Theses and Dissertations
Date of Award
2014
Document Type
Dissertation - NSU Access Only
Degree Name
Doctor of Education (EdD)
Department
Abraham S. Fischler College of Education and School of Criminal Justice
Advisor
Judith Converso
Committee Member
Stephen Konowalow
Committee Member
Ronald J. Chenail
Keywords
Resilience (Psychology), Organizational Change, Private Colleges, Adjustment (to Environment), Enrollment Trends
Abstract
This applied dissertation was designed to provide an analysis of the relationship between organizational resilience and enrollment fluctuations of independent, for-profit higher education institutions, otherwise known as career colleges. In the 2010 to 2012 school years, for-profit higher education existed in a turbulent environment characterized by regulatory, media, and public scrutiny. Virtually all of the colleges in this sector experienced enrollment declines starting in 2010. By 2012, some colleges were starting to see this trend stabilize or reverse, whereas others did not. The purpose of this study was to determine if the differences in these colleges’ enrollment trends could be attributed to organizational resilience.
Organizational resilience has been defined as the ability to bounce back from organizational crisis or change, including change brought about by a turbulent environment. Mallak (1998) designed an instrument to measure organizational resilience and determined that organizational resilience is shaped by six factors: goal-directed solutions seeking, avoidance-skepticism, critical understanding or sensemaking, role dependence, resource access, and source reliance. A modified version of this instrument was sent to a purposive sample of 475 independent (i.e., five campuses or less) for-profit college leaders. A total of 59 institutions responded, which met the G*Power a priori minimum sample size.
The correlation between organizational resilience levels and enrollment fluctuations was fair to moderate and significant, r = .40, p < .05. A multiple-regression analysis revealed that the model significantly explained the impact of the six organizational resilience factors on enrollment fluctuations, F = 4.15, p < .01. The R2 for the model was .32, and the adjusted R2 was .25. In terms of individual organizational resilience factors, two tested either significantly or moderately significantly: avoidance-skepticism and critical understanding or sensemaking.
Recommendations for college leaders include monitoring the level of avoidance to ensure a healthy balance of skepticism regarding new situations and incorporating strategies to help organizational members increase their levels of critical understanding or sensemaking. Recommendations for further research include extending the research to other types of postsecondary institutions and other performance metrics, investigating goal-directed solution seeking with qualitative methods, modifying sampling techniques, and obtaining additional college data that can be statistically controlled in further analyses.
NSUWorks Citation
Kathryn Frisbie. 2014. Relationship Between Organizational Resilience and Enrollment Fluctuations of Independent, For-Profit Higher Education Institutions. Doctoral dissertation. Nova Southeastern University. Retrieved from NSUWorks, Abraham S. Fischler College of Education and School of Criminal Justice. (978)
https://nsuworks.nova.edu/fse_etd/978.