Management as Visionary Planning for Dealing with Systemic Change : A Case of Malaysian Open Distance Learning Institution

Vision has been described as a major element in leadership and strategic planning for all organizations including education. Moreover, planning vision has been assumed as the leader’s key task and responsibility. In managing the change process, working on vision not only means examining and re-examining the strategic planning for the organization but also making explicit to management the purpose for the change. Therefore, the importance of the vision and planning would be more essential when an organization is undergoing systemic changes. This paper is the result of a PhD research study. The purpose of this paper is to examine vision as one of the main components of systemic change management strategies for implementing e-learning innovation in an Open-Distance Learning (ODL) organization with management functions including planning, organizing, guiding, and monitoring. From the data analysis it was found that in the context of technology-based change or systemic change that affects all the levels and aspects of the organization, vision and strategic planning play as the two key prerequisites for the success of the change. The results of in-depth analysis of “vision” as the main theme of this study are presented in this paper