A study of the relationship between institutional policy, organisational culture and e-learning use in four South African universities

This is the author's version of a work that was accepted for publication of the article: A study of the relationship between institutional policy, organisational culture and e-learning use in four South African universities. Changes resulting from the publishing process, such as peer review, editing, corrections, structural formatting, and other quality control mechanisms may not be reflected in this document. Changes may have been made to this work since it was submitted for publication. A definitive version was subsequently published in Computers & Education, VOL5 3, 2009, DOI 10.1016/j.compedu.2009.01.006.
This article investigates the relationship between policy (conceptualised as goals, values and resources), organisational culture and elearning use. Through both qualitative and quantitative research methods, we gathered data about staff and student perspectives from four diverse South African universities representing a selection of ICT in education policy types (Structured and Unstructured) and organisational cultural types of ""collegium, bureaucracy, corporate and enterprise"" (McNay 1995). While our findings show a clear relationship between policy and use of ICTs for teaching and learning, organisational culture is found crucial to policy mediation and the way that elearning use is embedded within the organisation. We conclude that although a Structured Corporate institutional type enables the attainment of a ""critical mass""within e-learning, Unstructured Collegium institutions are better at fostering innovation. Unstructured Bureaucratic institutions are the least enabling of either top-down or bottom-up elearning change.