Twenty-fourth International Conference on Knowledge, Culture, and Change in Organizations

Abstract

Over the past 50 years, there has been little change in the way that most academic departments conduct their day-to-day affairs. Research suggests that faculty and specifically scientists and engineers are highly individualistic, self-directed, with a strong desire to share their knowledge and the need for approval from their peers (Cain 2012, Soderhjelm et al., 2016, Shannon, 1980), and this culture is rewarded by the way the faculty performance is evaluated toward their promotion and tenure. However, for the past four years, we have adopted a strategy where we use an agile process to operate the department’s day-to-day operations. As a result, we have seen a significant improvement in faculty collaboration. In addition, we also recognized an improvement in the hierarchical relationship between faculty, thereby encouraging the junior faculty to incorporate their ideas in the department mission, vision and strategies. This paper shares some of our lessons learned over the past four years.