Staff Readiness for Electronic Management of University Students’ Academic Records: An Africa International University Assessment

This book explores the concept of change readiness in the context of adoption of an electronic system of managing student academic records in a university. Successful change management requires an interaction between the change drivers and the change recipients throughout the change process. Change readiness for change implementers is often ignored which may result to change failure requiring the need for ownership before change implementation, during implementation and after change adoption.

The current case utilizes an evaluation model to establish the level of readiness by staff members who would be key change recipients to implement the new Student Information System (SIS). Based on best practice, five key indicators of change readiness were evaluated in the context of the institution under study. The findings showed that staff had a positive attitude towards the role of a SIS but there was need to attend to the other indicators of readiness such as communication of the leadership vision and strategy for management of student academic records, the skill levels required for change implementation, technological climate in the institution and perceived leadership support. A successful change implementation therefore depended on the leadership’s capacity to inform, motivate and empower staff for adoption of the SIS.