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dissertation entitled

HOW INNOVATION ATTRIBUTE PERCEPTIONS
INFLUENCE COMMUNITY COLLEGE ADOPTION OF

PROGRAMS PROMOTED BY AN EXTERNAL AGENCY

PhD.

presented by

Sandra M. Harley

has been accepted towards fulﬁllment
of the requirements for the

degree in Higher Adult and Lifelong
Education

 

 

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HOW INNOVATION ATTRIBUTE PERCEPTIONS INFLUENCE COMMUNITY
COLLEGE ADOPTION OF PROGRAMS PROMOTED BY AN EXTERNAL
AGENCY
By

Sandra M. Harley

A DISSERTATION

Submitted to
Michigan State University
In partial fulﬁllment of the requirements
For the degree of

DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
Department of Education Administration

2005

Abstract
HOW INNOVATION ATTRIBUTE PERCEPTIONS INFLUENCE COMMUNITY
COLLEGE ADOPTION OF PROGRAMS PROMOTED BY AN EXTERNAL
AGENCY
By
Sandra M. Harley

This research found that the perception of Relative Advantage is most signiﬁcant
to an organization’s adoption decision through answering the question: Do innovation
attribute perceptions inﬂuence community college adoption of programs promoted by an
external agency? The inﬂuence of the other four attributes on community college
organizational decisions is less clear. This study explored how an educational institution
weighs various novel curricular programs for institutionalization to meet organizational
goals and how organizational perception of the characteristics of an innovation, or
attributes, inﬂuenced the adoption decision. In particular, the innovations under study
were promoted by an external agency formed as an interorganizational relationship made
up of two- and four-year colleges. To study the inﬂuence, quantitative and qualitative
data collection techniques were employed in a multiple case study comprising three
community colleges. The case study was guided by six propositions developed from
previous studies reported in the literature. In addition, the study recognized the
importance that various organizational levels within a college, academic vice presidents,
coordinators of international programs and faculty, might have on the adoption decision.

The case ﬁndings were analyzed and reported out by the six propositions.
Proposition 1, the inﬂuence of innovation attribute perceptions on community college

adoption decisions will mirror the ﬁndings in the literature supporting the theory, was

partially conﬁrmed. The perception of an innovation’s Relative Advantage was most
important in forming a community college’s adoption decision. Proposition 2, the faculty
member or administrator with the strongest link to the promoting agency will function as
the change agent for promoting innovations, was not conﬁrmed. What emerged ﬁom the
data was that the perceived value of the interorganization relationship to each
international program coordinator framed how the individual continued to promote the
international module innovation on his or her campus. Proposition 3, the coordinator will
use interpersonal communication channels to strengthen the attribute perceptions of
relative advantage, compatibility, trialability, and observability while decreasing the
perceptions of complexity to increase the likelihood of innovation adoption, was
conﬁrmed. Proposition 4, individual change agents will deﬁne an innovation to serve
differing purposes at each college studied, was conﬁrmed. Proposition 5, the way an
organization institutionalizes an innovation will inﬂuence organizational communication
structures and consequently impact productivity, was conﬁrmed. The community
colleges modiﬁed their organizational communication structures to support the
innovation adoption decision made that provided the greatest relative advantage for their
institution. Proposition 6, faculty and administrators will view the purposes of the
innovations differently, was conﬁrmed. Members of each organization level perceived

the innovation as serving different organizational ends.

Copyrighted by
SANDRA M. HARLEY
2005

 

Acknowledgements

Only through the expert skills of my dissertation director, Marilyn Amey, was this
research study birthed. She knew when to hold my hand, when to coach me in making
the ﬁnal push and delighted in the ﬁnished project. My committee members, Marylee
Davis, Jim Fairweather and Joe Levine, were equally supportive and helpful. I am deeply
grateful for their assistance.

John Meltzer and Robert Glew of Michigan State University were
accommodating in directing me toward appropriate subjects and community colleges
sites. Those faculty members and administrators who participated in the case study were
very gracious and generous with their time and expertise. Without their assistance, this
research project could not have reached fruition. .

There is always a willing group of people supporting and encouraging the
researcher. My family members, friends and colleagues acted as cheerleaders, giving
moral and emotional sustenance. My loving husband, David, who had traveled this road
himself, took on much of the day-to-day chores of family life and provided counsel when
a roadblock was encountered. Other family members encouraged and helped. Doug
programmed the Web-based questionnaire and monitored data submission. Huan, Susan,
Meghan and Tally cheered me on, with good timing. A special group of ﬁiends: Gail B,
Olga, Karen, Sally and Gail W checked on my progress monthly and assured me that I
would reach my goal. Finally, I owe a great deal to Stan Sofﬁn and his trusty assistant
Julie Peters for their support each day. There are many more who deserve words of

thanks, but the list grows too long. Know that I appreciated you and your help.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

LIST OF TABLES .............................................................................. viii

LIST OF FIGURES ............................................................................. ix
CHAPTER 1

PROBLEM AND BACKGROUND ......................................................... 1

Research Question ..................................................................... 2

Extent Of Study ............................................................................................... 3

Deﬁning The Terms ........................................................................... > .............. 5

Diffusion Of Innovation Literature ...................................................... 5

Innovation ............................................................................................. 7

Innovation Attributes ........................................................................... 7

External Inﬂuence ................................................................................ 7

Adoption .............................................................................................. 8

External Change Agency ...................................................................... 9

Importance Of The Study ................................................................................ 10
CHAPTER 2

LITERATURE REVIEW ............................................................................................ 12

Change Forces ................................................................................................. 13

External Forces .................................................................................... 13

Internal Forces ..................................................................................... 15

Change Issues Unique To Community Colleges ................................. 16

Forces Against Change: Homeostasis ................................................. 17

Change And Community Colleges ...................................................... 18

Summary .............................................................................................. 18

Change Agencies ............................................................................................. 19

Mass Or Mediated Communication ..................................................... 19

Interpersonal Communication ............................................................. 20

Summary .............................................................................................. 21

Persuasion Stage —- Innovation Attributes ........................................................ 22

Role Of Attributes In Research ........................................................... 23

Recent Innovation Attribute Literature ................................................ 25

Intersecting Conceptual Frameworks .............................................................. 33

Summary .......................................................................................................... 35
CHAPTER 3

METHODOLGY .......................................................................................................... 36

Study Propositions ........................................................................................... 39

Proposition 1 ........................................................................................ 39

Proposition 2 ........................................................................................ 39

Proposition 3 ........................................................................................ 40

Proposition 4 ........................................................................................ 40

Proposition 5 ........................................................................................ 41

Proposition 6 ........................................................................................ 41

Units Of Analysis ............................................................................................ 41
Colleges ............................................................................................... 42
Interviews ............................................................................................ 43

Linking Data To The Propositions .................................................................. 44
Data Collection .................................................................................... 44

Data Analysis Procedures ................................................................................ 68

Presentation Of The Interpretation Of Findings .............................................. 70

CHAPTER 4
THE CASE STUDY .................................................................................................... 72

Community Colleges Sites .............................................................................. 72
College Characteristics ........................................................................ 74
Internationalizing The Colleges .......................................................... 76

College Innovation Adoption .......................................................................... 80
Innovation 1 ......................................................................................... 80
Innovation 2 ......................................................................................... 84
Irmovation 3 ......................................................................................... 8S

Validity Of Propositions .................................................................................. 87
Proposition 1 ........................................................................................ 87
Proposition 2 ........................................................................................ 91
Proposition 3 ........................................................................................ 96
Proposition 4 ........................................................................................ 100
Proposition 5 ........................................................................................ 103
Proposition 6 ........................................................................................ 111

Answering the Research Question: How Innovation Attribute Perceptions
Inﬂuence Community College Adoption Of Programs Promoted By An

External Agency .............................................................................................. 115
CHAPTER 5
RESEARCH OVERVIEW 120
Research Synopsis .......................................................................................... 120
Analysis Of Findings ....................................................................................... 122
Implications ..................................................................................................... 127
Limitations ....................................................................................................... 133
Need For Further Research .............................................................................. 135
APPENDICES
A. Perceptions of Three [expunged] Programs .............................................. 137
B. Note of Explanation ............................................................................ . ...... 143
C. Table 9: Pearson Product Moment correlation of faculty responses
about their perceptions of Innovation 2: Summer Institutes ..................... 145
D. Table 10: Pearson Product Moment correlation of survey instrument
Scales ......................................................................................................... 147

REFERENCES ............................................................................................................ 149

vii

LIST OF TABLES

Table 1. Data sources used to validate case study propositions ................................ 45
Table 2. Examples of modiﬁed questionnaire items ................................................. 49

Table 3. Survey distribution and response rates by category expressed in both

 

raw number numbers and percentages............. 57
Table 4. Clustering of responses by innovation and by scale ................................... 63
Table 5. Examples of interview response interpretation for coding purposes .......... 67
Table 6. Example of cross-case synthesis matrix ...................................................... 70
Table 7. Comparison of community college sites ..................................................... 73

Table 8. Faculty responses for Innovation 2: Summer Institutes
by question and by scale with means and standard deviations .................... 89

Table 9. Pearson Product Moment correlation of faculty responses about
their perceptions of Innovation 2: summer Institutes attributes .................. 145

Table 10. Pearson Product Moment correlation of survey instrument scales ............. 147

 

viii

LIST OF FIGURES

Figure 1. Case Study Design ......................................................................................

ix

38

Chapter 1: Problem Background

American community colleges operate in an environment of continuous change--
both internally and externally. Stakeholders press for changes in leadership practices,
planning methods, fund allocation, curriculum revisions, and other innovations. In
addition, it is common for agencies, external to the community college, to develop sets of
best practices for promulgation. These agencies represent a variety of interests as
discussed by Stark and Lattuca (1995). Some of the examples they cite as inﬂuencing
higher education are agencies concerned with either general institution or professional
program accreditation while other organizations, for instance the Accounting Education
Change Commission, may have missions to promote a specialized curriculum or
pedagogical innovations, and often geographic or national agencies advance curricular
changes.

Without a centralized national or centralized educational system in many states,
community colleges are free to select from myriad innovations that best ﬁt individual
institutional need. Under these circumstances, what sways a community college to adopt
an innovation? How might an external change agency cachet an innovation in order to
attract the interest of a community college? This research project partially answers these
questions through surveying and interviewing community college faculty and
administrators within one Midwestern state to explore the role innovation attribute
perceptions played in the adoption decision. Equally important was recognizing and
researching innovation attributes as antecedents of change in higher education, in

particular community colleges. Rogers (1995) deﬁnes the period of time preceding the

decision as the “persuasion stage” when an individual or an organization is deciding to
either adopt or reject an innovation.

Organizational decision-making during the innovation adoption process is an
under-explored area of research and most notably the role of innovation attribute
perceptions in the decision process (Rogers, 1995; Tomatzky and Klein, 1982). In
addition, what prepares postsecondary institutions for adopting change is not often
studied. Gaining a better understanding of how attributes are perceived and used in
organizational decision-making can lead to more suitably craﬂed proposals, which are
more likely to move through the internal decision-making process of the organization.

In particular, three international curricular program efforts promoted by the
interorganizational relationship, Educators Dedicated to Intemationalizing Curricula

(EDIC) a pseudonym, were the innovations under investigation. EDIC is a consortium of
two- and four-year colleges within one Midwestern state dedicated to increasing
international awareness through various educational efforts. By way of documenting the
adoption process for these speciﬁc programs by EDIC member community colleges,
common decision inﬂuences were identiﬁed that can guide other change agencies and
agents in promoting curricular program innovation to community colleges.
Research Question

Of particular interest to this project was the research question: Do innovation
attribute perceptions inﬂuence community college adoption of programs promoted by an
external agency? Did community college administrators and faculty hold different
perceptions about innovation attributes with respect to the same innovations? And

ﬁnally, using the three innovations with differing rates of diffusion success, what

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evidence existed in the data that perception of the different attributes inﬂuenced the
decision to adopt?

In answering these questions, it was thought that additional threads of inquiry
might arise. It was speculated, depending upon the research ﬁndings, that it might be of
interest to explore whether every adopted community college international curricular
programming innovation shared a common pattern.

Answering the proposed research question gave a better understanding of how
perceptions of innovation attributes inﬂuenced community college adoption of programs
promoted by an external agency. Not only can external organizations or individuals
wishing to affect change in community colleges better understand how to couch
innovations, but also a signiﬁcant gap in diffusion of innovation research literature is
ﬁlled.

Extent of the Study

The purpose of this study was to focus on the inﬂuence of innovation attribute
perceptions on community college decisions to adopt programs promoted by an external
agency. Therefore, issues of leadership practices or style were not of primary interest but
their inﬂuence on how the innovation was deﬁned at various institutions was noted.
Governance or decision-making structures were not investigated directly but their role
was apparent in how organizational communication systems were framed in response to
the innovations at the three community college sites studied. The narrow focus of this
research did not allow for a full study of how institutions implemented strategic planning
or institutionalize change efforts except when these processes were directly related to the

adoption of the innovations under study. The dependent variable, adoption of

international curricular programs promoted by EDIC, does not imply that this research
examined community college curricular Structure. It was the intention to study an
organizational issue and not international curriculum or prevailing curricular theories.
Furthermore, this was not an evaluation of EDIC effectiveness as a change agency, but
lessons can be drawn from this study by EDIC about how it can increase the likelihood of
institutional adoption of the innovations it promotes in the future.

Researchers have developed a large and broad body of literature around diffusion
of innovation. This study was an attempt to study a narrow area of that research—the
inﬂuence of innovation attribute perceptions on organizational decisions to adopt change
promoted by external agencies. Therefore, this study did not measure innovation
adoption thresholds or rate of adoption by community colleges. Nor were barriers to
adoption explored. The goal of this project was not to describe wholly the process of
adoption but to deﬁne the inﬂuence of attribute perceptions on the decision to adopt. As
such, this study was not concerned with the solo faculty attempts at internationalizing
curriculum. The organizational innovativeness of community colleges was not studied.
And, the research did not explore contingent innovation-decisions or the optional
decisions of individuals to adopt the innovation but focused on the organizational steps in
the decision to adopt.

Community colleges are motivated by numerous events, issues, and persons to
adopt innovation. These motivators and their inﬂuence were not part of this research
study. In particular, the inﬂuence of “competition” or what social learning theory

literature refers to as “following the Harvards” was not considered as integral to the ﬁnal

phase of the decision-making step studied. It was assumed that the inﬂuence from
events, issues, and persons was exerted during the ﬁrst phases of the decision.

It is understood that an organization’s structures, dynamics, resources, along with
its leadership are important predictors of innovation adoption. This project looked at
what the researcher believed to be the ﬁnal step of the adoption decision process and
hypothesized that the perceptions of innovation attributes were the crucial linchpin by
which adoption decisions were ﬁnalized.

Deﬁning the Terms

To assist the reader, it is important to deﬁne the terms used in this research
project. The factors named thus far are common terms that have many meanings
associated with them depending on reader reference and experiences. Therefore, it is
important to establish a working deﬁnition for each term drawn from the literature used
in framing the research question.

Diﬁ‘usion of innovation literature. Rogers (1995) presents a concise history
outlining the development of the theoretical precepts for diffusion of innovation and a
comprehensive summary of its literature. He traces the beginnings to the French
sociologist/social psychologist Gabriel Tarde’s work during the early 1900s and to the
work of the British and German-Austrian anthropologists known as diffussionists of the
same period. In addition, Rogers (1995) chronicles modern diffusion research traditions
beginning with two rural sociologists, Ryan and Gross, who followed the adoption of
hybrid seed corn by Iowa farmers in the early 19405. Reaching across disciplines, they

took theoretical social constructs developed by American anthropological scholars in the

l 920s and applied them to the diffusion of agricultural practices. Thus, began the

migration of innovation diffusion research to most disciplines.

The largest bodies of diffusion research can be identiﬁed in ten academic

disciplines and sub-disciplines: anthropology, early sociology, rural sociology, education,

public health and medical sociology, communication, marketing and management,

geography, general sociology, and general economics (Rogers, 1995, p. 42-43). By

applying the research traditions of disciplines or sub-disciplines, one can often predict

which of ﬁve general units of analysis named by Rogers (1995, p. 90-91) will be used in

conducting a study: social systems, members of social systems, dyadic network links

within and between social systems, or innovations. In categorizing known diffusion

research across all ﬁelds and disciplines, Rogers (1995, pp. 90-91) determined that eight

main dependent variables emerged:

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8.

Earliness of knowing about an innovation by members of a social system;
Rate adoption of different innovations in a social system;

Innovativeness of members of a social system (the members may be
individuals or organization);

Opinion leadership in diffusing innovations;

Diffusion networks;

Rate of adoption on innovations in different social systems;
Communication channel use (e.g., whether mass media or interpersonal);
and,

Consequences of an innovation.

In addition, he isolated common independent variables that are studied: characteristics of

System members, attributes of innovations, patterns in the network links between system

members, systems norms, characteristics of the social system, change agent variables,

types of innovation decisions, innovativeness, and nature and use of the innovation

(Rogers, 1995, pp. 90-91). A deeper discussion of the origins of the research paradigm

may be found in the article by Valente and Rogers (1995).

Innovation. Rogers (1995) provided the broadest deﬁnition for innovation when
he wrote, “an innovation is an idea, practice, or object that is perceived as new by an
individual or other unit of adoption” (p. 11). Therefore, innovation in this study referred
to an international curricular program that was new to a community college. The

particular curricular programs under study were those that originated external to the
college—programs promoted by EDIC.

Innovation attributes. Generally, it is through the discipline lenses of
communication and rural sociology that innovation attributes are viewed, as the perceived
characteristics of the innovation (Johnson, 1997). Traditionally, in the literature, there
are ﬁve characteristics that are common to all innovations: relative advantage,
compatibility, complexity, trialability, and observability. In particular situations or
industries, research has shown that an innovation may have other characteristics that
inﬂuence the decision to adopt. For instance, Dearing & Meyer (1994) found eleven
distinct characteristics when applied to hazardous waste biorernediation process
innovation that were considered important to the decision to adopt by ﬁrms engaged in
the clean-up of toxic waste sites. In addition to the traditional ﬁve, Dearing & Meyer

isolated other attributes such as economic advantage, effectiveness, and reliability. To
remain consistent with the ﬁndings of Lindquist (1978), whose work formed a basis for
this research project, the strength of the ﬁve universal attributes were tested, leaving the
discovery of any additional characteristics that may have importance to community
colleges in their adoption decisions for future research.

External inﬂuence. Lindquist (1978) made a persuasive case for the power

wielded by external forces over colleges and universities for initiating change. He stated

“students of academic reform ﬁnd, in fact, that most change in colleges and universities
appears to have an external stimulus behind it” (p. 28). Lindquist does not imply that
colleges only respond to agencies that exercise regulatory authority, but that inﬂuence
frequently originates through college associated networks. In recording his ﬁndings from
the cases studies, he wrote, “nearly every local innovation had a model as a stimulus and
guide” (1978, p. 224). These models were ﬁom geographically close institutions, new
top administrators bringing programs with them, or the chief administrators becoming
aware of models being implemented at other institutions. Using Lindquist’s (1978)
ﬁndings as a lens provides an opportunity to look at the inﬂuence of an organization such
as EDIC. This study’s operational deﬁnition of external inﬂuence was: the inﬂuence
wielded by an organization that is outside of the governance systems of individual
community colleges under study but whose staff and other coalition members maintain
close association with one another. Therefore, this researcher considered EDIC to be an
external inﬂuence by virtue of its being a member of a network of colleges but being
outside of the formal organization of any of the colleges.

Adoption. As individuals or organizations progress through the decision making
process, a point is reached where “a decision to make full use of an innovation as the best
course of action available is made or conversely, the decision is made to reject the
innovation” (Rogers, 1995, p. 21). This deﬁnition does not imply that the innovation will

be fully implemented or integrated into the organization; and, its future continuance is not
suggested by this deﬁnition. It was expected that the community colleges studied in this
research project would have varied responses to EDIC promoted curricular program

innovations. Some decisions were to reject a particular international curricular program

or to discontinue the program after adoption while other program innovations continue.
The study focused on determining the strength of perceived attributes and the role that
those attributes played in college decisions to adopt, whether the program was
implemented and continued or whether it was implemented and then discontinued.

External change agency. There are many categories of external agencies that can

inﬂuence community college decision-making. For instance, agencies created by
legislation such as state departments of education; regional accreditation agencies; state
universities with altered transfer requirements; and so on. This study examined the
inﬂuence of one particular type of external agency—a change agency——by exploring how
community college faculty and administrators perceived the attributes innovations
proposed by this external agency.

Rogers (1995) suggests that a change agency is simply an organization that
“wishes to inﬂuence clients’ innovation-decisions in a direction deemed desirable” by the
agency (p. 335). The literature abounds with examples. For instance, Grilli & Lomas
(1994) explored physician acceptance of practice guidelines promulgated by medical
organizations between 1980 and 1991 to improve the quality of care. Dearing & Meyer
( l 994) studied the effectiveness of the U. S. Environmental Protection Agency’s
demonstration projects for technology transfer in the ﬁeld of hazardous waste

bioremediation. In the Midwest and central regions of the United States, the North
Central Accreditation Commission on Institutions of Higher Education promoted
assessment of student learning as an essential criterion for general institutional
accreditation (Lopez, 1997). This study focused on the adoption of international

curricular programs promoted by the change agency, EDIC, a coalition of higher

education institutions under the outreach auspices of the ﬁctitiously named Midstate
University (MU). EDIC was dedicated to internationalizing two- and four-year college
and university curricula especially, from the perspective of the social sciences and liberal
arts and with an emphasis on developing countries.

The prior terms are used frequently in the description and results of this research
study. It is important to gain a mutual understanding of how they are consistently used in

the writing. Other terms, used less ﬁequently, are deﬁned in the context in which they

were used.

Importance of the Study

The potential for the results of this research project to contribute to the body of
diffusion of innovation literature is unquestionable; as well, they possess implications for
practice. In the latest edition of his seminal work, Diﬁiision of Innovations, Everett
Rogers (1995) characterizes approximately 7,000 diffusion research projects by variables
and of these, only 1 percent investigates innovation attributes--the factors inﬂuencing the
decision to adopt. Largely, these studies center on an individual's decision to adopt.
There are few organizational studies in this category of diffusion research and of those
studies investigating the organizational decision process, most often, there is a strong
organizational leader or change champion identiﬁed as central to the adoption process
( see Becker 1970; Walton, 1970-71). This study differed in its focus by investigating the

importance of innovation attribute perceptions at the organizational level and not from
the perspective of an individual.
This research has the potential for impacting the practices of both community

colleges and agencies external to the colleges. In organizational decision-making,

IO

understanding the interplay of decision components is important (Scott, 1998). Ferreting
out and understanding the beliefs or conditions imbedded in its culture, which shape
decision-making provides a learning opportunity for the organization. Using the ﬁndings
of this research will provide community colleges wishing to become more aggressive in
their programming the understanding of how to manipulate innovations to better assure
adoption by the organization.

In addition, innovation promoted by external change agencies must compete with
other external and internal innovations vying for adoption by community colleges. Often
curricular innovation springs from an individual college faculty member constructing
new meaning from a uniﬁcation of different disciplines by applying what Boyer (1990)
refers to as scholarship of integration. The faculty member may informally share this
curricular innovation with departmental members or formally share the innovation with
discipline colleagues through publications or presentations. Whether the innovation
originates internally or externally, or with an individual or an agency, this researcher
believed it was important to determine the inﬂuential strength and role of each innovation
attribute perceptions to community college decisions to adopt. This understanding can
provide a roadmap for positioning future recommendations by change agencies,
increasing the likelihood that a promoted innovation will successfully permeate the

organizational decision-making process of community colleges.

ll

Chapter 2: Literature Review

Everett Rogers (1995, p. 163) conceptualized the diffusion of innovation as a
broad, general theory encompassing ﬁve stages: knowledge, persuasion, decision,
implementation, and conﬁrmation. He hypothesized that diffusion is encouraged to
progress from stage to stage by means of communication, either interpersonal or mass
media. In addition, Rogers (1995) placed diﬁusion of innovation within the context of
prior conditions. Since the publication of the ﬁrst edition of Rogers’ Diﬁ‘usion of

Innovations in 1962, his diffusion model has become the most prevalent frame for

research on innovation (McAnany, 1984).

Not all innovation researchers consider the multi-discipline use of Rogers’ model
as positive. Warner (1974) saw the model’s popularity as a research design as a
disadvantage. It was his contention that the body of diffusion of innovation research is
spread over a very broad range but that each discipline has looked at only a narrow scope
of variables or situations. He believed that this hampers the generalization of ﬁndings
and the building of a comprehensive diffusion model. Wamer’s criticism is valid but the
model effectively explains aspects of how innovation diffuses regardless of the discipline
lens used. It is this effectiveness of explanation that made it a useful model for this
research study. The research question established ﬁnite parameters for study and
constructs meaning within higher education. Therefore, the vast body of literature
dedicated to the innovation-decision model proposed by Rogers (1995) was not be ﬁrlly
explored—only the literature that was pertinent to the research question: Do innovation

attribute perceptions inﬂuence community college adoption of programs promoted by an

external agency?

