategies for attack, the hedgehog simply rolls up, exposes its sharp quills, and
defeats every new attack by the fox. The following quote is important in considering the
hedgehog concept in light of the respondents’ perception of it.
This brings me to one of the most crucial points of this chapter: A Hedgehog
Concept is not a goal to be the best, a strategy to be the best, an intention to be the
best, a plan to be the best. It is an understanding of what you can be the best at.
The distinction is absolutely crucial. (Collins, 2001, p. 98)
Betty dismissed the hedgehog immediately as something that was dead. Bobbi
tOOk the hedgehog to represent the right direction of the organization. Madge reﬂected,

‘ “The hedgehog was an unusual concept for me to really grasp on [to] and embrace. We

were moving forward at a very fast pace and we were going to be leaders and

i l'lnovators.” Redeye did not have much to say about the hedgehog and did not think it

was that important to the overall scheme of things. Both Jack and Tim were puzzled by

ttle hedgehog. Jack said, “At the time it really didn’t mean anything to me, to be honest

140

with you.” Tim echoed this by saying, “I never understood the whole thing (hedgehog)
and I really never cared.” Jordan dismissed the hedgehog saying, “I never hear anything
about the book. The hedgehog was talked about a lot. We got a different one now. It’s
about the ﬁrst day [of class] and the difference between great teachers and okay
teachers.”

Rick provided a new perspective on the hedgehog metaphor. A new term called
“uniﬁed focus” was substituted for the hedgehog sometime in late 2003 or early 2004.
Rick continued, “Uniﬁed focus became the large word for the hedgehog. Hedgehog talks
about core competency and the engine that drives, well, uniﬁed focus became the next
buzzword for that whole conceptual framework.” Interestingly, Rick commented that
uniﬁed focus has also, “just kind of trailed off and now we have gone to leadership
values and culture and immeasurables and driven by mission.”

Mary was not very impressed with Good to Great. “Yes, we were required to read
the book and I am a good student, so I read the book,” she said. “I thought it was silly. It
was pulp. There was nothing of substance in it. The fact that we were hanging so much

Weight on it told me that they didn’t know what they were doing.” In refening to the
hedgehog Mary said, “The way they applied it, never made sense.”

The other theme that developed was the use of an analogy on the bus/oﬂ' the bus.
It is derived from Collins’ (2001) idea that plans should not be developed and strategy
Sl‘lould not proceed until the right people are with the organization (on the bus) and the
Wrong people are separated from the organization (off the bus). In addition, it is
irnportant that those persons on the bus are occupying the right seats in the bus. Collins

describes the on the bus/off the bus idea as,

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To be clear, the main point of this chapter is not just about assembling the right
team — that’s nothing new. The main point is to ﬁrst get the right people on the
bus (and the wrong people off the bus) before you ﬁgure out where to drive it.

The second point is the degree of sheer rigor needed in people decisions in order

to take a company from good to great. (p. 44)

The second point about rigor is to differentiate it from ruthlessness in personnel decisions
and actions.

Madge said that the people she worked with did not refer to on the bus/off the bus
in the way it was intended in the book. They used it more to refer to who was ﬁred and
who was retained on a personal basis. Betty commented that the bus metaphor, “Oh,
yeah, that was a big joke, too. I mean that was, I’d get a [computer account] deactivation
notice and the comment in our office was ‘Well, must be they weren’t on the bus’.” She
thought of it as “whether I keep my job or not.” Betty shared how the bus metaphor’s use
related to people she knew in the organization.

I mean here you had people that took the hedgehog on the bus with them. They

worked their butts off and I was just. . ..I was very very angry and I didn’t hesitate

to say things. Um, that Jane Doe [pseudonym] got them through their
accreditation, got the accreditation they wanted and they cut her loose. Wham!

You know, I never accepted that and I wouldn’t — I didn’t make any bones about

not accepting it. This was just dirty pool there.

Redeye’s commented this way about the bus metaphor,

Well I thought that with the process of uniﬁcation it was a good plan or a good

idea, it made people feel like, let’s get on . . . Have them get on the bus to go, and

142

it was kind of a common phrase that was used to one another you know, “get on
the bus.” There were some people that I kind of wondered about. Why they were
still on the bus, and how are people [were] allowed? But [I did] not know all the
details involved. There were a lot of people that stayed on the bus, but they
changed seats, they may have been doing something in admissions now and that
particular job got eliminated and they went over into student services, you know,
something like that. I understood some of those things, but there are still some
people that I had questions if they were the right people to be on the bus.
What Jack had to say about the bus metaphor was,
That one I got. Our group understood it and we made many comments about on
the bus or under the bus or out of the bus or hit by the bus. . . .You’re on the bus or
if you weren’t on the bus your job was going to be gone. That created an
environment where it was very difﬁcult for people to offer their free opinion. If
they dissent. . . they would be perceived as off the bus and they’re gone.
Tim was more pointed, describing the bus metaphor as, “I think people were offended. I
think it was, in a sense, the way it was conveyed was ‘you are going to go along with the
new program or you are going to be gone’. ...And someone said to me, probably about
six months ago, we need a new bus driver.”
Rick was quite candid in describing the bus concept, saying, “Well that came
back to bite them in the butt.” He related the convocation event of fall 2003 when
President Deemer told the assembly that everyone who is on the bus will stay on the bus.

As Rick stated,

143

 

Well that didn’t happen and people noticed that and that came back several times

[when additional numbers of job eliminations continued] and it’s still coming

back, ‘you said everybody is on the bus.’ Well they jumped off that bus analogy

in a heart beat after that. You didn’t hear about the bus anymore.

Jordan related a comment made by his daughter, whose company was also
reading Good to Great at that time, “I don’t care who is on the bus, I just want to make
sure somebody can ﬁx the bus when it breaks down,” and then added, “obviously
everybody on the bus right now has no clue where the bus is going.”

The Post-Merger Phase - Summary

The post-merger picture emerging from the interviews contains several elements
relating to the merger that can have implications for the organizational culture evolution
that took place. The ﬁrst is that those interviewed expressed good or, at least, optimistic
feelings about the merger at the start. Whether this impression is due to genuine buy-in to
the merger goals and values or was tempered by the realization that being in accordance
with the merger was needed for survival is not clear. It seems reasonable to think that
both are true.

