Exploring How Policy Integration Facilitates Change Implementation At A Midsize Public Research University: A Case Study

Most higher education institutions in the United States are bound to the triad’s regulations, but their methods for integrating external policies with internal ones are unstudied. Employing a single-case, embedded design, this qualitative study centers on a midsize public, research institution in the eastern United States to explore how one higher education institution navigated its policy environment. I proposed three questions, focusing on how academic units (AUs) and support units (SUs) worked together, how they integrated internal and external policies, and how participants experienced institutional change processes. Three frameworks guided this study: colleges and universities as systems, top-down and bottom-up implementation, and the processual policy (dis)integration framework. I used the latter to understand how AUs and SUs collaborated and integrated policies. AU and SU stakeholders formed three key partnerships (AU-AU, SU-SU, and AU-SU), which they relied on to work together. Within these partnerships, participants used various policy instruments to fuel change processes and protect boundaries between AUs and SUs. Engagement in institutional change processes was an enlightening introduction for stakeholders new to institutional change—who were usually AU representatives—and an opportunity for veterans to expand their knowledge about external expectations and higher education trends. The substantive change policy partnerships established the infrastructure of policy integration. Colleges and universities seeking to develop or reboot their institutional change policies should focus on who is involved in changes, how they work together, and the inherent role of these policy actors both within the units they represent and within the institution at large.