12

This review presents four major subdivisions of the literature related to the
research question. The ﬁrst is a brief deScription of environmental issues impacting
institutions of higher education. The second section describes the role of change agencies
in promoting change. An analysis of the second stage of diffusion, persuasion, comprises
the third section. The ﬁnal section, draws consensus from the literature to support the
research proposed in this paper.

Change Forces

Within the Rogers (1995) model, prior conditions shape how the innovation-
decision process progresses. For this research project, felt needs or problems, as
manifested in change forces, was considered the most general prior condition impacting

Midwestern community colleges. Every postsecondary institution feels the pressure to
react to the forces for change (American Council on Education, 1999). College
committees are empanelled to seek innovative ways to respond to the latest threat or
opportunity. Faculty members discuss techniques for engaging students in the classroom.
Legislatures look for ways to assure the taxpayer that the colleges and universities in their
state are offering quality educations.

Change brews not only in the outside world but bubbles up inside of the
organization. It is assumed seeking out appropriate innovation to address these forces
becomes a priority for most institutions.

External forces. The most provocative coverage of external forces for change in
higher education can be found in the work of Peterson and Dill (1997) and the American
Council on Education (1999) monograph “On Change: En Route to Transformation”.

Speciﬁcally, the literature regarding these forces can be categorized into six broad

l3

themes: competition, globalization, demographics, technology, accountability, and
economics.

Peterson and Dill (1997) point to the competition from institutions within and
outside of postsecondary education as sources of threat. It is suggested that outside of the
academy, media and entertainment organizations will soon be delivering educational
opportunities that are attractive alternatives to the traditional offerings of colleges and
universities (Peterson and Dill, 1997; Sullivan and Siggins, 1993). Within the academy,
new forms of institutions and delivery methods are emerging, such as the virtual Western
Governors’ University described by Gardner and Livingston (1996).

The American Council on Education (1999) stressed the importance of
globalization of institutions and curricular programs to meet the changing needs of the
marketplace. There is a growing need for graduates entering the workforce to be
knowledgeable about multiple cultures, their languages, and trade practices; in addition,
students ﬁom other nations are joining American classrooms or participating in
asynchronous learning (Doucette, 1998). Shifting classroom demographics to include
multiple ethnicities and an aging student body is a well-documented change force
(American Council on Education, 1999; Bonvillian and Murphy, 1996; Cohen and
Brawer, 1996).

Norris and Dolence (1996) emphasized the crucial role of technological advances.
With technology having a life span of six months to three years, huge sums of money
must be invested continuously in upgrading IT systems, attracting the technicians to
service the systems, and training faculty and administrators in its use. Peterson and Dill

(1997) approached technology as a change force that will reconﬁgure curricular

l4

programming and student services. They concluded that swiftly changing technology
will impel workers to continually upgrade their skills and that postsecondary institutions
must create curricular programs to meet these demands and to design ﬂexible delivery
options for the offerings.

Legislative and public calls for accountability are growing louder (American
Council on Education, 1999; Green, 1997; Stark and Lattuca, 1995; Sullivan and Siggins,
1993). Government, employers, parents, and students are holding institutions
accountable for what is taught and how it is taught. Regional accreditation agencies are
demanding that colleges and universities measure student learning over the course of a
student’s tenure at the institution (Lopez, 1997).

Declining federal and state dollars bring economic concerns to colleges and
universities (American Council on Education, 1999; Bonvillian and Murphy, 1996;
Sullivan and Siggins, 1993). With shrinking public funding, postsecondary institutions
must curtail expenditures while raising student contributions through increased tuition.

Any one of the six forces for change identiﬁed above is a powerﬁrl driver of
institutional reformation, but taken together they batter the foundations of colleges and
universities.

Internal forces. While the external environment is awash in multiple changes, the
internal environments of postsecondary institutions are far from placid waters of
contentment. From within the academy, there are calls for restructuring the higher
education experience and its institutions. These internal forces for change are best
represented in three works by Boyer (1990), Barr and Tagg (1995), and Norris and

Dolence (1996).

15

Boyer (1990) envisioned restructuring the professorate. He advocated for faculty
to embrace a more full recognition of scholarship that includes discovery, integration,
application, and teaching. There can no longer be a disconnection between the purposes
of higher education and the society, and it is incumbent that the faculty assists with
bridging the gap (Rice, 1996).

Barr and Tag (1995) called for revising the common institutional focus on
teaching to one of learning. They suggested that this begins in the classroom but
permeates throughout the language used in colleges and universities and to allocation of
funds based on learning outcomes. Lovett (1996) joined their appeal by recommending
that learning be more broadly deﬁned than that which occurs in the classroom; she too,
advocated for measuring learning outcomes rather than gauging education by seat time.

Norris and Dolence (1996) sought to dismantle the current organizational
structures of postsecondary institutions and replace them with cross-ﬁmctional teams.
This call for ﬂattening college and university organizational structure is a common theme
in the literature (Alfred and Carter, 1997; Benjamin and Carroll, 1996; Snyder, 1993). It
is thought that streamlining the decision-making functions will allow institutions to act
more quickly and therefore be more resilient to change forces.

These calls from within the academy are as powerﬁrl as the external change
forces. These are the voices of faculty and administrators who wish to transform colleges
and universities.

Change issues unique to community colleges. As institutions of higher education,
community colleges experience the universal external and internal change forces

mentioned in the preceding paragraphs. In addition to those effects, Cohen and Brawer

l6

(1996) highlighted several that are unique to the community college, of which three are
signiﬁcant forces for change. Firstly, they pointed to the external change force growing
out of the emphasis on vocational education created not only by student interest but also
by the inﬂux of federal and state job development monies. Secondly, Cohen and Brawer
(1996) traced an internal force for change to the need for an extensive developmental
curriculrun to assist a growing body of students to acquire the basic skills needed for
college level work. Lastly, they identiﬁed a part-time work force as an internal change
force—between SO and 60 percent of community college faculties are adjuncts who move
in and out of teaching on a regular basis and bring new ideas and ways with them.

Forces against change: homeostasis. As leading authors writing about
organizational systems, Morgan (1997) and Senge (1990) noted that organizations
resemble complex organisms in their ability to maintain homeostasis—the balancing of
external forces with internal demands to preserve status quo. External force is countered
by internal adaptation, and the organization is returned to previous levels of operation so
that old systems are restored.

Kennedy (1995) indicated that postsecondary institutions demonstrate
homeostasis. In his review of major trends in the literature regarding internal resistance
to change in institutions of higher education, he categorized the forces against change
into two general themes: local governance issues and political issues. Therefore, when
college administrators seek a groundswell of support from the faculty for changes
departmental political realities come into play. Tenure decisions, academic promotions,
and allocation of current and future resources depending on who is the department chair,

are just a few issues that shape a department’s political climate (Kennedy, 1995.) The

17

meeting of the two forces, administrative goals and departmental realities, leaves only
one safe route for most colleges and universities: status quo.

Change and community colleges. In contrast to Kennedy (1995), Levin (1998,
2000), an astute observer of the inﬂuence of change forces on community colleges,
differs in his view of how these institutions react to change. He documented the
responsive nature of community colleges to stakeholder demands such as increased
participation as a workforce partner with employers and local governments and the
globalization of the institution. However, he has found that community college
responsiveness to change forces has not been as profound or deep as to alter its mission
or values. It is his contention that

the essential nature of the community college, its identity, is embedded in

what it does; in its actions and change processes. Thus, the organization’s

responses to external stimuli . . . are expressions of organization and
efforts to not only maintain but also reproduce its identity. (Levin, 1998,

132)

Summary. If Rogers (1995) is correct that to understand the origins of innovation
one must consider prior conditions, then colleges and universities should be a breeding
ground for innovation to contend with external and internal forces for change. Yet,
homeostasis is a powerful force for maintaining an institution’s current circumstances.
There are educational institutions that do more readily respond to environmental stimuli--
community colleges. Levin (2000) wrote that the mission of these institutions is one of
change. When student bodies evolve, employers have new needs, or faculty search for

ways to engage working adults, innovations are embraced by the community college.

18

Change Agencies

Miles (1964) wrote that there exists “a vast complex of associations devoted to
the interests of one category or another of educational practitioner [that] also exerts a
good deal of inﬂuence on educational innovation” (p. 38). What types of associations or
organizations are these? How do they exert their inﬂuence? Applying Rogers’ (1995)
theory that diffusion is transported through channels of interpersonal and mass
communication, one can sort educational change agencies by the preferred type of
communication channel: mass or interpersonal communications.

Mass or mediated communication. Examples of organizations using mass or
mediated communication channels to encourage diffusion of innovation predominate in
the literature (Grilli and Lomas, 1994; Narula and Pearce, 1986; Wallack et al., 1993). It
is also true that educational organizations heavily utilize mass communication channels.
For instance, organizations such as National Endowment for the Humanities, National
Institute of Education, Association of American Colleges, Carnegie Foundation for the
Advancement of Teaching, American Association of State Colleges and Universities,
Education Commission of the States, National Governors’ Association, among others
(Stark and Lattuca, 1997, p. 81) publish scholarly treatises and more prosaic pieces to
engage a broad audience in discourse. Stark and Lattuca (1997) captured the debate
initiated by these change agencies calling for curricular reform in colleges and
universities. Organizations, such as these examples, engage in extensive deliberation or
debate in their publications in order to reach potential adopters and to encourage

diffusion of the promoted change.

19

A great number of organizations distribute guidelines or best practices to member
individuals or organizations; for instance, Grilli and Lomas (1994) researched the
compliance rate of Canadian physicians with adoptingpractice guidelines, and Johnson et
a1. (1998) studied the impact of technology mandates issued by a national health
organization to local chapters. In a similar fashion, regional accrediting agencies
encourage the diffusion of institutional improvement (Lopez, 1997). Through the
promulgation of accreditation criteria and annual meeting sessions, member institutions
of higher education are encouraged to adopt assessment of student academic achievement
via a formal planning and evaluation process (Lopez, 1997).

Interpersonal communication. Other associations take on a more collegial role in
attempting to affect reform by utilizing two different interpersonal communication
channels: change agents and interorganizational relationships. Many organizations adopt
the strategy of sending change agents into the ﬁeld. The agent is an employee of the
organization or an advocate of its mission and is empowered to persuade others to adopt
the innovation promoted by the sponsoring organization (Rogers, 1995). This model is
used extensively by land grant college and university extension services (Rogers, 1995).
Other examples of the change agent model are its use in third world countries for
economic development (Auwal and Singhal, 1992) and for targeting of HIV/AIDS
programs (Svenkerud et al., 1998).

This research project investigated innovation promoted by the organizational
communication model--interorganizational relationships. This structure does not solely
rely on an organizationally deﬁned change agent but does utilize interpersonal

communication channels to diffuse innovation (Powell and DiMaggio, 1991). Gray

20

(1985) described this framework in educational institutions as a counter to adversarial .
problem solving by creating a “process model of collaboration” (p. 917). By establishing
interorganizational relationships, both the educational institution and the association can
“create long-term structures to support and sustain their collective appreciation and
problem-solving activities” (Gray, 1985, p. 917).

lnterorganizational relationships can exist between two or more established
organizations or can be the coming together of several organizations to form a new
coalition to advocate for change that would mutually beneﬁt their constituents. Howze
and Redman (1992) describe the formation of such a coalition during the late 1980’s.
Several organizations in Virginia became increasingly concerned with poor Virginians’
access to health care. Inforrnally, members of such diverse groups as the American Lung
Association, the AARP, Urban League, the Virginia School Boards Association, and the
Virginia Cooperative Extension Service met to discuss health related issues. In 1989,
they formally established the Health Promotion and Education Council of Virginia to
promote social innovation to the Virginia Assembly. Just as that council is a change
agency using interorganizational relationships to promote change, so is EDIC. As
described in the introduction, EDIC is an organization of representatives of two- and
four-year colleges joined in an interorganizational relationship to promote international
curricular programs in institutions of higher education.

Summary. Yin and Gwaltney’s (1981) research veriﬁed the importance of
interorganizational relationships in educational settings. They found that

when a local school district improves its services, it is often assisted by

another organization . . . a new idea is transmitted by one of these

organizations to individuals in a local school district. The idea may then
be put into practice. (p. ix)

21

This research project studied the inﬂuence of the attributes associated with three
innovations promoted by EDIC, a higher education change agency. The agency was
characterized by interorganizational relationships and it was assumed that the
interpersonal communication channels inherent in this organizational structure
encouraged the process of diffusion. This research focused on the “persuasion stage” of
the Rogers (1995) model, which is prior to the “decision stage” at which point
community colleges decided to either adopt or reject each of the three innovations.
Persuasion Stage - Innovation Attributes

Rogers (1995) described the persuasion stage of diffusion as that period following
awareness of an innovation when individuals or organizations begin to form opinions
about a change. He stated that the opinions are affective in nature and usually inﬂuenced
by information gained from peers rather than by systematic research. This incoming
information is sorted into ﬁve basic categories or attributes of perceptions about the
innovation: relative advantage, compatibility, complexity, trialability, and observability.
In many situations, there will be additional attributes depending on individual or
organizational circumstances. Attribute perceptions answer basic questions for the
decision-maker. For example: How will this be an advantage to the organization or me
(relative advantage)? Is it fairly close to how we already do things (compatibility)? Is it
simple and easy (complexity)? Must we integrate the total innovation or is it possible to
try parts (trialability)? Where can I see this in action (observability)? How the attributes
are perceived (the answers to the decision-maker’s questions) shape the decision to adopt

or reject the innovation.

22

Role of attributes in research. A common usage of attributes has been as a
typology of ﬁndings (Howze and Redman, 1992; Lindquist, 1979; Svenkerud et al.,
1998). Lindquist (197 9) used innovation attributes to sort higher education case study
ﬁndings into categories. Utilizing the properties of the attributes, he suggested future
action strategies for colleges and universities wishing to become more innovative.
Howze and Redman (1992) wrote retrospectively about a successful interorganizational
effort; they applied the characteristics of innovation attributes to the alliance actions to
explain successful efforts. Svenkerud et a1. (1998) used the characteristics of innovation
in the process of program review. By using the attributes as coding devices for a
qualitative analysis, components of successﬁrl AIDS/HIV prevention programs were
identiﬁed. These authors and others who have used attributes as “organizers” have not
contributed to the body of knowledge explaining the role and inﬂuence of innovation
attributes on the diffusion process except to demonstrate the utility of attributes for
grouping observations or events.

A preponderance of early studies employed innovation attributes as independent
variables associated with the rate of diffusion (Carlson, 1965; Evans and Leppmann,
1970; Fliegal and Kivlin, 1966). This has not been a fruitful area of research. For
instance, Carlson (1965) was one of the ﬁrst researchers to apply Rogers’ diffusion model
to educational settings. He utilized several curricular innovations (e.g., modem math,
programmed learning) to compare the inﬂuence of each innovation attribute on adoption
rate. This study and others that followed share several common weaknesses: (I)
attributes lacked common/established deﬁnitions; (2) attribute presence was deﬁned by

an expert, or a group of experts, and not the adopter/decision-maker; (3) innovations were

23

not presented in the same way. In this and other studies, the strength of attributes has not
predicted adoption rate. Evans and Leppmann ( 1970) explained more fully

The ﬁndings of our investigation support the view expressed by Rogers

that the actual characteristics of an innovation are of little importance to its

adoption. What does seem to matter is the way in which the individual

perceives the relative values of an innovation . . . Attempts, then to

delineate the different characteristics of an innovation might very well

proceed from the perceptions of the individual or the group--that is, they

would make subjective rather than objective evaluations. (p. 16)

In a single article, Ostlund (1974) reported two signiﬁcant studies. He used
housewives’ perceptions of new products to predict the probability of future product
purchase and to assess the relative importance of innovation attribute perceptions as
predictor variables. Both studies showed that the perceptual variables (relative
advantage, perceived risk, complexity, observability and compatibility) were far more
successful as predictors of purchase than personal characteristics of the respondents.
Thus, with the rigorous studies conducted by Ostlund (1974), came veriﬁcation that the
importance of innovation attributes are in their secondary meanings (perceptions) and not
their primary characteristics.

As described by Tomatzky and Klein (1982), prior to Ostlund (1974), studies had
assumed that a primary characteristic, such as cost which had been associated with the
innovation attribute relative advantage, would be a deﬁning reason for adoption.
Research did not bear this out, but innovation attributes were present. What role did they

play? It was Ostlund (1974) that conﬁrmed the theoretical conjecture that personal

perception of an innovation attribute is pivotal to the adoption decision.

24

Therefore, it was the intent of this research to study how the innovation attribute
perceptions held by members of community colleges within one Midwestern state
inﬂuenced the organizational decision to adopt three innovations promoted by EDIC.

Recent innovation attribute literature. Two comprehensive reviews and analysis
of innovation attribute literature have been compiled by Tomatzky and Klein in 1982,
and by Johnson in 1993. In addition, Everett Rogers has continually tracked all
innovation research since 1962 and used the ﬁndings to modify his diffusion of
innovation theory. Each subsequent edition of the publication, Diﬂusion of Innovations,
contains a broad and extensive review of the literature. Accordingly, it seems most
appropriate to limit this literature analysis to research conducted in the past twelve
years—covering the years 1992 through 2004.

Three published works by Johnson (1993), Tomatzky and Klein (1982) and
Rogers (1995) included extensive reviews of the literature. These works provided the
foundation for early literature review.

Tomatzky and Klein (1982) conducted a meta-analysis of the ﬁndings from the 75
known studies researching the inﬂuence of innovation characteristics on the adoption-
implementation decision. Conﬁrmation of relationship to adoption of several attributes
was the primary frnding of the meta-analysis. Three of the ten innovation characteristics
reviewed were consistently related to adoption: compatibility and relative advantage were
positively related while complexity was negatively related. The researchers felt that
while this ﬁnding was interesting, it was inconclusive due to the lack of common

attribute deﬁnitions between studies. The authors wrote that this lack of agreement on

25

meaning probably contributed to the large number of innovation characteristics studied
and to the less than statistically signiﬁcant relationships.

As a result of the one meta-analysis, Tomatzky and Klein (1982) proposed seven
distinguishing factors that contribute to the ideal study of innovation attributes. Those
factors are:

1. The study should be predictive rather than retrospective;
2. Adoption and implementation decisions should be considered as dependent
variables;
3. Rigorous research methods that lend themselves to replication should be utilized
in order to establish a body of research from which generalizations can be made;
4. Issues of validity should be addressed by reliable measures of innovation
characteristics as perceived by the decision-makers;
5. More than one attribute must be studied so that predictions across attributes can
occur;
6. Information about attributes should be gathered across several innovations; and,
7. Study the adoption of innovations by organizations and not individuals.
Using these seven factors to code the 75 studies, the authors found no research projects
that contained all seven design factors—in less than 10 percent of the studies were ﬁve or
more factors present. Since the publication of the Tomatzky and Klein (1982) review
and meta-analysis, researchers have been using the Tomatzky and Klein design criteria as
a yardstick for drafting new research projects (Dearing and Meyer, 1994; Moore and
Benbasat, 1991; Robbins, 1992; Rogers, 1995).

Included in the Johnson (1993) book, Organizational Communication Structure,
is a comprehensive review of the innovation attribute literature as it relates to the impact
of communication structures on various aspects of organizations. Seventeen of the works

Johnson (1993) identiﬁed, that had implications for the studying the inﬂuence of

innovation attribute perceptions, were written between 1980 and 1990.

26

Johnson’s (1993) interest was with the inﬂuence of innovation on organizational
outcomes and productivity. In Chapter 10, he describes how perceptions of innovation
attributes inﬂuence organizational communication structures and consequently impact
productivity. F rom an organizational communications perspective, Johnson found that
two innovation attribute perceptions, complexity and compatibility, were most salient to
the role of innovation in productivity and organizational outcome issues.

Although the focus of this volume is internally generated innovation, many of the
ﬁndings can be applied to organizational behavior in general and community colleges in
particular. For instance, he stated that interpersonal communication channels are the
most effective and ﬂexible means for carrying information about innovations in
organizations. Use of this channel is able to decrease perceptions of complexity and
therefore, assist with overcoming an adoption barrier. Yet, if an’innovation is perceived
as complex as well as having low compatibility, then the organizational risk factor
becomes too great for the effective use of interpersonal communication channels.
Understanding the underlying relationship between the attribute perceptions of
complexity and compatibility becomes important to any change agent or agency trying to
affect change in an organization or community college.

Johnson (1993) found much evidence, as did Rogers (1995) that “informal
channels [of] persuasion, or inﬂuence, [are] the primary means available to secure
participation in an innovation” (p. 163). It is necessary for the change agent or agency to
use interpersonal communication channels to strengthen the attribute perceptions of
relative advantage, compatibility, trialability, and observability while decreasing the

perceptions of complexity.

27

In reviewing the attribute literature, Rogers (1995) wrote that
Little effort has been devoted to analyzing ‘innovation’ differences (that
is, in investigating how the properties of innovations affect their rate of
adoption) . . . Diffusion researchers in the past tended to regard all
innovations as equivalent units ﬁ'om the viewpoint of their analysis. This
is an oversimpliﬁcation, and a dangerous one. (p. 204-205)
Rogers (1995) referenced the Tomatzky and Klein (1982) meta-analysis and literature
review. He agreed with their suggestions for how to strengthen attribute research
methodology and noted that the attribute relationship to adoption that they identiﬁed
continues to explain a signiﬁcant amount of variance in rate of adoption studies.
Predominately, Rogers ( 1995) placed the discussion of attributes into the broad context of
his model for diffusion of innovation—for instance, focussing on how perception of
innovation attributes are inﬂuenced by communication channels. For an in-depth
discussion of innovation attributes, one must seek out the sources cited by Rogers (1995).
In analyzing research conducted during 1992-2005, multiple databases and
bibliographic references in articles, books, and theses were used to search out current
writings that examined the importance of innovation attributes in implementation and
adoption decisions. Eight articles and 13 dissertations, written during 1992-2005, were
identiﬁed. There is a striking difference between six of the studies and the remaining
articles and dissertations. The studies conducted by Dearing ( 1997), Dearing and Meyer
(1994), Johnson et a1. (1998), Meyer et al. (1997), Moore and Benbasa (1992), and
Wilson et a1. (1999) have either added new knowledge or methodology to the study of
innovation attributes. The studies described in the articles by Cockerill et a1. (1999) and

Grilli and Lomas (1994) are extensions of previous attribute ﬁndings to other ﬁelds, as

was the research conducted by the dissertators.

28

Dearing (1997) methodically researched how communicating innovation
attributes inﬂuenced the decision to adopt. He found that the presence of too much
observability and trialability in technology transfer situations decreased diffusion.
Dearing evaluated the effectiveness of the U. S. Department of Energy integrated
hazardous waste management demonstration projects for “diffusing sets of new
engineering and biology innovations from federal laboratories and universities to private
businesses” (p. 262). Representatives from private enterprise could visit the various
demonstration projects ﬁ'om implementation through culmination. The discussion
between potential adopters and the scientiﬁc teams mounting the demonstration projects
were analyzed. Dearing learned that gaining too much information about an innovation
under development can drive away adopters—missteps, risk hazards, conjectures on
effectiveness, all are communicated to the potential adopter. It appears from the Dearing
research, that potential adopters are more comfortable adopting a “ﬁnished” innovation.
Out of this evaluation research grew three new innovation diffusion concepts described
by Dearing and Meyer (1994): the attribute matrix, the innovation proﬁle, and the
potential for adoption rating (or PAR score). At this time, it appears from searching the
literature, that these concepts have not been tested.

Johnson et a1. (1998) evaluated the effectiveness of information technologies
within an interoganizational design—a national organization with a network of
autonomous regional service units. Their ﬁndings imply “that organization members rate
contrasting dimensions of an innovation differentially, depending on the nature of the
SPeCiﬁc technology” (p. 1). Employees rated the attributes of each of three computerized

innovations differently compared to how compatible they were to prior personal

29

 

 

 

experience. For instance, the attributes associated with using email as a primary
communication tool were rated higher by those familiar with the use of a computerized
outreach system or computerized office management system. This research sparks the
notion that there may be a sequence or lining up of attribute perceptions which could
possibly determine adoption or implementation decisions. Out of this same evaluation
project, Meyer et al. (1997) contrasted the attributes of three preventive health
innovations. Once again the attributes for compatible innovations were rated differently
compared to prior personal experience of the rater.

Moore and Benbasat (1991) used a single innovation, the personal computer work
station, to test the inﬂuence of attributes on the adoption decision. Preceding their work,
instruments to measure attribute perceptions were primitive and not reliable. Moore and
Benbasat’s contribution to the ﬁeld of innovation diffusion is the development of a very
reliable and valid survey instrument to test attribute inﬂuence.

