Review by: Kerres, Michael (2004-11-25)

The literature on change management has grown rapidly in recent years. The context of higher education as an object of research, however, has not reached much attention yet. One of the seminal publications presenting an approach that has reached much attention is from a group of authors from the UK that – although published in 1996 – still is interesting to read. One important aspect is that the authors already place special emphasis on the role of information technology for addressing the challenges of tomorrow’s higher education.

The book does not present an elaborated theoretical discussion of managing the process of change in the context of higher education. It rather suggests and outlines a method to managing institutional change. In the first chapters the authors describe the generic OPENframework and apply it to managing change in higher education. The framework relies on three concepts: Perspectives are the views from different set of people inside and outside the organisation. Qualities provide the value system and define the goals an institution wants to achieve in its various subsystems. Elements are used to describe the parts of the business, social and technical systems. The authors then describe their “Learning Environment Architecture” as a framework that aligns the needs of the business, its people and the capabilities of technology. Universities are being described as organisations that consist of business, social and technical subsystems.

The next two chapters describe how and why to formulate a vision and how value systems are being developed. Chapter 5 and 6 explain how to define key business objects and processes for a learning environment. Chapter 7 and 8 outlines how people interact in HE institutions and how services can support them. Chapter 9, finally, describes how the functionality of IT-systems can be derived from the above analyses.

The book provides many checklists and figures that help understanding and applying the basic concepts of the approach but it does not present any evidence about the feasibility or applicability of the approach.

The book addresses a british audience. For a reader from a different cultural background the publication still can be valuable since it implicitly provides insights into some differences of higher education systems. Furthermore, the approach the authors have developed demonstrates how concepts from rather different theoretical backgrounds (economy, learning theory and information technology) can be integrated into a rather complex analytical framework.