Chapter 7: Bachelor’s Degree Production and State Higher Education Finance Policy in the Pre- and Post-Recessionary Period: Managing Change Towards Racial Equity in Higher Education Through Competing Institutional Logics

When colleges and universities are called upon to change, there is no singular organizational “function” that can be adjusted to produce different outcomes. In this chapter, we attempt to better understand the mechanisms and processes of managed change—that is, intentional change processes directed towards organizationally defined goals. By observing organizational dynamics in terms of institutional logics, which are systems of rationality and sensemaking inherent to broader social fields of practice, we argue that managed change can be a process whereby contradictions create space for shifts in practice. We apply this framework to two cases of public institutions involved in efforts to improve equity in student outcomes in the context of a statewide accountability policy. We illustrate how managed change processes surfaced competing and complementary logics, the unique configurations of which produced discernible contradictions in practice that, when identified, organizational actors were forced to negotiate and resolve. Our findings offer campus leaders new ways of managing change that calls for the negotiation of deeply held values and fundamental reconfigurations of practice.