Business School Case Study

The scenario

Three years ago a Dutch university decided to merge three academic departments to create a business school. This merger was the outcome of a university-wide restructuring exercise undertaken as part of a drive to improve the overall ranking of the university.

You are the recently appointed dean of the business school and you have been in post four weeks. You moved to this post from a Danish business school. Your predecessor was formally head of the department of economics (one of the three departments that were merged to create the business school). She has now retired.

When the business school was established it had a small financial deficit but this has gradually increased over the last three years. The overall annual deficit is now almost 200k. The economics department has an annual deficit of 750k. When you took up your new appointment the chair of the appointing committee provided a potted history of the business school and indicated that the university expected you to look for ways of eliminating the deficit and improving the school's research performance.

Your predecessor's style of management was to relate with the three departmental heads on a one-to-one basis. The only business school-wide committee is the learning and teaching committee which was set up in order to coordinate the school's response to a university-wide review of teaching quality and student support. The review was completed six months ago and the business school was rated below average.

The three departments that were merged to form the business school are economics, accounting and finance and management studies. They all have very different sub-cultures.

Other considerations

Additional issues that might influence your approach to managing this change are:

1.You have observed that, compared with elsewhere, the three departments in your business school do not seem to have been innovative when it comes to developing cost effective approaches to providing high quality learning experiences for students.

2.You are aware that academics still do a lot of the administration associated with admissions, examining, timetabling and other aspects of teaching administration that could be undertaken by appropriately qualified support staff. However, you have some reservations about whether the existing support staff has the competence or motivation required to undertake this work.

3.You are also aware that even though the business school was established three years ago there is little integration across the three departments. For example, they each retain a departmental office and look after their own admissions and course administration.

4.Although each department offers separate undergraduate degree programmes you feel that there could be high student demand for a new degree programme that combines economics with inputs from the other two departments. However, you feel that this proposal will encounter strong resistance.

TASK

1. Identify the external and internal factors that motivate the university to make the change.

2. Identify key stakeholders that can be affected by the proposed change.

3. Diagnose the existing state in the school to identify situations in favor or against the proposed change and how to overcome negative aspects of the current state.

4. Identify important things leaders of the school can do to implement the proposed change.

5. Consider what might be done to motivate employees to accept the change