Management and governance : inside an HE institute

This research is a case study of a public body - a UK HE institution - to reveal aspects of a cycle of 'change that did not stick' and to reveal the power-base and control aspects of change, organisation and management. This institution set about to change its operation to a democratic, matrix-style of organisation. It then reversed that change and in four years returned to something like its former structure. The people at the top - the 'directorate' - arrived and moved on but the staff remained. Eleven of the staff, all middle managers, talked about the events and their interpretations of this change. Their perspective is from outside senior management, yet closer to those engaged in the day-to-day operations of the institution. The interviewees told what happened - from the inside. Their 'voices' are the 'data 1 and the most important part of the story. They provide a 'text', which is supported by a background of internal official documents and external documents during the period. The cycle of organisational change, seen through the eyes of the 'affected 1 , is presented as a text, a social document, encasing and enveloping their accounts and stories with the intention of preserving the integrity of the evidence. Various interpretative approaches are followed: Critical Theory, philosophy, culture together with the national Higher Education context and a 'casestudy' of another HE institution as corroborative background. The casestudy, prompted by the general approach of the respondents, is used as a spring-board for reflections on management and governance.