The Role of University and Industry Relationship in Improving Factors Affecting on Sustainable Performance of SMEs

Increasing community attention to sustainability issues has created the need to pay attention to improving sustainable performance in SMEs. Different industries and companies for improve their sustainable performance need to effectively communicate with universities. So that they can take advantage of the competitive benefits of education and research. There are very importance in the different companies, that SMEs are not able to improve all performance criterions at the same time due to their inherent limitations. The purpose of this research is to identify the effective factors on improving the sustainable performance of SMEs using the Q method, and then ranking these factors by using the best - worst method. The statistical population of this research includes knowledgeable experts on the relationship between university and industry which is from the province of Guilan. Rasht SMEs were selected. and a total of 11 experts were used as samples. After the Q method, four subjective groups with the names of empowerment, leadership, market orientation and operation were identified, each having four sub-criteria. Finally, by performing the best - worst case analysis and data analysis using GAMZ software, the results showed that the most important factor affecting the sustainable performance of SMEs and improved through university and industry communication, is Leadership.