Prioritizing factors enabling organizational agility in universities and centers of higher education in Yazd

Agility is a competitive means for all organizations that is considered important in today's uncertain and changing environment. In current competitive environment, many organizations need strategic planning to achieve agility. In this regard, for implementing agility in organizations, identifying factors enabling organizational agility is essential because understanding these factors can help organizations to design, plan and implement agility. But these factors do not have similar preference and have internal dependencies. On the other hand, universities as one of the knowledge based organization need agility. Therefore, the aim of this study was to identify and prioritize factors enabling structural organizational agility in universities via interpretive structural modeling approach. The aim of present study is practical and its method and nature is descriptive – analytical. A questionnaire was used to collect information. The statistical population consisted two parts. In first part, for identifying factors enabling organization agility structure, a sample of 283 individuals including presidents, vice presidents, department chairs, and faculty members and instructors in Yazd were selected according to random - stratified sampling and their opinions were evaluated an analyzed. In second part, for leveling and prioritizing identified key factors, 10 faculty members who had practical and scientific expertise about the issue were used. Factor analysis results showed that seven factors of culture, forming knowledge-based organizations, agile workforce, continuous improvement, participation and collective cooperation, information technology and organizational structure are considered as key factors enabling organization agility structure at the universities. Also, the results of interpretive-structural modeling showed that the factor of forming knowledge-based organization has the highest power and the least dependency among other 6 key factors.