Wilson et al. (1999) used two innovation attributes, radicalness and relative
advantage, and the inﬂuence of organizational climate to explain the adoption of a
technological innovation across an industry. They contrasted climate issues in 70
hospitals to the adoption of imaging technology (MRI). These authors contributed to the
ﬁeld of innovation diﬁusion through the linkage of organizational climate with
innovation attributes as a determinant of the adoption decision.

If the other studies did not contribute new knowledge or methodology to the ﬁeld
of innovation diffusion, did they measure up to the Tomatzky and Klein (1982) ideal

Suldy of innovation attributes by including the seven distinguishing factors mentioned

30

earlier? Only one dissertation study met ﬁve of the seven factors of superiority
(Bamsley, 1994).

When considering the ﬁrst factor identiﬁed by Tomatzky and Klien (1982) that
the study should be predictive rather than retrospective, the research projects have
become more sophisticated in the past two decades. The authors found no predictive
studies in their sample; on the contrary, in the group of 15 studies for this literature
review that did not contribute new knowledge or tools, 9 were predictive in nature. The
second Tomatzky and Klien (1982) factor, that both adoption and implementation
decisions should be considered as dependent variables, has become more prevalent in
recent studies. They reviewed one article that studied both the adoption and
implementation decisions and in the past nine years, there have been three dissertators to
study both dependent variables. I

Of the 15 studies that did not contribute new knowledge or research tools to the
ﬁeld of diﬁusion of innovation, none met the third Tomatzky and Klien (1982) factor for
an optimal study: contributing to the body of research from which generalizations can be
made. A single dissertator (Holcombe, 2000) used the survey tool developed by Moore
and Benbasat (1991) but the research question, tool, and results are not congruent.
Holcombe used a survey that was validated for predicting the inﬂuence of attributes on
the decision to adopt an innovation yet the research question implies that Holcombe was
studying the rate of implementation. In addition, the ﬁndings are somewhat suspect if
Gross et a1. (1971) were correct in their criticism of Rogers’ theory for diffusion. They
assert that the proposition that individual organization members evaluate whether they

will adopt the innovation or even discontinue its use after adoption, “does not apply to

31

major education innovations in most school situations . . . (p. 21)." Their research
showed that most innovation in schools is done by ﬁat and that teachers must comply
with the adopted policy. Holcombe (2000) investigated secondary teacher usage of the
Internet in school districts that had received state grants for the implementation of
Internet based teaching strategies. It is possible that his ﬁndings would not be duplicated
in situations where there are no incentives for a district’s teachers to utilize the Internet in
the classroom.

Great strides have been made toward addressing issues of validity by utilizing
decision-maker perceptions of innovation characteristics, the fourth factor of excellence.
In the studies that Tomatzky and Klien (1982) analyzed, only one-third utilized decision-
maker perceptions contrasted with 87 percent of the studies conducted since 1991. This
trend to incorporating more rigorous study factors can also be seen in the number of
attributes studied in each project, the ﬁfth criterion identiﬁed by Tomatzky and Klien
(1982). In the original study, 20 percent of the projects utilized a single attribute; but 100
percent of recent studies included multiple attributes as independent variables. This
positive trend continued with the seventh factor: 60 percent of recent studies studied
organizations as the adopting unit as compared to 45 percent in the original analysis.
Remaining in about the same proportion of study is the sixth factor, gathering
information about attributes across several innovations. Previously and currently, about
20 percent of studies utilize attributes from multiple innovations.

What is evident by this analysis is that the more rigorous the research project vis-
a-vis incorporating the seven factors identiﬁed by Tomatzky and Klien (1982), the more

likely the research will add new knowledge or methodological tools to the ﬁeld. The six

32

exemplary studies identiﬁed earlier all incorporate ﬁve or more of the factors. Future

researchers would do well to model their studies on the seven factors proposed by

Tomatzky and Klien (1982).

Intersecting Conceptual Frameworks

Concepts drawn from the writings of three authors formed the foundation for the
proposed study of: “Do innovation attribute perceptions inﬂuence community college
adoption of programs promoted by an external agency?”. More than 25 years after
Lindquist (1979) wrote about bringing change to postsecondary institutions, his writings
remain provocative. He proposed utilizing a synthesis of communication and planned
Change strategies to affect change. He noted that, “the locus of power within a college or
university, in summary, will tend to lie among senior faculty leaders and high
administrators who are respected and esteemed” (p.28) but who are unable to bring about
Change due to departmental and faculty control over teaching and research functions. It
is to this group that he directed his writings. He conducted comprehensive case studies of
Change initiatives at colleges and universities and then categorized the ﬁndings by
innovation attributes. Lindquist showed how one might use knowledge about the
Characteristics of attributes to position change initiatives in colleges and universities and
then apply various communication or planned change strategies to increase the likelihood
0f adoption. From the Lindquist (197 9) studies, researchers know that innovation
attributes play a role the decision-making of colleges and universities.

Rogers (1995) presents the theoretical foundation for how diffusion of innovation
“CUPS. An integral part of the theory is Stage Two, Persuasion. The many studies

tracked by Rogers show that decisions to adopt and to implement innovation arise out of

33

the perceptions the decision-maker holds about the characteristics implicit to the
innovation. Five attribute perceptions are common to every innovation: relative
advantage, compatibility, complexity, trialability, and observability. From the body of
innovation attribute literature, it is known that all of the attribute perceptions except
complexity are positively related to the decision to adopt; complexity is negatively
related. What is not clear from the literature is the universal importance of the
relationship. Some studies have found statistically signiﬁcant relationships for some
variables and not others while other studies reported only positive or negative (but not
statistically signiﬁcant) relationship to adoption of the variables. This variability of
ﬁndings leads one to question if there might not be another dimension to innovation
attributes.

In an unpublished paper, Johnson (1997) based a series of suppositions on similar
ﬁndings that he and others reported in two articles, Johnson et al. (1998) and Meyer et al.
(1997.) In both studies, attributes for compatible innovations were rated differently
Compared to prior personal experience of the rater. Johnson (1997 ) hypothesized that
there is a progression or stepping of attribute “pro” and “con” perceptions. The perceived
attributes of several innovations can possess the same relationship to adoption, but that
does not mean all innovations will be adopted. He supported the view that this queuing
0f attribute perceptions can be manipulated to enhance the probability of adoption.

Thus, the evolution of the research question: Do innovation attribute perceptions
inﬂuence community college decisions adoption of programs promoted by an external
agency? Rogers (1995) provided a theoretical model for conceptualizing innovation

diffusion at both the personal and organizational levels. Lindquist (1979) pointed to the

34

importance of external agencies and organizations in promoting colleges and universities
to adopt innovation and he utilized innovation attributes to characterize successful change

efforts. Finally, Johnson (1997) suggested a raison d’étre for what we all know, out of a
group of good innovations one is better.

Summary

The literature has shown that colleges and universities operate in environments,
internal and external, that seethe from change forces. The community college is not
immune to this turbulence but is better suited than other postsecondary institutions to

respond, in that their missions are crafted to create educational institutions which are

responsive to environmental and stakeholder need.

In the Midwest, community colleges and several four-year colleges have joined
together to form a interorganizational change agency, EDIC, to explore ways to meet
several forces for change: growing need to globalize the curriculum, respond to employer
need for employees with sensitivity to international issues, growing diversity in the
Student body, etc. Their decisions whether to adopt or reject three EDIC promoted
innovations, was studied.

Rogers (1995) presented a convincing argument supported by the literature, that

innovation attribute perceptions formed by community college leaders and faculty are

indicative of their decision to adopt the promoted changes.

35

Chapter 3: Methodology

The means for answering the research question posed by this study, “Do
innovation attribute perceptions inﬂuence community college adoption of programs
promoted by an external agency/.7”, called for a case study design that incorporated
quantitative and qualitative techniques tailored to a retrospective study using a small,
well-deﬁned population. A cross-site analysis (Miles and Huberman, 1984) design was
implemented using community college administrators and faculty within one Midwestern
state as subjects and three community colleges also in that state as sites. Additionally,
archival materials from the external agency, Educators Dedicated to Intemationalizing
Curricula (EDIC), were used.

To deﬁne the research question, six propositions were developed. Each
Proposition was identiﬁed with a particular method for soliciting the data relevant to
conﬁrming the proposition. Two data gathering tools were employed: a questionnaire
based upon an instrument developed by Moore and Benbasat (1991) and an interview
Protocol developed around this questionnaire. During interviews, additional
Organizational questions designed to elicit organizational information regarding structure,
sPending patterns for international educational programs, and leaders that advocate for
Change were posed to those identiﬁed by EDIC staff as knowledgeable informants. In

addition, EDIC archival materials were used as a data source.

The community college personnel were questioned about their perceptions of the
attributes of three EDIC sponsored international curricular innovations (described in the
Linking Data to Propositions section of this chapter) promoted over a twelve-year period

by the agency. In the third edition of Robert Yin’s Case Study Research: Design and

36

Methods (2003), ﬁve major components of a case study research design were laid out:
research questions, propositions, units of analysis, data linkage to propositions, and data
analysis procedures. The discussion of this research project follows the outline
developed by Yin (2003) for implementing case studies. Figure 1 presents a visual
organization of how the case study was operationalized for this particular study.

This research project investigated the inﬂuence of innovation attributes on
community college decision-making. The inquiry was ﬁamed by the question: Do
innovation attribute perceptions inﬂuence community college adoption of programs
promoted by an external agency? As noted by Merriam (1988), the use of case study
methodology is most appropriate when inquiry boundaries can be sharply drawn around
an organization, program or individuals and the resulting information can be used to add
knowledge about or to improve practice. The nature of this study’s research question ﬁts
neatly within the limitations set out by Merriam. The case study narrowly focuses upon a
group of community colleges within one Midwestern state, members from three
organizational levels in those colleges and three unique innovations promoted to those
institutions. Utilizing multiple sources of data gained through the case study process
gave an understanding of how innovation attributes inﬂuence community college
adoption decisions.

The literature conﬁrms the existence of innovation attributes (Dearing, 1997;
Dearing and Meyer, 1994; Johnson et al., 1998; Meyer et al., 1997; Moore and Benbasat,
1991; Robbinsl994; Rogers, 1995; Wilson et al., 1999) and affirms the signiﬁcance of
attribute perceptions (Evans and Leppmann, 1970; Ostlund, 1974; Tomatzky and Klein,

1982) in the decision to adopt or not to adopt. This study was undertaken to replicate the

37

Figure 1

Case Study Design

 

Research Question: Do innovation attribute perceptions inﬂuence community college
adoption of programs promoted by an external agency?

1
Propositions:
Relationship of attributes to adoption decision replicate other ﬁndings
Change agent has strong link to EDIC
Change agent uses interpersonal communication to aid adoption decisions
Change agent deﬁnes innovation to ﬁt organization
Institutionalization impacts communication and productivity
Organizational levels view innovation differently

l

9999!"?

Units of Analysis:
Phase 1 - Survey
10 Community Colleges within one Midwestern state
21 Chief Administrators
25 Faculty members
Phase 2 - Interviews
3 Community Colleges within one Midwestern state
2 Academic vice presidents
3 International program coordinators
8 Faculty members

Data Linkages:
Phase 1 - Survey
3 Innovations
Questionnaire via mail and Web
EDIC archival data
Phase 2 - Interviews
1 Innovation and international programming in general
Questionnaire via interview
6 Organizational questions

Data Analysis Procedures:
Statistical analysis
Pattern Matching
Multiple case: explanation building and cross-case synthesis

 

38

importance of innovation attribute perceptions to organizational decision-making—
speciﬁcally, academic-programming decisions made by community colleges.
Study Propositions

To shape a case study and to maintain its direction, Yin (2003) suggested
developing study propositions. These are the supporting questions or auxiliary
statements that arise out of the primary research question. By deﬁning these threads of
exploration early, the research maintains its focus and the researcher has a structure for
analyzing the resulting ﬁndings. The following six propositions framed this study:

Proposition 1. The inﬂuence of innovation attribute perceptions on community
college adoption decisions will nrirror the ﬁndings in the literature supporting the theory.

In the Tomatzky and Klein (1982) meta-analysis of common innovation
attributes, plus the tracking of innovation research by Rogers (1995), and the Moore and
Benbasat (1991) research on the importance of perceived attributes, the relationship to
adoption of several innovation attributes have remained stable. When testing attributes
against adoption decisions, compatibility and relative advantage were positively related
while complexity was negatively related. Relationship to adoption of other attributes has
been less deﬁnitive. Therefore, it was likely that the community college decision data
when tested would replicate ﬁndings ﬁ'om prior studies.

Proposition 2. The faculty member or administrator with the strongest link to
EDIC will function as the change agent for promoting a EDIC innovation.

Rogers (1995) wrote, “One of the main roles of a change agent is to facilitate the
ﬂow of innovations ﬁ'om a change agency to an audience of clients” (p. 336). The

structure of EDIC, as an interorganizational relationship of institutions interested in

39

internationalizing their curricula, suggested that the change agent would be the
institutional representative that chose to attend and participate in EDIC sponsored events
and meetings on a regular basis. Since it was impossible for all organizational decision-
makers to participate in every EDIC function, it was conceivable that there would be one
or two institutional representatives who would assume the position of change agent even
though it was not identiﬁed or recognized by EDIC delegates and staff.

Proposition 3: The change agent will use interpersonal communication channels
to strengthen the attribute perceptions of relative advantage, compatibility, trialability,
and observability while decreasing the perceptions of complexity to increase the
likelihood of innovation adoption.

Johnson (1993) pointed out that interpersonal communication channels are more
effective in transmitting information about highly complex innovations. The innovation
studied, Innovation 2: Summer Institutes, explored the attribute perceptions associated
with developing and using international curriculum modules. It is assumed that
designing and writing a curricular module can be involved and difﬁcult. Therefore, it
was likely that change agents would encourage module development in face-to-face
interactions rather than utilizing mediated or mass communication channels (i.e.,
distributing academic articles).

Proposition 4. Individual change agents will deﬁne a EDIC innovation to serve
differing purposes at each college studied.

One of the generalizations developed by Rogers (1995) relates innovation
adoption to the ability of the change agent to predict the client needs. It was assumed that

the community college change agents had intimate organizational knowledge of areas

40

that were lacking or needed improvement. Therefore, it was likely that innovations
introduced by these change agents would be directed at rectifying these insufﬁciencies.

Proposition 5. The way an organization institutionalizes an innovation will
inﬂuence organizational communication structures and consequently impact productivity.

Organizational culture appears to have signiﬁcant impact on the adoption of
innovation (Johnson, 1993). The more compatible an innovation is to the organizational
culture (e.g., values, experiences, and necessities) the more likely it is to be adopted.
Whether the adoption decision is made at the formal level of organizational goal setting
or at the functional group level, communication structures will be developed or modiﬁed
to promote the implementation of the innovation to meet perceived organizational needs.
Therefore, it was likely that the EDIC innovation would serve different needs at each
community college studied and that the productivity of the college would be altered by
the adoption of the innovation.

Proposition 6. Faculty and administrators will view the purposes of the
innovations differently.

The research conducted by Meyer, Johnson, and Ethington (1997) suggested that
“innovation adopters and stakeholders may have contrasting views about speciﬁc
innovations” (p. 125). Therefore, it was likely that administrators, coordinators and
faculty would view the EDIC innovation as serving different organizational ends.

Units of Analysis

This research project sought to clarify the inﬂuence of attribute perceptions in

community college academic decision-making when considering whether to adopt an

externally promoted innovation. Therefore, the unit of analysis is the organization,

41

speciﬁcally the academic component of a community college. Following is a short
description of how a broad network of individuals at different sites, which composed the
sample, provided data to build a general understanding of what role innovation attribute
perceptions played in adoption decisions at the organizational level. Data collection
occurred in two phases, the ﬁrst a broad, encompassing survey and the second, more
focused, in-depth interviews.

Yin (2003) cautioned that it is critical to carefully deﬁne the units of analysis
when doing a case study especially when using individual responses to draw conclusions
about organizational behavior. He made the observation that in this situation, “ . . .
conclusions cannot be based entirely on interviews as a source of information . . . “ (p.76)
because this can lead to basing ﬁndings solely on individual inferences about
organizational behavior. To counter this effect, questionnaires and archival materials
supplemented interviews as data collection tools to ground the ﬁndings in organizational
behavior.

Colleges. To adequately address the research question, “Do innovation attribute
perceptions inﬂuence community college adoption of programs promoted by an external
agency?”, both community college faculty and executive level administrators served as
somces of data. Only community colleges identiﬁed in EDIC archival materials as
receiving funding associated with the three international programming innovations were
candidates for study. Using EDIC archival materials, colleges were ﬁrst grouped by
innovations adopted and then levels of EDIC participation. Natural breaks between
levels of participation lead to creating four groupings according to level of innovation

adoption and level of participation:

42

Group 1.

Group 2.

Group 3.

Group 4.

Composed of one community college that had high adoption/high
participation (adopting 3 innovations with 10 or more participants),
Comprised of six community colleges that had moderate
adoption/moderate participation (adopting 2 innovations with 5 or
more participants),

Comprised of ﬁve community colleges that had low
adoption/moderate participation (adopting 1 innovation with 5 or more
participants), and

Comprised of four community colleges that had low adoption/low
participation (adopting l or fewer innovations with less than 5
participants).

It was decided to excluded the colleges forming Group 4, with low levels of participation

and innovation adoption, from the study since these institutions had not participated in an

EDIC function in more than eight years. Administrative teams and faculty members were

surveyed in the remaining twelve institutions composing Groups 1-3.

Interviews. As the case study progressed, three community colleges were

identiﬁed by EDIC staff and by informal conversations with the state’s community

college faculty and administrators as having strong international programs. In addition,

these three colleges represented each of the three groupings of institutions studied: high

adoption/high participation, moderate adoption/moderate participation and low

adoption/moderate participation. Likewise, the colleges were geographically distinct:

one rural, one suburban, and one urban. Using the general criterion identiﬁed earlier, to

solicit data from all levels of decision-makers when possible, academic vice presidents,

international program coordinators, and faculty were interviewed at these three

institutions. Four of the thirteen interview subjects received the original survey

instrument and only one chose to complete it. The data collected through the interviews

gave deﬁnition to Propositions 2-6. The variety of individuals interviewed, spanning all

43

levels of the decision-making process, provided insight into how each organization made
its adoption decision.
Linking Data to the Propositions

This section of the methodology discussion is organized into two segments. The
ﬁrst part describes how data were collected in Phase 1 and Phase 2. The second part
links speciﬁc propositions with the data generated either through the survey or through
interviews, which provides a preview of how the ﬁndings are reported.

In Table 1, each proposition is followed with the data set used to either conﬁrm or
refute its validity. Yin (2003) suggested that this is an important ﬁrst step in designing a
case study because the wealth of data that are available through the use of this technique
can be so all-encompassing that limits must be set early.

Data collection. This section of the methodology discussion covers both stages of data
collection. Phase 1 — Survey describes the development of the questionnaire, procedures
for implementing the survey and the innovations studied. Phase 2 - Interviews is a
discussion of the interview protocol, the selection of innovation topic and coding of
interview responses.

Earlier, it was established that the literature conﬁrms the existence of innovation
attributes and afﬁrms the signiﬁcance of perceptions about the attributes. A
questionnaire (see Appendix A) was used to discern what inﬂuence faculty and
administrator perceptions of an innovation’s attributes had upon their community
college’s decision to adopt a curricular innovation.

Moore and Benbasat (1991) developed an instrument to measure the perceptions

of innovation attributes. The innovation that they were studying was adoption of

Table 1

Data sources Lsed to validate ca_se study propositions

 

Proposition Derivation of Data

1: The inﬂuence of innovation attribute Survey and interview data
perceptions on community college adoption
decisions will mirror the ﬁndings in the
literature supporting the theory.

2: The faculty member or administrator with the Interview data
strongest link to EDIC will function as the
change agent for promoting a EDIC
innovation.

3: The change agent will use interpersonal Interview data
communication channels to strengthen the
attribute perceptions of relative advantage,
compatibility, trialability, and observability
while decreasing the perceptions of
complexity for continued adoption of an
innovation.

4: Individual change agents will deﬁne a EDIC Interview data
innovation to serve differing purposes at
each college studied.

5: The way an organization institutionalizes an Interview data
innovation will inﬂuence organizational
communication structures and consequently
impact productivity

6: Faculty and administrators will view the Interview data
purposes of the innovations differently.

 

personal computer workstations. Since the instrument was designed as a tool to study
information technology (IT) innovations, it was necessary to modify the instrument to
examine the adoption of postsecondary innovations. Moore and Benbasat (1991)

encouraged the use and modiﬁcation of their instrument to a wider study of innovation

45

attributes; they wrote

It was our intention; however, that any scales developed should also be

generally applicable to a wide variety of innovations . . . the resulting

instrument is therefore general enough to be used, with slight

modiﬁcations, in most diffusion studies. (p. 194)

Moore and Benbasat (1991) noted that during the design phase of their research
project, they found that known innovation attribute survey instruments were neither
internally nor externally valid. “Furthermore, no comprehensive instrument to measure
the variety of perceptions of innovations existed. Such an instrument should be vital to
diffusion research, thus . . . [action] was undertaken to develop one” (Moore and
Benbasat, 1991, p. 194). With that goal in mind, Moore and Benbasat (1991) set about
operationalizing measures of the ﬁve attribute perceptions as deﬁned in Chapter 1:
relative advantage, observability, trialabilty, complexity/ease of use, and compatibility,
plus their two additional attribute perceptions of image and voluntariness.

Using other scales developed by innovation researchers, an initial item pool was
developed by Moore and Benbasat (1991). Innovation-speciﬁc and redundant items were
dropped and new items developed to correspond ﬁrlly with the innovation concept being
investigated. Items were sorted four times. During the ﬁrst cycle, Moore and Benbasat
(1991) asked judges to sort items into constructs and to name and deﬁne each category.
The action of the judges assisted Moore and Benbasat (1991) with establishing content
validity for scale intent. At the conclusion of the ﬁnal sort, Moore and Benbasat (1991)
calculated Kappa scores to measure inter-rater reliability or the level of agreement
between raters on both ranking of items and establishing categories (Fitz-Gibbon and

Morris, 1987). The Kappa scores ranged between 0.70 and 1.00, approaching what Hays

(1994) described as perfect agreement between raters when K is 1.0.

46

Moore and Benbasat (1991) conducted two pilot administrations and a ﬁeld test
with the instrument. During the ﬁeld test, 800 questionnaires were distributed to
individuals in seven companies. Moore and Benbasat (1991) randomly split the sample;
the ﬁrst split was used to search for scale improvement, and the second split was used to
test scale revisions. Final (Cronbach’s) alpha scores were between 0.71 and 0.80
indicating a high level of internal consistency of the scales (F itz-Gibbon and Morris,
1987)

The instrument developed by Moore and Benbasat (1991) had eight scales:
voluntariness, relative advantage, compatibility, image, ease of use, result
dernonstrability, visibility, and trialability. The adapted instrument may be found in the
Appendices. Two of these scales, voluntariness and image, were incorporated into the
instrument to support the innovation that they studied, personal work stations (PWS). In
the organizations studied by Moore and Benbasat ( 1991), individuals were free to use 3
PWS or to use other computer equipment, which lead the two researchers to include a
voluntariness scale. Moore and Benbasat (1991) referenced previous innovation attribute
research that deﬁned image as part of the attribute relative advantage. They made the
decision to create a separate scale to measure the importance of innovation image
perception in the adoption decision based upon their impression that having a PWS
would be seen as a high status tool in the organizations they were studying. It was
decided that these two scales were not relevant to this study and therefore, were not
included in the modiﬁed instrument. This decision is based upon the work of Lindquist
(1978). He implied in his book that colleges and universities adopted new programming

innovations to address performance “gaps” and not as prestige enhancements. In

47

addition, be identiﬁed governance issues as a consideration in innovation adoption
decisions. Voluntariness is a difﬁcult concept to apply to institutions of higher education.

Moore and Benbasat (1991) noted that construct validity for all scales except
“observabilty” were very high. Referring back to the original deﬁnition coined by
Everett Rogers in 1983, they extracted the concepts of visability and communicable to
others or “result dernonstrability” from the deﬁnition. The development of two scales
provided the nwded construct validity to measure the concepts of “observability.” It was
decided to use both scales in the modiﬁed instrument. Lindquist (1978) wrote that new
programming was often observed at nearby or similar institutions and investigated for
adoption as was programming that administrators or faculty members had heard
described at conferences or by professional acquaintances. Lindquist’s (1978) case
studies support the dual construct of the innovation attribute, observability, making it
applicable to the community college setting of this study.