There is a strong indication that several participants lacked respect for the talent,
decisions, and the expertise of the executive leadership team. Rick, Mary, and Jordan
used terms such as “they don’t know what they are doing” or “they don’t have a clue” to
express this opinion. Part of their feeling may have been due to the high turn-over in
leadership positions.

Several participants also questioned the decisions and expertise of leadership for

the manner in which jobs were eliminated. Several of those interviewed mentioned the

144

fact that someone was suddenly gone or they were escorted off the premises. Mary
related what she called “the blue folder day” and Madge described something very
similar. Essentially, staff was presented with a “take it or leave” proposal or they had to
reapply for the reorganized positions. Mary also used the phrase “we are dying” to
describe this perception. Jordan commented that there was not any real strategic plan.
Rick was more indirect in saying that the president was not prepared for the job, implying
that his choices of organizational direction might not be the best.

One of the most prominent issues brought to light is the perception that
communication during the merger transition process was wanting. Jordan, Mary, Tim and
Rick made comments like “you have to be politically correct,’ “duck and cover,” “watch
what you say,” or “keep under the radar.” At the same time, leadership made decisions on
institutional directions or processes and often released the news in a limited or piece-meal
fashion. Communication problems were raised in employee surveys as early as 2002. As
of January 2005, executive leadership began addressing the communication issue by
instituting an e-mail newsletter, in addition to the monthly web site newsletter
(Anonymous, 2005 January 19). This was a response to feedback received in the
employee forums conducted in the fall of 2004, earlier referred to as a series of town hall
meetings. However, the leadership perception of communication problems was that the
issues were the result of local campus leadership not communicating effectively to staff,
instead of miscommunication by executive management to campus leaders. In the same
issue of the newsletter a web—based version of the old suggestion box called Contact DU
was announced to provide an additional input vehicle for staff with unanswered

questions.

145

The post-merger data indicates a signiﬁcant shift in participant perceptions ﬁ'om
the generally satisﬁed, family-like climate with the pre-merger organizations to one of
dissatisfaction, puzzlement, and fear after the merger. This is demonstrated in post-
merger respondent statements that leadership lacks competence, made unwise decisions
on the directions of the institution, incongruence between what is stated by leadership and
their actual practices, inhibited communication from the bottom up, and ﬂawed

communication from the top down.

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Chapter Five: Discussion

In consideration of the expansive data obtained here, the discussion portion of this
study needs to begin with an overview of what the data shows the reader with regard to
the inﬂuences of organizational culture in the merger to form Davis University. The
discussion will then move to consideration of research questions two and three for the
speciﬁcity of these questions lend themselves to an elaboration of the topics introduced in
the overview. The ﬁrst research question, being more global in scope, will incorporate a
synthesis of various conclusions derived from research questions two and three.
Therefore, it is more logical to address those matters at the end of the discussion.
Overview

The data obtained from the participants indicating inhibited communication up
and down the hierarchy, incongruence between leaders’ words and actions, and doubts
over the organizational decisions of leadership have led to the participants questioning
leadership competence. Essentially, there has been a breakdown in the culture of familial
trust experienced by participants in their pre-merger institutions, where the instability of
leadership processes has introduced an isolating inﬂuence on the developing culture of
Davis University. Characterization of this is best illustrated by Mary’s comment, “if we
burrow any lower below the radar, we’re going to be mole people.” This suggests that
most of the participants are responding to a signiﬁcant lack of trust that has entered the
culture of DU. This same isolation of staff when experiencing mistrust has been reported
by Pepper and Larson (2006) and Wells and Kipnis (2001).

Any discussion of how trust manifests in an organizational culture must begin

With a deﬁnition of trust. Mayer, Davis, and Schoorrnan (1995) propose that trust is,

147

 

The willingness of a party to be vulnerable to the actions of another party based

on the expectation that the other will perform a particular action important to the

trustor, irrespective of the ability to monitor or control that other party. (p. 71 1)
While not precisely a deﬁnition, Mollering (2001) uses the functional aspect of trust to
describe “a state of favourable expectation regarding other people’s actions and
intentions” (p. 712). Searle and Ball (2004) qualify this ftuther by arguing that since trust
is an expectation, “Trust is therefore, based on a awareness of imperfect knowledge” (p.
709). The converging factor in these statements is that of expectation.

Expectation is precisely the word to describe the faculty and staff members

 

entering this merger. There was little in the participants’ remarks that indicated a
disagreement per se with the conceptual idea of the three schools merging. In fact, several
of those interviewed related that the merger was an overall positive thing for the school.
The work of Covin, Kolenko, Sightler, and Tudor (1996) found that the organizational
members in their study may be resentful of the merger, but saw it as a vehicle to enhance
the stability of the company, enhancing their long-term employment. More often, the
joining of two or more companies is attended by worry and fear as employees are
concerned about lower level Maslow needs like the viability of receiving their paycheck
(Slowinski, et al., 2002). The interviews revealed a palatable level of fear and anxiety
among the members of Davis throughout the merger process.

These members came from pre-merger cultures where a basic organizational
assumption was greater enrollment leading to revenue enhancement. This organizational
assumption yielded an operational approach in the pre-merger schools that stressed a top-

down hierarchical control and decision-making on important strategic issues or

148

directions. Staff input was how that strategy was to be carried out. Within that sphere of
freedom, the staff of each school developed practices, procedures, symbols, and rituals to
accomplish their strategic direction. The empowerment of being able to operate within a
sphere of freedom is considered as one factor promoting the family-like culture to the
pre-merger organizations.

