Running head: ORGANIZATIONAL ANALYSIS 1

Organizational Analysis

Eden Driscoll

Western Illinois University

Organizational Analysis

Although my practicum was divided between the Office of Study Abroad and Outreach

(OSAO) and the Bachelor’s of General Studies Office, I will be concentrating my analysis solely

on the OSAO for the sake of this paper. The office has been constantly struggling to recruit

more study abroad participants, which is the situation I will be investigating using three lenses.

The lenses that I have seen most powerfully throughout my practicum experience in the OSAO

are organizations as organisms, cultures, and political systems.

Providing Context

According to the homepage of the OSAO’s website, their mission is to allow “​students

to complement and enhance their classroom instruction by experiencing the culture and

language of a host country.” There is a total of five professional staff, one part-time

graduate assistant, and one other practicum student in the office besides myself. Among

the professional staff, they have one advisor for faculty-led programs and another for all

other program types. The office also does some institutional outreach, which is

coordinated by another staff member. The chief receptionist does walk-in advising and

plays a large role in marketing. Pedro is the director; he oversees everything and acts as

the liaison between the office and the rest of the university. The graduate assistant is

overhauling and improving the study abroad website, while the other practicum student is

in charge of revamping the peer ambassador program.

The office and its functions are funded through a variety of ways. Administrative

costs and staff salaries are covered by the departmental budget from central

administration. The only money for marketing is earned from fees third-party providers

pay to participate in the study abroad fairs. The office has two donor-funded scholarships

that they offer students; they also have an additional six scholarships per semester, six

hundred dollars each, that are funded by community trips that the office organizes.

The OSAO offers programs in over 60 countries. Two-thirds of Western Illinois

University (WIU) students studying abroad choose short faculty-led programs. The

remaining third decides to go abroad through exchange, affiliate, or direct programs for

either a semester or entire year. Exchange programs allow students to pay roughly the

same amount for a semester abroad as they would for a semester at WIU because of the

agreements the office has in place with their exchange partners. Affiliate programs are

usually more expensive since they are arranged through a third-party provider, but they

do offer a greater range of programs in almost any country and for any field of study.

Direct programs allow students to enroll directly in a foreign institution of higher

education.

Despite all of these options, the office only sends approximately 100 students

abroad each year. Although this has moderately increased from the amount they were

sending a few years ago, it still pales in comparison to other institutions. University of

Northern Iowa, for example, enrolls around the same number of students as WIU, but
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they send 400-500 students abroad annually. Southern Illinois, Northern Illinois, and

Illinois State all send more students overseas than WIU. Even Eastern Illinois sends

more students, and they have a smaller student body. The main purpose of my practicum

has been to study these institutions with the goal of discovering how to account for these

differences.

The OSAO as an Organism

Morgan (2006) draws a parallel between organizations and organisms because

both can be regarded as “living systems” that exist “in a wider environment on which

they depend for the satisfaction of various needs” (p. 33). He uses the term

‘open-system’ to illustrate how organizations are ‘open to’ and influenced by their

environments. I chose to include this lens because the impact of the greater WIU

environment on the OSAO is clearly visible, particularly in how the lack of support for

the office from upper administration limits the number of students going abroad. Several

OSAO staff members feel that the office has been shoved into a corner and forgotten by

higher officials. The university president, provost, or other vice presidents have never so

much as released a statement saying that study abroad is crucial to creating a global

campus, let alone initiated an institutional-wide campaign for greater study abroad

participation. Without this type of encouragement, it is difficult to convince faculty

members to incorporate study abroad into their curriculum. If the OSAO had more
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advocates among upper administration and the faculty, the office could reach and recruit

more students than what the five full-time staff can do by themselves.

The current Illinois budget crisis is also impacting the OSAO. The instability of

WIU’s financial situation has made it impossible for the office to be allocated more

money for scholarships and marketing efforts that could attract additional students. The

final environmental influence that I will mention is the composition of WIU’s student

body. Across the nation, study abroad participants are statistically most likely to be

Caucasian females. Therefore, the substantial percentage of historically underrepresented

students at WIU could partially explain why less WIU students go abroad in comparison

to other institutions where this population is smaller.

