Identification of Management Information System (MIS) Strategies Barriers in Higher Education Institutions through Multi-Criteria Decision Making (MCDM) Approach: Case Study of Ferdowsi University of Mashhad

Abstract

Each organization or company, regardless to its restrictions, purposes, and type of the activity, in order to fulfill and manage the duties is in need of various data and pieces of information. The aforesaid cases are generated by managers and employees and used by all the staffs. The manifest issue of current days is that organizations and companies which are struggling in such an unpredictable situation has to do the vast activities and they are in urgent need of gathering, processing, concluding of the extended area of data in different scopes. Consequently, this issue causes public and private organizations through the entire world commence a global move toward utilizing different data systems particularly Management Information System (MIS). Meanwhile universities and educational institutes took some important steps in this case. This move was faced with revolutions, successes, failures, challenges and ample resistances among higher education institutes. In line with the mentioned issues, the investigation of matters and difficulties related to the process of designing, establishing, utilizing and the development of MIS in universities of country can play an important role in the process of determination through all the public and private organizations. The present study was aimed to diagnose and rank the barriers of utilizing MIS at Ferdowsi University of Mashhad. The findings reveal that organizational barriers are the most influential and the human-related ones are the least. This outcome can be used as a practical lead for the managers of higher education institutes. Key words: Communication and information technology, management information systems, multi-criteria decision making, TOPSIS