Developing a model for assessment of organizational adaptation of university with external environment (Study of Tehran Public Universities)

The main purpose of this research was to study the variables and factors that affect adaptation of university to external environment and to develop a model for assessment of Tehran public universities adaptation to external environment. A mixed method research approach involving a three-round Delphi study was used to record responses to the closed-questions and open-ended-questions. Other data were gathered through interview, and a questionnaire. Content analysis was used for assessing qualitative data based on scientific documents and interviews, and for the analysis of quantitative data, factor analysis, reflective and formative modeling based on SPSS, Smart PLS & LISREL were employed. The population of this research comprised Tehran Public Universities (Including: Medical universities, Industrial universities & Complex universities) and the sampling method adopted involved ratio and cluster sampling. 37 variables emerged from literature, Delphi survey and interviews. KMO of 0/82 and the results of Bartlett's test indicated that the data are adequate for factor analysis. Results of factor analysis pointed out that those 37 variables can be partitioned into nine factors.Detective factor analysis results showed that 70.53 of university adaptation variance can be explained by nine factors including: external environment management, learning, organizational culture, organizational communications, participation, strategy orientation, responsibility, self-organizing and goal orientation. T statistics showed that all factors are significant, the most important factor being environment management. Composite reliability of factors i exceeded 88% and the meaning of AVE (average variance explained) pointed out that a large amount of university adaptation variance is explained by those factors. Indices of Redundancy= 0/0024, AIC=353/06, BIC=227/48, GOF=0/98 R2=993 show that the model has goodness of fit with these data.