case study 7.1

CASE STUDY 7.1: CAN YOU SUCCEED WITHOUT POWER? Scoria is a company that helps provide colleges and universities with the tools needed to offer degree programs online. The firm's basie package provides services like the learning management system (LMS), tech support for the system, and online application management. However, it also offers packages with marketing, recruitment spe- cialists, student services specialists and at-risk stu- dent support, course-building assistance, textbook and materials management, and human resource services for adjunct instructors. Depending on the services a university chooses, Scoria charges 30% to 80% of the revenues the university makes from each online student Scoria recently entered a partnership with Daily Unii versity, a well-known private university in the south eastern United States. Daily wants to offer its MBA, Master of Education, and Master of Professional Studies degrees online. The reason driving this deci sion is that there are many students in the state's rural areas that want to earn a degree but live more than 60 miles from the campus and are not able to make the drive after work each night or do not want to give up their weekends in all-day intensive sessions. Daily decides to use the learning management and online teaching tools, course-building services, student recruitment and admission services, and textbook and materials management services. The contract is drawn up, and it is agreed that Scoria will receive 50% of the revenues generated from the students in the online program However, now that the contract is signed a number of issues are arising that are causing Daily University and its faculty problems. Academic regulatory agen- cies require that courses be developed and taught by individuals with proper degree credentials. So in this partnership, Daily faculty develop the course content and send it to the team at Scoria that build the course in the LMS. Once the courses are built, Scoria does not allow changes to be made for causes like poor student feedback or changing book editions. So, the faculty have the authority to develop their courses but lack the ability to make interesting changes to the courses based on what they think is happening. This really bothers one faculty member, Dr. Kelly , who wants to pull in different current articles each week when she is teaching the course. However, she can- not do so, and Scoria is not willing to find a way to work around the current system to find a solution that would benefit both the faculty and students. Several other faculty members share Dr. Kelly's desire. Daily University personnel are not the only ones having a hard time in this partnership. Scoria is pro- viding recruitment and admission services for Daily by ensuring students have a complete application, including any test scores, before sending an applica- tion to Daily's admission office. This is a benefit to Daily because it is only processing complete applica- tions. However, to the employees at Scoria who are working as admissions specialists, the process of appli- cation review by Daily is too long and frustrating for Discussion Questions 1. Identify the different power issues going on in the case. What types of power do the different parties have? Explain. 2. How are individuals reacting to their power or lack thereof? students and Scoria staff. The current process is for the admissions team to review the application mate- rials and transfer them to Daily's system. The system then licks the application to the dean of the programm the applicant has applied to for review. As deans are busy people, this can take a few days, if not a week. To further bog down the process, Scoria has forbidden the deans from contacting applicants or their refer- ences, and so the deans don't have a way to get clari- fication for any questions arising from the materials. Thus, on borderline or questionable applications, it can take the deans extra time to consider and make a decision regarding a candidate. However, Scoria's employees feel that Daily should be able to make a decision within 48 hours and constantly are asking for updates Finally, Daily's IT department is having issues in the partnership as well. Scoria and Daily use different sys- tems that don't interface with each other. The admin- istrators have been discussing options for solving the problem, such as adding new lines of code that should help one system drop data into the other system, hav- ing Daily upgrade and change its systems, having Sco- ria provide staff that enters the data into Daily's system using remote access and Daily's software licenses, and hiring more staff on Daily's end to enter the data from Scoria. However, none of the solutions is that ideal to either party, and so the IT administrators are looking to the provost of Daily and the vice president at Scoria to come up with an amicable solution So far, this partnership is off to a rocky start, but it is early in the relationship and there is hope that the relationship can be saved. What types of influence techniques could be used to help in any of these situations to reach commitment by both parties. Identify and justify at least three