Analyzing and Designing a Proper Structure for Iran's Science and Technology Parks

Organizational structure as an operational context for organization’s plans and strategies clarifies the relationship among employees or executives. Along with changing in the other components of transformation, organizations must consider changing their organizational structure. Iran’s Science and Technology Parks as centers for promopting innovation in a local and national society also need a structure appropriate to their mission, goals, tasks and fundamental activities. In this article, we review structure notion and its structural and content aspects and introduce Science and Technology Parks as developmental mechanisms. In order to achieve a proper structure for Iran’s Science and Technology Parks, we studied the Parks’ fundamental activities in their mission and goals statements and conduct a comparative study of the structure of 12 Science and Technology Parks of pioneer countries accompanied with acquiring the viewpoints of managers and experts of Science and Technology Parks. Then a conceptual model of organizational structure of Science and Technology Parks based on comparative studies and literature review in organizational structure and considering the challenge with current structure of Parks was developed. In the end, by interviewing managers and some of Iran’s Science and Technology Parks experts, the proper structure is presented and necessary suggestions to managers and future researchers are explained.