Sending with the permission of Sarah Knight ...

Dr Tom Browne, User Support and Educational Technologies Manager
Information Services, Laver Building, North Park Road, Exeter EX4 4QE
email: [log in to unmask],   tel: 01392 26 3232

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Call for papers: ICT-Driven Organisational Transformation in HE

A special issue of the Journal of Organisational Transformation and Social
Change

Guest editors: Dr Simon Shurville and Dr Tom Browne

It is often stated that Higher Education (HE) is key to creating and
supporting the knowledge-based economies of the 21st century. Ironically,
however, while the sector specialises in creating and imparting knowledge,
it is often less agile than its industrial counterparts in applying
knowledge or new technology in response to threats and opportunities within
its ecosystem.  Moreover, HE has a unique culture in which collegiate
traditions and ideals are in competition with new financial realities and
personal reward structures. Published examples of organisational
transformation in HE are rare but would prove instructive both to HE itself
to and the broad field of organisational theory.

This special issue of the Journal of Organisational Transformation and
Social Change will identify and share evidence of successful organisational
transformations in which HE institutions have demonstrated themselves to be
adaptable and responsive to the particular threats and opportunities
presented by ICT in general and by e-learning in particular.

E-learning can be defined as a family of approaches to education which
ranges from enhancing face-to-face teaching through to independent resource
based learning and which are facilitated and supported via ICT. There are
manifold drivers for HE to adopt e-learning and associated ICTs, such as
knowledge management. These include: accommodating increased student
numbers, addressing environmental sustainability, building strategic
alliances, exploiting new technologies, facing global competition,
improving quality, opening access, personalising learning, reducing costs,
responding to government initiatives, and supporting lifelong and work
based learners. Together, these drivers represent both disruptive and
sustaining changes across the familiar triad of culture, people and
processes that comprises an institution. This multitude of internal and
external drivers can nonetheless generate resistance from key stakeholders
within the organisation. Ameliorating such resistance within an environment
where educational ethics are paramount requires careful and professional
change management. Transforming the structure of an existing organisation
to support new technologies, practices and processes requires similar
sensitivity. This transformative flow may initially be bottom-up or
top-down, but in either case the change agents should be informed by best
practice.

The problem is that HE has a unique set of cultures which make it reluctant
to learn from published accounts set in other sectors, including other
educational sectors. We therefore invite submissions from the international
community of practitioners and researchers which demonstrate effective
integration of innovative technologies and practice within the social
systems of HE. We are particularly interested in narratives that describe
and reflect upon the experience of change from the perspectives of multiple
stakeholders and which describe organisational contexts in detail.
Narratives can be set at any scale or level of focus, so could include a
particular course, department or institution as well as networks of
institutions and / or industrial partnerships. Alternatively, narratives
could consider how ICT or e-learning was used within a change programme,
again at any scale.  We encourage authors to consider the ethics of each
change programme and to report on any transformative effect on the
stakeholders during the change itself and thereafter. Overall, we encourage
authors to reflect on any relationships between organisational behaviour,
structure and culture and to discuss how these affected the transformation
and also how they were altered by it.

The Journal: Organisational Transformation and Social Change

The Journal of Organisational Transformation and Social Change (OTASC)
(http://www.intellectbooks.co.uk/ppjournals.php?issn=14779633) is an
international English language, peer reviewed scholarly journal.  It is
dedicated to an academically sound approach to enquiry and exploration into
change in organisations and social systems, and it seeks convergence of
these and related disciplines so as to form a science of social
communities.  This journal takes the view that situations involving people
are normally highly complex, and hence it sees all human/social conditions
and processes in terms of the complexity paradigm.  While OTASC
particularly encourages systematic operational research and cybernetic
approaches, it should also be seen as a general vehicle to explore theory
and practice about change deriving from the more traditional academic
disciplines.  OTASC encompasses the social sciences, including
organisational and management science, management systems/operational
research and cybernetics, social psychology, sociology, anthropology,
political science, psychohistory, as well as economics, law, mathematics
and matters relating to the information or knowledge society. OTSC is read
by academics working in the area of management, organisational behavior,
social psychology, organisational anthropology, human resource development.
It is relevant to business schools and university departments across the
world, including Europe and the USA. It is also directed towards those who
make policy and their advisors, and to managers.

Format for submissions

Prospective authors should initially submit a 1,000 word extended abstract
which includes key words and references. These extended abstracts will be
reviewed by the guest editors and successful authors will be notified by
e-mail. The successful authors will be invited to expand the extended
abstracts into scholarly articles of 6,000 words which adhere to the Notes
for Contributors from the Publisher (please see
http://www.intellectbooks.co.uk/misc/contributornotes.pdf). These scholarly
articles will be double-blind reviewed and at this stage successful authors
will be invited to accommodate reviewers comments in a second draft. The
copyright of all material published will be vested in the journal.

Interdisciplinary approaches are strongly encouraged. Appropriate
methodologies and traditions will include action research, anthropology,
change management, conversation theory, cybernetics, ethnomethodology human
resource management, innovation management, knowledge management,
organisational psychology, organisational theory, social psychology and
technology management.

Please submit extended abstracts to: [log in to unmask] by 30/09/06.

Please note that if sufficient high quality papers are received, then the
journal editors have indicated that a double issue is possible.

Key dates

  * Submission of extended abstract: 30/10/06
  * Outcome of review of extended abstract: 31/11/06
  * Submission of first draft of scholarly article: 31/01/07
  * Outcome of review of first draft of scholarly article: 31/02/07
  * Submission of second draft of scholarly article: 31/04/07
  * Publication of special issue: Mid-2007

The guest editors

The special issue will be guest edited by Dr Simon Shurville and Dr Tom
Browne:

.         Dr Simon Shurville ([log in to unmask]) is a Senior
Lecturer in Electronically Enhanced Learning at Cranfield University.
Previously Simon directed the implementation of the Managed Learning
Environment at the University of Sussex and together with Tom initiated
e-learning 'by stealth' at Sussex. He has delivered commercial e-learning
products and knowledge based systems in industry. Simon is an associate
editor of the journal Interactive Learning Environments, is on the
editorial board of Campus Wide Information Systems, and co-edited the book
Words on the Web: Computer Mediated Communication. He holds a BA and a PhD
in artificial intelligence and an MA in change management.

.         Dr Tom Browne ([log in to unmask]) is User Support and
Educational Technologies Manager within Information Services at the
University of Exeter. Tom is a member of the UCISA-TLIG Teaching and
Learning subcommittee and has recently completed a term of office on the
JISC Committee for Learning and Teaching. He continues on the JISC Pedagogy
Steering Group and is also an accreditor for the Higher Education Academy.
He has developed and delivered several undergraduate and postgraduate
degree-based courses in Geographical Information Systems, which provided
opportunities to explore more innovative learning styles using e-learning.
For many years Tom had a dual role of e-learning support and academic
practitioner and with Simon, was responsible for initiating and furthering
e-learning developments and organisational change at Sussex. He holds a BSc
and PhD in Geography.

Both editors maintain a keen interest in national and international
organisational transformation in HE and in HE itself as an enabler of
social justice and change.

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