The politics of virtual learning environments: Environmental change, conflict, and e-learning

The necessity to view innovations in educational technologies with the major role played by organizational politics to promote higher education is discussed. An innovation or change in natural, cultural, commercial, political, and technological will impact upon the organization. E-learning is becoming an increasingly integrated part of both the cultural and technological environment of modern organizations and its introduction should be recognized as a process with political implications. An innovation emerges from a small subgroup and then undergoes a process of diffusion which is vulnerable to failure at any point due to diverse characteristics of different organizational subgroups. It is believed that conflicts within organizations are necessary to produce creativity, that brings innovation.