An exploration of the organizational structure components of universities of medical sciences in transition to third generation university

A third generation university is characterized by three significant missions, including the protection and dissemination of human knowledge, research, and paving the ground for the university to play a role in economic and social development. The purpose of this paper was to identify the structural components of medical universities in transition to third generation university. This study is a systematic review. The search for the present study was carried out with the keywords of organizational structure, the organizational structure of universities, third generation university, entrepreneurial university, and organizational structure of the third generation university on databanks including ISI, SID, Magiran, ProQuest, sagepub, and PubMed as well as Google Scholar from 1990 to 2017. Afterward, all reviewed articles that had inclusion criteria were studied. A total of 42 articles that were related to the topic were employed. The majority of these papers suggest the modification of the organizational structure relative to the objectives and higher education procedures in order to enhance efficacy. Given the findings, there is the emphasis on the complexity, formality, and concentration in the organizational structure of medical sciences universities. Therefore, it is necessary to make changes in the current structure of medical universities in order to transit to third generation university.