This chapter reflects on how the Michigan Center for Student Success (MCSS) has leveraged its position within a membership organization for community college presidents and trustees to engage in statewide student success efforts in a state with a unique higher education governance structure. With no formal higher education governing body to set…

Despite management theorists' decades-long attention to the robust sustainability of complex organizations, adaptive management practices remain undertheorized. Management is evolving from a hierarchically organized effort in pursuit of strategically determined goals into a facilitation of layered, distributed, autonomous agents able to learn from…

Negentropy is a construct drawn from physics that can be conceptualized as the opposite of energy losses associated with normal organizational life. Over time, physical systems tend to "wind down" or entropy, eventually into disintegration. The application of negentropy to social systems, metaphorically, is the primary purpose of this…

The contemporary university has its place amid a world in total motion. The issue arises, then, as to what it is it to try to shape a university in the context of a world that lacks stability. The thesis argued here is twofold: (1) that the university should take seriously its entwinement with the world; indeed, with large eco-systems of the…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is the presentation of a learning model for a manager and employee working collaboratively to make advances in knowledge, skills, work performance and in the quality of their relationship. The model is called reciprocal action learning. Design/methodology/approach: The approach was to examine concepts and…

This article suggests that it is in the vicissitudes of the OECD's internal developments that we can better understand how the OECD developed into a global policy actor and reference in education. From an ontological perspective, the article focuses on the three characteristics dimensions of IGOs -- actor, arena, instrument -- and examines how…

Purpose: This paper aims to explore the impact discourse has on decision making practices within the boardroom and considers how personal proficiency in micro-language use can enhance an individual's personal efficacy in influencing boardroom decisions. The work uses Habermas' theory of communicative action to critique board talk, highlighting the…

Whereas growth in international school numbers is widely reported, less attention has been given to how these schools have developed as organisations. Drawing on organisational life-cycle models (Greiner, 1972) and the work of DiMaggio and Powell (1983), this paper addresses that gap. As international schools grow individually, and as the field…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to place the idea of the learning organization in a historical, multidisciplinary context with the aim of identifying obstacles and opportunities for its greater realization in practice. Design/methodology/approach: Marking the 30th anniversary of publication of Peter Senge's "The Fifth Discipline",…

In rapidly changing employment markets, career guidance has a vital role to play in supporting people in navigating transitions between education and employment across the lifespan. In this article, the issue of quality and quality assurance in career guidance is explored. Although there is no clear agreed international understanding of what…

Purpose: This paper aims to provide some comments on the four papers, other than the author's own, that were included in a recent special issue on organizational unlearning. Design/methodology/approach: The author carefully reads these papers and identify problems that may hinder unlearning research. Findings: While each paper has its own merits,…

Purpose: This paper aims to conceptualize what it means to be resilient in the face of our current reality of indisputable turbulence and uncertainty, suggest that continual metamorphosis is key to resilience, demonstrate the role of unlearning in that metamorphosis and suggest that problem formulation is a key deliberate mechanism of driving…

Many colleges and universities today are reorganizing student affairs operations in ways that eliminate or reassign many of their functions to other university departments. In some drastic cases, student affairs departments and senior leadership positions have been eliminated. On some campuses, the chief student affairs officer does not report…

Studies relating to reflection and reflective practice in learning, specifically workplace learning, have gradually emerged from within the professional education literature. Evidence has seen a shift from an individualistic to a more collective approach to reflection, in an attempt to move away from viewing learning as an individual action.…

The authors review the Organisational Development and Design (OD&D) capability building programmes they have facilitated in the UK Civil Service and consider the learning and impact which they have had at an individual and organisational level. These programmes have been delivered to over 350 professional civil servants across a broad range of…