The empowerment and family-like cultural expectation was upset as executive
leadership not only controlled strategic direction, but also governed the local day-tosday
ways of working by insisting on complete procedural uniformity in the system. As Sopow
(2006) states it, “Most corporate structures and management systems today are based on
an organization’s historical and developmental factors — its culture- that in turn create the
day-to-day climate” (p. 14). The expectation of stability was upset with the merger,
especially where employees’ expectations in the merged organization were either not
explained well or suddenly changed, i.e., the unannounced discontinuation of the
hedgehog and bus analogies. When employees who questioned the DU merger
implementation approaches, regardless of how legitimate they considered their questions
to be, found themselves off the bus, other employees reacted with fear of the same
happening to them. The result was an atmosphere of coercive power wielding (Wells and
Kipnis,2001) to which organizational members reacted, as described by several
participants, with phases like “duck and cover” or “just shut up and do your job.”

Research Questions Two and Three

The results obtained in this study developed in a manner that co-mingles
addressing both the second and third research questions. The second question is, “What

are the perceptions of the academic and operational professionals to the cultural

149

development of a merged higher education institution?” The third research question is,
“How do these professionals deal with the congruence and incongruence between
organizational symbols, espoused values, and the basic assumptions of culture?” The data
reveal that how the professionals deal with incongruence of the cultural features of
artifacts, espoused values, and basic assumptions plays a role in their formation of
perception regarding the cultural development of the organization.

In order to address the second and third research questions, it is necessary to
establish what formed the expectations of newly created DU members to the merger
process, in addition to their pre-merger school cultural constructs. The most persuasive
evidence for these expectations was found in the mission, values, guiding principles, and
especially, the Framework for Success documents of the merged organization, which
were intended to create a set of espoused values. However, espoused values do not have
to be in documents only, but can reﬂect what executive leadership believes the
organization is or what it aspires to become (Daley, Pouder, & Kabanoff, (2004). Written
statements as a vehicle for expressing espoused values is also consistent with a uniting
function of culture (Meyerson and Martin, 1987) where leadership intends to integrate
culture across the organization, provide uniformity to cultural features, and provide
consensus in beliefs and interpretations among members.

When the intent of these documents is examined against the statements of the
participants, there are several areas of incongruence, which serve to illuminate the third
research question. For example, “regular and open communication will be the hallmark of
Davis University,” as found in the framework for success, does not characterize the

comments participants related to inadequate communication from executive leadership

150

and the perceived inability of staff to safely communication their concerns upward
through the hierarchy. The participants’ comments on communication ranged from the
largely benign “you have to be politically correct” to the more cynical “duck and cover.”
Murphy and Davey (2002) found that when ofﬁcial values are not perceived as seriously
encompassing the change effort, those values can be viewed in a cynical manner. They
suggest that this is due to the executive leadership personnel not faithfully enacting the
espoused values. In turn, the mid-level administrators conformed to the detachment of

espoused values from the reality of their implementation out of concern for their jobs.

 

Another example involves the president’s advocacy and promotion of the book
Good to Great (Collins, 2001) as a method to achieve greatness for the university. My
assessment is that the ideas of this book were so heavily used by the president in the
initial two years of the merger that Good to Great assumes the characteristic of espoused
values for the organization. Terms like the hedgehog and on the bus/off the bus became
common parlance at Davis. However, it appears that the participants’ perceptions of the
president’s actions in managing school operations did not emulate the principles
represented by the hedgehog or the bus metaphors. Therefore, these meaning of these
metaphors for employees shifted from Collins’ original meaning to divisive terms
representing fear, isolation, or that the Good to Great philosophy was not taken seriously
by leadership.

One example of leadership demonstrating it was not taking the Good to Great
(Collins, 2001) philosophy as Collins’ intended is the attrition seen in the management
team. The initial management team, in keeping with the espoused ‘on the bus’ metaphor,

were accepted by the staff members. As the merger transition continued, the people

151

comprising this management team changed so that about three quarters were gone within
the period of this study. Many of the leaders who were lost to attrition were perceived by
staff members as fulﬁlling the attributes of those who should be ‘on the bus.’ Enrollment
fell and revenue decreased resulting in additional large numbers of terminations, even
after the president declared that everyone present at the 2003 convocation was “on the
bus.” In this way the underlying organizational basic assumption for DU of increasing
revenue by increasing enrollment was being violated. The only way for leadership to

immediately remain somewhat faithful to the revenue imperative was to cut additional

 

jobs, even though it contradicted the President’s “on the bus” statement in 2003.

Actions in apparent contradiction to the “hedgehog” concept such as orienting the
organization away from the majority adult-leamer population pre-merger and diminishing
business-oriented educational strategies (cooperative programs) led to the perception that
leadership is not up to the task of setting the direction of the university. “They are making
it up as they go” was the comment of one respondent. As symbols, the hedgehog and on
the bus/off the bus came to mean something very different and were used by staff in
cynical ways, which were never intended by leadership.

Leadership qualities have been identiﬁed with employee satisfaction or
dissatisfaction with mergers. Covin, Kolenko, Sightler, and Tudor (1997) found that a
leader’s people skills, especially consideration toward others e.g., respect,
communication, showing one’s value, is crucial to the satisfaction of employees for a
merger. There are indications from the frndings of this study that those people skills are
not perceived to be strong because members existed in a state of fear of and had to watch

what they said to the president and members of executive administration. Block (2003)

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stresses the need for leaders to understand the human dynamic of their organization when
effecting cultural change. Schein (2004) considers leadership and the culture of the
organization to be one and the same thing. The results of this study indicate the president
of DU did not appreciate the human response to his use of concepts from Good to Great
(Collins, 2001) and what might happen if he led the organization to take actions that
employees could readily perceive as being in contradiction to those concepts.

Additional ﬁndings of this study relating to leadership indicate the need for
effective, open communication between executive leadership and staﬁ members is
important for staff to form a perception of trust in the merger process and the leadership
charting that process. As such, this ﬁnding contributes to addressing research question
three. This is similar to the results obtained by Lodorfos and Boateng (2006) and
Nikandrou, Papalexandri s, and Bourantas (2000). Lodorfos and Boateng found that
frequent communication that contains useful information is needed to enhance employee
perceptions of trust in management. Their results found that a lack of or poor
communication is frequently associated with expressions of distrust.

