*2.2. Factors Influencing the Institutionalization Process*

The process of institutionalizing change involves the interaction of multiple factors at various levels of analysis and time frames (Buchanan et al. 2005). At the organizational macro-level, Cummings and Worley (2009), Goodman and Dean (1982), and Jacobs (2002) argued that organizational characteristics influence the institutionalization process. These authors specifically mentioned three dimensions: congruence, environmental and technological stability, and formal staff grouping and cohesion. Highly congruent interventions, stable organizational environments, and less rigid staff groupings promote the persistence of change interventions (Cummings and Worley 2009). According to Clausen and Kragh (2019), existing organizational structures can inhibit proper organizational change anchoring, while Alänge and Steiber (2009) argued that a strong and committed organizational governance (board) can support the change sustainability process by providing the required resources. The question is whether the identified organizational characteristics influence institutionalization processes in the same manner across different types of organizations. Do context-specific features such as ownership and managerial flexibility apply, for example, in the context of a university development cooperation? Universities have distinct organizational characteristics such as normative missions of preserving high academic standards and academic freedom (de Lange 2013; Patria 2012). These characteristics lead to structural and operational complexity, which limits change implementation (Brown 2012), and change

institutionalization may not be handled the same way as in other organizations (Patria 2012). Furthermore, when the intervention characteristics are aligned and congruent with the organizational characteristics, the institutionalization process is catalyzed (Cummings and Worley 2009; Jacobs 2002). The premise here is that because the projects are meant to accomplish specified organizational change outcomes, the enduring characteristics of the host organization should determine the characteristics of the project interventions designed to create the desired change in the organization.

As a result, we hypothesized that

**Hypothesis H1a.** *Organizational characteristics have a direct positive effect on the institutionalization process (IP).*

**Hypothesis H1b.** *Organizational characteristics (OC) are positively related to project characteristics (PC).*

According to Stouten et al. (2018), specific features of change interventions have the potential to influence change processes and outcomes, but these features are frequently overlooked in the literature that focuses on general behavioral constructs. Equally, Cummings and Worley (2009) and Goodman and Dean (1982) suggested that easily institutionalized interventions have novel characteristics such as goal specificity, programmability, the aim of targeting the whole organization, strong internal support systems, and a strong sponsor. Similarly, Tornatzky and Klein (1982) argued that interventions should: produce a relative advantage; be more compatible with an organization; be less complex; be less expensive; and allow for trial implementation. Clausen and Kragh (2019) supported the argument of specific goals and active sponsorship, arguing that upfront goal setting and implementation design for specific interventions should include active ownership and competent leadership, which enable intervention sustainability. In this context, we looked at the characteristics of development cooperation project interventions and how their outcomes can be institutionalized within a university setting. Development cooperation projects differ from non-international development projects in several ways, including their intangible and even conflicting objectives that are difficult to measure, and external funding (grant or aid financing), which creates multi-level principal–agent dynamics, resulting in unclear roles for both the project manager and project supervisor (Gajic and Palcic 2019; Tekinel 2013). Because of these distinctive characteristics of international development projects compared to non-international development projects, there has been calls for different management approaches (Munro and Ika 2020). From these characteristics, we hypothesized that

**Hypothesis 2.** *Project characteristics (PC) have a direct negative effect on the institutionalization process (IP).*

Fishbein and Ajzen (2011) defined beliefs as a person's subjective probable judgments of a relationship between an object and its related attribute, whereas Armenakis et al. (2007) defined a belief as an "opinion or a conviction about the truth of something that may not be readily obvious or subject to systematic verification". Simply, a belief is an individual's conception about a specific behavior or an object (Kin and Kareem 2016). Internal stakeholders experience project interventions in unique ways during implementation (Bouckenooghe 2010) and form beliefs about the project (Lines 2005). The beliefs formed determine the attitudes of stakeholders toward the project, which in turn determines whether stakeholders will be hostile or supportive of the project (Lines 2005). To sustain the changes, it is necessary to recognize the stakeholders' beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors, which, when reinforced, can develop into shared values, and build consensus towards the project (Buller and Mcevoy 1989), which serves as the foundation for change institutionalization. Rahn et al. (2020) summarized five change-related beliefs based on a model by Armenakis et al. (2007), including: (a) discrepancy, a belief that there is a need for change; (b) appropriateness, a belief that the change will be effective and that the right actions were chosen; (c) principal support, a belief that management will provide the required resources and be committed to the change; (d) efficacy, a belief that employees can perform the new tasks and duties the change will bring; and (e) valence, a belief that the change will bring positive outcomes for employees. According to Morin et al. (2016), the first three beliefs (a–c) are related to change management practices, whereas the last two beliefs (d–e) are conceptually related to affective commitment to change and psychological empowerment of change recipients. According to Armenakis et al. (1999), institutionalizing change within an organization necessitates crafting and continuously delivering a core message about the change intervention covering the five beliefs to the organization's members to build commitment to the intervention. As a result, we hypothesized that

**Hypothesis H3a.** *Change-related beliefs (BEL) of internal project stakeholders have a direct positive effect on the institutionalization process (IP).*

