Innovativeness and institutional image: A comparative study of selected technical institutions in Gujarat

Abstract

Technical education sector in India is an important part of the whole system of education. It has contributed significantly in making India one of the largest resources for technical manpower and thereby, being a catalyst in national development. The professional graduates who contribute to the technical manpower are produced in hundreds of colleges scattered all over the country. Viewed from an organisational perspective, the quality of the graduates produced primarily depends on the quality of academic programmes which, in turn, depends on the faculty, the inputs they provide to the students and the innovativeness they adopt in designing and delivering the academic programmes. Faculty inputs and innovativeness is associated with the image they have about the institution. The present study aims at finding out the interrelationships between perception of institutional image and innovativeness.

In this study, an attempt has been made to develop two independent measures of faculty's perceptions about image and innovativeness of their respective institutions. In addition, a separate scale has been devised to explore the perception of the students about their institutions. Based on these scales, relationship between faculty's perception about the institution's image and innovativeness has been examined. Also, congruence between students' and faculty's perception about the institution has been investigated Certain important antecedents of these variables have been explored and implications of these findings for technical institutions, their academic programmes and output have been discussed.