The board of Fiserv (an investment management company) has already decided to close the business no matter what. Agile Financials has agreed to buyout Fiserv and retain part of the Fiserv staff if the purchase deal closes. However, if too many of Fiserv's clients left with their accounts or if the customer satisfaction index (CSI) continued to…

The public higher education economic and competitive environments make it crucial that organizations react to the circumstances and make better use of available resources (Duderstadt, 2000; Floyd, 2008; Shulman, 2007; State Higher Education Executive Officers (SHEEO), 2009). Viewing higher education through the perspective of new institutionalism…

Over 20 years ago, Robert J. Barak and Barbara E. Breier suggested incorporating a regular assessment of the entire program review system into the review schedule in order to ensure that the system itself is as efficient and effective as the programs under review. Barak and Breier's seminal book on the goals and processes of program review has…

Given the current economic constraints facing the country, school districts in the U.S. have been pushed to develop annual budgets through a new lens and to accept the reality that budget adoption is a complex, political process. Whether a school district is rich or poor, growing or declining in enrollment, serving a specialized population or…

This report documents the successful coordination of two agencies, the Teacher Corps of the Office of Education (Department of Health, Education, and Welfare) and the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention of the Law Enforcement Assistance Administration (Department of Justice), in the establishment of a joint program, the School…

The implementation of a matrix structure as an alternative to the traditional collegial/bureaucratic form at a college of education in a medium-size state university is described. Matrix organizational structures are differentiated from hierarchical bureaucratic structures by dividing the organization's tasks into functional units across which an…

This case study of the organizational structure of the Brazilian Literacy Movement (MOBRAL) describes the various organizational changes made as the mediating agency attempted to develop a large-scale national program within the existing social structure. Steps in the organization's development are traced from: (1) Beginnings in 1970 under the…

An institutionwide strategic planning effort at Central Michigan University, in response to a need for rapid and significant changes in its information technology infrastructure, is outlined. The effort resulted in a matrix governance structure for information technology that acknowledges the value of both distributed support and a strong central…

The information division at Cornell University (New York) information resources division has determined that its traditional program development method is inadequate to meet the demographic, fiscal, and technological demands of the 1990s. It is changing its systems analysis and design procedures to deliver applications better, faster, and with…

At Brigham Young University, the admissions office organized its staff in teams and built a computer software system to support the teams. An improved worker sense of responsibility and increased emphasis on human factors resulted in dramatically increased productivity as measured by number of admissions applications processed and completed.…

The James Madison University (Virginia) experience in implementing the "Student Learning Imperative" is described. Challenges to be met in creating programs, services, and curricula focused on learning and a strong sense of intentionality are discussed including circumstances for change; compatibility of project and community values;…

The trend toward outside contracting of college and university services is examined, and issues involved in the decision to do so are discussed. The experience of one university in outsourcing its printing services shop is offered as illustration of how this approach can resolve several administrative issues: cost, quality and extent of services,…

In 1994, the information technology organization at Indiana University, Bloomington, undertook a major computing technology conversion that affected 40,000 people. The project is described, and factors contributing to its success are discussed, including system architecture, marketing and customer communications, and migration of information…

In this book, the former coordinator of the Technical Assistance Project of the African Association for Literacy and Adult Education (AALAE) provides an insider's account of the corruption, political management, and organizational mismanagement of the AALAE in 1991-1996. Chapter 1 introduces six myths regarding nongovernmental organizations…

This document is intended to assist senior managers and governors of colleges in the United Kingdom that are faced with serious difficulties. The first section provides an overview of how the issues of college recovery were handled under the Further Education Funding Council. The second section examines crisis and recovery in corporations and…