Prior to and during the early phases of the merger, there is little indication from
the participants or the Davis documentation that the leadership had an appreciation of or
had prepared for how individual pre-merger organizational cultures of the three schools
would inﬂuence the merger itself. Perhaps the cultural similarities between the three pre-
merger institutions inﬂuenced the leadership to believe that blending the three college
cultures would not be difﬁcult. On the other hand, there are indications from the
participant data of Rick, Tim, Jordan, and Mary that a blend of cultures was not being

planned, but rather there was an ending of pre-merger cultural norms to be replaced by a

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new Davis University culture. This does not appear to have been communicated well to
organizational members and what was communicated directly through documents like the
F rarnework for Success or indirectly by touting Good to Great (Collins, 2001) were soon
perceived by employees as being contradicted by leadership actions.

Lodorfos and Boateng (2006) stress that pre-merger attention to cultural
considerations is associated with lessened anxieties in personnel and Schweiger and
DeNisi (1991) found if leadership provides a realistic merger forecast of what is to come
that post-merger employee satisfaction is enhanced. What might be characterized as the
less than happy responses of the participants in this study toward the results of the merger
gives tacit support to this recommendation.

At the beginning of the Davis merger process it appears that the vision, values,
and direction were effectively communicated by executive administration in written form
and reinforced in verbal comments consistent with those ends. The data ﬁ'om the
participants indicate that it was when the later actions and observed behaviors of the
leadership contradicted those espoused values and direction, distrust began to surface.
Douglas, Burtis, and Pond-Burtis (2001) report that “communication is the medium
through which the vision is articulated to the followers, but communication has little to
do with the actual creation of the vision” (p. 58). While that assessment is essentially
correct, the results of this study add additional qualiﬁcation that communication is not
only a written and verbal process, but also one that embodies behavior that is consistent
with the espoused qualities of the vision, values, and direction of the organization. As

such, this conclusion is consistent with the ﬁndings of Senge (1990) and Arygris and

154

 

Schon (1978) that when the theories in use by an organization conﬂict with its espoused
values, organizational dysfunction is a likely result.

The information derived from participants indicates a convergence of issues
arising hour the communication of espoused values, the perception by participants that
leadership was not living those values, and developing mistrust of leadership by the
participants as a result. These issues appear to have a reciprocal relationship where each
leadership action perceived as not matching an espoused value leads to less
communication and, thereby, to the development of greater mistrust. This decrease in
communication is seen best by Mary’s comment of “don’t tell the emperor he’s naked”
for fear that expressing dissent will jeopardize continued employment. Essentially, there
is a lack of trust in leadership’s actions and intentions. This study’s ﬁndings are
consistent with those of Kavanagh and Ashkanasy (2006) who found that managers
without sufficient skills in change management or communication can lead to staff being
critical of the merger process itself and those who manage it. Kavanagh and Ashkanasy
add, “This had consequent detrimental effects on the ability of individuals to embrace the
changes required by the merger and view the new organization and new culture in a
positive manner” (p. S98). The results of the study presented here are also consistent with
Hoogervorst, van der Flier, and Koopman (2004) who found “cynicism among
employees is repeatedly the result of inconsistent message being received” (p. 288).

The ﬁndings of cynicism and distrust at Davis are similar to the assessment of
Stanley, Meyer, and Topolnytsky (2005) that cynicism and distrust co-exist. Where these
results differ from Stanley et al., is in the relationship between cynicism and resistance to

change. Stanley et al., reported that higher levels of cynicism prompted people to indicate

155

 

that they would actively resist change. I can ﬁnd no evidence of active resistance to the
merger changes. There are indications that participants in my study manifest their distrust
by withdrawing, staying below notice, or simply concentrating on doing only their
assigned tasks with little added on the basis of personal initiative. The Davis personnel
used gossip and the grapevine to convey stories about the leadership’s mis-steps and
reported dissatisfaction with Davis executive leadership communications. This suggests
that an additional feeling of apathy or powerlessness could inﬂuence the intention to
resist change brought on by cynicism or distrust and also contributes to answering

research question three (Searle, 2004).

 

Another interesting ﬁnding in this study is the expressions of mistrust by
participants were directed toward people in a more personal manner, rather than to the
position the person took on any particular issue. For example, Tim was not apparently
upset that the student co-operative program with employers was eliminated from his
duties. However, he was upset with executive leadership for not preparing the new
program coordinators for the demands of this role and for allowing the program to
whither. This ﬁnding is consistent with the description of Wells and Kipnis (2001) who
reported that when subordinates spoke of trust issues in regard to their managers, they did
so in terms of personal attributes and not job-related issues. Wells and Kipnis attribute
this to our larger socio-cultural perception that “trust and distrust are customarily linked
to the personal attributes of the person (p. 600).”

The vertical sampling of participants in this study produced comments that
showed some variation between lower level staff, mid-level management, and executive

management. Staff (Madge, Betty, and Redeye) commented more on what I characterize

156

as “people issues” and issues related to their immediate jobs than larger strategic or
cultural issues surrounding the merger. Mid-level personnel (Bobbi, Tim, Mary, and
Jordan) comments were a mix of people-related and larger strategic issues. Executive
level personnel (Jack and Rick) talked largely of strategic issues and, to a lesser degree,
of people issues. These ﬁnding approximate the report of Bijlsema-Frankema (2004) and
others studying organizational issues in higher education and other sectors by personnel
who occupy different levels of an organizational hierarchy (Morgan, 1997).

Research Question One

This leaves the larger ﬁrst question of the study “When higher education
organizations merge, what is the inﬂuence of organizational culture?” to be addressed.
This cannot be explored by looking at the individual facets of the merger presented in this
study for that could imply actions taken were right or wrong, correct or incorrect.

The evidence from the pre-merger institutions revealed three organizations with
relatively similar cultures consisting of a locally family-like atmosphere, but where
executive leadership exerted control over the strategic directions without considering the
input of most mid-level and staff level professionals. Input of members at the lower
levels of the hierarchy was primarily reserved to devise methods and processes to achieve
strategic directions decided by senior leaders. If a person was looking to identify potential
merger partners that were alike in the fundamental facets of organizational culture, Glen
Lincoln College, Decatur College of Business, and Davis College appeared to be as close
a match as independent institutions could be. Perhaps that is why more extensive

investigations and preparations for merging the cultures did not occur.

