Title: Adapting appreciative inquiry for agile higher education institute

Authors: Nikhil Kewalkrishna Mehta; Karuna Jain

Addresses: National Institute of Industrial Engineering NITIE, Mumbai, India ' National Institute of Industrial Engineering NITIE, Mumbai, India

Abstract: With increasing global and competitive pressure, Indian higher education institutions need to take initiatives to revamp themselves into organisations that have performance-oriented work and an agile culture. This study presents how one of the higher education institutes in India has initiated its journey towards agility. The appreciative inquiry was undertaken to initiate its journey of being agile. The study uses grounded theory to explore positive core life-giving strengths and skits performed to identify dreams of the faculty members. Underlining principles of projective test skits were analysed to set the norms for organisational agility. The study presents how members of the organisation have aligned themselves in the endeavours of value capture, value creation and value protection to deliver their performance on various fronts such as academic and research excellence, quality assurance of processes, capacity building, infrastructure, and global reachability and collaboration. The study holds immense social and practical implications.

Keywords: appreciative inquiry; agility; India; higher education; performance.

DOI: 10.1504/IJBEX.2025.144523

International Journal of Business Excellence, 2025 Vol.35 No.1, pp.1 - 26

Received: 30 Jan 2019
Accepted: 24 Jul 2019
Published online: 18 Feb 2025 *

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