Preferred Strategies of Selected University Student Affairs Administrators in Implementing Change Using Nutt's Four Models of Change Implementation Tactics

Abstract:
The purpose of this study was to investigate the perceived applicability of change tactics, as represented by Nutt's model of four change implementation tactics, by three groups of student affairs staff in the implementation of planned change in the administration of college and university student housing operations. The researcher developed and validated an instrument that presented typical change situations occurring in college and university housing operations. The scenarios were divided into four management function areas of planning, organizing, leading, and controlling. following each scenario were four responses that represented Nutt's four implementation tactics. The survey instrument was mailed to three groups of student affairs administrators involved with the supervision and management of on campus student housing. The three administrative groups were the chief student affairs officer, the chief housing officer, and members of the professional housing staff immediately subordinate to the chief housing officer. All groups were from public institutions with on campus housing populations of 2000 or greater. There were 100 administrators in each of the three groups drawn from an institutional sample of 178. simple t-tests and one-way analyses of variance were used to analyze the data. IF significant differences existed, a follow-up procedure, the Bonferroni test for significance, was used to identify specific differences. The results of the study provided support for the application of Nutt's model to change implementation in student housing administration. The study also extended the application of Nutt's model to higher education administration and identified differences in the perceived applicability of the four change implementation tactics. In overall application of the implementation tactics, administrators viewed each tactic as statistically different from the other tactics. None of the three groups of administrators differed in their application of the participation, intervention or edict tactics to change situations. The application of the persuasion tactic to change situations differed significantly between the chief student affairs officers and and both the chief housing officers and professional housing staff. The application of the implementation tactics to change situations within the functional areas of management provided several significant differences among the three administrative groups. The persuasion tactic provided most of the significant difference while the edict tactic showed no differences in application.
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