Merging Divergent Campus Cultures into Coherent Educational Communities: Challenges for Higher Education Leaders

Abstract

Mergers in higher education are viewed here as a sociocultural issue. Concentratingparticularly on mergers in Australia during the late 1980s and beyond, highlighted aresome cultural challenges that arose and strategies adopted by institutional leaders in trying tocreate integrated communities from the merging of campus cultures that were historically andsymbolically un-complementary. By viewing a number of cases, how hoped-for post-mergerintegration or 'coherent educational communities' were and were not achieved is a specificfocus. Evidence indicates that in newly merged campuses integrated as opposed to federalstructures provide more scope for tighter cultural integration. In particular, expert leadershipis needed that keeps cultural conflict to a minimum and pays special attention to developingnew loyalties, high morale and a sense of community within the newly created institution.