Why Innovation Fails

By A. Levine

Paperback : 9780873954211, 224 pages, June 1980
Hardcover : 9780873954129, 224 pages, June 1980

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Table of contents

Preface

PART ONE. QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS ABOUT INNOVATION

1. Innovation and Failure: Some Questions
2. Organizations and Innovations: Some Answers

PART TWO. A STUDY OF FOURTEEN INNOVATIONS

3. The Colleges: From Creation to Institutionalization
4. The Colleges: Continuing Institutionalization

PART THREE. CONCLUSIONS

5. How and Why Innovation Fails
6. Implications: A Literature Review

Appendix A. Methodological Note
Appendix B. A Synthesis of Theories on Planned Change

Bibliography
Index

Description

We know a lot about innovation in education—when it occurs, what forms it takes, or what steps it involves. But we don't know why it fails or succeeds. Arthur Levine's goal in writing this book was to understand how change can be accomplished successfully. His focus is on what happens after a change has been adopted.

Levine first offers a theory about change in organizations, based on the personality of the organization. He then examines his theory of change in a detailed study of fourteen structurally similar innovations in the experimental colleges at the State University of New York at Buffalo. He concludes with a review of other studies of universities as organizations in general, integrating his theory with other research on innovation in organizations.

Arthur Levine is a Senior Fellow at the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. He is also the author of three books on undergraduate education, particularly the changes on the late 1960s and early 1970s.