A Lesson Of Lost Political Capital In Public Higher Education: Leadership Challenges In A Time Of Needed Organizational Change

Abstract

All higher education institutions are struggling with a rapidly changing market and financial landscape. Here is a management-centered analysis of what happened when a college president, recognizing the need to make a radical adaptation to those changes, tried moving a campus community to a new organizational model, without collegial consensus, and too quickly. The result was that the president lost political capital and the college underwent a change in leadership. Yet the need for a new management model still remains.