REALIZING THE VIRTUAL UNIVERSITY CONCEPT:
The ADEC Case

By:	Dr. Terry Gibson, University of Wisconsin
	Dr. Janet Poley,ADEC

February 03, 1997

I. Introduction

II. The ADEC Mission

• food and agriculture
• natural resources and environment
• nutrition and health
• children, youth and families
• community and economic development

III. ADEC History

• A. Startup
  • LESSON ONE: The organization created by bringing these institutions together for a common purpose was more important than the purpose that brought the organizations together in the first place.

• B. Legal Structure
  • LESSON TWO: A solid, legal framework is essential for any virtual organization to succeed, but the legal framework alone is not adequate. Trust among colleagues and appropriate collaborative work tools are essential. Organizational structures can help foster cooperation and collaboration or they can hinder these forces. Strong interpersonal networks are the coundation for trust development.

• C. Management and Money
  • LESSON THREE: Stovepipe organizational structures and unclear management and financial systems can destroy any potential for progress toward cooperation and collaboration. There are natural tendencies in consortial efforts toward competition as well as cooperation - this can be healthy, particularly with respect to a push toward diversity and quality of ideas, programs, over-sight. Balancing cooperative and competitive forces is an art.

• D. Out of the Ashes
  • LESSON FOUR: Never intertwine the finances of one organization with another on-going organization without absolutely clear processes, procedures and full over-sight. Just like marriages, most attempts at collaboration fail over poor financial management and lack of full disclosure than lack of "sexy" program opportunities and delivery.

  • LESSON FIVE: Never have done outside the organization what might be done inside the organization. Development theory is clear that collaboration and teamwork are greatly stimulated by cross functional teams. ADEC abolished the stovepipe councils and put in place its Strategic Program Panel. This group was carefully picked to bring the "best people" with diverse interests and backgrounds to the table to work on creating an ADEC teaching and learning infrastructure. Unhealthy competition has been minimized. The talents of many caring and committed individuals from across the U.S. and around the world create virtual organization energy and enthusiasm.

  • LESSON SIX: Never hire attorneys to do jobs that you don't ask them for. Organizations need excellent legal and financial advice and should get it. Many law firms are focused primarily on billable hours and will do a variety of tasks for organizations that have nothing to do with the law. Ag*SAT, now ADEC, nearly folded because of huge legal and consulting bills that saddled the organization with a deficit in 1994 and very nearly caused the organization's death. Caring, commitment, energy and enthusiasm of talented people are the organizational engine.

  • LESSON SEVEN: Never be afraid to say, "whoops, it's time to start over." ADEC would not exist today if the Board of Directors and land grant university leadership had decided to call it quits. A key point here is that a strong history of collaboration across organization and state lines made it possible to say, "let's begin again."

• E. A New Start
  • LESSON EIGHT: Commonly agreed upon vision, mission and goals are essential for cooperative, collaborative work in a virtual organization. The Future's Summit saved Ag*SAT and put it in a position to be turned right side up and come back to be a national/international leader in distance education. While there were dark and foggy nights ahead for the consortium, slowly more of the individuals and sub-groups within the organization began to believe that the vision was important - that the mission could be accomplished and it was worth fighting for.

IV. Real Virtual Organizations Must Avoid Center-Periphery Trap

• LESSON NINE: Always collaborate to create work tools and commonly agreed upon systems and processes. Tools such as Internet access, audio and video conferencing and even snail mail when systematically applied in sequences and routines can result in greater ownership, improved peoblem solving and creation (more great minds) and practical and realistic management.

V. ADEC Processes, Routines and Shared Product Creation

VI. ADEC Today and Tomorrow

• LESSON TEN: Solid organizations are not built in a day and quality analysis for action is essential. The development model ADEC has found useful builds on the following four key areas defined by Chambers and other development practitioners:
  • A. Costs and Choices
    • According to Chambers questions of costs and choices are basic to practical thinking about action. Too often the cost side of decision making is poorly analyzed and the ones considered are often only the financial ones. Frequently far more important and less well recognized are costs in staff time and administrative capacity. Opportunity costs are not adequately analyzed. People think about alternative use of funds, but too rarely about alternative use of staff. The point here is that Virtual Organizations have to make choices - not all fronts can be attacked at once. Also organizations have no possibility of succeeding with lots of fuzz - i.e. let's communicate better - coordinate more - integrate functions. Practically, and ADEC movers are largely practical rural types, to do this requires making hard detailed choices of who should do what, when and how.

      Fuzzy choices and poor management can blunt action and demoralize any organization, not just a virtual one. A clear sense of strategy and sequencing most important things to do appropriately are essential.

  • B. Causes and Constraints
    • Analysis of strengths and weaknesses - opportunities and challenges is essential for a virtual organization. It is also dangerous. Too often these analyses are shallow, focussed on one cause to the neglect of others, designed to set a framework for a particular solution or not conducted in systems fashion.

      ADEC has recently published a document called the "Ideal Report" as an attempt to frame cause and constraint analysis not as a deficiency model but rather in the context of what would be IDEAL. IDEAL stands for Ideal Distance Education Administrative Language and the intent is to work backwards from agreements in eight areas critical to the forward movement of the consortium including sticky topics like transfer of academic credit, relationships between four year institutions and community colleges, turf battles among distance education, cooperative extension, continuing education and public television programs and facilities, financial systems that are customer oriented, collaborative work tools for finance and management and establishing criteria for total quality management and quality programs.

  • C. Finding and Making Opportunities
    • Much analysis is problem oriented. The danger here is the potential to reinforce negative social science. ADEC is finding that just as in development discovering opportunities means paying attention to "timing" and "irreversibility". Chambers says "the trick is to analyze the processes of change and to see what branches a system is reaching and what pushes can be applied at what time. Timing, timing, timing - just like location, location, location - is essential when new resources, news technologies and new activities - such as the Virtual University - are being introduced. Frequently the search for opportunities generates an agenda for action. Crisis and problems -like the earlier ADEC melt-down - generate the seeds of creativity.

  • D. Pollitical Feasibillity
    • Over and over development programs of all types fail because of inadequate attention to this dimension. It is critical to constantly determine - who wins and who loses. Whether one is talking about the rural poor or the "poorer" educational institutions (less well endowed, less well known, etc.) the rich and powerful rarely fail to act against their interests. This political dimension is not limited to institutions, but includes individual faculty members, departments, administrative structures created for a purpose at one time and now seeking to maintain. Realistically gaining and losing has a dimension of timing and are dynamic. A gain today might be the lose of tomorrow. Virtual university negotiations are a lot like NAFTA and organizations like ADEC that understand trace can work on this premise. At all levels within a virtual organization like ADEC the intent is to seek gain/gain situations and to create the type of synergy that will result in a sum greater than the parts. New technological tools are making regular ongoing collaboration - many to many - possible. Without many involved in the deliberations there is no possibility for identifying the real mutual gainers.

Reference:

1. Chambers, Robert. 1983. Rural Development: Putting the Last First.
Longman, Inc.: Essex, England.