17th November 2008Professor Vic Borden
Indiana University
Institutional Research as organizational learning
It is no coincidence that institutional research with its focus on quantitatively-driven, rational approaches to decision making, has developed and flourished at a time when higher education institutions have adopted increasingly professionalized models of administration and management. But higher education institutions are actually composites of hierarchical/bureaucratic and collegial models of administration and governance—i.e., a professional bureaucracy—typically characterized by highly decentralized and loosely coupled authority structures. A rational approach becomes complicated as various autonomous and at times competing groups attempt to make decisions. This presentation describes an alternative “collaborative organizational learning” approach to institutional research that offers several benefits for the productive use of the processes and products of institutional research, including greater buy-in from a wider array of colleagues, less resistance to information use, and more inclusive decision-making processes.
Victor (Vic) Borden is Associate Vice President for University Planning, Institutional Research, and Accountability at Indiana University. He is also an associate professor of Psychology within the Purdue School of Science at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) with an adjunct appointment in the department of Educational Leadership and Policy Studies (Indiana University School of Education). Dr. Borden's general area of scholarship is on the assessment of organizational performance within higher education institutions. Within this general area, he has pursued four themes: student progress and performance; organizational performance assessment and accountability; diversity and equity within higher education; and organizational learning and development as a framework for re-envisioning institutional research. Dr. Borden is an active contributor to several professional associations, most notably, the Association for Institutional Research, of which he is a Past President.
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E-Mail: conference21@shu.ac.uk
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