COVID-19 and Online Teaching and Learning at HEIs: Proposing Additional Research from Institutional Work Perspective

The purpose of this study is to highlight and call for more research into whether higher education institutions (HEIs) senior management teams are positioned as empowered leaders of change to coercively as well as persuasively implement an alternative online teaching and learning platform, disrupting existing institutions for the benefit of its major stakeholder, students amidst COVID-19. This study used a qualitative meta-analysis method to combine previous qualitative studies to develop deeper meaning through an interpretive process, signalling that more research in this area is required. We argue that the senior management teams in HEIs are influential actors and change agents and have the potential to significantly contribute to institutional work. In addition, we discovered that institutional entrepreneurship has limited research in the study of HEIs and depicts the opportunity to explore the concept of agency and institutional work in the context of HEIs. This study makes a good impression and emphasises the need for future research, particularly on senior management teams at HEIs, to reflect their institutional work in the formation of institutional changes witnessed in the HEIs virtual classroom platform.