Strategic Analysis of Organizational Agility Promotion in Iran’s Agricultural Higher Education

Document Type : Scientific - Research

Authors

1 Ph.D Student of Agricultural Extension and Education, University of Khuzestan Agriculture and Natural Resources, Khuzestan, Iran.

2 Professor of University of Khuzestan Agriculture and Natural Resources, Khuzestan, Iran.

3 Associate professor of Agricultural Extension and Education

Abstract

Objective: This study was conducted with the aim of a strategic analysis of organizational agility promotion in Iranian agricultural education using SWOT method. To achieve the above objective, first by SWOT analysis, the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats of Iran's agricultural higher education were extracted in order to enhance agility. Then, strategies for promoting organizational agility in Iranian higher education were presented.
Materials and Method: To this aim, two qualitative and quantitative steps were taken in order to identify strategies to promote organizational agility in Iranian higher education. Therefore, To achieve this goal, the mixed method design approach was used. In the first step, internal and external factors in the form of four categories of strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats gathered through in-depth interviews with agricultural higher education experts. They were identified by line-by-line analysis in the form of conventional content analysis. The data were collected through in-depth interviews with experts, which had experience in administrative positions in academic context (15 individual interviews). Then, in the second step, after analyzing the conventional content of the interviews, internal and external factors in the form of four categories of strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats were designed by the questionnaire. It was distributed among Iran's agricultural higher education experts to determine the importance (weight) and status of each case. In order to confirm the validity and reliability of the SWOT technique quality part in addition to the four techniques: Member control (by presenting the data analysis and its results to the respondents to know their response at the reporting stage),  During the data collection and analysis process, the researcher self-reviewed, in order to confirm the transferability of the research, it was attempted to develop and describe a rich set of study data during the data collection phase, and the verification and reliability of the research was also done by carefully recording the interview process and all its details. Comprehensiveness analysis was also given to the external and internal environment, which is influenced by the following items: time spent on collecting data, the expertise of the subject matter, and in particular the researcher's experience and skill in conducting interviews.
Result and Discussion: Based on the findings, increasing the level of technology in the academic community and the presence of professors, specialists, researchers and experts in agricultural universities are as follows: the most important strength and ever-increasing expansion of emerging technologies in the agricultural sector, the most important opportunity for organizational agility is the Iran's higher agricultural education. This is while reduceing budgets and investing in higher agricultural education, and non-compliance of educational content with the needs of the labor market and job market, The most important weaknesses and centralized policymaking and the centralization of good management in the university organization, weak communication between executive departments, research and development centers with universities and the lack of linkages between the agricultural education system and the employment system, one of the most important threats to organizational agility in Iran's higher agricultural education is considered. Citing the findings of this research can be a common tool and system approach to analyze internal and external factors and support decisions in order to promote organizational agility of policymakers in higher agricultural education, agricultural planners and managers will be exploited.

Keywords

References

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