Sketching innovative goals to integrate accreditation standards in higher education institutions through socio-economic approach to management

Abstract

The high degree of instability in Higher Education Institutions (HEI) is similar to a storm that can change life in an instant. HEI courage must be as powerful as change at its most fierce. HEI for the past years have been facing various competitive challenges such as the accreditation requirements. To adapt to the fast changes in the dynamic educational environment HEI should have the ambiguity to be different to rewrite their stories and to retune their best performance into an excellent and sustainable one. To grow faster than the competition, universities must link their identity with the day to day activities and nurture their lexicon among their actors to reduce the gap of knowledge by focusing on the human potential. Each University has its glow and charm, but it needs to look better into its hidden cost, to cure itself of the TFW virus, and to balance between the short term and long-term objectives. The research by intervening at a private University in the Kingdom of Bahrain aims to align between the accreditation requirements and the integral quality of education through attaining a flexible assessment practice in order to balance between its external and internal environment. The research will demonstrate that through the socio-economic approach to management (SEAM) three axes: tools, the process of improvement, and strategic decisions the University will become agile to change, will increase intangible schemes and will be able to design based on its capabilities an integrated quality and sustainable growth. (Worley, Zardet, Bonnet, Savall, 2015) The SEAM sparkles will translate the University strategy and the actors voices into a living story that will be reshaped and evolved to achieve higher sustainability and performance. The "Qualimetrics" approach, combining financial, qualitative and quantitative, will reveal the strategic aspects within the University. (Savall et al., 2000-2008) The implementation of SEAM at University B will illustrate on various findings. First, HEI can respond to external factors without losing their identity. Second, involving employees in integrating the accreditation standards in their daily activities will lead to a higher sustainability. Third, HEI "actors" must be willing to embrace new skills and be adequate to the application of the new emerging platform in their daily activities. Thus, each University must discover its glow by looking into its hidden cost and being innovative. The findings indicate that the organization learning is not limited to handling information, it engages in translating knowledge by decoding actions and behaviors. (Fiol & Lyles, 1985) The intervention will take University B across the complex landscape of HEI to the blessings that arise from transforming hidden cost into added value.