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When the merger occurred, it was met with some anxiety by members, but
apparently not disproportionately so. A new leader was brought in who enjoyed a “leap
of faith” trust by the members. A new set of mission, values, and framework for what
Davis University would do, stand for, and mean were composed and generally well
received by the members. The stage was set for the transition process to occur.

What happened next provides insight into the inﬂuence of culture in a higher
education merger. The apparent strategy, whether it was overt or tacit, was to suppress
the pre-merger cultures and replace them with a new one embodying the rhetoric of the
university mission, Guiding Principles, Framework for Success and, in a less formal
manner, the symbolism attendant to Good to Great (Collins, 2001). This is similar to
what Grubbs (2000) calls cultural imperialism, where the culture of the acquiring or
dominant ﬁrm imposes their culture on the weaker partner(s). However, the difference is
the new Davis University culture was not yet enacted at the start of the merger; it had
only been espoused. Therefore, it was not a dominant culture, but a culture in waiting.
The leadership of Davis acted as though this culture in waiting was dominant. The
evidence of this study implies that a new organizational culture cannot simply be
proclaimed or willed into existence, but it is enacted in smaller steps over time that
gradually move members away from the old and into the new culture as that new culture
becomes evident. Amis, Slack and Hinings (2002) contend that the nature of reaction to
change is governed by how closely the values held by individuals match the changes
being proposed. At DU the values held by most of the participants of this study did not

seem to coincide with the changes being asked for by leadership. This was especially the

158

 

 

case when the participants perceived that the leadership was not acting in a manner
consistent with their espoused changes.

Organizational members were cutoff from the cultural underpinnings that
sustained them in the pre-merger institutions. Even the use of the pre-merger school
names was actively discouraged by executive leadership. However because the new
Davis culture, as envisioned by leadership, had not yet surfaced in a meaningful way,
members existed in a kind of limbo. The combination of the understandable merger
anxiety and leadership personnel not readily acting out the values they wanted the new
DU culture to be created a very uncomfortable situation for members. Results indicate
that some members reverted to operating according to the pre-merger culture while
appearing to embrace the espoused values of the new organization.

The second inﬂuence of culture on a merger is the realization that acculturating
processes do not stop. During the gap in time between where the leadership hoped for
ending of the pre-merger cultures and the supposed enactment of the culture as
envisioned by leadership, the culture of Davis University was already forming in ways
that were unplanned. Reorganizations occurred, curricula were combined, and
terminations happened in a manner that contradicted the impression left by the Guiding
Principles, Framework for Success, etc. about how Davis would function. This resulted in
an alternative culture evolving, characterized by many organizational members becoming
outwardly conforming to what they thought the new culture was supposed to be, but
cynical and distrustﬁrl of the executive leadership’s intentions and competence. One
telling comment by Rick indicated that Davis was [at the time of the interviews] going to

ﬁnally begin culture change and development workshops across the university; this is

159

telling because the interviews took place almost ﬁve years after the start of the merger
process. This leads to the conclusion that organizational culture forms and develops on its
own accord through the actions of all organizational members. If the leadership in a
merger process acts contrary to their espoused intentions, organizational members may
not interpret the culture in keeping with the espoused intentions leadership desires.
Morgan (1997) discusses leadership that attempts to inﬂuence organizational
culture by relying substantially on metaphor as operating at “the level of slogans”
(p.143). As such, Morgan says that by operating at that level the mechanisms of culture
change usually have a minimal effect on organizational reality. The effect of DU’s
leadership attempt to install their version of cultural reality, particularly the use of the bus
and hedgehog metaphor, seems to have yielded the same result. Schein (2004) points out
that, “Change then occurs through cognitive redeﬁnition of key concepts, and the
resulting behavioral changes become unfrozen in the personalities of the individuals and
in the norms and routines of the group” (p. 312). The results of my study indicate the
behavioral changes of participants became unfrozen, but not through the cultural changes
DU leadership advocated. Instead, the participants’ perception of incongruence between
DU leadership’s espoused values and DU leadership’s operational behavior in
implementing those espoused values is what led to the change in beliefs and behaviors.
Any effort to now orient the culture toward the original mission, vision, and
framework does not look favorable. Schweiger and DeNisi (1991) found, “The negative
effects of mergers and acquisitions activity do not seem to simply go away with time but
seem, instead to get more serious (p. 127).” Schweiger and DeNisi add that with attrition

over time, satisfaction with the organization will increase because new members become

160

 

acculturated to the new situation and do not have the institutional memory of long-
standing members. They caution that this apparent increase in satisfaction is illusionary
and does not indicate the enactment of the desired culture, but accommodation to the one
that exists.
Limitations

The limitations of this study are bounded by the small number of persons
interviewed in a qualitative manner. The ﬁndings of this study do not necessarily predict
what the inﬂuence of culture would be to another set of higher education organizations
that choose to merge. Instead, it sheds light on what happened to the institution in
question and suggest reasons why it happened. The type of higher education institution
studied is also somewhat unique in being a career-oriented private independent university
with multiple campuses, largely in one state. Results could vary if the institutions
involved in a merger were public colleges and universities.
Summary

In the study presented here, the professional staff is not satisﬁed with how the
merger transition was conducted and the data show that at least part of that dissatisfaction
can be traced to the incongruence of artifacts, espoused values, and the observed or
perceived behavior of the school’s leadership over the course of the transition merger.
The organizational members’ response to the culture development of the merged
university was dependent partly on the perception of this incongruence in artifacts,
espoused values, and the behavior of the school’s leadership. Last, the ﬁndings suggest

that culture exists and develops regardless of overt or tacit intentions to create or shape it.

161

 

Delay in addressing culture issues in a higher education mergers means that a culture not

necessarily of leadership’s direct choice will develop.

