Evaluating the Policy of Ministry of Science in Creating Compulsory Sabbatical to Relation with Industry based on an Institutional Perspective

The relationship between university and industry and consequently their effects on innovation processes have long been analyzed in various scientific communities. The importance of this connection has caused some of the documents of the Islamic Republic of Iran to refer to it. According, one of the most important steps in the recent policy of the Ministry of Science of Iran doing the compulsory sabbatical related to the industry for newly recruited faculty members in higher education organizations and research institutes. Thus, the present study tried to explain the recent policy of the Ministry of Science, based on an institutional perspective.

To achieve this, 17 faculty members of universities and research institutes in Iran who were faced with this policy, as main beneficiaries by intensity case sampling method and according to the theoretical saturation of the data was selected. The tool of the study was a semi-structured interview. To analyze the interviews, we used the Colaizzi content analyze and to examine the validity of the research findings, the member checking method was used.

The Findings of the analysis showed that the policy in relation to the industry has faced some issues such as illegitimacy, coercion, consistency with the interests of policymakers, ignoring disciplinary differences, ignoring economic, sociology, and policy conditions. These issues indicate that the policy is based on the policy created in the oligarchic institutions.