There is also strong support for the possibility of change-related beliefs mediating the relationship between project characteristics, organizational characteristics, and change institutionalization processes. Change commitment, as previously stated by Armenakis et al. (1999), is the foundation for the institutionalization of change. Other research has discovered a strong relationship between change-related beliefs and affective commitment to change (Antoni 2004; Morin et al. 2016) as well as change-positive emotions, change readiness, and change-supportive behaviors (Rafferty and Minbashian 2019). In their comprehensive review, Oreg et al. (2018) presented change beliefs as mediators between the change content (characteristics), the internal organizational context features, and change consequences, of which organizational commitment is part. We, therefore, hypothesized that

**Hypothesis H3b.** *Internal project stakeholders' change-related beliefs (BEL) will mediate the effect of project characteristics (PC) on the institutionalization process (IP).*

**Hypothesis H3c.** *Internal project stakeholders' change-related beliefs (BEL) will mediate the effect of organizational characteristics (OC) on the institutionalization process (IP).*

#### **3. Materials and Methods**

#### *3.1. Study Context and Sample*

Our research focused on universities in sub-Saharan Africa, with a Ugandan case study implementing development cooperation projects. Mountains of the Moon University (MMU), a community university at the time of this study (currently taken over by the government), is located in the relatively rural western region of the country. MMU, which was founded in 2005, operated between private and public institutions, putting it in a precarious operating position that meant the university attracted fewer students and had limited resources (both financial and human resources). Even though MMU did get some government support, it was always insufficient and inconsistent. To solve this financing constraint, the university leveraged its community focus to attract project funding from the Netherlands, Belgium, South Korea, Austria, Northern Ireland, the United Kingdom, the United States, and other funding agencies. As a consequence, the university's observable growth and development during the previous decade can indeed be attributable solely to development cooperation funds and project interventions. This unique context makes MMU an interesting case to study the organizational development and change outcomes of development cooperation projects. Context-specific approaches that ask "what actually takes place" are promoted by both academics and scholars in development cooperation projects (Ika and Hodgson 2014). This case study was therefore appropriately selected to study the complex processes of change institutionalization (Yin 2003) within the context of development cooperation projects. Similarly, Clausen and Kragh (2019) argued that the "best time to study the sustainability of change depends on the characteristics of the change initiatives being studied, and the researcher must determine timing on a case-by-case basis."

Since 2013, MMU has been implementing a broad-based development cooperation program with two project components: one focuses on wider community development outcomes through conducting research, community engagement, and extension services; the other focuses on institutional capacity strengthening with organizational-level outcomes in the areas of staff research capacity training, upgrading the ICT infrastructure, systems, and processes, developing a library information system, supporting the university access to library e-resources, developing an online learning management system, staff development at the Ph.D. level and short-term skill training workshops for administrative staff in critical areas of finance, human resources management, etc., and supporting the establishment of a university FM radio station. Our study focused on the institutional strengthening component, the results of which have had a wide-ranging impact on almost every aspect of the university. Staff and other internal stakeholders have been faced with a myriad of changes in the organizational environment brought about by the different project interventions which have affected nearly every aspect of the organization. In such an environment, attention may be drawn to the technical aspects of project implementation, overshadowing the focus on the project's long-term outcomes. In contrast to the post-implementation study, exploring the change institutionalization processes during the project implementation phase allows for a systematic exploration of the phenomenon.

The sample respondents for the study were purposefully selected from 234 members of university staff. We screened the staff lists to identify staff who qualify as internal stakeholders, specifically those whose work has been directly affected by the project, or whose positions have a significant impact on the project's implementation. The final list of staff included project team members, the university's top management, faculty deans and heads of departments and units, and other full-time (academic and administrative) and fixed-term contract employees who have been direct or indirect beneficiaries of the project interventions. Additionally, we only considered staff who had been with the university for 2 years and above to avoid new staff who might have yet to interact with and experience the project's impact. We excluded part-time contract staff, because of their limited interaction with other staff, and their limited knowledge about the operations of the university. A total of 167 members of staff were identified and asked to complete a paper-based questionnaire, and a total of 134 questionnaires were returned, representing a response rate of 80.2%. Four of the returned questionnaires were excluded from the final usable sample due to incomplete responses.

The first section of the questionnaire elicited from respondents their type of work, job position in the organization, experience, and demographics (age and gender). From the 130 usable questionnaires, 10.6%, 32.5%, and 56.9% were from senior management, middle management, and other stakeholders, respectively. Academic, administrative, and support staff accounted for 64.0%, 24.8%, and 11.2%, respectively, of the sample. The experience of the respondents was important in this study to assess the level of knowledge about the program and its projects. Thereby, 48.3% of the respondents had been working at the university for at most 5 years, 37.3% for 6–10 years, and 14.4% for more than 10 years. Most respondents (54.0 %) had a master's degree, 26.2 % had a bachelor's degree, 10.3 % had a Ph.D., and 9.6 % had other qualifications. Male respondents were more (69.3 %) prominent than their female counterparts (39.7 %). Most of the respondents were aged between 31 and 40 years (55.2 %), with similar portions for under 30 years (17.6 %) and 41–50-year-olds (17.6 %). Respondents aged over 50 were the least represented.

#### *3.2. Measures*

Respondents completed the questionnaire with constructs anchored on a 7-point Likert scale ranging from "1" ("strongly disagree") to "7" ("strongly agree"), with higher values representing high values of each construct. A pilot study was undertaken involving 15 respondents with experience in implementing university projects to refine the questionnaire. The questionnaire was also shared with the program management to assess the sequence and contextual relevance of the items.