Moore and Benbasat (1991) developed thirty-seven items for use in six scales that
measure relative advantage, compatibility, complexity/ease of use, observability/result
demonstrability, observability/visibility, and trialability. Moore and Benbasat (1991)
indicated that in the eight scales there are twenty-ﬁve out of the thirty-seven items , or
twenty items when the two superﬂuous scales are omitted, that could be used as a shorter
version of the questionnaire without adversely impacting the construct validity of the
scales or their reliability. They cautioned that the alpha scores reported are only for the
sanmle used, and the shortened scales had not been tested on other, new data. The
Cronbach Alpha reliability coefﬁcients reported by Moore and Benbasat (1991) for the

Various shortened scales are: 0.90 for relative advantage, 0.86 for compatibility, 0.84

48

complexity/ease of use, 0.79 observability/result demonstrability, 0.83

observability/visability, and 0.71 trialability. Given those acceptable levels of reliability,

the decision was made to use the shortened scales since the questionnaire asks the same

questions about the three separate innovations.

Table 2 presents examples of how the wording of items was modiﬁed to ﬁt the

three educational innovations studied. After modifying the questionnaire, it was

distributed to a small number of community college faculty and administrators. This

pilot tested the psychometric property, reliability, of the rewritten items.

Table 2

Examples of modiﬁed guestionniire items

 

Example Of Original Items

Rewritten Items

 

Relative Advantage Scale:

7. Using a PWS enhances my
effectiveness on the job (p.
216)

Compatibility Scale:
1. Using a PWS is compatible

with all aspects of my work (p.

216)

Visibility Scale:
In my organization, one sees PWS
on many desks (p.216).

Relative Advantage Scale:
Starting a Fall Event will enhance the
effectiveness of the college’s work.

Compatibility Scale:

Participating in the Visiting Scholar
Program is compatible with all aspects of
the college’s work.

Observability/ Visibility Scale:

In my college, one will see Summer
Institute project outcomes in many
classrooms

Faculty and administrators at twelve community colleges that actively

participated in the EDIC organization and its functions were surveyed using the modiﬁed

questionnaire. In addition, it provided the protocol for interviewing selected faculty and

administrators, who had not responded to the mailed instrument, at three of the state’s

community colleges that have a reputation for strong international programming. Those

49

interviewed represented various organizational levels within the colleges. In addition,
each community college site was selected from one of the three groupings of
organizations by EDIC innovation participation/adoption rates.

In his book Survey Research Methods, Babbie (1990) described two basic survey
designs. The ﬁrst, cross-sectional survey methodology, is used when data collection
occurs only once across an identiﬁed sample that will be used to describe a larger
population. The ability to determine relationships between variables is also a
characteristic of cross-sectional survey methodology. The second, longitudinal survey
methodology, is used when a researcher wishes to track changes over a period of time by
collecting data at several points of time. Babbie (1990) subdivided the longitudinal
survey methodology into three survey design variations: trend, cohort, and panel studies.
These designs require collecting data at intervals over a span of time but vary in how the
populations are constructed and the types of change occurring in these populations.
Trend studies survey representative samples of a general population at various points;
Babbie (1990) cited political campaign polls as an example of this type of design. Cohort
studies follow changes to a unique population over a lengthy period of time using
different samples from that population to explain how change is occurring in their ranks.
A panel study, as described by Babbie (1990), follows change in a unique population
over a period of time by using the same sample but employing multiple factors particular
to each respondent to characterize the genesis of change.

Babbie (1990) pointed to the longitudinal survey and its subcategory
methodologies as rich sources for data to understand how and why a population changes

over a period of time, but he cautioned that these methodologies demand extensive

50

resource commitments from the researcher. Windsor, et al. (1984) also advised
researchers to consider the economy of design when considering the family of
longitudinal survey methodologies. Babbie (1990) and Windsor, et al. (1984) cited dollar
and time expenses and the stability of the sample population over time as traits of these
types of surveys which the researcher should carefully consider before employing.

With these considerations in mind, a cross sectional survey was conducted. In
addition, the case study was designed to understand how innovation attribute perceptions
inﬂuenced community college decisions within one Midwestern state to adopt change
and did not purport to research the change process of that adoption.

The more visible members of the population of interest are easily identiﬁed and
are a small number: EDIC member community college faculty and administrators who
were associated with the decision to adopt or reject the three EDIC promoted
international curricular innovations. It was determined, after consultation with the EDIC
staff, that there were between three and twenty individuals at each of sixteen community
colleges who could be described as involved and crucial to the adoption decisions, and
they comprised most of an identiﬁable population. In a situation such as this where “a
small subset of a larger population in which many members of the subset are easily
identiﬁed but the enumeration of all is nearly impossible” (Babbie, 1990, p. 97), Creswell
(1994), Miller (1991) and Babbie (1990) all suggested considering the use of purposeful
or judgmental sampling, a nonprobablility sampling strategy. Utilizing random sampling
methods to assist with generalizing ﬁndings to a larger population was not truly
applicable in this instance for two primary reasons. First, this was a retrospective study

without the possibility of constructing an experiment or quasi-experiment through

51

forming treatment and control or comparison groups for identifying characteristics that
may explain a larger population. Second, the deﬁned population being sampled was
small and known allowing most, if not all, to be included in the survey.

Of the 30 state community colleges, 16 participated in EDIC and 12 of the
participating institutions were surveyed. In EDIC archival records, EDIC event
attendance lists exist; all persons attending any EDIC sponsored event can be identiﬁed.
Utilizing this resource, the population of interest was identiﬁed and was requested to
participate in the research. The ﬁnal survey sample was comprised of 104 community
college faculty and administrators.

In addition, EDIC staff members identiﬁed one or more knowledgeable
individuals in each institution who the staff believed were associated with the decision to
adopt or reject the EDIC sponsored innovations. These informants were interviewed for
contextual organizational information relevant to the adoption decision process.

Included in the category of purposeful sampling are two techniques for
constructing sample populations: snowball or chain sampling and quota sampling. When

employing the snowball technique, the sample population is determined by asking
respondents who else to question and continuing until few new names surface (Patton,
1990), whereas, quota sampling as described by Miller (1991) is the grouping of a known
population by predetermined characteristics and selecting a proportion of each population
to interview. Utilizing the quota sampling technique “introduces some stratiﬁcation
effec ” (Miller, 1991, p. 63), which was beneﬁcial for studying the organizational issues

investigated in this project. Quotas were set both for institutions and respondents with

52

the caveat that quota sampling, as does all purposeful sampling techniques, made it
difﬁcult to generalize ﬁndings to a larger population.

Rather than solicit respondents from all sixteen EDIC community college
members, an institutional quota was set by grouping community colleges according to the
strength of afﬁliation with EDIC (determined by number of participants attending EDIC
sponsored events) and by number of innovations adopted. Participants and institutions
involved in the three program innovations were determined from EDIC archival records
and sorted into the four groups described earlier in the Units of Analysis section. Groups
1 through 3 formed the subject pool. Members of Group 4 institutions were excluded
because of the low rates of EDIC afﬁliation and participation. Subjects from the
remaining 12 EDIC participating community colleges were surveyed. This purposeful
sampling allowed for inferential comparison between like “EDIC afﬁliated” institutions.

Surveys were sent to all remaining faculty members, who had attended a EDIC
event, at each of the institutions asking them to participate in this study. The number
ranged ﬁ'om three to ten per community college. Furthermore, chief administrators
constituted another survey quota group. Predominately, chief academic administrators
were identiﬁed as EDIC-involved, though there were exceptions, such as college
presidents, community coordinators, vice presidents of student affairs, liaisons for
international programs, and others. By only surveying administrators directly associated
with EDIC, the perceptions of “hidden” decision-makers could have been overlooked.
The construction of a quota group including relevant administrative, but not EDIC
afﬁliated, decision-makers is supported by the ﬁndings of Stolz (1991). She wrote that

when making program adoption decisions in organizations, policy-makers were most

53

inﬂuential and that irnplernenters have little say in the initial decision to adopt.
Therefore, a quota survey group including the president, chief academic ofﬁcer, chief
student affairs ofﬁcer, chief ﬁnancial ofﬁcer, and community or international programs
coordinator at each institution surveyed was asked to participate.

Utilizing quota survey methodology accomplished three key outcomes. First, the
data sets lent themselves to analysis by organizational units and not just by individual
responses. Two, with small numbers of respondents, a community college that was
highly active in the MIEON organization and its events could possibly have skewed the
results of the data set. By setting respondent quotas, the data were less weighted by high
response-rates from individual institutions. Third, by instituting administrative quota
samples, it was possible to reach all decision-makers and not just EDIC stakeholders.

Using a purposive sampling process limited the survey to respondents who were
most knowledgeable about the decision process for adopting or rejecting one or more of
the EDIC innovations. As explained by Babbie (1990) and Miller (1991), this is the
primary advantage of using purposive sampling and this technique best ﬁts the purposes
of this case study. The research was conducted to better understand EDIC member
community colleges’ innovation decision making processes.

As stated earlier, this was a cross-sectional study utilizing a quota sampling
process. Survey instruments and a cover letter explaining the research project were
mailed to all EDIC member community college faculty and administrators who were
identiﬁed by participation in EDIC events and by EDIC staff members as probable
decision-makers in their college’s determination to adopt or reject the three proposed

curricular programs. In addition, surveys were sent to key college administrators. Efforts

54

were made to contact those decision-makes who had left the college to accept
employment elsewhere, for retirement purposes, or for other reasons for participation in
the survey. For those subjects who were more comfortable using electronic
communication forms, a Web-site, www.talljgone.net-survey.htrnl, was developed to
host the questionnaire. The survey letter instructed the subjects in how to access the site.
Subjects were given the option to use either version, print or electronic, to respond.

For greatest return rates, Dillman (1978) recommended four mailings: the initial
mailing of the instrument; a postcard reminder; a second copy of the questionnaire to
non-responders; and a third copy of the questionnaire to non-responders utilizing certiﬁed
mail. The Dillman (1978) recommendations were modiﬁed to reﬂect the prevalent
availability and acceptance of technology today.

Step 1: The initial mailing of the survey instrument was sent to identiﬁed subjects
and included a cover letter giving respondents the option of using the enclosed postage
paid envelope to return a completed paper instrument or to complete the survey
instrument on-line. Six subjects utilized this on-line feature. Each subject was assigned a
unique personal identiﬁcation number (PIN) that could access the questionnaire web-site
and was used to track non-respondents. Programming of the questionnaire web-site
restricted respondents to one submission of a completed survey instrument. One
respondent provided both a completed paper questionnaire and completed the web-form
of the instrument. The earliest response, as determined by comparing post-mark with
web-site tracking data, was used. Unfortunately, this ﬁrst mailing was distributed as

Spring semester was ending at most community colleges because it took longer than

55

expected to receive permission from the university committee overseeing research
involving human subjects.

Step 2: Following the Dillman (1978) recommendation, postcards were sent to all,
one week after the original mailing. The postcard “serves as both a thank you for those
who have responded and as a friendly and courteous reminder for those who have not”
(p.183). The Internet URL for the web-based edition of the questionnaire was noted on
the postcard along with the PIN assigned to that person. In addition, e-mails containing
the same information as the postcards were sent to the subjects. EDIC participant lists
were compared to various community college directories published on their Web-sites
and email addresses were noted.

Step 3: Those who did not return the questionnaire received a follow-up mailing
as the fall community college semester began. Enclosed were the instrument, a stamped
return envelope, and a cover letter asking that they either complete the paper or web-
based survey instrument. During Step 2, communications from several subjects to the
researcher indicated that there was an organizational identity problem. The role played
by EDIC as the change agency was not apparent to many of the participants. A note of
explanation (Appendix B) of the interorganizational relationship represented by EDIC
and three other organizations promoting international programming to the state’s
community colleges was drafted and included in this mailing. Three weeks after this
mailing the case study immediately progressed to the interview stage.

The judgmental sample was made up of 55 faculty members and 49
administrators (Table 3). The survey instrument did not reach 11 sample members (10.6

percent) due to outdated addresses. Therefore, the subject pool was decreased to 93: 48

56

faculty members and 45 administrators. Of those returning the survey instrument, nine
subjects indicated that they would not respond to any portion of the questionnaire.
Predominately, the non-responders had retired from their positions at various community
colleges and felt that they had left that life behind.

Table 3

§1£Vev distribuLtion and response rates by category expressed both in Law numbers a_n(_l
mcentages

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

FACULTY ADMINISTRA- COLLEGES
MEMBERS TORS
N' %" N' %" N' %"
Surveys distributed 55 100.0 49 100.0 12 100.0
Surveys undelivered 7 12.7 4 8.2 8 66.7
Remnse rates by categories 21 38.2 25 51.0 12 100.0
Refusals to participate in 5 23.8 4 16.0 6 50.0
survey
Innovation 1: Fall Event
Participated in decision 3 14.3 0 0.0 3 25.0
Did not participate in 13 61.9 21 84.0 9 75.0
decision
Innovation 2: Summer Institute
Participated in decision 1 4.8 l 4.0 2 16.7
Did not participate in 15 71.4 20 80.0 10 83.3
decision
Innovation 3: Scholar in Residence
Participated in decision 2 9.5 2 8.0 4 33.3
Did not participate in 14 66.7 19 76.0 8 66.7
decision
aRaw number

l’Rates expressed in percentages by category

Utilizing EDIC archival materials and through consultation with EDIC staff, three
programmatic initiatives were identiﬁed in a Kellogg Foundation grant funding proposal
and in documentation for the use of Title VI funds granted by the United States
Department of Education (USDE). According to the EDIC staff, these three innovations
had varying rates of success. When more than seventy-ﬁve percent of the participating

community colleges adopted an innovation, the staff considered the innovation very

57

successful; whereas, they termed an innovation adopted by approximately ﬁfty percent of
the colleges to be moderately successful. Proposed innovations with less than a ten
percent adoption rate were considered unsuccessful by the EDIC staff.

Tomatzky and Klein (1982) suggested that studying innovations with varying
rates of success could strengthen attribute perception research. Therefore, the following
three EDIC promoted innovations were selected for study: the Fall Event, termed by the
staff as the most successful innovation promoted by the organization; Summer Institutes,
which the staff labeled as moderately successful; and the Visiting Scholar Program,
viewed by the staff as a failure.

EDIC Innovation 1 — Fall Event evolved from informal relationships between
several community colleges and Midstate University (MU) faculty and was the initiative
for establishing the EDIC consortium. Several rural community colleges established,
with the assistance of MU faculty, fall events focused on international themes. As an
outreach effort, MU personnel invited members of other two— and four- year colleges to
discuss developing a coalition to further international curricular development in the
Midwest. Those postsecondary institutions that accepted the invitation to join the
alliance constitute EDIC’s membership. Other institutions have sporadically participated
in various events but are not considered members of the coalition.

The new group petitioned the Kellogg Foundation for funding for academic years
1989/1990 and 1990/1991 to support developing Fall Events at all EDIC member
colleges. The Kellogg Foundation granted funding to support bringing cultural events
and scholarly presentations to each member campus, supplying consultation assistance,

and funding to provide curriculum development assistance to faculty at member

58

institutions. With more than seventy ﬁve percent of member community colleges
adopting a Fall Event program, EDIC staff and advisors term this innovation the most
successful promoted by the coalition.

EDIC Innovation 2 - Summer Institutes were created through USDE Title VI
funding to support undergraduate international studies and foreign language programs.
Funding was granted to EDIC for the academic years 1994-1996 to establish Summer
Institutes. The eight-day curriculum workshops were designed to assist faculty with
developing focused international cunicular modules and to offer on-going assistance to
insure that the curriculum would be piloted in the following year. About half of the
EDIC afﬁliated community colleges institutions enrolled faculty in the Summer
Institutes. Having met the ﬁfty-percent participation criterion, the EDIC staff and
advisors refer to the adoption of this innovation as being moderately successful.

EDIC Innovation 3 - Visiting Scholar Program emerged during Academic Year
2000-2001. EDIC members and staff recognized a waning interest in the organization.
Various meetings were held with coalition members in an attempt to ﬁnd new direction
for the organization. Housed in the MU administrative structure under the ﬁctitiously
named Center for International Directives (CID), EDIC activities were directed by the
CID staff and funding was ofﬁcially procured through CID auspices. During Academic
Year 2001-2002, CID set aside USDE Title VI funds to endow the Visiting Scholar
Program. Faculty members from EDIC afﬁliated colleges were invited to spend ﬁve days
on the MU campus to pursue areas of international curriculum interest. The scholarships
covered all travel, room, board, consulting fees, and fees for special on-campus seminars

and events. This innovation clearly falls into the category identiﬁed by EDIC staff as not

59

being successful—less than ten percent of the membership participated. In fact, only one
EDIC community college member sponsored a faculty member’s attendance.

Thirteen interviews were conducted over a four-month period. Referring to the
criteria discussed in the earlier section, Units of Analysis, three colleges were selected as
the interview sites based upon their EDIC participation and innovation adoption rates.
Representatives from each of the three selected community colleges participated.

It was determined that faculty who implemented an innovation would be asked to
participate. It was believed that they would more easily recall their perceptions of the
innovation’s attributes during the decision phase, as compared to a faculty member who
chose not to implement an innovation eight to ten years ago. Eight faculty members from
two community colleges agreed to be interviewed. At the Group 3 representative
community college, no faculty members were available for interviews. Most EDIC event
participants from that college were no longer at hand; out of the original participants,
only the academic vice-president and coordinator for international programs remain. At
the other two community colleges, the faculty interviewed represented a wide variety of
disciplines and ﬁelds: musing, physics, business, English, writing, civil engineering, etc.

It was thought that the chief academic ofﬁcer would be an important college
leader to interview. Resources are allocated and academic programming direction set by
this college leader. This position nurtures new innovations or allows them to wither. The
academic vice-president at the Group 1 representative community college was
interviewed, as was the Group 3 representative community college vice president.

Unfortunately, the academic vice-president at the Group 2 representative community

60

college recently retired and moved from the area. The researcher was unable to locate
her.

The international program coordinator was interviewed at each of the three
institutions. The coordinator at the Group 3 representative college assumed the position
at the retirement of an active EDIC member several years ago. The current coordinator
has been less closely afﬁliated with EDIC but still maintains some ties.

Out of the 46 responses by administrators and faculty received from the mail/Web
survey, 34 indicated that they did not participate in the Fall Event adoption decision on
their respective campuses. Three respondents, all faculty members, indicated that they
participated in the decision to adopt the curricular innovation on their campus (see Table
3). Each of the faculty members represents a different institution. For Innovation 2:
Summer Institutes, one faculty member and one administrator responded that they
participated in the decision concerning its adoption at their institutions, while 35
respondents did not. The two decision-making respondents represent different
institutions.

In a pre-analysis step, the responses were aggregated by scale. This pattern
matching (Yin, 2003) was used to discern indicative response clusters. The intention was
to identify the most salient innovation as the basis for the faculty interviews. In every
instance, the responses for all six scales clustered around similar values for the Summer
Institute innovation (see Table 4) indicating that there was a similarity of attribute
perception across the innovation. Clustering of responses occurred only within two

scales for the remaining two innovations.

61

Using response data generated by two sample members can only be used to
indicate of patterns of perception. A faculty member and an administrator from two
different community colleges indicated that they participated in the adoption decisions
for utilizing the Summer Institute Innovation, the development of international
curriculum modules, at their campuses. When aggregated by scale, the responses were
closely related for this innovation. The similarity of perception occurring for only the
Summer Institutes innovation and not the other two leads one to speculate on probable
reasons. First, it is probable that Fall Event is so thoroughly institutionalized at most
campuses that it was difﬁcult for respondents to separate the decisions surrounding its
establishment from contiguous organizational decisions. Second, since the Visiting
Scholar innovation was not widely adopted by member community colleges, conceivably
it was not as well known and therefore, ﬁrm perceptions were not formed.

It was decided that, as the case study moved into the interview phase, the
investigator would be sensitive to the presumptions presented in the preceding paragraph.
When greater clarity of perceptions about the attributes of Fall Event and Visiting
Scholar innovations did not emerge in the ﬁrst few interviews, the primary focus of the
interview component then targeted attribute perceptions associated with the innovation of
international curriculum modules in the later interviews.

A11 interviews were conducted by the researcher and all but four were
conducted in person. The other interviews were via telephone. The interviews were
recorded and transcribed; in addition, the interviewer made notes as the interviews
progressed. A database was created using Excel and all data were entered into it for

analysis by protocol question, by organizational question, and by proposition.

62

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63

In all instances, the survey questionnaire was used as the interview protocol to
provide continuity of data subject matter, in other words, the interviewer used the survey
questions as the protocol. The interviewer explained the purpose of the interview,
described the interviewee’s rights to terminate the interview at any time and that the data
would be presented in the aggregate, and gave each subject a statement of the
University’s human subject rights to sign and a personal copy. For those interviews
conducted over the phone, the statement was emailed to the subject prior to the interview.
The subject was asked to either send the form electronically or by mail it to afﬁrm his or
her consent to participate in the interview. The subjects were instructed at the beginning
of the interview to think back 10- 12 years to when the decision was under consideration
to adopt. As the interview progressed, the subjects had to be prompted frequently to
focus on the events preceding implementation of the innovation.

Early on it became apparent that relying solely on the questionnaire, as the
interview protocol, would have to be modiﬁed somewhat. The vice-presidents could not
or would not address operational issues concerning an individual innovation. For
instance, the question “developing international modules will improve the quality of work
the college does” lead into lengthy discussions about the global development of
international programming at the college rather than the speciﬁc curricular innovation of
inserting international modules into each course. Probing did not help the interviewee
shift focus from the strategic goal of the administration for integration of global
perspectives into student experiences as contrasted with the operational task of
implementing a cunicular innovation at the classroom level. It appeared that the vice

presidents broadly linked all international curricular efforts.

64

Likewise, the faculty found it difﬁcult to think that a cunicular innovation would
be furthering the work of the college because the interviewee would generally deﬁne
“work of the college” as the role of the college’s chief administrators in setting strategic
goals. When answering the question “developing international modules will improve the
quality of work the college does,” faculty members would invariably say that they did not
think about how developing international curriculum modules would further the
administration’s goals for diversity. Instead, faculty members focused on reasons that
centered upon personal interests, wishing to broaden their students’ knowledge, or to
meet a departmental goal.

On the other hand, international program coordinators frequently interchanged
their points of view from the strategic goals of the administration to what was happening
at the course level. Most often, they placed the adoption of the innovation decision into
the context of how the work of international programs would be impacted. For instance,
when answering the question “developing international modules will improve the quality
of work the college does,” the coordinators referenced the mandate given to them by the
administration to develop an international program. Then they would proceed to
describe how adoption of one of EDIC innovations by the faculty advanced the goals of
the administration. Their viewpoint most often reﬂected the role of change agent as
described by Rogers (1995). He wrote about how change agents bridge the gap between
organization and individual implernenters in the diffusion of an innovation. These
distinct levels of vision conﬁrmed Proposition 6 and its analysis may be found in the
following chapter. It was these varying levels of innovation perception that lead to

relaxing the interview protocol from hi ghly-structured to moderately-structured.

65

Using a less structured interview protocol allowed greater ﬂexibility for the
subjects to address areas of their interest. For instance, vice presidents preferred focusing
their comments on the Fall Event innovation, international programming events that were
popular within the community, or the broad goals of the college. International program
coordinators tended to ﬁt both the Fall Event and Summer Institutes/intemational
modules into how each of the innovations related to the program he or she developed.

By comparison, faculty members only answered questions about international modules,
the most concrete or product-like irmovation. One of the international program
coordinators interviewed was the only adopter of the “Visiting Scholar” innovation.
Other interviewees had not heard of the program or confused it with other study
opportunities.

Following Miles and Huberman’s ( 1984) suggestion for creating an accounting
scheme for data coding to deﬁne perspectives, the degree of expressed affect was used to
ascertain strength of agreement or disagreement with the survey instrument questions
used as the interview protocol. Interview transcripts provided each respondent’s response
to the questions, in turn, these were coded as strongly agree, agree, unsure, disagree, and
strongly disagree. A second, independent coder conﬁrmed the classiﬁcation of comments
by response category. Located in Table 5 are examples of interviewee responses that
were coded to correspond to questions on the survey insMent.

Each of the international program coordinators served as the informants and
answered questions related to the organizational context in which the adoption decision
was made. The questions were constructed to elicit any unusual organizational

structures, policies or leadership inﬂuences that might set one institution apart from the

66

Table 5

Examples of interview response interpretation for codinm

 

Strongly Agree:
° Absolutely! I couldn’t see how it wouldn’t improve the curriculum
by having an experience like that.
I can’t imagine a time in any college where the international world
wouldn’t be signiﬁcant.
I thought it was critical to a good education; that this work would be
critical to the success of the college and that it was essential.

From my ofﬁce, I considered it part of the college.
I knew I might meet with some resistance. But, I feel as if I have
seen this work.
Preferably, yes, for this group of students to be prepared to
undertake similar work in their courses or maybe, again you always
wonder about what sticks with them.
Unsure:
Deﬁnitely possible, not necessarily easy
I don’t think that really was on my mind
I think . . . to the extent that I can remember, my concern was about
the students; and what the college was doing would always be
second or third.
Disagree:
' I don’t think the community was aware of where the programs came
from.
I think that that’s a no in a lot of classes and there is resistance ﬁ'om
folks who have a jammed packed 16 week (system).
Not really, in fact I felt that a lot of what we were doing and had
done was without necessarily the blessing of the administration of
the college.
Strongly Disagree:
1 never had a sense that the college wanted us to do anything. The
whole thing was ground up, not top down.
It has always been difﬁcult.
No. we didn’t. We have a group of folks who are ﬁrm believers that
we need to identify our core business and we stick with that, and
global education may not be part of the core business.

others. They were asked the following questions:

1. Is there an unusual organizational structure in place?
2. Who serves in key administrative positions?

67

3. Does the college have a history of strong resource allocation to international
programming? .

Do the organizational dynamics support innovative educational programs?
Was there a “change champion” associated with international programming?
In particular, were there one or more EDIC program champions?