Another characteristic of this lens is contingency theory; organisms must adapt to

their environments in order to survive. Pedro constantly demands me to bring him

innovative ideas that will help the OSAO thrive. For example, the office is including

more underrepresented students in their marketing materials as well as attempting to form

closer partnerships with cultural centers in order to embrace this important part of WIU’s

environment. The office is also trying to adapt to current social media trends by creating

a Snapchat account.

However, this lens does not represent a completely accurate picture of the office.

The OSAO is also trying to change its surrounding environment rather than just adapt to

it. Part of my practicum was to research the benefits of study abroad to present to upper
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administration in the hope that their apathy would change to support. We are also trying

to find new ways of engaging faculty, such as conducting Study Abroad 101

presentations at new faculty orientation.

Finally, Morgan (2006) states that “individuals and groups...operate most

effectively only when their needs are satisfied” (p. 35). This lens emphasizes the

importance of treating employees as human beings with personal needs that must be met.

The OSAO does this well in the respect that there is a high level of comradery in the

office. Staff members care about each other’s lives outside of work and try to support

one another in whatever way they can, whether that be covering the front desk while

everyone else is out to lunch or going out for drinks after work to celebrate someone’s

birthday. However, the understaffing due to WIU’s financial cuts has caused

considerable stress on OSAO staff members since they all have to pick up extra work that

they cannot afford to hire someone else to do.

The OSAO as a Culture

Regarding organizations as cultures provides a slightly different interpretation of

the OASO’s situation. “Shared values, shared beliefs, shared meaning, shared

understanding, and shared sense making are all different ways of describing culture

(Morgan, 2006, p. 134). The apathy of the upper administration and faculty towards the

OASO could be considered a part of WIU’s culture rather than an aspect of its

environment. One could argue that staff and faculty across the institution share a
ORGANIZATIONAL ANALYSIS 7

common belief that study abroad is unessential to the WIU student experience.

According to this lens, the goal of the OASO would be to change the culture of WIU by

transforming study abroad into a shared institutional value. This would require a slightly

different approach to the situation than the organism lens. Morgan (2006) describes

culture as being an “ongoing, proactive process of reality construction” (p. 136). To

achieve cultural change, the office must reconstruct the institution’s reality instead of

merely adapting to its existing environment. This explains the discrepancy that I noted in

the previous section when some of the office’s actions seemed to focus on changing the

environment rather than adapting to it.

Another characteristic of this lens is corporate culture. Morgan (2006) explains

that “organizations are mini-societies that have their own distinctive patterns of culture

and subculture” (p. 125). The OASO itself has a very distinctive culture. The entire staff

shares the belief that if they know each other better as individuals, than they will work

more effectively as a team. They constantly talk about their personal lives while they

work. The staff members all agree that they are a family, and they treat one another

accordingly. Not only do they go out together regularly with their spouses and children,

they also feel free to disagree with one another. This ability to challenge one another

creates space for new ideas on how to recruit students.

Although the staff works together very well, one cultural shift I have suggested is

increasing the belief that constant marketing is necessary to the enhancement of the
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office. Right now, everyone is responsible for helping with marketing to a certain

degree. However, marketing efforts are usually pushed aside until the last minute before

a special event since all the staff is focused on other aspects of their jobs. In order to

reach more students, there needs to be a shared understanding throughout the office that

marketing is a critical component of everyone’s job description.

The OSAO as a Political System

The final lens I am using compares organizations to political systems. Morgan

explains politics as negotiating conflicting interests. Therefore, instead of adapting to the

environment or reconstructing culture, this lens suggests that the best way to approach

this situation would be to appeal to people’s interests. For example, the president

prioritizes recruiting international students over encouraging students to go abroad

because international students bring more revenue to the university. In order to prompt

him to start an institutional-wide campaign for study abroad, the OSAO would have to

convince him that increased study abroad participation would be in the best interests of

the university. To this end, I have been researching how study abroad has been shown to

increase student retention as well as academic and career success. The more students

retain, the more money the university makes; the more successful students are after they

graduate, the more potential donations WIU could receive. In the same way, the office is

trying to discover new ways to cater to the interests of the faculty. We are strategizing on
ORGANIZATIONAL ANALYSIS 9

how best to present information to faculty members so that they realize the potential of

study abroad in attracting more students to their respective fields.

