Investigating the cause and effect relationships of the main components of the performance management of higher education institutions based on structural-interpretative approach

The performance management system has a prominent role in achieving the goals and missions of educational institutions. This research is conducted with the aim of investigating the cause and effect relationship of the main components of performance management based on the structural-interpretative approach. The location of the research is higher education institutions. At the qualitative stage, the researcher achieved the content of performance management in the four dimensions of growth, learning, internal processes, customers and finance by using the content analysis method. In the quantitative stage, relationships between the themes are identified by using the ISM method and the MICMAC analysis. Based on the results of structural and interpretative analysis and research findings, five factors of long-term contracts, reduced price of training courses, income diversity, the speed of responding to educational needs, and improving the process of communicating with the stakeholders have the most impact from other factors and the least impact on them. Based on the identified relationships, the components of the customer dimension and financial dimensions are located at the first level and the internal processes, the growth and learning dimension are respectively located at the next levels.