9?"?

Because the organization context questions were not open-ended, they were only
somewhat effective in establishing the organizational context in which adoption decisions
were made. By far, the richest organizational insights derived from the interviews with
the program coordinators, faculty and academic vice presidents.

The use of EDIC archival data and the development of a questionnaire for both
the survey and interview protocol proved to be effective data collection methods. The
distribution of the questionnaire using survey methodology resulted in interesting and
informative patterns of evidence, plus “hidden” organizational identity issues were
surfaced. Using the questionnaire as the interview protocol resulted not only in data
related to attribute perceptions but also provided rich contextual data.

Data Analysis Procedures

The case study analysis was developed using two methodologies, statistical
analysis and cross case synthesis. Using both quantitative and qualitative methodologies
in a case study is a common practice according to Yin (2003). A multiplicity of
analytical techniques offers the researcher an opportunity to collect data across broad
populations in addition to in-depth probing of a particular site or issue.

Through Proposition 1, this research project intended to compare the ratings of
innovation attribute perceptions of one or more organizational groups to the results found
in other studies. For this purpose, the static coded (Miles and Huberman, 1984) faculty

members’ ratings of their perceptions of the Summer Institutes innovation attributes

68

(described above) were used. The data set was small but did not preclude using basic
descriptive statistical tools and calculating degree of association among the perception
ratings. Four instructors from each the suburban and the urban community colleges
provided responses during their interviews that could be coded in ways to correspond
with the survey instrument scales. Averaging available data created scale values.

First, a visual inspection of the faculty data array was conducted for unusual
response patterns and to note missing values. Second, a Pearson Product Moment
correlation was calculated using the data from the faculty members’ responses about their
perceptions of the international curricular module innovation attributes. Two Product
Moment correlation calculations were performed to ascertain degree of association by
item and by scale. Third, means for each scale were calculated to determine relative
importance of each scale to the respondents; and fourth, the standard deviations of the six
scales were computed to measure their variance.

In the Miles and Huberman (1984) sourcebook, cross case synthesis is
recommended as one methodology to increase the generalizability of case study ﬁndings
while maintaining the ability to understand how each ﬁnding is uniquely shaped at
individual locations. Utilizing the cross case synthesis methodology was crucial to
validating Propositions 2-6. Two ordered matrices (Miles and Huberman, 1984) were
developed for entering interview data by proposition. One matrix compared propositions
by site and the other compared propositions by position held within the college. As the
matrices were analyzed, themes emerged. The themes coalesced by proposition across
sites and college positions; support or non-support for individual propositions was

determined. As an example for the reader, a small section of the matrix comparing

69

Proposition 6 by organizational positions may be found in Table 6. This table presents an

illustration of how the interview data were arrayed for analysis. As shown in the example

reproduced in Table 6, the matrix provides one with the ability to easily discern the

differing purposes served by an innovation as deﬁned by vice presidents and faculty

members. All data for the matrices were abstracted ﬁ'om the transcripts of the taped

interviews.
Table 6

Example of cross-case smthesis matrix

 

Proposition 6: Faculty and administrators will view the purposes of the innovations

differently.

 

SCC-AVP"

1. I saw how it [international programs]
could enrich all curricular efforts

2. International programming became a
part of the strategic plan and was reﬂected
in the operational plan.

RCC-AVP"

1. Experience the difference, used it
[international programs] to combat student
naiveté or parochialism.

2. It [international programs] provides an
opportunity for experiences--especially
those life altering experiences.

3. [provide students with] career
experience

UCC-F(a)°

1. I was very interested in cross- or trans-
cultural health issues. I thought it would
be terriﬁc for the . . . program.

2. in spite of the administration, we
[faculty] will keep it going

SCC-F(a)d

1. Saw international modules as a ground
up effort.

2. No, I wasn't overly concerned with that
[the college's work] at the time.

3. I saw the project related to
[coordinator]'s ofﬁce not to the college

 

aSCC-AVP: suburban community college academic vice president

l’RCC-AVP: rural community college academic vice president

ZUCC-F(a): urban community college faculty member (a)
SCC-F(a): suburban community college faculty member (a)

Presentation of the interpretation of ﬁndings. The narrative and tables depicting

quantitative data comprising Chapter 4: The Case Study, present the conclusions without

70

further reference to how the ﬁndings were derived. All methodological discussions are
contained in this chapter.

A multi-site, embedded case study was used to answer the research question: Do
innovation attribute perceptions inﬂuence community college adoption of programs
promoted by an external agency? Midwest community college administrators and faculty
provided data through a survey and through interviews about three EDIC sponsored
international curricular innovations promoted over a twelve-year period.

Deriving six propositions from the adoption of innovation literature followed
Robert Yin’s (2003) suggested case study research design. The propositions were

validated using both quantitative and qualitative methodologies.

71

Chapter 4: The Case Study

The case study was conducted in two stages. Phase 1 was a survey of
administrators and faculty and Phase 2 consisted of interviews. The quantitative data
derived during the ﬁrst stage survey were used to structure the collection of qualitative
data during Phase 2 for example, determining which innovation became the focus for the
interviews. How each proposition, in support of the research question, was either
conﬁrmed or negated was based solely on the data gathered during Phase 2 of the case
study.

This chapter begins with a description of the three community college sites that
were used to investigate how innovation attribute perceptions inﬂuenced community
college adoption of programs promoted by an external agency. College web sites,
physical observations by the researcher, interviews with knowledgeable organizational
informants, and fall enrollments found on the State Community College NETwork
provided data with which institutional commonalties and differences could be inferred
(see Table 7) through comparison. The next section explores how each of the six
propositions supporting the research question were either conﬁrmed or negated by using
the qualitative data gathered through college faculty and administrator interviews at the
three sites. Finally, the ﬁndings are integrated into a general statement section about the
impact of innovation attribute perception on community college adoption decisions.
Community Colleges Sites

The three community colleges selected as the Phase 2 institutions for the case
study received EDIC funding for promoting the three international programming

innovations used in this study. Through conversations with EDIC staff and with

72

 

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state community college faculty and administrators, these colleges are known for their
strong international programs. In additiOn, these three colleges represented each of the
three groupings of institutions surveyed during Phase 1 of the case study: high
adoption/high participation, moderate adoption/moderate participation and low
adoption/moderate participation. 1

During the 19805 and 19903, colleges and universities were responding to the
directives from their accrediting agencies to incorporate views of the larger society into
the organizations. For instance the Higher Learning Commission of the North Central
Association of Colleges and Schools, the accrediting agency for the three colleges, ﬁrst
criterion for accreditation is speciﬁc on this issue. The core component lb of this
criterion reads, “In its mission documents, the organization recognizes the diversity of its
learners, other constituencies, and the greater society it serves” (N CA, p.3.1-3). In
response, colleges were organizing their missions to address the issue and general
education departments were including this need for understanding diversity in their
curricular core competencies. The EDIC innovations were just a few of the many efforts
at each college to meet this accreditation criterion.

College characteristics. The three community colleges are in differing geographic
locations: rural, suburban and urban areas. As a convenience, these geographic
descriptors, rural, suburban and urban are used for identifying the community colleges in
the following sections. The rural college is in an isolated area serving mostly farming
and recreational communities. There are no major cities or heavily populated areas
nearby; to reach the college, one must leave an interstate highway and travel over state

and county roads for more than thirty miles. In contrast, the urban community college

74

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lies at an exit of a main interstate highway that traverses the Midwestern states. The
college is about equal distance, three hours, ﬁom two of the larger metropolitan areas in
the United States. In addition to the main campus, there is a campus located in the
central section of the downtown of a moderate sized city. Making-up the local taxation
base are manufacturers, agribusinesses, and commerce, one of which is a Fortune 500
company. Close by is a state university. The suburban community college serves three
small cities. Predonrinately, it is a rural area but there are several manufacturers, and the
world headquarters of a Fortune 500 company is located there. Also, one of the smaller
state universities is close by. The main campus is equal distance from the cities and is
located at the exit of an interstate highway, the college has established satellite campuses
in the downtown areas of the three cities. The physical plants of the colleges are of
similar style: attractive, contemporary buildings that hug the ground. The three main
campuses of the colleges opened within ﬁve years of one another during the early 19605.
The latest fall enrollments, 2003, for the state’s community colleges as reported
by the Community College Services Unit of the State Department of Labor and
Economic Growth Ofﬁce of Post-Secondary Services show that there were 211,197
students enrolled in the colleges and that one-third of the students were full-time. Seven
of the state’s community colleges enrolled less than 3,000 students, fourteen colleges had
fall enrollments between 3,000 and 10,000 students, and seven colleges had enrollments
over 1 1,000 with only two of those having more than 20,000 students. The urban and
suburban community colleges serve approximately the same number of students each fall,
10,000, making them moderate sized institutions. Full-time student enrollment is 40

percent for both colleges. The rural college enrolls 2,000 students, 30 percent full-time,

75

each year placing it in the lower enrolhnent quadrant for the state’s community colleges.
The demographics of the student bodies are similar: more than half are female, the
median ages fall between 22 and 23, and the students are predominately Caucasian. The
urban and suburban institutions employ approximately 200 full-time and 250 part-time
faculty members. The rural college has 35 full-time and 85 part-time faculty members on
staff.

When asked about administrative structures, each college informant described a
typical academic administrative conﬁguration (Cohen and Brawer, 1996): president, vice
president for academics, deans, department heads and faculty. For instance, the rural
community college vice president named off the positions at his college and then said, “I
think the structure itself is fairly traditional. 1 don’t think if you look at the
organizational chart it looks weird.” He went on to state that the coordinator of
international programs reported directly to him, which is the case also, at the other two
colleges.

Intemationalizing the colleges. Early in their histories, the liberal arts deans at
both the urban and suburban community colleges were instrumental in establishing an
international mission for the colleges. During the interview, an urban community college
faculty member remembered the role played by his dean

We worked mostly with the dean back then. The dean of, I don’t

remember what it was called back then, it’s had about three names since

then; basically, dean of the liberal arts . . . She was supportive in her very

gentle way. She sort of steered the program through the web of

administrators without giving them, probably, too much information. She
moved it along that way. You know, before people realized it was a viable

thing . . . she was a perfect soldier for us. Some of the other folks here

hadn’t such an international view of things. So she was the right person,
at the right place, at the right time.

76

This dean’s interest in internationalizing the curriculum sprang from personal
experiences. The faculty member related that the dean and her husband were world
travelers, and that had sparked her interest in exposing the students to a larger view of the
world.

The dean at the suburban community college had begun investigating
internationalizing her curricula as a faculty member. Shortly before she assumed the
position of dean, the president decided that the college needed to move toward more of an
international focus. Because of his personal management style, many members of the
college, both faculty and administrators, brought ideas to him for backing. This “open
door” policy spawned many, although, fragmented international efforts. The suburban
community college vice president that participated in this research project was the faculty
member who moved into the position of dean of liberal arts and then to the vice
presidency. She remembered that, “There was nobody holding it together. That’s what
the vice president took charge of and pulled it together . . . An assignment I had was to
see what was out there and pull it together into a comprehensive program . . . As a dean, I
got fascinated with it and started to see the potential there was in the international
program to enrich other things that we did.” Her strong belief that incorporating
international themes into the college’s curriculum enriched students’ experiences lasted
throughout her academic career. To assist her with carrying out the internationalization
of the curriculum, she appointed a faculty member to head up the effort and created an
ofﬁce to spearhead the venture. In addition, the concept was broadened to be more

inclusive by folding in international affairs into the college’s effort to become more

diverse.

77

The president at the rural community college shared the open door administrative
style found at the suburban college during the development period for international
programs. According to the coordinator, “If we [faculty or staff] got an idea relating to
education, basically [we could] pop into [the vice president’s] ofﬁce or the president or
both and say ‘why don’t you do this’ and sum it up and make a decision in a span of an
half hour.” As she continued with the interview, she remarked how she misses that
ﬂexibility or quick responsiveness to ideas since a new president has been installed. The
current president is much more formal in administrative style and prefers to maintain
official channels of communication. The vice president reﬂected on this change of
administrative style

I think there has been an attempt lately at the school to make the [decision-

making] process more formalized and not just as far as global awareness

but all of activities. There may be a lot more red tape to go through, and of

course any bureaucratic structure can do a good job of justifying policies

and procedures. Obviously any organization this complex needs to have

certain bureaucratic processes. I am afraid we are going into a direction of

establishing such formalized structure we may not be able to make these

decisions [as quickly as before].

The president at the m'ban college never became as involved in the international
Program decision-making as the other two presidents were. One faculty member
reﬂected upon the president’s involvement in internationalizing the curriculum, “the
President was good but it wasn’t her issue but she did give us the support to go on. She

Wasn’t necessarily a cheerleader but that was alright.”

As discussed earlier, the academic vice president of the suburban community

College assumed the role of change agent for promoting various international program

innovations. As change agent, she provided the bridge between EDIC and her college for

advancing the innovation. The vice president at the rural community college was a

78

willing supporter of international program innovations. He spoke of an instructor who
was very involved with EDIC and how he supported this instructor by releasing him from
teaching for one course a year to coordinate international programs on the campus. The
vice president was willing to leave curricular issues to faculty but took a direct role in
developing trips for the college’s students to ethnic neighborhoods in the Chicago area.
His uncle, who was involved in immigrant services for another Midwest state, assisted
with the arrangements. In this instance, be operated as a change agent for international
programs but not for international curricular innovations. At the retirement of the faculty
member, the vice president appointed a part-time faculty member to assume the
responsibilities. When asked if she considered herself to be closely associated with
EDIC, she answered that she was unsure. The other international program coordinators
were in agreement that they were closely associated with the organization.

The vice president for academics at the urban community college was never
closely associated with the international programming efforts. It was the dean of liberal
arts who gave a faculty member the additional charge to develop “something
international.” From the data collected, other urban college faculty members do not have

a relationship with EDIC. They have sporadically attended programs and have done a
few joint presentations with the EDIC staff. One of this college’s faculty members
related, “I remember doing a presentation at another college with EDIC faculty. [Our
college] has always enjoyed a relationship with MU on international relations. We feel
like the little brother or sister that has been invited to come along and that feels neat.”
The only college representative for EDIC interorganizational affairs for the urban

institution was the coordinator of international programs. Time and again during faculty

79

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interviews references were made to when the coordinator brought back ideas ﬁ'om MU or
the visits of University faculty.

College innovation adoption. The three community colleges constituting this case
study adopted at least two of the three innovations, to varying degrees, promoted by
EDIC. The suburban community college adopted all three innovations.

Innovgtion 1. The fall event innovation began as the product of informal
relationships between MU faculty and several community colleges. The cooperative
relationship produced events focused on international themes. Funding was successfully
secured to formalize this assistance during 1989-1991. The funding supported cultural
events and scholarly presentations on all EDIC campuses and allowed MU to supply
curriculum consultation assistance and faculty development opportunities at the
institutions. This innovation is considered by the EDIC staff to be the most successful
since more than 75 percent of the member community colleges adopted it. The three
colleges instituted various forms of the fall event innovation.

Grant funding speciﬁcally for bringing international speakers and cultural
functions to its remote campus was received by the rural community college. The
funding made it possible for the college to host traveling art exhibits from abroad and
international dance and musical companies. MU faculty members continued to visit the
campus to speak on various topics of international interest. After the funding ceased in
1991, the fall event evolved into lectures by either internationals from the student body or
the community or by faculty members and students who had experienced one of the

international exchange programs. Fall event migrated from a two-week affair with a

80

presentation each day to a series of presentations scheduled throughout the academic
year. The vice president described the impetus for this scheduling change

Initially . . . it took place over a two week period and you can’t obviously

arrange a time that is perfect for everybody where you have people

coming and going; it is a commuter campus where people don’t spend

time . . . It is hard to schedule ten presentations for a two hour block

within a two week period . . . It was always difﬁcult in the sense of the

logistics.

Originally, one of several goals for fall event was to serve as an outreach activity to
acquaint high school students and community members with the rural community college
and its services. Funding cutbacks at the local level resulted in school districts foregoing
non-essential transport of students. This decision impacted the attendance during the
two-week event. The shift to presentations throughout the year now allows the college’s
students, faculty and staff ﬂexibility in their scheduling and community members still
attend those sessions that are of interest. In addition, other international activities began
during this period continue. The college heavily recruits international students and
student trips to ethnic neighborhoods are organized. Plus, a community college
association for international exchange programs grew out the rural community college’s
experiences with fall event and is located on the campus today.

The fall event innovation was adopted by the suburban community college and
structured much the same as was the rural community college’s two-week event. The
differences were that there were several (two or three) presentations each day and the
activities were compressed into a single week. The vice president eloquently described
how and why fall event was brought to her community college

The college reconstructed its vision; part of that vision was that we needed to

have our students mindful of diversity. We were going into a global economy.
Things were happening in the automobile industry that we couldn’t ﬁgure out.

81

We ﬁgured we had to get in. Everybody is not going to take a class so we had to
target towards the large groups, students and faculty. That turned out to be our
global awareness week, which we did once a year in the beginning [fall term].

All week long there were programs every day. Teachers had integrated the
learning outcomes in the courses they taught. We had everything from GM
talking about ISO, if you were in the technical area, you’d know about that, if you
weren’t, you wouldn’t know. They [the students were] exposed to large and wide
varieties of things that were happening the world. When we were able to have
exchange faculty, we had people [that] could speak with knowledge and
experience about progress. We learned what it was like not to be able to feed
your children or a mother might choose upon birth to kill a child to protect the
others because there was not enough. This blew the people apart and it got them
to a place that this was not right or wrong, it was about resources and what people
have to do to stay alive. Most times, our visitors from their observations, that
Americans have so much and they take things for granted and don’t appreciate
what they have. I think many of our people came to hear this. [They] talked
about things we have and take for granted. You could hear the difference. It was
one of the biggest learning experiences. It is still going on.

The academic vice president and the faculty member tapped as the international program
coordinator recently retired from the college. As the guard changed and ﬁnancial
pressures grew, the college has undertaken many changes. One was the scaling back of
the fall event to three days in the fall semester and two days in the spring semester to
evenly spread the expenses across the academic year. Speaker honoraria are modest or
nonexistent but the college does compensate speakers for their travel; in addition, there
are advertising fees associated with building community awareness of programming,
additional custodial pay, supplies and minimal refreshments. Seemingly small expenses
but part of a “tightening of the belt” move that includes faculty putting all handouts on-
line so that copying costs can be better controlled.

During the same period that the college implemented fall event, it pursued other
avenues for internationalization. For instance, the college aggressively developed sister
college relationships within Aﬁica and Mexico. Faculty and students sought yearlong

academic exchanges between the institutions. The experiences of these participants were

82

folded into the fall event initiative. The vice president collected data on these exchanges
and is currently developing an impact study for the funding agency that made grant
monies available for the exchanges.

The genesis of fall event on the urban community college campus took a different
route. A faculty member described what happened, “[The coordinator] and I came into
[the college] at the same time, 1986, [we] became ﬁiends. We talked about developing
an international program while running together. [The coordinator] invited [me] to join
the group. [He] had a bunch of people ﬁ'om Midstate who would come over and lecture,
on various topics and issues.” Another faculty member more fully described these
sessions, “When [the coordinator] was ﬁrst forming an international studies committee, a
faculty group got together to talk about maybe just having an international festival. We
weren’t even talking about curriculum at that time. I joined that group. We would have a
program, just come hear what was being presented by either another faculty member or
someone from Midstate University.” From these informal “brown bag” presentations for
students and staff, there later emerged an international awareness week of presentations
and poster sessions that culminated in an international festival complete with food, music
and dancing. The festival event continues today and tickets are sold. Most years, the
event is sold out. Currently, the week of activities has been replaced by thematic events
throughout the year that involve not only presentations but also cultural experiences (e. g.,
Dia de los Muertos celebrations of food, piﬁatas, music, dancing, and speakers; plus,
Spanish lesson during the week’s lunch hours). The events vary in length, sometimes a

single day or others may continue for a week.

83

Innovation 2. The summer institutes innovation was funded through a federal
grant awarded to EDIC for the academic years 1994-1996 to establish the program. The
workshops offered on the MU campus were designed to assist faculty with developing
focused international curricular modules and to offer on-going assistance to insure that
the curriculum would be piloted in the following year. Grant monies provided full
funding to support all EDIC member attendees and provided funding for workshop
leaders. About one-half of the EDIC afﬁliated community colleges enrolled faculty in the
summer institutes, leading the EDIC staff and advisors refer to the adoption of this
innovation as being moderately successful.

Each of the community colleges studied sent faculty to the summer institutes
developed by EDIC. The faculty member who served as the international program
coordinator at the rural community college during those years, attended along with the
academic vice president and two other faculty members. The coordinator developed
several modules for the classes he taught and encouraged the faculty who attended the
workshop with him to develop international modules. When the coordinator retired
seven years ago, the inclusion of international modules in the curriculum ceased.

Of all EDIC member institutions, the suburban community college had the
greatest number of attendees, nineteen, at the summer institutes. It can be speculated that
the measurement of international efforts, which were folded into the tenure system,
would encourage interest in the curriculum workshops. As a practice, the international
program coordinator tracked the modules developed and which courses they supported.
For faculty members unable to attend one of the summer institutes, she encouraged and

worked directly with them to develop modules to support their curricula. She has been

84

absent from the college for nearly four years, yet the faculty members interviewed
reported continued use of the modules.

Six faculty members, including the international program coordinator, from the
urban community college attended one of the several EDIC summer institutes. The
coordinator began teaching the college’s cohort of faculty interested in internationalizing
the curriculum how to develop modules for their classes. The faculty welcomed this
assistance. One of the interviewees reported being pleased with the invitation to join the
coordinator’s group, “When [the coordinator] was developing the idea of curriculum
modules, I thought that this was a great idea for the . . . curriculum here . . . I jumped on
the bandwagon . . .” This innovation took root and exploded; today, a vibrant institute
ﬂourishes at the college. The institute trains faculty members from other colleges
throughout the region in the development of international modules to support various
curriculums (i.e., allied health, science, and mathematics).

Innovation 3. The visiting scholar innovation was piloted as a new direction for
EDIC during Academic Year 2000-2001, to counter waning interest in the organization.
In the MU administrative structure, EDIC was a part of the Center for International
Directives (CID), its organizational activities were directed by the CID staff and funding
was ofﬁcially procured through CID. Some of the general grant monies were earmarked
for postsecondary outreach. These funds were set aside to endow the Visiting Scholar
Program. CID invited faculty members from EDIC afﬁliated colleges to spend ﬁve days
on the MU campus to pursue areas of international curriculmn interest. The scholarships
covered all travel, room, board, consulting fees, and fees for special on-campus seminars

and events. Restrictions associated with the use of the grant monies were maintained by

85

hosting the visiting scholars on the MU campus so that CID afﬁliated faculty might work
closely with them. This innovation clearly falls into the category identiﬁed by EDIC
staff as not being successful as only one EDIC commturity college member accepted the
opportunity.

When asked about their interest in becoming a CID supported visiting scholar at
Midstate University, the interviewees from the ma] community college confused the
program with a Fulbright initiative and later realized that they were not familiar with the
opportunity. Several faculty members from the urban community college became
interested in taking advantage of the program after they learned of it from the
interviewer. The single participant, thus far, in the program was the international
program coordinator from the suburban community college. She was delighted with the
experience and felt that it was crucial in preparing her for a sabbatical in South Aﬁica.
She was able to sharpen her writing and research skills through the support provided by
CID; she continues to publish papers that grew out of the experience. Upon her return
from sabbatical to the suburban community college, her office was dissolved and its
functions folded into the student services department. She chose to take early retirement
as a result of the organizational restructuring. It is unclear to this author how the
experience provided any beneﬁt to her community college except by continued exposure
of the institution to the EDIC/CID staff. The academic vice president from her college
spoke of the innovation in terms of great individual rewards provided to the coordinator.
As the coordinator left for her sabbatical, the vice president retired. They have
maintained a social relationship and perhaps this is the focus of the vice president’s

personalization of beneﬁts to the coordinator.

86

Validity of Propositions

During Phase 1 of this study, survey data shaped how Phase 2, interviews and site
visits, of the case study was constructed. In Phase 1, survey responses were aggregated
by scale and response clusters matched (Yin, 2003). The responses for all six scales
clustered around similar values for the summer institute innovation (see Table 4), and not
across all scales for the other two innovations, indicating that was a similarity of attribute
perception for this innovation. Therefore, summer institutes or the inclusion of
international auricular modules became the primary innovation investigated during
Phase 2.