162

 

APPENDIX A

163

 

Appendix A: Interview Questions

Many of the stories and experiences elicited ﬁ‘om the participants will be initially
determined from an assessment of the drawings completed from the participants prior to
the interview portion of the data collection. It is important to understand that these are
presented in the parlance of questions, but will not necessarily be asked in a
question/answer manner. All areas of discussion will allow for the participant to add and
elaborate freely. All participants will be allowed to comment and discuss topics or areas
not speciﬁcally addressed in these areas below. However, the areas and themes discussed
with the participants will lead toward satisfying information needs in the following
topics.

Initial reaction to the news that your organization was to merge with the other
two.

What thoughts went through your mind?

 

Did you discuss it with others in your organization? If, so what was your
impression of their reaction?

Did you discuss it with your family? If, so what was your impression of their
reaction?

Were there any events or incidents that struck you as signiﬁcant in the initial
stages of learning about the merger?

Was the “ofﬁcial” rationale(s) given for the merger consistent with informal
information you received by either senior leadership or others?

Activities in the merger plan by the participant (after announcement).
What duties were you asked or volunteered to do?

What was your attitude and the attitude of your peers and subordinates to those
activities?

Describe any incidents or situations that tended to be either positive or negative.

Based on the actions and activities you saw going around you, what was your
attitude toward the manner in which the merger was going forward?

Perceptions of new culture.

What were the ﬁrst indications that the climate of the new organization was going
to be different than your pre-merger organization?

164

What are the similarities in climate between the pre and post merger
organizations?

Are there parts of the new climate that don’t match with what the leadership is
saying they want to create?

What were the symbols used to convey the idea of a new way of doing things?
Did the symbols add or detract from your perception of the underlying message?
The process of culture change

Did (do) you perceive consistency in the creation and fostering of a new
organizational climate?

Have the symbols, rituals, or stories currently in the organization matched your
perception of the underlying value(s) that is/are trying to be conveyed?

What parts of the transformation from (name of the participant’s prior institution)
have succeeded, what parts have not?

If you were in charge at the start of the merger, how would you have proceeded
and what would you have done?

Overall impressions of the merger from a cultural point of view

Is Davis University today a stronger institution compared to the sum of three prior
institutions?

What is your perception of the primary attitudes, principles, or subliminal
messages that guide Davis University?

Has the merger been successful when considered against those primary attitudes,
principles, or subliminal messages?

Responses and conversation related to the above areas will be coded as relating
most closely to one of the three research questions.

165

 

APPENDIX B

166

 

Appendix B: Drawing Instructions to the Participants

The following instructions will be printed on the reverse side of each sheet of
drawing paper. The paper size will be 8.5 by 11 inches to facilitate digital scanning. The
only labeling on the drawing side of the paper will be the pseudonym of the participant
and which drawing (pre-merger organization or post-merger organization) this drawing
represents.

“You are asked to draw your impressions to the following question (appearing
then will be one of the two instructions listed in the methodology section)

“Think about the work and atmosphere that you feel best represents your
workplace at (name of the prior institution). Draw a picture of yourself working for
(name of prior institution).

“Think about the work and atmosphere that you feel best represents your
workplace at (name of the merged institution).

You may use any combination of the color markers, pencil, or pen provided. You
may use captions or numbering in the drawing, you may also label the identity of people,
and have them “speak” using newspaper cartoon “verbal balloons” if you wish.

Drawing can seem like a funny thing for adults to do. As we grow up, most of us
are encouraged to set aside drawing in favor of writing. This can lead to adults being
reluctant to draw as a way of expressing themselves. Try your best not to feel
embarrassed or self-conscious about your drawing ability.” There is no right or wrong
when it comes to expressing yourself.

167

 

_—v. V

 

at —4_

 

APPENDIX C

168

 

APPENDIX C: Letters of Invitation to Participate and Permission Authorization

Note: Pseudonyms for the institutional names have been inserted here, but the original
letter of invitation named the actual institutions. No letterhead was used.

August 18, 2005

Dear

My name is Michael Wambach and I am a doctoral student in Higher, Adult, and
Lifelong Education through the College of Education at Michigan State University. I am
completing my dissertation requirements with a study of the organizational and human
dynamics events that occur when higher education organizations merge operations. The
Human Resources ofﬁce of Davis University has identiﬁed you as someone who has
worked with one of the pre-merger institutions for at least three years and continuing with
the merged Davis University to the present time.

 

I invite you to participate in a study I am conducting to examine the experiences of those
who have participated in a merger of colleges. The study will involve an in-depth
interview session, which is constructed to allow you to express your experiences verbally
and artistically. The interview session method is designed to be minimally intrusive on
your time. I am able to schedule this interview session with you either at your workplace
during working hours or outside of the workplace and outside of work hours.

Participation in the study is purely voluntary on your part. There will no monetary
payment or beneﬁt for participation. Whether you participate or not, all communication
with me will be held in the strictest conﬁdence and not divulged to anyone at Davis
University. You can indicate your acceptance of this invitation contacting me by phone or
email. If you have questions about being included in the study that you would like
answered before accepting, then feel free to contact me. My contact information is listed
below. Acceptance of this invitation does not mean automatic inclusion in the study, as
there is a methodological need to assure approximately even distribution of participants
in different job categories from the three pre-merger institutions.

I hope you will assist me in this investigation. Please complete the brief form and return
it to me in the self-addressed, stamped envelope provided.

Michael Wambach, Doctoral Candidate

Higher, Adult, and Life-Long Learning Program
Michigan State University

3833 Keeweenaw NE

Grand Rapids, MI 49525

(616) 361-81 17 mwambach@comcast.net

 

169

Note: The following is an example of the permission form that was signed by qualiﬁed
participants. No letterhead was be used. Pseudonyms for the institutional names have
been inserted here, but the original permission form named the actual institutions.

I, (name of participant) agree to participate in the investigation being conducted
by Michael Wambach, doctoral candidate at Michigan State University. I understand that
I will be interviewed concerning my experiences surrounding the merger of Glen Lincoln
College, Decatur College of Business, and Davis College to create Davis University.

I understand that my participation in this study will be held in strictest conﬁdence.
No one at Davis University will know whether I have or have not participated. Any
identiﬁcation of me to members of Michigan State University will only be done in
accordance with the rules of the University Committee on Research Involving Human
Subjects (U CRIHS), as per Michigan State University policy.

