ABSTRACT
In today's higher education organizations, leadership is dominated by an environment of change, complexity, and uncertainty. According to organizational change researchers and theorists, higher education is faced with increasing challenges from external stakeholders and constituents to transform academic institutions to be more efficient, more nimble, and more attentive to the changing needs of those they serve. The process of engaging effective organizational change is not a sprint; it is more like a marathon. Enacting change takes time and requires a great deal of preparation and attention for it to be effective and result in lasting change. While senior student affairs officers’ (SSAOs) identify themselves as change agents, their understandings of and approaches to change were fairly traditional, incremental, and not particularly systematical in nature. The SSAOs spoke very little about how they dealt with resistance to change or how they encouraged the adoption of change beyond engaging staff members in the idea and planning process.