Analysis of interview data gathered at three sites during Phase 2 supported that
the propositions originally developed to guide the research project were valid. In the
following section each proposition is presented along with the ﬁndings that support it.
Faculty interview data were coded in an effort to transform qualitative data into
quantitative data for comparison with ﬁndings reported in the literature. The resulting
quantitative data were used to test Proposition 1; qualitative data were used to conﬁrm
the remaining ﬁve propositions.

Proposition 1. The inﬂuence of innovation attribute perceptions on community
college adoption decisions will mirror the ﬁndings in the literature supporting the theory.

To test support for Proposition 1, faculty members’ ratings of their perceptions of
the summer institutes innovation attributes were coded and used. As described earlier,
Phase 1 survey data showed this innovation to have the most cohesive perceptions and
faculty members at each case study site had the freedom to or not to adopt and implement

this particular innovation. Other studies (Moore and Benbasat, 1991; Rogers, 1995;

87

Tomatzky and Klein, 1982) found when testing attribute perceptions against adoption
decisions, compatibility and relative advantage were positively related while complexity
was negatively related; how the remaining two attributes, trialability and observability,
were perceived was less deﬁnitive.

This proposition, of the original six, has the least support in the case study
ﬁndings. Interview data from the eight faculty members were coded and entered into the
appropriate scales. The small number of subjects limited analysis to descriptive
statistical functions (e.g., means, correlations, standard deviations). The original intent
for this proposition was to compare quantitative data gathered during the case study to
Moore and Benbasat (1991) results. The sampling errors for this data set were too great
and the N too small to derive Kappa scores for measuring inter-rater reliability or
Cronbach’s Alpha reliability coefﬁcients for gauging the internal consistency of the
scales as Moore and Benbasat (1991) had when developing the original instrument.

When consulted, Table 8 presents several interesting observations. The standard
deviations for scales 1, 4, 5, and 6 are within the same range, yet the variations of scales 2
and 3 are greater. Using the raw coded interview data, one can observe that for Scale 2:
Compatibility, the faculty from the urban community college consistently answered that
they felt the writing of international cunicular modules was less compatible with the
work of the college. For instance, less agreement is shown through the answer provided
by an urban college faculty member, “[for me it was compatible] but I am not sure it was
consistent through the college.” Faculty members from the suburban community college
indicated strong agreement that the development of the modules was very compatible

with the work of their college as evidenced by a faculty member’s reply, “the college has

88

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a general education objective. . .that students that graduate are required to have a global
and international awareness [therefore, inclusion of the modules are compatible with the
work of the college] .” Later in this section, exploring how the innovation was deﬁned in
Proposition 4 and investigating how, in Proposition 5, it was institutionalized at each
institution could explain this differing of opinion between the faculty members from the
two community colleges. Examining the raw data presented in Scale 3: Complexity
indicates that two of the four suburban community college faculty members interviewed
believed that the writing of an international cunicular module was a complex task while
the other two did not. One could speculate on the reasons for this inconsistent rating by
faculty members from the same college working with the same international programs
coordinator. One interpretation could be that the suburban coordinator was more
effective in applying her interpersonal skills while assisting two faculty members in
developing their cunicular modules or perhaps those two faculty members more adept at
developing curriculum. The answer is not clear from the data.

The Pearson Product Moment correlation calculations of questions (Appendix C)
and of the scales (Appendix D) did not advance the interpretation of ﬁndings for
Proposition 1. The number of subjects makes an explanation difﬁcult to craft using
correlations. When examining Table 9 reproduced as Appendix C, one ﬁnds that the
reported correlation for 13 of the 180 question pairings was statistically signiﬁcant (p
<.05). However, the small N of respondents (8) requires an r of >.7O to achieve p<.5,
and at that alpha level, one might expect to ﬁnd 9 of the correlations to be signiﬁcant due

to chance.

90

There was evidence that one instrument scale, Four: Observability/Results
(questions 13-16), functioned as developed by Moore and Benbasat (1991) even
considering the small N of respondents. The four items comprising the scale are strongly
intereorrelated (r’s of .81, 180, .52, .37, .59 and .56) which suggest that the respondents
rated the observable results of the international curriculum module innovation very
similarly in the various aspects of those items. That is, the interviewees believed that
they could accurately observe the results of the innovation and describe those results
from different perspectives. The other scales did not demonstrate high internal
consistency, as the items do not appear intereorrelated in meaningful ways.

By using the scale means reported in Table 8, this study did ﬁnd that Scale 1:
Relative Advantage was rated as very important to the adoption decision, as was the
Relative Advantage factor reported in the Tomatzky and Klein (1982) meta-analysis.
Tomatzky and Klien (1982) found Compatibility and Complexity to consistently
inﬂuence the adoption decision although the quantitative data presented in this
proposition are inconclusive in their support. A clearer understanding of the importance
of compatibility and complexity to community colleges in the adoption decision-making
process emerged through the interpretation of the qualitative data presented later in
Propositions 4 and 5.

Proposition 2. The faculty member or administrator with the strongest link to
EDIC will function as the change agent for promoting a EDIC innovation.

There is a lack of published research on the role of an interorganizational change
agent. Without the guidance of other studies, it was assumed that the EDIC staff would

be able to identify those institutional members that were most supportive of the EDIC

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organization and therefore, could be assumed as change agents. The EDIC staff provided
the names of four individuals: the coordinators of international programs at the urban and
suburban community and the academic vice presidents of the suburban and rural
community colleges. EDIC staff described how these persons had been supportive of
forming the organization, its goals, all of its programs, and had participated in the
development of the innovations under study. This assumption, that the EDIC staff could
identify the change agent, was not supported by the data. This research found that how
close an individual perceived his or her ties to EDIC determines the adoption decision for
the international module innovation. This ﬁnding suggests that the individual makes a
personal commitment to becoming the interorganizational change agent.

For instance, the coordinator and vice president at the suburban community
college were closely associated with EDIC and their college’s programming closely
followed the innovations being promoted by EDIC. In fact, when probed about the
college’s relationship with EDIC, the vice president was amused reporting that

. . . the concept we had was that we [would develop] some things. EDIC

had resources to help us do that. It was interorganizational cooperation; . .

. Sometimes we used them and sometimes they used us. There was a lot

of exchanging. I think that all of it was they were doing it with us that

made all of the difference in the world.

She continued with relating how MU staff and faculty oﬁen sought out the assistance of
her college because it was a very early adopter of an international education initiative,
sister-college partnerships. In the beginning, MU was embarking on an outreach effort to
community colleges and wished to understand the differences between the academic

programming needs of a community college and a research university seeking to

internationalize their curricula. This early collaborative effort resulted in seeming grant

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funds to create EDIC. When the suburban college international program coordinator was
asked if she considered herself to be closely associated with EDIC, she strongly agreed
and added that she “considers it one of the most pivotal groups in internationalizing her
college’s curriculum.” The vice president and coordinator’s acknowledged perception of
having strong bonds with EDIC identify them as change agents of the interorganizational
relationship.

When contrasted with the experiences of the rural community college, a very
different picture emerges. The practice of including international modules into the
cuniculum at this college was discontinued with the retirement of the faculty member
serving as the international program coordinator. Yet the EDIC staff had labeled this
community college’s academic vice president as a committed member of the
interorganizational relationship. Why had the innovation been discontinued at this
college but the institutionalization of the innovation continued at the suburban college
after the retirement of both the vice president and coordinator? It was assumed that at the
rural community college there would be some vestige of international curricula modules
since there was a EDIC staff identiﬁed change agent present in the organization. It was
learned that during the period that EDIC was developing and promoting the curricular
innovation of inclusion of international modules, the vice president was not particularly
active in EDIC. At his college, only the retired coordinator functioned in the role of
EDIC change agent.

In his interview, the vice president ﬁ'om the rural college reminisced about his
introduction to EDIC: “The former president and [the retired coordinator] invited me to

go with them to several programs on international education down in East Lansing.” It

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was these conferences that introduced him to the interorganizational relationship, EDIC.
His keen interest and involvement came several years after the introduction of the
innovation under study. He shared that he ﬁnds EDIC meetings beneﬁcial for exploring
new ideas and for the networking opportunities. His participation in EDIC is shaped by
his perception of it as an organization from which one gains contacts with people and
ideas and not for crafting products that can be transported back to one’s campus.

When the coordinator for international programs at the rural college was asked
about her afﬁliation with EDIC, she replied that she “do[es] not see a need to be afﬁliated
With EDIC. They are a source of expertise to be tapped when need be.” Her perception
reﬂects that of her vice president. In addition, she explained that originally there were
four or ﬁve faculty members who were loosely associated with EDIC and its
globalization efforts but that now the faculty members’ efforts are not really supported.
This lack of support is reﬂected in the vice president’s personal view of international

education or experiences

. . . there [is] an insularity that people feel, it is important not only to learn
about Aﬁica but to actually learn about Africa from an Aﬁican when
many people never get the chance to interact with an Aﬁ'ican or
Aﬁican/American living up here. It is surprising how many people really
haven’t traveled out of the district and that holds them back in terms of
their career options. The students that have those experiences, their
horizons and choices broaden. I see that as so crucial.

It became apparent at the close of these two interviews that neither the vice president nor
the coordinator perceived of themselves as change agents for EDIC. Nor, are there

Organi zational policies in place to encourage the continuance of the innovation.

Therefore, it is not surprising that the innovation was discontinued in favor of arranging

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international exchanges and the continuance of seminars throughout the year that
originated out of fall event.

The EDIC staff labeled the international program coordinator at the urban
community college as a strong supporter of the organization and an excellent informant
candidate for this study. Therefore, it was assumed that the coordinator could be thought
of as the EDIC change agent for his college. After consideration, it is apparent that his
perception of his role with EDIC is weakening. This change in perception appears to be
linked to his growing reputation as the leader of another regional interorganizational
relationship promoting globalization of the curriculum. This organization was founded at
his college and is rapidly garnering recognition and prestige in the Great Lakes area.

The coordinator described his role in developing EDIC and promoting its early efforts.
During the interview with him, it was obvious that he is distancing himself from EDIC.
In explaining how be viewed the organization, he stated that in the past few years, “EDIC
took a dive in effectiveness because some community colleges were not valued and not
supported.” Whether he was referring to his college or other colleges was not clear.

His distancing of himself from EDIC was further supported by the interviews with
the urban community college faculty. One instructor was rather puzzled by questions
concerning EDIC’s relationship to developing international curriculum modules. She
said the coordinator “interacted with the MU people” and followed up with explaining
how their local global organization was responsible for training community college
faculty to develop international curriculum modules. The four faculty members

intel'Viewed from the urban community college attributed the innovation to their

coordinator and faculty rather than to EDIC.

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This view contrasts sharply with the opinions held by faculty members at the
suburban community college. These instructors recognized that the innovation originated
with the MU afﬁliated group but lauded their coordinator for her assistance with
implementing the project. They pointed out how she suggested that particular courses
that they taught would beneﬁt from the inclusion of international modules, and she
followed up on particular interests of the faculty, suggesting how that might lead to a
module. For instance, the geology instructor did his doctoral research on sub-Sahara

soils and the coordinator suggested that he might want to tie this in with the study of
American deserts.

The perception of one’s afﬁliation with EDIC appears to determine whether that
person is actually functioning as its change agent for each community college studied.
The persisting strength of afﬁliation appears to have shaped how the innovation adoption
continued at a college or whether it was discontinued. The perceived value of the EDIC
interorganization relationship to each international program coordinator framed how he
or she continued to promote the international module innovation on his or her campus. In
addition, the case study ﬁndings indicate that there may be a linkage between perceived
Strength of EDIC afﬁliation at the time of innovation promotion and the continued
adoption of an innovation.

Proposition 3. The change agent will use interpersonal communication channels

to . strengthen the attribute perceptions of relative advantage, compatibility, trialability,
and observability while decreasing the perceptions of complexity for adoption of an

innovation.

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It is assumed that designing and writing a curricular module can be involved and
difﬁcult. Therefore, Johnson’s (1993) point that interpersonal communication channels
are more effective in transmitting information about highly complex innovations should
play an important role in how the coordinators of international programs presented
information to. faculty members about the development of modules. The development of
Proposition 3 grew out of the assumption that change agents would encourage module

development in face-to-face interactions rather than utilizing mediated communication
channels (e.g., distribution of EDIC developed outlines).

Although the coordinator of international programs ﬁ‘om the rural community
college is not a EDIC change agent, she is the change agent for other international
programs and experiences. The college discontinued the implementation of the EDIC
module development innovation, but other innovations such as the workshops originating
from the fall event experience and international exchange study programs exist on the
campus. The coordinator indicated that she used interpersonal channels to encourage
faculty members to adopt the innovations that she currently promotes. For instance, she
described how she interests faculty members in one innovation: “I sell the exchange
programs to the faculty as a travel opportunity.” Since most faculty members would have
some travel experience, even if it was within the state, selling the chance to travel
internationally increases the positive perceptions of relative advantage, compatibility,
trialability, and observability innovation attributes while demystifying the complexity of

the assignment.

The international program coordinator was described as selling the innovation by

three of the four suburban community college instructors interviewed. One faculty

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member related how the coordinator sold her on adopting the innovation: “[the

coordinator] knew I was already doing the content in my learning community experience
classes. She suggested I formalize it by writing a module and make it the organizer for
the learning community experience.” Thus, by making this suggestion, the coordinator
was able to make the faculty member feel more positive about trying this innovation.
The coordinator addressed relative advantage by suggesting that the module become the
curriculum organizer for the course. The innovation attributes of trialability and
observability were seen more positively since the coordinator assured the faculty member
that she was already doing it, while a complex task was made simpler by pointing out the
silnilarity to what was occurring currently in the course. Other faculty members echoed
the use of this strategy by the coordinator. In addition to faculty, the academic vice
president lauded the coordinator’s adroit use of interpersonal communication channels.
She observed that the coordinator had a “wonderful style of working with people. She
could position or present ideas that caught the attention of the faculty and could get them
actively engaged intellectually.” The coordinator was more modest in her view; she saw
herself as support person to the faculty.

A faculty member at the urban community college described how the
international program coordinator utilized the interpersonal communication channels at
the college: “[He] talked to everyone about his ideas. He worked hard to develop the
From, personally organized international celebrations, he lobbied for the program, and
he’s a great promoter of the programs now." The coordinator was able to increase faculty

members’ positive perceptions of the innovation’s attributes by creating a spirit of team

effort. One faculty member alluded to the coordinator’s heritage as shaping how he

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approached working with the faculty. The coordinator is an emigre from a country
known for its close family structures and collaborative working styles. Three of the
interviewees explained that the coordinator had invited them to be “a member of his
team”; in addition, it was said that “[the coordinator] got the faculty together almost like
a fanrily; we’d travel and present together. Lots of outside of the job relationships were
formed. [He] makes our families feel included.” Other descriptions of the coordinator’s
use of interpersonal communication channels included mentoring of faculty during the
process of writing a module, general discussions with groups of faculty members about
the process of writing a module, learning the results of the coordinator’s own modules
and being recruited by the coordinator to write a module. By using these communication
strategies, the coordinator structured what Rogers (1995) referred to as prior conditions.
The faculty at the urban community college had a strong commitment to including
international modules into the curriculum; it became a norm of the social system. By
manipulating these conditions, the persuasion stage (Rogers, 1995) of the adoption
decision becomes easier to navigate. To become a member of the team, one has to
include a module making it more compatible to the role of faculty and therefore,
increasing its relative advantage. Having the ability to observe the process decreases
complexity of the task and increases the sense of being able to try out the idea before
Committing.
It appears that the coordinators effectively utilized interpersonal communication
Channels to make an innovation more attractive for faculty adoption by heightening the
Positive attributes and decreasing the sense of complexity associated with the innovation.

This tactic was observed at all three sites even though the rural college had discontinued

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the innovation under study. The rural coordinator used interpersonal communication
channels to increase the adoption rate one of the international program innovation that the

college was now actively promoting.

Proposition 4. Individual change agents will deﬁne a EDIC innovation to serve
differing purposes at each college studied.

Serving as a bridge between an organization promoting the innovation and the
adopters is a role often attributed to change agents (Rogers, 1995). Change agents shape
the innovation to best ﬁt their organizations. As the interviews progressed at the three
sites, this bridging role crystallized for the international program coordinators. All three
coordinators spoke of receiving a mandate from the administration to begin an
international program; the details or conﬁguration of the effort were left to the
coordinator. Each of the coordinators chose to deﬁne the innovation in differing
manners.

At one site, the coordinator deﬁned the innovation as not supporting the goals of
her institution nor those goals held by her vice president. She chose to allow the
innovation to die while promoting a different innovation, more in accord with the goals
she perceived as important. The coordinator ﬁ'om the rural college did not perceive of
herself as an EDIC change agent but adopted that role for a different interorganization
relationship with a mission related to that of EDIC’s. She deﬁned her mandate as the
bridging of the new organization’s goals with those of her vice president. He believed
that cultural immersion has a more profound impact on students than did international

Curricula inﬁision. It was to the coordinator’s advantage to develop a perception of

herself as the change agent for the new organization.

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The coordinator explained that she had been a part-time faculty member and
assumed some of the responsibilities of the role of international program coordinator as
the former coordinator transitioned into retirement. As the newly designated coordinator
fully assumed tasks of her role, she often accompanied the vice president to the meetings
of a state community college association. With the lobbying of her vice president, the
association took an active interest in providing international exchange opportunities for
students and faculty. Since their college had been providing these experiences in a
limited manner, it was a natural step for the association to ask the rural community
college to coordinate the effort for the association. Each participating college provided
an administrative fee to the rural college for coordinating the program. The outside
funding for administration of the exchange program ﬁnally provided the vice president
with an opportunity to make the international program coordinator position full-time.
With the promise of continuous funding, the international programming goals held by the

vice president could be folded into those of a larger, state organization and thereby, offer

job security to the new coordinator.

For the coordinator, the adoption of the new organization’s innovation was more
compatible to her goals and to those of her vice president than was the EDIC innovation.
As a way of explaining she said, “an international program cannot be successful without
Complete administration support. Faculty can’t do it by themselves.” She was clearly
articulating her belief that the EDIC inclusion of international module innovation could

not have the ﬁrll support of her college’s administration and therefore, it was futile to

allocate resources to support its continued adoption at her college.

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In sharp contrast was how the innovation was deﬁned to advance the goals of the
suburban community college. The academic vice president recalled that, “the college
reconstructed its vision; part of that vision was that our students needed to be mindful of
diversity.” She continued with an observation that at the time, the Midwest was moving
into a global economy but most students and community members did not know what
that meant. The international program coordinator deﬁned the development of
international curriculum modules as a way to meet the vision. Two of the faculty

members articulated this during their interviews. One instructor noted that the
coordinator encouraged her to write a module that would introduce students to a more
diverse view of the world but assured her that the inclusion of a module was not
mandated. The second faculty member explained that the module was important because,
“it was related to the mission of the college and served [the college’s] community;
fostered diversity.” The college change agents for the suburban community chose to
deﬁne the EDIC innovation as an embedded organizational goal with curricular
implications whereas, the rural community college discontinued the EDIC innovation
because it did not advance the beliefs and goals of the vice president.

A third variation of how the innovation was deﬁned by a coordinator was found at
the urban community college. He is deeply committed to internationalizing the
curriculum through faculty development. During an interview with him, he stated “the
international modules are a critical curricular innovation. Prior to their introduction
faculty would show an occasional foreign ﬁlm as an international curricular effort.” Now

science and mathematics faculties introduce their students to the life and customs of

major theorists who are mostly from countries other than the United States. The allied

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health curriculum has cultural care spiraled through each course and through each year
while the softer ﬁelds of study (e.g., management) have writing assignments based upon
international topics. Unlike his counterpart at the suburban community college, the urban
coordinator does not rely only on encouraging individual faculty members to create an
international curriculum module. Using the EDIC model as the structure for the regional
institute housed on his campus, the coordinator schedules curriculum development
workshops that are open not only to his college’s faculty but also to other community
college faculties. The institute has taken the EDIC innovation and made it the product of
the institute. The faculty members serve as workshop leaders and mentors to other
regional faculty, often developing long-lasting collegial relationships. Every faculty
member interviewed had very positive experiences to relate concerning the module
development workshops that were delivered by the institute.

The interviews showed how the three coordinators crafted very different
deﬁnitions of the EDIC international curricular module innovation. The coordinator from
the suburban college deﬁned it as a useful tool for promoting the organization’s mission.
The coordinator from the rural community college deﬁned it as not useful and did not

promote its continued implementation because the vice president preferred cultural
immersion to curricular initiatives. The coordinator ﬁom the urban college deﬁned the
innovation as a useful product for an institute devoted to faculty development.

Proposition 5. The way an organization institutionalizes an innovation will

inﬂuence organizational communication structures and consequently impact productivity.
Johnson (1993) crafted a broad deﬁnition for organizational communication

structure: “[It] refers to the relatively stable conﬁguration of communication relationships

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between entities within an organizational context” (p.11). Relationships are evidenced by
the formal elements of an organization that control and coordinate how the work is
processed, for instance an employee handbook or organizational chart, and the informal
elements that reﬂect how information ﬂows through the "pipelines” of an organization.
Johnson (1993) pointed out that there is a great variety in how entities are deﬁned:
individuals, work units, and groups of work units. Furthermore, Johnson (1993)
emphasized how organizational communication structures must change dming the phases
of innovation adoption and implementation. Structures utilizing informal communication
will decrease resistance to the innovation and move the organization toward adoption but
“implementation requires high formalization” (Johnson, 1993, p. 172). Without the
organizational communication structural changes, productivity will not increase. An
organization’s culture (i.e., values, experiences, and necessities) provides the context in
which the communication structures are developed and maintained. Consequently, the
likelihood of adoption of an innovation is also dependent upon the degree of
compatibility with the organization’s culture.

Following the adoption decision, communication structures are developed or
modiﬁed to promote the implementation and institutionalization of the innovation to meet
organizational needs. Likewise, when the decision is not to adopt or to discontinue
adoption, organizational communication structures reﬂect that choice. Conﬁrmation of
how communication structures support adoption decisions can be evaluated through the
productivity of the innovation under study.

' Following the adoption decision and implementation, the three community

colleges institutionalized the international curricular module innovation quite differently.

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Rogers (1995) described the adoption of an innovation as a continuous cycle: initial
adoption decision, implementation, re-adoption decision, continued implementation or
adaptation, and so forth. He sees the institutionalization of an innovation as the
continuation of the adoption decision (Rogers, 1995). The cunicular module innovation
was abandoned, or according to Rogers (1995) a re-adoption decision was not made, in
favor of a different innovation offering more individualized experiences following the
retirement of the former international programs coordinator at the rural college. With
time, international modules were no longer offered in courses and all vestiges of the
innovation were gone from the institution.

Using Johnson’s (1993) model for organizational communication structures, both
informal and formal elements were utilized by one college for increasing its productivity.
The innovation was used by the suburban college as one of several tools to expose
students to the issues of a diverse world. The adoption of the innovation was facilitated
through informal communication elements for instance, the coordinator’s conversations
With faculty members. The organization’s formal elements were modiﬁed through the

creation of an administrative ofﬁce and adjustment of the tenure guidelines to increase

the likelihood that the innovation would be institutionalized.

By relying solely upon an informal element in the organizational communication
structure, dialogue between faculty members, the coordinator and faculty ﬁ'om the urban
college were able to effect change to the formal elements of college’s communication
system plus develop a communication system unique to the faculty’s deﬁnition of the
innovation. The coordinator and faculty chose to use the module innovation as a means

for developing a specialized certiﬁcate program for students and for enhancing faculty

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development. The communication structures in each college developed in support of the
chosen innovation deﬁnition and the productivity of the international programs continue
to support the deﬁnition decision.

The importance of providing experiences for the naive or parochial student, what
he termed life-altering events, was the focus of the rural college’s academic vice
president interview. He provided numerous examples of individual students who were
greatly impacted by their travels either abroad or to ethnic enclaves within the United
States. For instance, he told the story of a student named Tanya and her experience
during a trip to Chicago’s ethnic neighborhoods

[The schedule was comprised of ethnic representatives speaking about] the

unique issues and problems associated with their culture. [The time] was

interspersed with good ethnic food and in a couple of instances some

cultural presentations as well. [The trip] was two and one-half days and

the students had never been to a big city or gone into an ethnic

neighborhood [before]. It was a very intense experience. These can be

life-altering experiences. One student, who happened to be [ﬁom our

college], she was terriﬁed for the ﬁrst two days. She always had to be

with somebody. The last day of the trip we were in Chinatown and we

were supposed to meet at a speciﬁc time. [Noticing she was not with the

group, people began asking] where was Tanya. She wanted to go off by

herself to window-shop and explore the neighborhood. For Tanya, there

was a lot of growth in a very short period of time [on that trip]. Since that

time, she has moved out of her shell and become a very poised and

conﬁdent young woman.

