Changes in Higher Education and Well-being of Academic Employees: Storylines from Higher Education Academic Employees in Ghana

Abstract

Over the past two decades, the higher education sector in Ghana has undergone many reforms ranging from deregulation and financial sustainability to massive investments in infrastructure. These reforms are aimed at addressing diversity in schools, promoting inclusive learning and increasing access to quality tertiary education. The reforms required changes in job skills, job conversions, modes of teaching and learning, self-consciousness and staff re-locations with probable consequent effect on the well-being of employees. However, these reforms failed to adequately account for employee well-being issues. Hence personal changes and support schemes to help employees keep pace with the changes have received little attention. We investigated these phenomena in public universities to understand the well-being shifts during the reforms from the storylines of higher education academic employees. The study adopted a qualitative research design using laddering interview technique grounded in the personal change theory to solicit stories from 19 academic employees who have lived across the reforms. Interpretative Phenomenology Approach (IPA) of data analyses was used to analyse the experiences of academic employees. The study provides personal stories reflected in real-life experiences and hinged on the eudemonic theory within a developing country context. The study discovered that leadership, personal mindset shifts and political interference constitute a Change-Effect Model that shapes the well-being of academic employees during the period of organisational reforms. The findings provide a new dimension to organisational reforms and employee well-being and consider from a critical viewpoint how a change-effect model can be applied in change management process to support employee well-being in locally appropriate and effective ways.