Conflict is a key aspect of this lens and occurs whenever divergent interests

collide. I have witnessed political conflict several times throughout my practicum. For

example, Pedro is very transparent in his quest to make the OSAO a more powerful force

on campus, and some departments resent having his agenda pushed on them. I was first

made aware of this when Pedro urged me to meet with the provost in order to interview

her about how the OSAO contributed to campus and how it could improve. When I tried

to make an appointment with her via her secretary, the secretary pronounced the request

‘inappropriate’ upon hearing that it was Pedro’s idea. A less dramatic example of

conflicting interests would be when OSAO staff reach out to faculty to see if they can do

a classroom presentation on study abroad sometime during the semester. Oftentimes

professors will reject the request because they do not believe that the information would

be relevant to their course or that time should be taken away from the other course

material that they have to address.

Another important characteristic of this lens is the dynamics and sources of power.

According to Morgan (2006), “Power is the medium through which conflicts of interest

are ultimately resolved. Power influences who gets what, when, and how” (p. 166). The

reason why Pedro has emphasized garnering support from higher administration is

because they are the ones who control the decision-making processes about where the
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university’s scarce financial resources go. By being in positions of formal authority,

upper administrators have a great deal more power to create institutional-wide change

than the OSAO staff.

The environment and culture of the OSAO itself can also be analyzed through the

political lens. The freedom allowed in the office to speak freely and challenge each other

can be construed as democratic in nature. There is also little formal hierarchy since

Pedro has given the other staff members almost as much authority to make decisions as

he himself has. This egalitarian spirit has succeeded in encouraging the staff to work as a

closely-knit team.

Critical Evaluation

The ultimate goal of the office is to change the culture of the university so that

study abroad is valued and promoted throughout the entire institution. I do not believe

that this will be possible until the OSAO has the formal power of upper administration

supporting it. However, in order to obtain this support, the office has to prove that

investing in study abroad is in WIU’s best interests. I believe that to convince higher

officials to take the OSAO seriously, the office has to demonstrate its potential by doing

more with the resources it already has. In other words, the OSAO has to adapt and thrive

in its current environment before it can use the insights provided by the political lens

effectively.
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I would argue that there are several ways the OSAO can more effectively interact

with the greater WIU environment. To reach out to Western students who have a low

socio-economic status, the office could establish more exchange programs. These

programs are among the most affordable options because they cost approximately the

same as a semester at WIU and students’ financial aid can be applied. As mentioned

earlier, the office also needs to reach out to the multicultural students who compose a

substantial portion of the student body. This could be achieved by speaking at

multicultural student organization meetings, such as the Latin American Student

Organization and Black Student Association. The OSAO also needs to participate or

collaborate in events hosted by centers directly supporting these students like Casa Latina

and the Gwendolyn Brooks Cultural Center.

Student demographics are not the only type of environmental factor that the

OSAO should consider. There are free venues for marketing that have never been

utilized, such as the telescreens in residence halls. Efforts to keep in contact with study

abroad alumni after they graduate should be established, perhaps through a regular

newsletter. This may encourage them to donate to OSAO scholarships in the future. In

the meantime, the office should add a service requirement to existing scholarship criteria

so that students returning from overseas commit a certain amount of hours to peer

advising. Peer to peer interaction has been an effective recruiting tool for many study

abroad offices.
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Since all of my suggestions involve the OSAO taking advantage of its

environment, I would argue that the ‘organizations as organisms’ is the dominant lens.

Even if the office appeals to the interests of the upper administration as the political lens

suggests and wins their support, WIU’s environment, particularly the current budget

crisis, will determine how much and what form support for the office will come in.

Therefore, the political lens is still subservient to the organism lens in this analysis.

While the cultural lens provides another perspective from which to view the situation, it

is not used to guide any action steps.

In conclusion, this paper has given me the opportunity to see Morgan’s lenses in

action. While I had seen how they were reflected in my practicum throughout the

semester, I did not understand how they could be applied to guide practical decisions

until this analysis. I am looking forward to implementing some of these suggestions next

semester during my advanced practicum in the OSAO.

References

Morgan, G. (2006). ​Images of organization.​ Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, Inc.

Study Abroad. (n.d.). In ​Western Illinois University​. Retrieved April 25, 2017, from

http://www.wiu.edu/sao/study_abroad/