In addition, he gave examples of community college presidents who had not given much
importance to international programs at their institutions until they were given the
opportunity to travel abroad. If organizational communication structures and
productivity are shaped by the processes by which an innovation is, or is not,

institutionalized, it is not surprising that the cunicular module innovation withered at this

college. It is through the ofﬁce of the academic vice president that resources and

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curricular innovations are directed. With the funding from the state community college
organization supplying additional monies, the vice president’s personal vision for cultural
immersion could shape how these resources and programs are delivered. The
international program coordinator conﬁrmed the importance of the vice president’s vision
when she stated that international programming needed to “move beyond the curriculum”
because classroom modules could not provide an intense experience. For her, it is
important to strengthen the communication structures that support the cultural immersion
innovation and assure it is productive. If a future re-adoption decision is made not to
continue this innovation, her full-time position will be eliminated. She works hard at
promoting faculty and student exchanges to all of the state’s community colleges.

The academic vice president stated that she and president of the suburban
community college, “wanted to pull together a[n international] program and measure its
impacts.” Therefore, they “created an ofﬁce and administrative position to increase the
visibility of international programming.” In addition, this office was responsible for
implementing operational plans that met the college’s strategic goal of increasing its
population’s awareness of the diverse nature of the world. Introducing international

modules was just one of several initiatives operationalized through the strategic planning
process of the college. Others included faculty and student exchanges with sister
colleges, learning communities developed around ethnic or racial themes, block classes
integrating international perspectives and two or more disciplines, and so forth—all
coordinated by the newly created administrative ofﬁce. Also, the faculty tenure system
was revised to reward instructors for utilizing one or more of the initiatives. During

faculty interviews, the interviewer was made aware of an administrative policy to pay a

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small honorarium to faculty who developed modules. At the conclusion of her interview,
the vice president commented that her retirement and that of the international coordinator
would not bring the internationalization of the curriculum to a halt. As an example, she
reminisced
Faculty said they wanted [global awareness week] twice a year . . . They
recommended that the global awareness [committee] would do a program
two days each semester. [The new format] may weaken the community
consciousness but meanwhile the president now has a speaker series, other

things going on that may not be [wholly] global awareness, they are doing
other things. They are still happening. It is part of the normalization

process.

Deﬁnitely, much of the visible shell of international programming at the college had
changed but the core concepts were too ﬁrmly entrenched in the organizational
communication structure, via the formal elements of planning and rewards, of the college
to cease. Faculty interviews veriﬁed her appraisal. All four instructors interviewed
mentioned missing the guidance of the coordinator now that her responsibilities had been
subsumed into the student affairs ofﬁce. There were many comments about the degree to
which programs had changed but productivity of the innovation continued. Faculty
members were still including the modules that they had developed into their classes and
several continued to be heavily involved in other international initiatives.

The international module innovation is kept alive through adroit use of both
formal and informal elements of the urban community college’s organization
cormnunication structure by the international program coordinator and by the faculty. In
addition, the coordinator and faculty have developed an analogous organizational
communication structure. The coordinator and three of the four instructors interviewed

related how supportive the original general education dean was of their efforts but that

108

the president and other ofﬁcers of the college were indifferent. One faculty member

noted that, “the administration does not consider international education as part of its core

business.” This faculty member went on to say

The college administration was not supportive in many ways, for instance:
faculty had to be 1n the classroom, therefore release time to go present

or attend meetings/conferences pertaining to developing international

curriculum wasn’t granted;
unless a presentation directed at students was directly related to an

approved course objective, faculty couldn’t release the students for

attendance;
staff, such as librarians and counselors, could not attend because

presentations were held during their normal “work day.”
The administration never formally recognized what the faculty was doing.
The faculty member’s comments illustrate how the formal elements of the college’s

communication system imparted a message that adoption of this innovation would not

further the work of the college as deﬁned by the administration.

Perhaps out of a sense of rebelliousness, the faculty and coordinator created their
own organizational communication structure, with both formal and informal elements, in
support of the innovation. A faculty member gleefully described their efforts as a, “slight
insurrection or battle of the college.” The coordinator’s structure began with the
development of a “family” of interested faculty. Several faculty members mentioned
how personal relationships have developed through the camaraderie of this experience.
Since there was not administrative support or resources for a program such as the one
developed at the submban college, the urban coordinator utilized the informal elements

0f interpersonal communications with faculty members for implementation of the
innovation. With the implementation of the innovation in classrooms, students began to
Show a strong interest in international courses but the coordinator and faculty realized

that there was not a viable employment market for community college students with an

109

associate’s degree in international studies. In addition, advanced international courses
taken at a community college would not transfer to four-year institutions. The
coordinator assured the interviewer, “[that] there’s no way [local universities] will accept
these courses.”

The core-planning group determined that there was enough faculty interest in
developing international modules for inclusion into basic course work for a student to be
able to complete an international certiﬁcate. A faculty member veriﬁed this

I thought we would be able to run classes. For instance College Writing I

that all schools offer, we offer maybe ﬁfty or more of those in the fall

semester. I knew we could [insert an international module into] a handful

of those classes, so I ﬁgured we would be able to utilize it without many

problems. The only thing I . . . suspected would happen if we were to cost

the school big bucks, [is that] we’d be stopped at that point. To modify

classes [by adding an] international component, I thought it was up to [the

faculty]. Again, the school didn’t block our way.
It is at this juncture that the underground communication structure intersected the formal
elements of the college’s communication structure. Now there exists on the college’s
term schedule course sections that are marked as applying towards a certiﬁcate of
international studies in addition to various associate degrees. For instance, students may
select from any number of writing sections, some of which include international
curricular modules which are identiﬁed with a “G” following the section number—
students not pursuing the certiﬁcate may enroll in these sections also because all
departmental agreed upon learning objectives are met in addition to the added
international module.

A summary of the interview ﬁnding shows that the urban college has used its

success to gather other community colleges throughout the Midwest to form an

association that promotes the inclusion of international modules into the curriculum,

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strong faculty development programs focused on international education and other
initiatives. What started as an underground organizational communication structure at
the urban college matured into a highly successful, autonomous regional faculty
development institute. The institute is supported by grants ﬁom the United States
Department of Education and through event attendance by other community colleges
faculty members.

At the three community colleges, three unique structures developed for
organizational communication to serve individual college needs and consequently, the
productivity associated with the innovation was impacted. The rural college
communicates the importance of personal experiences and the decision to re-adopt the
module innovation is not made but a decision to adopt exchange programs for individual
faculty members and students is made to better support the goals of the organization. The
suburban college wishes to measure the impact of the innovation and integrates
innovation outcomes into its organizational planning structure; the outcome products
continue after the retirement of the key administrators. The urban community college has
an administration that communicates a lack of interest in international education but has a
faculty committed to the idea, resulting in a strong implementation of the innovation.
Using its span of organizational control, the cuniculurn, the faculty has effectively
institutionalized the innovation.

Proposition 6. Faculty and administrators will view the purposes of the
innovations differently.

Building upon the ﬁndings of Meyer, Johnson, and Ethington (1997) that

“innovation adOpters and stakeholders may have contrasting views about speciﬁc

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innovations” (p. 125), this proposition looked at how administrators, coordinators and
faculty viewed the EDIC curricular module innovation. Following is a description of
how members of each organizational level perceived the innovation for serving different
organizational ends.

Many of the questions on the survey instrument that served as the interview
protocol asked how an aspect of the innovation promoted the work of the college.
Administrators readily acknowledged the connection between innovation and the
college’s work. For instance, the suburban vice president commented that, “it could
enrich the students’ college experiences.” The international program coordinators’ views
were slightly different. They thought of the innovation as a way to fulﬁll the assignment
given to them by administration and accepted, that therefore, the assignment was the
work of the college. Every faculty member interviewed, however, had difﬁculty with the
wording of the questions that a curricular innovation could be construed as the work of
the college. A faculty member from the suburban college said, “I didn’t think about the
work of the college but about the students.” This feeling that “the work of the college”
belongs to the administrators and teaching belongs to faculty was echoed by an urban
college faculty member, “at the time, I didn’t relate it to the college.”

As reported previously, chief academic ofﬁcers focused upon international
programming in general. Their remarks centered on the gains this type of program could
produce for the college’s goals. For instance, the vice president from the rural
community college said, “I saw how [international programs] could enrich all curricular
efforts.” Echoing his thoughts was the vice-president from the suburban college. She

believed that exposure to international topics sensitized students to important world

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issues that could enhance their future careers. The vice president pointed out that local
and most state employers were seeking employees with a broader understanding of what
it meant to engage in international business. I

Bridging the gap between administrative opinion of the innovations and faculty
conceptions were the international program coordinators. Not a single coordinator linked
the international module innovation to strategic goals of the college. Broader statements
were made, such as “international programs build awareness.” There was much
discussion about the implementation phase—working with faculty and developing useful
“products” for the students. The coordinators shared that they felt a separation ﬁom
administration, or rather, a different direction. For instance, the coordinator ﬁ'om the
urban college stated that the development of international modules is “faculty driven with
some administrative support.” It was as if the coordinators did their work with the
benevolence of the administration. Each of the coordinators made a point of saying their
work did not cost the college much. When questioned about the beginning of the
international programming efforts, the descriptions provided by the coordinators of their
charges from administration was laissezfaire in nature: create an international program.

The faculty perceived of the adoption of the international curricular module
innovation in a radically different manner than did the coordinators. Every faculty
member interviewed viewed the effort as discipline related and not college related.
Statements such as, “No, I wasn’t overly concerned with [the college’s work] at the
time;” “I didn’t think about the work of the college but about the students;” and “I don’t
give much thought to the college—it would make the administration happy if I thought

that way more often” were made by the faculty members. Most faculty members

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interviewed echoed the belief shared by an instructor at the urban community college:
“This has been very different because the program came ﬁom bottom up and everything
else is top down.”

Rather than attributing the innovation to arising outside of the faculty ranks or
even the college, it was viewed as a locally developed faculty tool to meet student needs,
as evidenced by comments such as “it was important to provide developmental students
with a ‘quality’ college experience,” and “student focus is a personal mission.” In
addition, faculty saw the innovation as a means to advance departmental goals. At both
community college sites where faculty members were interviewed, an institutional
learning outcome promoting the study of the diverse world had been adopted. Half of the
instructors interviewed mentioned that the modules became a way to meet this learning
outcome. The disparity between acknowledging that the innovation was used to meet a
college goal and the faculty’s acceptance of the work of the college as the development
of learning outcomes can be best summed up by the statement of an instructor at the
suburban community college: “administration doesn’t foster these [curricular]
innovations.”

In “doing” the work of the faculty, developing international modules, six of the
eight instructors interviewed linked the innovation directly to the coordinators. None of
the faculty members viewed the international program coordinators as a representative of

the administration but as a faculty support person, as illustrated by a suburban faculty
member stating, “I saw the project related to [her, the coordinator’s] ofﬁce not to the

college.”

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This wide variation in how faculty, coordinators, and chief academic ofﬁcers
viewed the innovations supports the anecdotal ﬁndings of Meyer, Johnson, and Ethington
(1997). They found, as did this research, that innovation perceptions vary according to
the level of position within the organization.

Answering the Research Question: How Innovation Attribute Perceptions Inﬂuence
Community College Adoption OfPrograms Promoted By An External Agency

Clearly, for the community colleges studied, the most important innovation

attribute inﬂuencing the adoption decision is Relative Advantage. In this aspect, this

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study conforms to the ﬁndings of other research reported in the literature. The
importance of this attribute was veriﬁed even though this particular study investigated the
attribute’s inﬂuence on an organizational decision rather than an individual decision to
adopt.

There were several ways the perception of relative advantage played a key role in
a community college’s decision to adopt a program promoted by the external agency,
EDIC. For example, the vice president of the suburban community college who wanted
the curriculum to be more inclusive of diversity issues saw the relative advantage of
writing international modules as a vehicle to achieve her goal. The college
institutionalized the innovation as one of several tools to meet the challenge of
broadening their core curricular competencies. In promoting the innovation’s adoption,
the coordinator of international programs heightened the faculty’s perception of its
relative advantage to meet individual classroom goals and those of their departments.

Wishing to engage faculty in making the urban college’s coursework more
globally focused, the coordinator saw the relative advantage of promoting international

module development. The faculty responded positively to being invited to join an

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exclusive subset of faculty members devoted to the development and inclusion of
modules. In fact, one faculty member called the early coalition, “the Maﬁa of the
college.” When the relative advantage of using modules to internationalize the
curriculum is not valued, as was the case at the rural community college, modules that are
developed will not be used and new efforts will not emerge.

Other attribute perceptions cited in the literature as being consistently important
to the adoption decision are Compatibility and Complexity, but their inﬂuence on
community college adoption decision-making is less clear. Compatibility does not stand
alone in its inﬂuence in this study but appears to be linked to two additional factors: how
the change agent deﬁnes the innovation and how members of the organization deﬁne the
organization’s work. The coordinator and vice president from the suburban community
college deﬁned the development of international modules as advancing the goals of the
college while faculty acknowledged this as an end product of the modules but steadily
maintained that their primary importance was to the classroom. Members from each
organizational level deﬁned the innovation differently and shaped that deﬁnition to be
compatible with the work they do.

At the urban community college, the perception of Compatibility of module
deve10pment with the work of the college was also an issue. The faculty members
interviewed about the development of the modules saw them as advancing their work as
instructors but did not see the modules as linked to the overall work of the college. It is
at this college that module development has spun a parallel organizational
communication structure outside of the college’s communication structure through the

independent institute promoting international cuniculum. Module deve10pment is

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deﬁned as the work of a subset of the faculty and not related to the work of the larger
body of faculty or to the administration’s work.

Clearly, the coordinator mitigated the perception of Complexity for faculty
members at the urban community college by leading workshops detailing the process of
curricula module development. During the workshops, the coordinator encouraged
collaboration between attendees. Each faculty member interviewed related his or her
successful development of modules to the group support offered in a workshop format.
In this manner, the coordinator deftly shared the burden of lessening Complexity of the
innovation by encouraging the attendees to work together on developing modules under
his guidance. It was a different situation for faculty members from the suburban college
who found the task of module development somewhat complex. They received one-on-
one encouragement and advice from the coordinator but completed their task on their
own.

Whether in a workshop setting or one-on-one dialogue, both coordinators used the
interpersonal communication strategy of selling. The coordinators broke down resistance
to module writing by simplifying the task and highlighted its features to promote the
implementation of the innovation, thereby increasing the innovation’s Relative
Advantage and Compatibility while decreasing Complexity. On the urban campus there
was an added dimension, not only did the coordinator sell the development of modules

but he also promoted membership in a faculty subgroup dedicated to the globalization of
the curriculum. Through this exclusive membership, be increased faculty members’
perception of Relative Advantage plus the innovation attribute perception of Image, or

prestige, identiﬁed by Moore and Benbasat (1991) but not included in this study of

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innovation attributes. When an urban faculty member accepted the responsibility for
offering international modules in their ecurse, members of the faculty subgroup, who
were seasoned in module development, worked closely with the new member as did the
coordinator. The fostering of this collegial relationship was by far the most effective
interpersonal communication strategy used by the coordinators. Through membership in
this faculty subgroup, intense personal relationships developed that crossed academic
disciplines. These relationships took on dynamics that could be characterized as family. I
The ﬁnal factor in answering the research question, “How do innovation attribute I
perceptions inﬂuence community college adoption of programs promoted by an external
agency?,” is the perception held by the college’s interorganizational agency
representative of his or her relation to the agency. How this perception changes over time
impacts the adoption of the innovation and the continued adoption decision over time.
The original three coordinators felt a close connection with the agency when the
innovation was ﬁrst promoted. The coordinators’ close tie with the agency appeared to
inﬂuence the attribute perceptions held by others within the college as adoption decisions
were made. Each college adopted the development of international curriculum modules
and the innovation continued for several years as it was originally promoted by the
agency. Over time, there has been little change in the innovation at the suburban
community college. The agency representatives from that college have maintained strong
ties to EDIC even after their departure from their institution and sustained the belief that
the innovation helped their college achieve crucial aspects of its mission and goals. This
is in contrast to the rural college where the original EDIC representative retired and the

new coordinator did not build a strong relation with EDIC. She did not value the

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innovation as helpﬁrl in meeting her college responsibilities. As a result, the innovation
was discontinued. The urban coordinator’s EDIC tie grew weaker as his new
organization gained strength. The innovation continued unchanged on the urban campus
but the acknowledgement of EDIC’s role in its development was lost. The development
of international cuniculum modules were no longer an EDIC innovation but became an

institute innovation.

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Chapter 5: Research Overview

This study answered the research question: Do innovation attribute perceptions
inﬂuence community college adoption of programs promoted by an external agency? It
also advances the understanding of how these perceptions inﬂuence an organization’s
decision-making process. In particular, this research explored how an educational
institution weighs various novel curricular programs for institutionalization to meet
organizational goals. The resulting ﬁndings offer a new understanding of postsecondary
organizational behavior.

Research Synopsis

The internal and external forces pressing two— and four-colleges for organizational
responses to economic, political, leadership and curricular issues have been well-
chronicled (American Council on Education, 1999; Cohen & Brawer, 1996; Peterson and
Dill, 1997; Stark and Lattuca, 1995; Sullivan and Siggins, 1993). These forces for
change necessitate that institutions operate in an environment that is continuously
shifting. Often, the chosen response to these calls for change is the adoption of an
innovation that is either generated internally or one that is promoted by an agency
external to the college (Doucette, 1998; Gardner & Livingston, 1996; Howitz and
Redman, 1992).

Predominately, innovation attributes research focused on the individual decision
to adopt an innovation. This research explored how the organizational perception of the
characteristics, or attributes, of an innovation inﬂuenced an institutional decision to
adopt. In particular, the innovations under study were ones promoted by an external

agency. A group of two- and four-year colleges formed an interorganizational agency,

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Educators Dedicated to Intemationalizing Curricula (EDIC), to promote the common
goal of internationalizing their curricula. Case study methodology was employed to
investigate how attribute perceptions of the agency’s three promoted curricular
innovationsiinﬂuenced adoption decision-making at three community colleges. As the
case study moved from Phase 1, the survey stage, into Phase 2, interviews, the focus
narrowed to investigating one of the innovations: Summer Institutes, the development of
international curricular modules.

As the literature points out (Rogers, 1995; Tomatzky and Klein, 1982),
organizational decision-making during the innovation adoption process is an under-
explored area of research as is the role played by innovation attribute perceptions in the
decision process. Cached within this ﬁeld of research is little about what prompts
postsecondary institutions to adopt an innovation to promote organization change
(Rogers, 1995). The impact of innovation attributes have long been studied (Rogers,
1995) without deﬁnitive success. It was Ostlund (1974) who ultimately determined that
the major importance of innovation attributes is the perceptions held by decision-makers
about the attributes. Two additional landmark studies concerning the importance of
innovation attributes were the meta-analysis of the seventy-ﬁve known research projects
done by Tomatzky and Klein (1982) and the work by Moore and Benbasat (1991) to
develop an instrument which measured the inﬂuence of the perceptions on the adoption
decision.

The case study was guided by six propositions developed from previous studies
reported in the literature. In addition, the project recognized the importance that various

organizational levels within a college might have on the decision to adopt a particular

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innovation. Therefore, three organizational levels: academic vice presidents,
coordinators of international programs and faculty, were embedded into the multiple case
study.

Analysis of Findings

The case ﬁndings were analyzed and reported out by proposition. The
propositions were then used to derive an answer to the research question.

Proposition 1, the inﬂuence of innovation attribute perceptions on community
college adoption decisions will mirror the ﬁndings in the literature supporting the theory,
was partially conﬁrmed. As with other researchers’ ﬁndings (Dearing, et al., 1994;
Meyer, et al., 1997; Tomatzky & Klein, 1982), the perception of an innovation’s Relative
Advantage was most important in forming a community college’s adoption decision.
Several examples of the importance of this perception surfaced during the interviews.
For instance, vice presidents viewed the introduction of various innovations as efﬁcient
processes for advancing organizational goals and coordinators of international programs
stressed the relative advantage of a particular innovation when promoting its adoption to
the faculty. In the instance when the perception of relative advantage of an innovation
weakened, the adoption of that innovation was discontinued by the rural community
college.

Many other studies (Cockerill et al., 1999; Dearing, 1997; Dearing and Meyer,

1 994; Grilli and Lomas, 1994; Johnson et al., 1998; Meyer, et al., 1997; Moore and
Benbasat, 1991; Ostlund, 1974; Robbins, 1992; Rogers, 1995; Tomatzky and Klein,
1 982) have consistently found that the perception of Compatibility of the innovation is

positively linked to adoption of an innovation whereas, the perception of Complexity of

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the innovation is negatively associated. Meaning that the more like an innovation is to a
college’s practices or programs the more favorably the innovation is viewed and contrary,
an innovation is not viewed favorably by a college if it seems to be complicated to
implement or understand. In this case study, the inﬂuence of these two attributes was
less clear. It appears that one’s organizational level structures how these attributes are
perceived. Therefore, how compatible an innovation was to the work of the college was
deﬁned by the role of the respondent’s within the institution; and how they deﬁned the
work of the college. Administrators viewed innovations as compatible with the mission
and goals of a college (institutional vantagepoint) whereas, faculty did not acknowledge a
link to the institution per se but to their individual or departmental needs (more local
vantagepoint). Complexity appeared to have little inﬂuence on the adoption of an
innovation. The strength of Relative Advantage and how Compatibility is deﬁned
appeared to outweigh any inﬂuence of Complexity.

Proposition 2, the faculty member or administrator with the strongest link to
EDIC will function as the change agent for promoting a EDIC innovation, was not
conﬁrmed. Early on, it was important to establish who functioned as the link between the
EDIC and the community college as an intermediary change agent. EDIC staff identiﬁed
several college representatives who were thought to be supportive of the organization, its
goals and programs. The assumption that these individuals carried out a campus change
agent role related to the promotion of the innovation was not supported by the data.
What emerged from the data was that the perceived value of the EDIC interorganization

relationship to each international program coordinator rather than the ties that coordinator

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maintained with EDIC framed how the individual continued to promote the international
module innovation on his or her campus.

Proposition 3, the change agent will use interpersonal communication channels to
strengthen the attribute perceptions of relative advantage, compatibility, trialability, and
observability while decreasing the perceptions of complexity to increase the likelihood of
innovation adoption, was conﬁrmed. This proposition explored the assumption that
international program coordinators would encourage module development through
interpersonal communication channels rather than utilizing mediated communication
channels such as, working one-on-one with faculty members as they developed modules
rather than distributing module development guides. Indeed, the coordinators effectively
used interpersonal communication techniques such as one-on-one persuasion to make
innovation adoption more attractive for faculty by heightening the positive attributes and i
decreasing the sense of complexity. This tactic was observed at all three sites even
though the rural college was promoting an innovation other than the one under study.

Proposition 4, individual change agents will deﬁne an EDIC innovation to serve
differing purposes at each college studied, was conﬁrmed. Using Rogers’ (1995) idea
that the change agent is the bridge between the organization promoting the innovation
and the adopters, this study looked at how the change agent shaped the innovation to ﬁt
with his or her organization. The three coordinators crafted very different deﬁnitions of
the EDIC international curricular module based upon how they believed their
commission for carrying international programming would be best served. One
coordinator deﬁned it as a useful tool for promoting the organization’s mission, which

supported her vice president’s strategic initiatives with creating changes within the

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college’s rewards systems to reinforce efforts to internationalize the curriculum. Another
deﬁned it as not useful since her college focused upon cultural immersion programs for
students and faculty therefore, she did not promote continued implementation of the
innovation. The third coordinator deﬁned the innovation as a useful product for an
institute devoted to faculty development housed at his college but not part of the college’s
organizational structure.

Proposition 5, the way an organization institutionalizes an innovation will
inﬂuence organizational communication structures and consequently impact productivity,
was conﬁrmed. As predicted by Johnson (1993), this study found that the adoption of an
innovation is dependent upon the degree of compatibility with the organization’s culture
as evidenced by the alignment of organizational communication structures to support
productivity associated with the decision. The three community colleges comprising this
study modiﬁed their organizational communication structures to support the innovation
adoption decision made that best served the institution’s needs. One communicated the
importance of personal experiences and the innovation died in favor of exchange
programs for individual faculty members and students. A second college wished to
measure the impact of the innovation and integrated outcomes into its planning structure;
the outcome products continued after the departure of the EDIC change agents. The third
college had a faculty committed to international education but an administration that
lacked strong interest. To counter this, the faculty institutionalized the innovation solely
through the curriculum and created strong external communication structures to insure
the continued promotion of the international curricular module innovation to other

community colleges.

