Challenging Isomorphic Mimicry With Human-Centred Design to Build Capacity in Three African Higher Education Institutions

Abstract

The Innovation Scholars Program (ISP) in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) targets the issue of organizational capacity development in higher education institutions (HEIs). HEI's are susceptible to patterns of isomorphic mimicry, manifested where institutions often replicate behaviors perceived to be ideal without developing internal capacities for maintaining or adjusting. ISP addresses these patterns through individual and organizational capacity development leading to a focus on institutional function. Isomorphic mimicry is characterized by a focus on form over function (e.g., a new classroom building with no classes scheduled vs. building capacity of instructors to deliver relevant learning outcomes for their society); and incentives for leaders to use new resources to maintain the status quo (agenda conformity). Isomorphic mimicry is driven by global pressures but felt in part by HEI leaders and faculty. To address these issues, the ISP employs human-centered design (HCD) as a cornerstone of its approach. HCD is a user-focused problem-solving methodology that involves understanding the needs of the end-users whom we include as faculty, administrative leaders, and community-based stakeholders. Participants in ISP design and create prototypes and refine solutions through iterative, interdisciplinary, cross-hierarchical, feedback loops. Within the ISP, HCD was operationalized through workshops matched to design phases which led participants to deploy a working prototype. We measured individual and organizational learning, including participants' outcomes and collective patterns of organizational responsiveness, observed in part through a cross-case comparative analysis. As participant observers, we noted individual and organizational outcomes and conducted interviews, document analysis, and field observations to identify and understand new patterns. In each of the three ISP programs, individuals developed capacity, faculty and administrators learned to use HCD together (organizational capacity) as a problem-solving approach. Participants built trust in the process of local problem identification. Specifically, we observed where HCD ideas and principles appeared in locally identified use cases. The HCD approach fostered a shared language for making change, built trust among participants, and led to changes that outlasted project funding. By integrating individual learning and organizational change through HCD principles, HEIs established a new pattern of work, and focused on function, moved away from intensification (more of the same spending) toward repeatable processes and the needs of end-users. Integrating individual and collective learning with function in mind was key to interrupting components of isomorphic mimicry. The ISP helped ensure that organizational novelty was aimed at functional outcomes rather than status quo actions. Several of the initiatives begun in ISP continue to resonate and evolve post-project funding and have become self-sustaining in the local HEI ecosystem.