HYPOTHESIS AND THEORY article
Front. Educ.
Sec. Higher Education
Volume 10 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/feduc.2025.1690451
This article is part of the Research TopicReimagining Higher Education: Responding Proactively to 21st Century Global ShiftsView all 23 articles
Transforming Organisational Culture in Higher Education: A Strategic Change Management Case Study for Higher Learning Institutions Using the IRACE Framework
Provisionally accepted
- University of South Africa, Pretoria, South Africa
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Higher education institutions (HEIs) worldwide face mounting pressures to transform their organisational cultures in response to the Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR), socio-political imperatives, and evolving expectations from diverse stakeholders. This transformation process is especially critical in African contexts, where universities must simultaneously pursue global competitiveness and address historical inequities through decolonisation, Africanisation, and inclusive governance. This paper presents the IRACE Framework: Initiate, Reflect, Act, Consolidate, Evaluate, as a strategically aligned and context-sensitive model for cultural transformation in HEIs. By synthesising established change management models (Lewin's Three-Step Model, Kotter's Eight-Step Model, Prosci's ADKAR, the PREXSU model, and the TIPS™ Managerial Leadership Framework) with governance principles from King IV, the IRACE Framework integrates human and systemic dimensions of change. The University of South Africa (UNISA) serves as the focal case to illustrate the framework's design and application, providing insight into stakeholder engagement, governance alignment, and the embedding of transformation in institutional priorities. Findings indicate that successful culture transformation in HEIs requires structured yet adaptive processes, participatory design, robust governance integration, and capacity building. The paper concludes with recommendations for HEI leaders, policy-makers, and researchers seeking sustainable and ethically grounded change strategies.
Keywords: organisational culture, Change Management, higher education, IRACE Framework, governance
Received: 21 Aug 2025; Accepted: 03 Oct 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Twabu. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Khanyisile Yanela Twabu, mayekky@unisa.ac.za
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