El cambio organizativo en las Instituciones de Educación Superior

The interest of the present research is the process of organizational change in Higher Education Institutions (HEI). Forces such as globalization and the development of information and communication technologies have permeated higher education and forced universities to face processes of change to respond to environment demands. Resources and capacities theory, institutional theory and population ecology have been selected to explain the process of change. Likewise, three models (Lewin, Greiner and Kotter), that correspond to a planned change, in phases and that recognizes the presence of revolutions and evolutions in the process. From the practical point of view, it is important to transcend the paradigm around academic management and to recognize that organizational theories have validity and application in institutions and that they demand a specific professional profile of their leaders. In this sense, it seeks to recognize the process of change in the HEIs of Colombia with programs active in the field of Physical Education, from the resistances and facilitators and, at the same time, contribute to the field from a proposal that serves as an orientation to managers, to carry out processes of change. It is a qualitative research, whose main purpose is descriptive, but also, because of the little explored of the subject in the field of knowledge of the physical education, fulfills an exploratory purpose. He sits on interpretivism, however, recognizes the complementarity of positivism and recur to it in a phase of study. It is composed of a theoretical analysis and two empirical studies. The theoretical analysis consists in a rigorous literature review that constitutes the theoretical support of the research and the basis for the development of empirical studies. The first empirical study is about design, validation and application of a questionnaire to HEI managers in order to identify the processes of change that they advance or have advanced and, from there, to select three cases that are analyzed in the second empirical study under multiple case studies methodology. Among the conclusions, we highlight the idiosyncrasy of the HEI and the training profile of its leaders, which can limit the processes of change, the pressures exerted by national and institutional government on HEIs, forcing the change, the degree of organizational inertia which must maintain HEIs to survive in the environment and the leader’s management capacity to achieve a successful change by reducing resistances and identifying facilitators. This research makes a contribution to the literature from the theme of organizational change in its relationship with higher education, it provides a validated instrument that could be applied in other studies and it presents a model of organizational change management and a training plan for HEI managers.