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Proposition 6, faculty and administrators will view the purposes of the
innovations differently, was conﬁrmed. To probe for veriﬁcation of the anecdotal
ﬁndings that members of various organizational levels view innovations differently found
in the Meyer, Johnson, and Ethington (1997) research, this study looked at how
administrators, coordinators and faculty viewed the EDIC cunicular module innovation.
The case study ﬁndings conﬁrmed that members of each organization level perceived the
innovation serving different organizational ends. Academic vice presidents readily
acknowledged the connection between innovation and the work of the college, most often
linking it to their institution’s mission statement. The international program
coordinators’ views were of a bridging nature; they thought of the innovation as a way to
fulﬁll the assignment given to them by administration and therefore, that made it the
work of the college. Faculty members balked at considering a curricular innovation as
the work of the college. They saw the inclusion of international modules into their course
curricula as fulﬁlling a student, departmental or personal need.

In answer to the research question, how do innovation attribute perceptions
inﬂuence community college adoption of programs promoted by an external agency,
Relative Advantage is the most compelling. The inﬂuence of the other attributes on
community college organizational decisions is less clear. The function of the remaining
attributes is dependent upon how the change agent deﬁnes the innovation, how members
of the organization deﬁne the organization’s work, the way in which interpersonal
communication strategies are used, and the change agent’s perception of his or her tie to

the interorganizational relationship.

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Implications

With a better understanding of the adoption decision-making process used by
community colleges, common principles can guide change agencies and agents in
promoting innovations to community colleges. These principles can be used to identify
the best way to position an innovation for widespread adoption and to lead decision
makers to agreement, across the board, on an innovation. The foremost principle is the
singular importance of the innovation attribute perception of Relative Advantage to an
organization’s adoption decision while the other four innovation attributes, compatibility,
complexity, observability and trialability have little inﬂuence. Closely related to the
importance of Relative Advantage is the dichotomy of innovation deﬁnitions assigned by
the organization’s leaders as compared to members at other levels within the organization
and the risk for an organization when it does not plan for the succession of the
innovation. Other principles relate to the role of the interorganizational relationship
agency with potential adopting institutions; for instance, how are intermediaries between
organizations selected and how are innovations promoted.

Agencies and agents promoting change need to be cognizant that each level
within the organization considering an innovation shapes its own perception of relative
advantage. T op-level leaders see relative advantage as synonymous with advancing the
mission and goals of the institution. When considering an innovation, leaders exhibited a
laser-like focus on advancing their organizations, and the decision-making strategies that
they employ resemble the use of a sieve for ﬁltering those innovations that previded
greatest relative advantage to the organization. Members of other levels within the
organization consider the perception of relative advantage in terms of personal or job

related goals rather than furtherance of the organization, as for example, does an

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innovation advance the job assigned or enhance a faculty members’ classroom
performance.

Congruence between innovation and the mission of the institution is of utmost
importance. It is the mission of most community colleges to be responsive to stakeholder
demands -- predominately, those arising from workforce partnerships with employers and
local governments. Should a land grant university, as part of its outreach mission, wish
to promote an innovation to area community colleges, it is suggested that the staff not use
the more traditional academic terms to describe an innovation. For instance, entitling a
program “Linking International Curriculum to Today’s Issues” would convey that the
innovation is more congruent with the mission of community colleges and the goals of its
faculty as compared to a title such as “Scholars in Residence.” Aligning the promotional
language of the innovation to enhance the perception of relative advantage for both
college administrators and faculty will increase the likelihood of adoption.

In the program title example cited, “Linking International Curriculum to Today’s
Issues,” administrators would immediately identify the experience as a means for
promoting the organization’s mission of globalization, and faculty interest would be
piqued by such a title as an experience to assist with attaining departmental goals in
support of the college’s mission or to further their students’ needs. The experience being
offered by the outreach unit of the university would not change, it would remain an
immersion experience for individual faculty members. It is important for change
agencies and agents to keep in mind that members of community colleges cannot relate to
an innovation that on the surface is not closely related to their institution’s core business.

It is innovation congruence with the community college mission that explains why

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cultural experiences offered by change agencies are far more readily adopted by
community colleges. Community colleges understand that gaining a cultural
understanding of various regions and countries of the world are important skills for a
future automotive employee who might be sent to Mexico to train local workers in new
auto paint processes. In addition, community college administrators understand that the
open-to-public forums of cultural events can provide small business owners, who are one
of many community college stakeholders, an opportunity to engage visitors from Asia in
conversation about environmental issues related to manufacturing in their home lands.
Innovation congruence with mission is crucial to the adoption decision and
therefore, how an interorganizational relationship agency goes about promoting an
innovation to its member organizations gains importance. Exposure to an innovation
through mass communiques is not an effective channel of communication. College
administrators and faculty need to determine the relative advantage of an innovation for
either their college or for their personal beneﬁt before making the adoption decision.
Novel and complex innovations beneﬁt from promotion by interpersonal communication
strategies rather than by mediated communication strategies. To decrease the perception
of complexity while increasing the perceptions of relative advantage and compatibility, a
change agency should use promotion strategies based on interpersonal communication.
Strategies such as inviting key members to small discussion groups to design an
innovation’s implementation strategy, personally calling faculty members who have
attended previous agency events to invite them to take part in the new experience, and
sponsoring visits by agency staff members and community college representatives to the

other campuses should prove to be effective approaches for promoting an innovation.

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Change agencies and agents would ﬁnd greater adoption of proposed innovations by
utilizing the principles of personalized selling rather than relying on letters of invitation.
Maintaining clarity of institutional mission is crucial. A community college
achieves this mission clarity through aligmnent of its organizational communication
structures to include any innovations that provide support for its institutional
productivity. The adoption of an innovation by an organization is dependent upon the
degree of relative advantage to the institution, and to assure that the innovation continues
to provide relative advantage or enhancement of institutional productivity, the innovation
must move ﬁ'om being transmitted through interpersonal communication channels into
the formal organizational communication structure. If this does not happen, it poses a
risk for the continuance of the innovation or in a more extreme case, for the organization.
For example, adopted innovations can be discontinued when key personnel leave the
organization or key administrators redeﬁne the relative advantage of the innovation to the
institution. When this occurs, the innovation is either not integrated into the formal
organizational communication structure or it is no longer supported by the
communication structures in place. Inadvertently, an organization can allow an
innovation to develop at the fringes, and it becomes very successful but is never
integrated into the formal communication structure of the college because the
administration does not perceive its relative advantage. The innovation can achieve
regional recognition, which leads to the innovation and the college becoming
synonymous to the public. Should key personnel associated with the innovation leave the
college without the development of a succession plan for the innovation, the innovation

will likely die. At the demise of the innovation, the organization will ﬁnd that its

130

reputation acquired through the successful innovation will gradually diminish and its
stakeholders will be disgruntled. The organization can forestall these events by taking
steps to bring the innovation into the formal organizational communication structures.
Taking this action would help assure the succession of an innovative program.

For those community colleges wishing to adopt an innovation that will carry out
portions of their institutional mission, it is suggested that they integrate monitoring
systems into their operational plans and modify the organizational reward structures for
those faculty or staff members who adopt the innovation. This action will assure that the
organizational communication structures develop in such a way to promote greater
productivity in achieving the institutional mission. By manipulating how the
innovation’s attributes are perceived, more consistent adoption throughout the college
will occur.

It is important that members of community college faculties and administrations
understand that each will view the purposes of innovations differently. This is not
unusual, but it needs to be appreciated. Without understanding, there is an assumption
that one group or the other does not value a particular innovation, which can result in the
distortion of organizational communication structures, and consequently, productivity of
the innovation is impacted.

Interorganizational relationship agencies cannot assume that representatives from
member organizations ﬁmction as agency change agents. The person serving in this role
frames how he or she promotes an innovation at their college based on the perCeption of
relative advantage provided to him or her by the interorganization relationship. The

closer a representative perceives their ties to the agency, the greater their support will be

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of an agency-promoted innovation; conversely, if a representative believes that the
agency provides them with little relative advantage, they will be less likely to promote
the innovation. By comparison, a change agent promotes the agency’s innovation as it is
framed. In the instance of institutional representatives to an interorganizational
relationship agency, they serve both as an agent of the agency and an agent of his or her
college. This role duality plus the perceived relative advantage of the agency, held by
each representative, molds what the representative will promote as an innovation. This
constitutes a subtle yet powerful distinction in roles.

Agencies that are formed through interorganizational relationships would do well
to identify surrogate change agents early on and work closely with those so identiﬁed.
The agency could then assist these agents to better understand how innovations can be
communicated in ways that promote its relative advantage and decrease complexity while
enhancing perceived compatibility with the institutions they serve. Sessions focused upon
using personal selling techniques as a method of promoting innovations would be a
beneﬁcial interpersonal communication skills set for change agents to acquire. In
addition, it would be advantageous for an agency to break more complex innovations into
stepped processes for an organization to try before committing to full adoption. Trying
small pieces of an innovation and being successful decreases the fear of utilizing
organizational resources on a large, complex innovation that could be a failure.
Assembling case studies of the innovation at work in various institutions could spark
more interest in trying it. Gaining this understanding of how innovation attributes are
perceived and used in organizational decision-making can lead agencies and identiﬁed

agents to craft more suitable proposals, which are more likely to be adopted.

132

In summary, innovations must meet the test of relative advantage to an
institutional mission. The promoting agency should strive to make the innovation
congruent with the needs and goals of community colleges, which are designed to meet
the changing expectations of a wide variety of institutional stakeholders. In addition,
agencies need to clearly plan for reaching and training those who will serve as
implementers of change in their colleges. Agencies need to promote curricula as other
products (i.e., bread or cars) are, through the heightening of relative advantage to the
adoption decision-makers and not through the use of rhetoric. Finally, community
colleges need to pay particular attention to their organizational communication structures:
Are they supporting the innovations that promote the institution’s mission?

Limitations

As the case study progressed, several limitations surfaced. The timing of the
study was less than optimal for several reasons. Typically, full-time faculty members at
the three community college sites have a teaching load of 10 courses per academic year.
Their availability for completing survey instruments or participating in interviews was
limited. Surveys anived as the spring term was ending and the second instrument
distribution was during the ﬁrst weeks of fall term; timing contributed to lower than
expected return rates. The time period for interviews was ﬁ'agrnented; the ﬁrst phase was
mid-fall semester and the second was mid-spring semester. With interviews falling
across an academic year, creation of the data base was stalled until all interviews were
completed. There was a full calendar year between collection of the quantitative and

qualitative data.

133

Upon reﬂection, it would have been more appropriate to conduct a longitudinal
study with data collection points every few years rather than this retrospective study
spanning a thirteen-year period. This time-span had implications for collecting data from
many subjects, several key administrators and an international program coordinator.
Efforts were made to contact faculty members who left for other institutions or for
retirement. Tracking these subjects became difﬁcult when home addresses were no
longer current or a faculty member had moved between several colleges. Two presidents
and vice presidents retired during the study’s time-period. Only one of the retirees, the
suburban academic vice president, was available for interviewing. One of the retired
international program coordinators was interviewed; the other had returned to his country
of origin. A narrower time-span for innovation adoption in future studies is advisable. In
addition, it was impractical to conduct an in-depth study of the adoption of the ﬁrst
innovation, Fall Event. It was so institutionalized after thirteen years that subjects found
it difﬁcult to discern cuncnt perceptions from original ones.

As this study began, the political climate shifted. The state experienced budget
shortfalls and state—aid to community colleges was decreased. As a result, many
community college faculty, staff and administrative members were laid-off or terminated.
There was some hostility ﬁom subjects when discussing the work of the college and there
was a lack of interest in participating in a study about institutions that no longer
employed the subject.

As a caveat to other investigators, it is critical to be mindful of the environmental

and prior conditions (Rogers, 1995) when designing an organizational study. Much of

134

' the success of the study will be dependent upon the researcher’s understanding of these
factors.
Need for Further Research

This study has surfaced several intriguing questions for future research. Foremost
are questions about change agents. In general, change agents and the role that they play
in organizational innovation adoption decisions is understudied, particularly, in
interorganizational relationships. How are change agents identiﬁed by these types of
agencies and what roles are assigned? Is there a linkage between perceived strength of
agency afﬁliation at the time the innovation is being developed and promoted and with
the continued adoption of an innovation by the agent’s organization? Developing a case-
study around the change agent as a new innovation is promoted would provide an
informative overview of how the agent was identiﬁed and the perception of the agency
held by this individual.

This case study used the ﬁve most common perceptions of innovation attributes
(Howze and Redman, 1992; Johnson, 1993; Lindquist, 1979; Moore and Benbasat, 1991;
Ostlund, 1974; Rogers, 1995; Svenkerud et al., 1998; Tomatzky and Klein, 1982):
relative advantage, compatibility, complexity, visibility, and trialability as independent
variables. Other researchers, most notably, Dearing and Meyer (1994) have found other
attribute perceptions that inﬂuence the adoption decision. Are there additional
characteristics to be discovered that may have importance to community colleges in their
adoption decisions? This needs further investigation. Utilizing the case study
methodology employed by Dearing and Meyer (1994) with an innovation being promoted

to community colleges should help identify additional attributes if they exist.

135

The individual’s adoption decision process is well studied and understood
(Rogers, 1995). But are the same factors in play in an organization’s decision-making?
This study found that one’s level within the organization shapes how the innovation is
deﬁned and the purposes it serves. Is it possible, or practical, to have a uniform
deﬁnition and expectation of an innovation throughout the organization? Following an
innovation as it is introduced in the organization may be a way to better understand the
importance played by level within the organization. It would be interesting to design a
quasi-experimental study that tracked two community colleges adopting the same
innovation; one college’s change agent, administrators, and faculty are schooled in a
uniform deﬁnition of the innovation and the other not.

Innovation adoption decision-making in both interorganizational relationships and
in community colleges is little understood. There are many ﬁuitful areas for research that
could build a body of literature that would lead to a greater understanding of this process

and theoretically could improve the productivity of these organizations.

136

Appendix A

Perceptions of Three [expunged ] Programs

137

PER CEPTIONS OF THREE
[expunged] PROGRAMS

The following survey asks you to think back to when you and others in your community
college were making decisions to either adopt or not adopt programs promoted by the
[expunged]. Each of the three programs will be described and following each description
will be several questions pertaining to how you remember perceiving the program as the
college considered implementing it.

0 FALL EVENT 0

During academic years 1989/ 1990 and 1990/1991, grant funding was made available for
community colleges to form a coalition to further international curricular development by
establishing Fall Event at [expunged] member colleges. Funds were available to bring cultural
events and scholarly presentations to member campuses, supply consultation assistance, and to
provide cuniculum development assistance to faculty.

 

o I did not participate in considering whether to implement the Fall Event program at
our campus. If this is true, please skip to the next section, SUMMER
INSTITUTES, page 2.

 

 

 

As you remember considering the decision in 1989-1991,

8
whether to implement Fall Event, please mark the extent to E i
which you agree or disagree with how you recall believing the i a u 3,.
program would impact the college: E if 5g ‘3’ g
, . . , . $3 , 8 z: i“ e,
1. Learning to arrange a Fall Event will be easy for the college. ‘ '
p , p , j _ , 7 . 0 0 0 0 0
2. I believe I could communicate to others the consequences of
starting a Fall Event. 0 0 0 0 0
3. Starting a Fall Event ﬁtsinto the college’s work style. ' l
. j - f , . 0 0 0 0 0
4. In my college, one will see Fall Event project outcomes in
many classrooms. 0 0 0 0 0
5. The Fall Event will not be very visible in my college
, i ' j 0 0 0 0 0
6. I think that starting a Fall Event ﬁts well with the way the
college likes to work. 0 0 0 0 0
7. Overall, I believe that a Fall Event is easy to utilize.
. _ f l 0 0 0 0 0
8. Starting a Fall Event will enable the college to accomplish .
its cunicular tasks more quickly. 0 0 0 0 0
9. Starting a Fall Event will rmprove the quality of werk the
college does. , 0 0 0 0 0
10. Before deciding whether to start a Fall Event, the college
will be able to properly try it out. 0 0 0 0 0

138

Q
Q
Q.
Q
Q

' 11. Staﬂirig a Fall Event will make it easier to do the work of
. thecollege. . A . .
12. Starting a Fall Event will give the college greater control
over its work.
13. I would have difﬁculty explaining why starting a Fall Event
may or may notbe beneﬁcial.
l4. 1 would have no difﬁculty telling other about the results of
starting a Fall Event.
I 15. The college will be permitted to start a Fall Event on a trial
basis long enough to see what it can do.
16. Starting a Fall Event will enhance the effectiveness of the
college’s work
17. I believe that it is easy to get a Fall Event to do what the
college wants it to do.
18. Starting a Fall Event is compatible with all aspects of the
college’s work.

19. The results of starting a Fall Event are apparent to me.

20. The college’s connection with a Fall Event is clear and
understandable.

Q Q Q Q Q Q Q Q 0
O Q Q 0 DO 0 Q Q
Q Q Q O O O Q O O
O Q Q Q Q Q Q Q Q
Q Q Q O 00 O Q 0

SUMMER INSTITUTES

During the academic years 1994 -l996, [expunged] offered Summer Institutes. The eight-day
curriculum workshops were designed to assist faculty with developing focused international
cuniculum and to offer on-going assistance to insure that the curriculum would be piloted in the
following year.

 

o I did not participate in considering whether our campus should take part in the
Summer Institutes program. Ifthis is true, please skip to the next section,
VISITING SCHOLAR, page 4.

 

 

 

As you remember considering the decision 1994-1996, whether

the college should participate in Summer Institutes, please § 8
mark the event to which you agree or disagree with how you g in
recall believing the program would impact the college: g g a, ~ g
3

, . é a s 5» t

21. I believe I could communicate to others the consequences of
participating in the Summer Institute programs. 0 0 0 0 0

22. Participating in the Summer Institute programs ﬁts well with
the way the college likes to work. 0 0 0 0 0

23. Participating in the Sumrher Institute programswill improve
the quality of work the college does. 7 p \ . . j 0 0 0 0 0

24. Participating in the Summer Institute programs will enable
the college to accomplish curricular tasks more quickly. 0 0 0 0 0

139

('25. Participating in the” Summer ' Institute programs is

37. I would have difficulty explaining why participating in

4 Summer Institute programs may or may not be beneﬁcial.

38. In my college, one will see Summer Institute project
outcomes in many classrooms.

39. Before deciding whether to participate in any Summer
Institutes, the college will be able to properly try them out.

40. Participating in the Summer Institute programs will give the
college greater control over its work.

., compatible with all aspects of the college’ s work. 0 0 0 0 . 0
26. The college’s interaction with the Summer InStitute program - V I V
is clear and understandable. 0 0 0 0 0
27. Participating in the Summer Institute programs ﬁts into the
college’s work style. 0 0 0 0 0
28. Theresults of participating in Summer Institute programs 1
are apparent to me. 0 0 0 0 0
29. I would have no difficulty telling others about the results of
participating in Summer Institute programs. 0 0 0 0 0
30. The college will be permitted to participate in a Summer 1
Institute on a trial basis long enough to see what it can do. 0 0 0 0 0
V 31. Participating in the sum“ Institute programs will enhance ‘
the effectiveness of the college’s work. 0 0 0 0 ‘0
32. I believe that it is easy to get participation in the Summer
Institute programs to do what the college wants done. 0 0 0 0 0
33. Participating 1n the Summer Institute programs will make it i .
easier for the college to do its work. 0 0 0 0 0
34. Learning how to utilize participation in the summer Institute
program is easy for the college. . 0 0 0 0 0
35. Overall, I believe that. participating in Summer Institute
program is easy. 0 0 0 0 0
36. Summer Institute program participants will not very visible
in my college. 0 0 0 0 0
0 0 0 0 0
0 0 0 0 0
0 0 0 0 0
0. 0 0 0 0

VISITING SCHOLAR PROGRAM

During Academic Year 2001 -2002, the [expunged] parent organization for [expunged]
funded the Visiting Scholar Program. Postsecondary faculty members were invited to
spend ﬁve days on the [expunged] campus to pursue areas of international curriculum
interest. The scholarships covered all travel, room, board, consulting fees, and fees for
special on-campus seminars and events.

 

o I did not participate in considering whether our campus should take part in
the Visiting Scholar program. If this is true, please skip to the [expunged]
AFFILIATION section, page 5.

 

 

 

140

As you remember considering the decision in 2001-2002,

whether to implement Visiting Scholars, please mark the ’

extent to which you agree or disagree with how you recall
believing the program would impact the college:

41.
' 42.
43.
44.
45.

46.

47.

48.

49.
5o.
51.

52.

53.

I would have no difﬁculty telling others about the
results of participating inthe Visiting Scholar Program.
Participating in the Visiting Scholar Program is
compatible with all aspects of the college’s work.
Participating in the Visiting Scholar Program ﬁts into
the college’s work style.

Participating in the Visiting Scholar Program will
improve the quality of work the college does. ‘
Participating in the Visiting Scholar Program will
make it easier for the college to do its job.

I believe that it is easy to get participation in the
Visiting Scholar Program to do what the college wants
done.

I think that participating in the Visiting Scholar
Program ﬁts well with the way the cellege likes to
work.

I belreve I could communicate to others the
consequences of participating in the Visiting Scholar
Program.

Participating in the Visiting SchOlar Program will
enhance the college’s effectiveness.

Learning to utilize participation in the Visiting Scholar
Program rs easy for the college.

Overall, I believe that the Visiting SCholar Pregram rs
easy to participate in. _

The college will be permitted to participate in the
Visiting Scholar Program on a trial basis long enough
to see what it can do.

Participating 1n the Visiting SchOIar PrOgram will
enable the college to accomplish curricular tasks more

‘ quickly.

S4.

55.

56.

In my college, one will see Visiting Scholar Program
prOJ ect outcomes in many classrooms.

The results of participating in the Visiting Scholar
Program are apparent to me.

Visiting Scholar Program participants Will not be very
visible 1n my college.

141

0 0 0 Q Q Q Strongly Disagree

0 Q Q Q Q Q Disagree

0

00900

0

000'0

Q Q I Q Q Q Q Unsure

0000

O Q Q Q Q Q iAgree

0

00000

0

0 0 0 Q Q Q Strongly Agree

0000

0

57. Before deciding Whether to participate in the Visiting

Scholar Program, the college will be able to properly 0 0 0 0 0
try it cut. ' ‘

’58. I would have difficulty explaining why part101pat1ng in

the Visiting Scholar Program may or may not be 0 0 0 0 0
beneﬁcial.

59. Participating in the Visiting Scholar Program will give

the college greater control overitswork. 0 0 0 0 0
60. The college’s interaction with the Visiting Scholar

Program is clear and understandable. . 0 0 0 0 0

[expunged] AFFILIATION

Please rate the strength of your afﬁliation with the
[expunged].

61. I Consider mySelf to be very closely assoCiated' with
[eXPunged].

Q Strongly Disagree
0 Disagree
0 Strongly Agree

0 Unsure
‘0 Agree

THANK YOU FOR YOUR PARTICIPATION.

142

Appendix B

Note of Explanation

143

A Note of Explanation

It has been brought to our attention that there is some conﬁtsion regarding organizational
aﬂiliation associated with the three programs forming the basis of this survey. Perhaps the
following history will clartjy the relationships:

During the 1980’s, there were many successful international education programs
developed in [expunged] community colleges. Organizations such as [expunged] and
[expunged] fostered many of these initiatives.

The faculty and staff from the [expunged] at [expunged] joined their community
college colleagues in [expunged] and [expunged] to seek ways to share expertise and
programming for the promotion of international education.

In 198 9, [expunged] sought grant monies from the Kellogg Foundation to provide
assistance to develop and enhance international programming in the state’s higher
education institutions. In response, the Foundation awarded ﬁrnds to assist with
coordinating and strengthening existing programs in addition to creating new
programs in postsecondary institutions in [expunged].

To receive and administer the funds, [expunged] created [expunged]. [Expunged]
was a formal coalition of 16 community colleges and 5 four-year colleges guided and
supported by [expunged] faculty and staff.

The funds from this Kellogg grant and subsequent US. Department of Education
grants were to be used not only for the development of new programs but to further
strengthen existing international programs (such as F all Event) in member colleges.

By developing [expunged] as an interorganizational relationship with member
colleges and existing specialized organizations (i.e., [expunged], [expunged]),
[expunged] was better able to use grant monies to assist with building a coordinated
international education effort statewide. Grant funds were available to [expunged]
member institutions for bringing cultural events and scholarly presentations to
campuses, for supplying a variety of consultative assistance, and for providing
curriculum development assistance to faculty.

RELEVANCE TO THIS RESEARCH PROJECT:

We are only interested in learning what characteristics are important to faculty and administrators
when considering new programs. We ask you to think back to when a program was being
introduced whether by [expunged], [expunged], [expunged], or another organization and
determine how its characteristics shaped your thinking about it. This research project does not
attempt to study the effectiveness or inﬂuence of any of the programs or organizations; nor is it
an attempt to measure the impact of grant monies.

If you believe that this explanation would inﬂuence how you answered any of the survey
questions, please feel free to resubmit the enclosed questionnaire.

144

Appendix C

Table 9: Pearson Product Moment correlation of faculty responses
about their perceptions of Innovation 2: Summer Institutes

145

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146

Appendix D

Table 10: Pearson Product Moment correlation of survey instrument scales

147

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