 

I understand that representations of what I discuss at the interview will be
portrayed in a manner that does not identify me. Questions that I may have concerning
this investigation can be posed to Michael Wambach, principle investigator.

Signed Date

 

 

170

 

APPENDIX D

171

APPENDIX D: Framework for Success

Note: The institutional pseudonym used in this study is substituted for the actual name of

the university depicted in this study.

FRAMEWORK FOR SUCCESS

The Unigueness of Davis University '

Learning is our highest purpose and ﬁrst priority. To that end, we will deliver innovative I

 

academic programs that offer students a truly practical business education. Davis
University is in the business of education and as such will place quality education at the
core of our goals and strategies. We will be responsive to a changing business
environment and will prepare students for the world of work, getting them where they
want to be quicker than other higher education institutions.
0 Quality programs. Have a strong and vibrant program development process that
produces high-quality, cutting-edge programs with applications in the workplace.
- Flexibility and efﬁciency. Respect the need for a wide range of course and
program offerings, placing value on an efﬁcient education (price and time) when
preparing students (regardless of age) for work and a technology-driven
workplace.
0 Student services. Operate an outstanding system for assessment of learning
needs, ongoing student advising, and employment services.
- Partnerships with business. Build and maintain close relationships and

partnerships with local employers: Outreach to businesses, including unique

172

internships, and faculty-business practitioners that will guide us toward curricula
that will meet student needs much better than our competition.

Committed, thoughtful employees. Recruit, reward, and retain employees
dedicated to a culture of customer service, innovation, and personal
accountability. We will create a culture in which Davis University employees
will be encouraged to share good ideas and best practices; this is essential to
excellence.

Long-term commitment to the vision. We will remain focused on this vision for
the long haul. We will move beyond semester-to-semester thinking by pursuing

goals and strategies that will build a vibrant and prosperous university.

Academics

Davis University will offer an innovative curriculum and educational delivery system that

students seeking a practical business education will prefer. Our curriculum and its

delivery will have no close substitute. This Davis academic franchise will be

characterized by the following:

Davis will stand for open enrollment, but not open graduation. Our reputation
and ability to attract students depend on delivering a hi gh-quality practical
business education that will get students jobs and drive career advancement. Any
person wanting to pursue higher education will be given the chance to succeed at
Davis, but students will be expected to work hard to obtain their diplomas and
degrees.

Students will be well prepared for school and work through a highly integrated

approach that combines assessment of learning needs, personal academic plans

173

 

 

 

and goals, appropriate and challenging courses and programs, practical
application of academic disciplines through internships, and student advising.
Davis University will rely on standard outcomes assessment for students,
benchmarked against real world measurements (for example, CPA exam).

The Davis University Excellence System will be woven through the curriculum
and distinguish the University’s ability to build practical business skills.

Our faculty will have practical experience, understand current business issues and

emerging trends, and be dedicated to teaching students who expect a practical

 

business education. Dev elopement of full-time and adjunct faculty will be a
prime directive for the University.

Davis University will maintain an open door admissions policy. This necessitates
a comprehensive program of developmental education. Students will be assessed
upon admission to determine the most appropriate academic plans. When
necessary, developmental programs will assure that students possess the skills to
excel in school and succeed in the workplace.

Our uniﬁed curriculum will be adaptable to the changing business environment.
The curriculum will be founded upon a program development process led by a
multi-disciplinary and multi-functional team; it will include new programs
grounded in emerging business practices as well as current program and course
life-cycle analysis.

Davis will be dedicated to a broad range of options in its programming and

curriculum, including accelerated degrees; ﬂexible schedules within a semester

174

calendar format; competency-based credits; and credit and non-credit business
and industry training.

Our racial and cultural diversity will be a source of pride and will uphold our
commitment to a student body that reﬂects the businesses and communities we
serve.

We will create a state-of-the-art library system that can meet the unique needs of a
multi-campus, geographically dispersed university.

Internships will be central to practical learning, providing hands-on experience.

Davis internships will be ﬂexible enough to accommodate working students.

 

Davis will explore strategic alliances with other education institutions to reach
current and new target markets and broaden program offerings.
Our students will learn the value of community service and have instilled in them

a civic responsibility that is essential to a balanced life.

Customer Service

Davis University Davis University’s commitment to practical business education lies

in the personal attention it gives to students and the closeness of its links to local

businesses. By listening to students and local businesses, we will serve each much

better. Davis will be recognized as the leader in customer service among institutions

of higher education. The customer service culture will permeate every campus and

level of the University.

0 Davis will excel at assessing learning needs of students and employer
workforces, designing programs and delivery methods to address identiﬁed

needs and measuring outcomes against employer-driven learning goals.

175

0 We will move toward assigning each prospective and current student to one
person, who will guide him/her through Davis University, providing a single
point of contact for answering (or getting the answers from others) for all their
questions. This personalized contact will be the start of a system for life long
counseling that serves alumni as they advance in their careers.

- We will develop ways of assessing university employees’ performance so that
exemplary customer service can be identiﬁed and rewarded.

r a
0 Customer service also means offering a collegiate atmosphere that builds

 

pride in students’ afﬁliation with the University. This includes student clubs,
athletics, and service learning.

0 Davis will build meaningful partnerships with local businesses to reinforce
service to students in their education, training, career planning, and job
placement.

0 To understand what businesses need, the University will integrate local
community advisory activity with the University’s Academic Councils. This
will provide the University with regular input on cutting-edge practices in the
disciplines we teach.

o A student advisory ﬁrnction will be vital to gathering information on how best

to assure that our customer service is student-centered.

 

Organizational Development and Excellence

Davis University will create and maintain an exciting culture that is open and creative,
and where people have the skills and resources to excel in their work. Faculty and staff

will be encouraged to help improve the University. The Davis culture will be founded

176

upon integrity in all behaviors, exemplary customer service, the embracing of change,

and an abiding commitment to the quality of education.

