Identifying and modeling the dimensions of the university's relationship with the external environment from the perspective of ecosystem thinking with the grounded theory method and ISM

Abstract

The lack of correct relationship between the university and the external environment (including society, industry, government, etc.) has been and is one of the current social issues of universities. The purpose of this research is to identify and modeling of different dimensions of relationship between the university and the environment, as components of a general ecosystem. We study the relationship of the university with the external environment from an ecosystemic perspective to discover the dimentions of this relationship, means that when the university wants to function as an organ in the knowledge-policy ecosystem of any society and respond to their needs by forming a productive relationship with stakeholders, what dimensions should it pay attention to and what is the relation of these dimensions together. In order to answer this questions and reach a framework of the model, after studying the literature, by the expert interview and using the grounded theory method, the general framework of the ecosystem relationship of a university with the external environment was extracted in the form of a coordinate construction with three axes of causality (why), quality (how) and nature (what). Then, for validity of the findings, once again, using the interpretive structural modeling method and the use of codes extracted from the GT, experts' opinions were taken, and by performing ISM, it was determined that the main nature of the university's communication consists of it. The projection of the university as an internal or external organity of the country has a fundamental effect on the design of the university as a component in the ecosystem.

Keywords

• ecosystem thinking
• transfer of technology
• university stakeholders
• grounded thoery method
• organity