Identifying and Prioritizing the Factors Affecting the Strategic Thinking of Commanders and Managers of Military Universities (Case Study: Imam Hossein University)

By considering the complexity of the environment and drastic changes in existing organizations and structures, as well as the existence of dynamic and non-linear styles affecting this issue, identifying and prioritizing strategic thinking factors can help in planning for training commanders and managers of military universities. This study aims to identify the factors that affect strategic thinking of them in three areas: environmental, organizational and individual. In this mix method study, in the qualitative part, by conducting an interview, the concepts are extracted and its analysis is done by content analysis method. In the quantitative part, in order to prioritize the factors, a questionnaire was used and analyzed by Dematel technique. As a result, thirteen key factors include: personality traits, intuitive traits, science, attending in gathering of strategic people, organizational intelligence, environmental and organizational constraints, insight, problem-solving skills, balance in heterogeneity and homogeneity of group, intelligent opportunism, turbulent environment, field mission and legal factors were identified as factors influencing strategic thinking. Three most effective factors in terms of causal relationships are: personality traits, intuitive characteristics and attending in gathering of strategic people, respectively.