Reflecting on the Organizational Barriers to Strategy Implementation in Iranian State Universities: A Multi-Study Approach

The purpose of this study was to identify and evaluate the current status of organizational barriers affecting the implementation of strategy in public universities. For that reason, a multi-study design was used by a combination of review scoping, a qualitative case study and a survey. In the first study, we used review scoping, and analyzed studies in the field of strategy implementation. The studies were selected with purposeful sampling from the scientific databases. In the second study by using a qualitative case study, the experiences of 15 managers of Shiraz University were considered through semi-structured interviews and then data were analyzed using thematic analysis technique. Likewise, in the third study and the evaluation section, the status of key barriers to effective strategy implementation in the top five universities in the country has been assessed by using a survey method. The findings of the study indicated that numerous organizational barriers, including barriers related to academic leadership, the nature of strategy, academic culture, financial resources, technology, communication, strategy monitoring, structure and human resources in the public universities that have affected Strategy Implementation. The results also revealed that at Tehran University and the Shiraz University, Academic culture; at Amirkabir University and Sharif University, structure; at the Science and Technology, human resources were the most important barriers to strategy implementation.