Entrepreneurial universities in Iran: a system dynamics model

Abstract

System dynamics is one of the widely used and instrumental approaches to solve different types of real-time problems from different areas. System dynamics modelling is often the background of a systemic thinking approach and has become a management and organisational development paradigm. This paper proposes a system dynamics approach for studying ‘how entrepreneurial universities might evolve in a developing country-in this case, in Iran?’ The model is built using cross impact analysis (CIA) method of relating entities and attributes relevant to the entrepreneurial universities evolution in developing nations. The CIA model enables us to predict the effects of various factors on the evolution of University of Tehran (UT) toward an entrepreneurial university. In this study, the main entities and attributes relevant to our problem are adapted from a recent study by Farsi et al. (2012). Then, some policy variables are proposed and their effects on the model were shown. Findings show that although internal interactions among entities are moving UT toward an entrepreneurial university, external policy variables are the main obstacles in reaching this goal.