246
H. Avery and B. Nordén
sharing, engagement and teamwork, and enables HEIs to become learning organisations that are open to creativity (Cooke 1987; Pahl-Wostl 2009; Baker-Shelley et al.
2017).
In the current system, funding is earmarked mainly for educational programmes
and research projects that do not have sustainability at their core, or which may
contribute to global injustice and environmental threats. As academics and academic
institutions, we can and should collectively lobby to change such policies. In the
meantime, we still have options for action. Existing courses can be restructured to
prioritise the ethics and crosscutting competences that are fundamental to sustainability, reading lists and cases can be selected to address actual challenges, and joint
courses can be built into programmes to enable collaborative work and transdisciplinary understanding (see the Roskilde model, Andersen and Kjeldsen 2015). Similarly, research projects can be clustered to enable collaboration in directions that are
relevant for sustainability transitions, departmental accounting and performance evaluation can be geared to disincentivise competition, while longer-term investments
and recruitment can be primarily oriented towards key issues for sustainability.
7 Why Do We Need Agile Learning Organisations
in Higher Education?
In times of rapid change, institutions alone do not provide a sufficient basis for the
trust that enables people to participate in emerging processes, since the stabilising
effect of routinised behaviour can interfere with the need to develop new practices
(Power 1997; Shore and Wright 2000). Current discussions that phrase these issues
in terms of resilience instead stress the significance of a strong social fabric and
interpersonal relations (Berkes 2007; Sriskandarajah et al. 2010). Interpersonal relations also play a key role in agility in orienting the development of knowledge and
competences in new directions (cf. Miller et al. 2011). This is because knowledge and
know-how in contemporary societies have become progressively more “opaque” due
to strong specialisation and divisions of labour. Opaqueness includes not only knowledge as a product, but also the instruments, methodologies and structural drivers that
underlie knowledge construction. Institutions, therefore, come to mediate relations
and communication between professions and between different segments of society.
While this regime of work organisation can function as long as changes are slow and
incremental, it is subject to collapse if changes accelerate.
In times of rapid and unpredictable change, individuals who can play the role of
knowledge brokers and mediate between contexts come to have an increasingly
strategic function. Formalised communication becomes increasingly inadequate,
since formalised systems are geared to address past conditions rather than current
and emerging challenges. At the same time, the need for crosscutting communication increases within, between and beyond HEIs to coordinate new responses to new
situations. Brokering carried out by human beings is thus needed across contexts, but
H. Avery and B. Nordén
sharing, engagement and teamwork, and enables HEIs to become learning organisations that are open to creativity (Cooke 1987; Pahl-Wostl 2009; Baker-Shelley et al.
2017).
In the current system, funding is earmarked mainly for educational programmes
and research projects that do not have sustainability at their core, or which may
contribute to global injustice and environmental threats. As academics and academic
institutions, we can and should collectively lobby to change such policies. In the
meantime, we still have options for action. Existing courses can be restructured to
prioritise the ethics and crosscutting competences that are fundamental to sustainability, reading lists and cases can be selected to address actual challenges, and joint
courses can be built into programmes to enable collaborative work and transdisciplinary understanding (see the Roskilde model, Andersen and Kjeldsen 2015). Similarly, research projects can be clustered to enable collaboration in directions that are
relevant for sustainability transitions, departmental accounting and performance evaluation can be geared to disincentivise competition, while longer-term investments
and recruitment can be primarily oriented towards key issues for sustainability.
7 Why Do We Need Agile Learning Organisations
in Higher Education?
In times of rapid change, institutions alone do not provide a sufficient basis for the
trust that enables people to participate in emerging processes, since the stabilising
effect of routinised behaviour can interfere with the need to develop new practices
(Power 1997; Shore and Wright 2000). Current discussions that phrase these issues
in terms of resilience instead stress the significance of a strong social fabric and
interpersonal relations (Berkes 2007; Sriskandarajah et al. 2010). Interpersonal relations also play a key role in agility in orienting the development of knowledge and
competences in new directions (cf. Miller et al. 2011). This is because knowledge and
know-how in contemporary societies have become progressively more “opaque” due
to strong specialisation and divisions of labour. Opaqueness includes not only knowledge as a product, but also the instruments, methodologies and structural drivers that
underlie knowledge construction. Institutions, therefore, come to mediate relations
and communication between professions and between different segments of society.
While this regime of work organisation can function as long as changes are slow and
incremental, it is subject to collapse if changes accelerate.
In times of rapid and unpredictable change, individuals who can play the role of
knowledge brokers and mediate between contexts come to have an increasingly
strategic function. Formalised communication becomes increasingly inadequate,
since formalised systems are geared to address past conditions rather than current
and emerging challenges. At the same time, the need for crosscutting communication increases within, between and beyond HEIs to coordinate new responses to new
situations. Brokering carried out by human beings is thus needed across contexts, but