Organizational Culture and Educational Innovations in Turkish Higher Education: Perceptions and Reactions of Students

Abstract

With the enormous scientific and technological developments, higher education institutions are facing rapid structural, social, technological changes. Because they are considered as an important center of talent development and knowledge production and sharing for countries. To fulfill their educational, social and economic needs, higher education institutions need to respond to changing education needs, to adopt the more flexible modes of organizational culture. Organizational culture is a promotive environment which influences values, assumptions and beliefs. In an innovative culture, people can easily develop new ideas and exhibit collaboration. Therefore, this paper examines the relationship between the organizational culture features and the perceptions and student reported implementation with regard to student-centered learning, collaborative learning and use of innovative educational technologies in Turkish higher education. Four universities were involved, and 894 students responded to a questionnaire comprising three groups of questions. The three groups of questions capture (i) demographic characteristics, (ii) student perceptions of organizational culture, (iii) students’ perceptions of and responses to educational innovations comprising the following scales in a survey study. The results show that features of organizational culture affect students’ perceived need for innovation, their views about innovative approaches to instruction, responsiveness to instructional innovations and the perceived implementation level of educational innovations. In addition, differences among the institutions were examined and discussed. The study concludes that hierarchical structure, lack of open communication and autonomy, workload, lack of financial resources and support are main barriers for educational innovations in Turkish universities. It also implies to understand the link between organizational culture and educational innovations in Turkish higher education context.