Organisational Change and Culture: A Case Study of the University of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa

Higher Education is not immune to change as change is inevitable in any organisation. This paper is based on the experience of transformation of the higher education landscape in South Africa, with a particular focus on the institutional mergers that had taken place and its implications for organisational culture. A key goal of the transformation process was to build new organizational and institutional forms, new institutional identities and cultures as part of a coordinated national higher education system. The University of Natal (UN) and the University of Durban-Westville (UDW) merged into a single institution now known as the University of KwaZulu-Natal. Culture is a critical variable in this process. The prevailing organisational culture was identified and described using the X Model of organisational culture. The X Model integrates aspects of past models of organizational culture, to render it suitable for the South African context. Organisational performance and service delivery were viewed as the 'outputs' of the organisation and are understood to be influenced by the organisational culture. The culture of the organisation is understood in terms of key elements such as how the organisation is led, the strategy adopted for change implementation, discipline in the organisation and how systems, processes and people are integrated, which all describe how things are done in the organisation. This paper provides a conceptual framework of organisational change and culture in the context of higher education mergers using the X model. Furthermore the paper proposes key recommendations and culminates in an innovative and integrative model to enhance organisational culture.