Engaging Design Thinking in Professional Bureaucracies: Improving Equity for Non-Tenure Track Faculty in Higher Education

Higher education faces a number of wicked problems, including the inequitable work environment for non-tenure-track faculty (NTTF), that require innovative solutions. This study examines the potential of liberatory design thinking for creating new policies, programs, and practices in higher education, including how the professional bureaucratic environment might shape the design process. Using data from three campuses where changes related to NTTF were successfully implemented, we extend the conceptualization of design thinking toward a model that adapts existing phases of design thinking and identifies new phases where the work of design is particularly influenced by the higher education context. We identify three dimensions that particularly contribute to these differences: politics and power in professional bureaucracies, structural and cultural constraints, and centering equity. This model has practical implications for supporting equity-minded change processes in higher education and may be of particular interest to policymakers, institutional leaders, design teams, and researchers.