When strategic implementation goes wrong:
Case study: Thames Valley University (UK)
In 1996the then-Prime Minister, Tony Blair, endorsed Thames Valley Universityas a model for other universities to follow; yet two years later it was named and shamed as the UK's first ‘failing’ university. Consider the following case study in failed strategic implementation and find out about the lessons that can be learned from it.
“What is so remarkable about what I have seen today is that this could form the benchmark for what could be done right throughout the country. Why I wonder can’t every University be like TVU?”Tony Blair, October 10, 1996, opening the Paul Hamlyn Learning Resource Centre, Slough Campus, TVU.
“TVU ‘named and shamed’ as the UK’s ‘first failing university’”
G. Alderman (1999) Innocence amid the TVU slaughter. Times Higher Education Supplement, 23 July.
What did TVU set out to do?
A new university formed in 1992, TVU is an amalgamation of four very different institutions: Ealing College of Higher Education, Thames Valley College, Queen Charlotte’s College of Healthcare and the London College of Music. The aim in founding the university was to build on the traditions of its antecedents.
TVU had a distinctive mission at a time when few universities did:
‘To support mass participation in higher education as a contribution to equality and social justice’
‘To become a student-driven institution, committed primarily to instruction and playing a major part in the educational, cultural and economic life of the region’.
What the university had going for it
At the time of its founding, TVU had:
28,000 students: two-thirds were part-time, more than half over 21, and just under a half from anethnic minority background
Colorful alumni: Pete Townsend from The Who, Ronnie Wood from the Rolling Stones and the late Freddie Mercury from Queen
A clutch of honorary professors who were leading figures in the creative industries: David Frost, Jeremy Isaacs, Michael Grade, Howard Goodall, Jenny Abramsy, Roger McGough
A Chancellor: the publisher Paul Hamlyn (Reed International), one of the wealthiest individuals in Britain
Award-winning Learning Resource Centers: these had been conceived and designed by leading architect Richard Rogers.
Challenges faced by the university
TVU faced the same challenge as many other universities: how to do ‘more’ (teach more students) with ‘less’ (fewer resources), while simultaneously maintaining quality in an environment where the pressure to change was unremitting.
Unlike other universities, however, it also had no significant financial resources or any realisable assets (other than building stock), and was operating within 40% of the space norms recommended by the external funding body.
The Vice-Chancellor’s vision
With all these things in mind, the Vice-Chancellor, Mike Fitzgerald, developed a compelling argument for change:
‘Radical external changes call for radical internal changes’
Without change ‘we face the prospect of death by a thousand (funding) cuts’(Fitzgerald, 1995, pp. 5–13).
His vision was to establish a ‘new learning environment’:an educational setting that was more learner-centered than instructor-centered, characterized by:
A transition from ‘mass time’ into ‘quality time’ for students
Relatively new ways of learning: electronic, media- and resource-based
A move away from the traditional narrow environment, in which students attend lectures at a set time and place, complete ‘bolt-on’ style assessments and learn passively under the tutor’s control, and toward an environment that would be more holistic and broader in scope
Opportunities for students to tap a wide range of learning resources (their student peers, library, computing and multiple media facilities, etc.) and organize their learning around assessment that would be central to their programs and in which, above all, they would be active participants in the process under the tutor’s guardianship.
This strategic initiative was no reckless or foolhardy venture but, rather, an imaginative aspiration, ahead of its time (in 1996). Overall, the Vice-Chancellor’s proposition has stood the test of time – but at TVU, it led to disaster.
So what went wrong at TVU?
1. Too much, too quickly
The ‘new learning environment’ (NLE) was ‘a very ambitious attempt to restructure the academic organisation and culture of the University at its most basic level’ (Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education(1998) Special review of Thames Valley University. 9 November, Gloucester). Yet it was implemented across all three levels of undergraduate programs in one fell swoop – without any ‘trial-and-error’ planning, piloting or phased development.The NLE was also introduced alongside two other new initiatives equally far-reaching in consequence:
The restructuring and centralization of all the University’s academic-related administration (ARA)into a central registry
The creation of ‘an internal market’ in which ‘Colleges’ (comprising a small management group) commissioned programs and ‘Schools’ (or ‘repositories of staff’) ran them – the idea was to incentivize schools and faculties to develop profitable new income sources.
TVU opted for the ‘big bang’ approach to implementation, and piled one fundamental change on top of another. Too much was attempted in too short a time.
2. The conditions for emergent change were not met
‘For its success the NLE needed very careful and comprehensive planning, effective leadership, prior infrastructural development, good communications, fail-safe contingency plans, fully tested information systems, a realistic timetable and goodwill on the part of all staff. We believe that these were all prerequisites, not merely desirable options, the absence or failure of any one of which would be likely to jeopardise seriously a successful outcome’. (QAA, 1998) In reality, the QAA found many of these conditions were not met:
The consultation was inadequate and perceived by staff members as a ‘hollow exercise’
Industrial relations with the trade unions were ‘very poor’
The university’s IT system was ‘fragile’ with ‘poor’ information flows
The timetable was unrealistic and the planning deficient.
3. The failure to predict the full extent of the changes
The phenomenon of unintended negative consequences – Tutt’s (1985) Law (N. Tutt (1985) The unintended consequences of integration. Educational and child psychology, Vol. 2, pp. 20-38) – where the secondary effects of change nullify those of the primary – is not an unusual one and it affected TVU.
In practice, the planned‘internal market’ did not operate as intended. It was perceived as an artificial internal division – one in which the Colleges sought to exercise a supervisory role over Schools which in turn regarded them as supernumerary.Far from incentivizing staff, it had the effect of reducing the status of tutor to that of ‘a hired hand’ (QAA, 1998).
4. The failure to recognize that change imposed from above cannot, and does not, work
The vision and rationale for change may have been a compelling one, but the NLE required a shift in academic values and culture if it was to be successful. This was not forthcoming because of the way in which the staff perceived the change:
The application of the concept of ‘student-driven’ in a coercive way rather than as a guiding aspiration
The mismatch between management rhetoric (to be ‘hands-off’) and the reality (very much ‘hands-on’)
The belief that this change was vested in a single individual – the charismatic unorthodox Vice-Chancellor, Mike Fitzgerald (with the spiky peroxide hair, dangling earring, Cuban cigarillos, office jukebox, chauffeur-minder etc.) – who may have had Richard Beckhard’s (1992) model of the ‘executive management for transformational change’ in mind but came across as overtly hierarchical in practice.
Values are only values if they are voluntarily chosen: at TVU, the NLE failed to attract genuine staff commitment. Rather, staffbecame disaffected and estranged from the institution.
What can we learn from TVU?
We ignore textbook approaches to managing change at our peril
The rationale for change by itself is not sufficient – the practical prerequisites for change must also be in place
We need to anticipate as far as possible the full extent of strategic implementation – expected and otherwise
Top-down change cannot and does not work
The Art of Conversation is a core process and collegiality is an aspiration to tap
Leadership qualities can and should be tapped at all levels
When faced with chaos, individuals naturally self-organize (as they did when the ARA unraveled).
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