There will be a university program that will promote and enhance dialogue on
ideas. Regular and open communication will be a hallmark of Davis University.
Faculty and staff will be encouraged to help improve the University. Processes
will be put into place to bring leadership and employees together regularly to
share ideas and provide critical feedback on improving the University.

The University will commit resources to employee education, ongoing training in
customer service, and team building.

We will be committed to excellence in every facet of operation. Davis will be the
best in its markets and practices, or it will exit those markets and change
operating procedures respectively.

Employees will be held accountable for performance and rewarded based upon a
merit system that will recognize risk taking, innovation, creative thinking,
decisiveness, customer service, teamwork, and personal initiative.

The University will develop systems to promote people into progressively higher
positions. Roles and responsibilities will be assessed regularly to assure
appropriate progress toward the highest quality education and exemplary

customer service.

Campus Operation

We will function as one university with uniﬁed strategies and operating standards that are

executed at the campus level. Standardized university policy and practice, along with

centralized support services, will free up campus leadership to be more involved with the

177

 

 

workings of the university, strengthen retention efforts, build relationships with local

businesses and civic leaders, and participate in ﬁrnd raising. Campus and academic

leaders will be enriched by their new roles.

We want campus leadership to contribute signiﬁcantly to the University’s—and
not just their own campus’s——progress. Uniﬁcation will put campus leaders in a
position to be much more involved in university business.

Campus leaders will help develop and implement skill assessment programs and
delivery methods that produce desired outcomes for students.

Campus leaders will create local intership opportunities and provide mentoring
that expose students to the real world of work and value of hands-on experience.
Davis will streamline ﬁnancial aid processes and assure that the administration of
ﬁnancial aid supports the goals of the University.

Broad implementation of the best practices of oUr campuses will be essential to
the success of the University.

Campus leadership will be assessed upon their success in building and leading
community coalitions; working with business leaders to form local business
advisory groups; crating partnerships with local high schools, community
colleges, and other organizations that are sources of new students; and generally
contributing to the image of Davis University through positive community public
relations.

Working with Advancement, campus leaders will be involved in local fund

development, campaign planning, and donor development.

Recruitment and Retention

178

 

Recruitment and retention will focus on the University’s ability to identify and meet
student learning needs. The mindset must be to enable students to achieve their learning
goals rather than simply measuring persistence form semester to semester.
0 Enrollment personnel will take personal responsibility for successﬁrlly processing
a student lead from application to enrollment, including successfully arranging for
all available ﬁnancial aid options.
0 Retention will be dependent upon all university personnel—faculty and staff—
recognizing that the classroom experience (ﬁrst-rate teaching of practical content)

is the foundation for retention.

 

0 We will reach into high schools through Career Pathways and other outreach
initiatives.

0 A university information system will track contacts and support customer service.
With the best technology available, we will develop a system that helps proﬁle
students and match learning needs with programs.

Marketing

The University will forge 3 Davis University brand and image that highlights its
commitment to practical business education and customer service. Market research and
technology will allow us to identify and pursue target populations who have the best
chance of excelling at Davis. Marketing will also aggressively promote programs to
strengthen recruitment and retention.

0 All of our constituencies will understand that the Davis University brand is

practical business education with exemplary customer service.

179

 

Davis will regularly identify market opportunities and develop plans for
penetrating these markets.

We will operate in markets as long as we can continue to meet student needs and
prosper, and leave markets when necessary.

Marketing will serve an integral component of program development and
enhancement, supported by a sophisticated market research effort. We will imply

the very best market research to deﬁne and measure progress.

Advancement

The University will maintain a vigorous fund raising program across all our campuses

that will be central to grth and prosperity. Such an effort will enable us to invest in our

long-term needs, including speciﬁc programs, technology, and student scholarships.

We will set and achieve fund raising targets that contribute signiﬁcantly to the
University’s capital priorities, and we will work in cooperation with academic and
operational leaders to keep these priorities in front of our prospective donors.
Davis will establish a process for campus leaders to assist with local fund
development. Advancement staff will work with campus leaders to coordinate
fund raising priorities (technology, facilities, scholarships and special programs).
We will actively pursue grant opportunities that support the programmatic and
instructional needs of our students and our business partners.

We will maintain an active information sharing and action plan for public policy
advocacy and issues management that is supportive of independent higher

education, student ﬁnancial aid needs, charitable giving, and a business-ﬁiendly

180

 

 

environment. This will hinge on establishing and maintaining relationships with
key elected officials and involving campus executives in the execution of tactics.
We will operate a National Davis University Alumni Association that builds
strong ties between alumni and Davis and increases contacts for fund raising and
marketing.

Davis will enhance student opportunities with an ongoing plan to improve the
University’s targeting and awarding of scholarships, including more generous

criteria for awarding scholarships.

Finances

We will invest wisely to prosper, keeping a healthy bottom line without jeopardizing

growth and essential support services necessary to recruit and retain students. Davis

University will take calculated risks to ﬁnance and build the University.

We will move beyond semester-tot-semester accounting by pursing goals and
strategies that will build a vibrant and prosperous university in the long term.
Budgeting will be tied closely to strategic planning.

We will build and employ an effective campus model that monitors student and
operation performance and guides resource allocation.

Davis will analyze academic programs relative to cost, revenue, and contribution
to margin.

We will employ an information management and cost accounting system to
forecast, analyze past performance, and model future performance.

A capital investment plan will guide the reinvestment of operating funds based

upon the greatest opportunity for meeting student needs.

181

‘—

0 We will develop a pricing strategy to allow us to compete more effectively in all

our target markets.
Facilities
Davis University will offer a learning environment that is conducive to the success of our
students. If we are delivering a practical business education, we must have the facilities
and technology to accomplish this. Our facilities must be comfortable, attractive, and up-
to-date technologically if we are to have a competitive edge in recruiting and retaining
students.

0 The quality of the learning environment will be assessed at all campuses, and a
prototypical Davis classroom—designed to provide maximum ﬂexibility,
comfort, appropriate technology, and the best possible learning environment for
students—will be deﬁned.

0 The Davis “look” will be consistent and ubiquitous across all campuses.

0 We will prioritize investments in existing and new facilities based upon market

research and growth prospects.

182

 

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183

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