Transformative Organisational Change: A Case Study of Restructuring Attempts in the Technical and Further Education (TAFE) Sector of New South Wales

Abstract

This study examines organisational change in two regional New South Wales (NSW) Technical and Further Education (TAFE) institutes that have recently undergone substantial restructuring. These institutes form part of the Vocational Education and Training (VET) sector in Australia. A particular focus of the study is on the challenges faced by managers who have experienced changes in leadership as well as moves from a more 'closed', 'top-down' hierarchical organisational structure to an 'open' team-based mode of operation, a strategy geared to building organisational capacity in a more competitive environment. The human resource implications of such a shift are of particular interest. Like many other organisations, high performing VET organisations are operating within a rapidly changing environment with external factors impacting forcefully on them. Coupled with this, the public sector nature of organisations such as TAFE Institutes brings its own complexities. These include limited flexibility, slow response time and lack of ability to align functions and processes across the organisation in response to the ever-changing government and business environment. In order to come to grips with the way the two institutes in question dealt with change and the impact that restructuring had on personnel, case study methodology, which allowed multiple means of data collection, was adopted. In-depth interviews with key informants, participant observation and documentary analysis comprised the major modes of data collection. Data were gathered from key informant interviews in TAFE Institutes as well as from a number of key experts within the VET sector. In the current competitive environment regional Institutes are keenly aware of the need to be more client-focused. The findings of this study indicate that each of the Institutes understands the new culture of client responsiveness and the value of collaborative and team-based structures that are seen to facilitate greater sensitivity to market demand. Each has moved from a more rigid bureaucratic structure and adopted team-based systems in order to respond more quickly to a rapidly changing environment, to tap into the expertise of their employees and to engage in innovative ways of producing new and better ways to meet customer demands. Each institute, however, applied very different means of leadership and management in attempting to achieve these ends, with quite different results.