Employees’ attitudes toward change with Lean Higher Education in Moroccan public universities

Abstract

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to study the attitudes of higher education employees to the change with Lean at public universities in Morocco in order to determinate the factors of resistance to change and to look for the motivating factors that encourage these employees to participate in change project with Lean. Design/methodology/approach A questionnaire sent to all administrative and technical staff of higher education at five public universities in Morocco during year 2019. This study has analyzed both a person-oriented approach and a variable-oriented approach and characterized by using Lewin’s change model to manage change with Lean. Findings The results show that individual, organizational and group factors have a positive impact on employees’ attitudes toward change with Lean but individual factors are more important than other factors. Research limitations/implications The research is limited to universities in Morocco and mainly public universities. It is only interested in the first stage in the change process with Lean (unfreezing). Understanding employee attitudes, determining motivation factors and the causes behind resistance to change before embarking in change journey with Lean Higher Education (LHE) enables the public universities in Morocco (management) to better prepare for change by reducing resistance to change to create a favorable climate to implement LHE. Originality/value The majority of research works to date focus on implementation of LHE without giving interest to the preparation of the organizational change, this last is very much requested to determine the driving and restraining forces in order to reduce the resistance to change that is the main reason of failure of many change programs. This paper attempts to determinate the factors of resistance to change which allows to the public universities in Morocco to overcome them before moving to the changing stage.

Discomfort and organizational change as a part of becoming a world-class university

“…The second stage, “moving,” is the implementation of change after preparing the organization through learning, support and communication (Paquibut and Al Naamany, 2019). The “refreezing” stage requires stabilizing and maintaining the change, when people start working using new ways and accept the change (Allaoui and Benmoussa, 2020).…”

Pandemic's effect on the relationship between lean implementation and service performance

“…Analogously to the original concept of lean manufacturing, lean service seeks to systematically reduce waste and improve quality throughout the whole value stream of service organizations (Suarez-Barraza et al, 2012;Hadid and Mansouri, 2014). Evidence of lean implementation in services is prolific, with organizational contexts that vary from restaurants (Keyser et al, 2017;Alles et al, 2018) and educational institutions (Balzer et al, 2015;Allaoui and Benmoussa, 2020) to hospitals (Waring and Bishop, 2010;Borges et al, 2020) and banks (Oppenheim and Felbur, 2014;Bakri, 2019). In general, those authors conclude that lean services implementation positively impacts organizations' performance, enabling more flexible and effective operations oriented to customers' needs.…”

The Role of TQM Approach in Indonesia Higher Education Quality Assurance

“…When this approach is applied in the world of education, several management theories are borrowed here to make adjustments [33]. Based on the above studies, the authors provide an overview of the application of TQM in tertiary institutions as follows: TQM is an approach that includes customer satisfaction, continuous improvement, shared commitment, and quality control to implement quality management in higher education [34], [35]. To implement these things, a university needs to carry out self-evaluation of internal quality audits that are based on standardization of external quality audits [16], [36].…”