JOURNAL OF RESEARCH AND PLANNING IN HIGHER EDUCATION
Year:2009 | Volume:15 | Issue:1 (51)|Papers Count:14

In order to identify a model for knowledge management in research centers performance promotion, after studying the literature, it was so clarified that there are three basic views regarding knowledge management and its position in organizations. One view looks upon knowledge management concept as such concepts as change management and transformation management in the organization. The second view believing that in each department of the organizations, the information management concept and position have been defined, it can be replaced by knowledge management. The third view looks upon the knowledge management concept from the systemic and strategic viewpoint. In this research, the researcher's view to the knowledge management concept is of the third view and on same basis, the conceptual model of research has been designed and suggested. The main theory of research has been so defined as: Alignment among knowledge strategies, knowledge production and development, knowledge transfer and knowledge application in research centers, leads to their performance promotion. To experiment this theory, the sample representing the statistical society selected, a questionnaire was designed and, after its validity and reliability tests, was distributed among the research centers of the target statistical society. After distribution and collection of the questionnaires, the quantitative data were statistically analyzed by SPSS software. The qualitative data were analyzed via content analysis method, and quantitatively coordinated by index definition. Finally, statistical analysis was conducted. The final results of both quantitative and qualitative analysis approved the main theory set forth in research.

The main purpose of this research is scrutiny relation between university presidents and vice- presidents' epistemological beliefs with their attitude towards strategic planning. The method utilized in this research was quantitative - non-experimental – descriptive - prospective. A total of 54 questionnaires were sent to the presidents and vice- presidents to assess their assumptions about the nature of knowledge including: simple, certain, innate, and quick (SCIQ) and, attitude towards strategic planning. The population includes all presidents and their deputies in all State, Islamic Azad and Medical Science Universities of northeast of Iran during 2007-2008. Regression analysis is used to analyze the data. The result indicates that there is a strong relationship between the presidents and vice- presidents' epistemological beliefs and their attitude towards strategic planning. This means that the presidents and their deputies who spot science relative, acquisitive and complex and gradual process of learning, they have more attendance to the strategic planning.

This article studies the management competencies of managers of universities in Tehran, using Slocum and colleagues' (date) model. The findings show that "Planning and Management", "Team Working" and "Self Management" competencies of the interviewed managers are at high levels and "Universal Awareness" competency is at the average level. But their "Communication" and "Strategic Action" competencies are between average and high levels. The findings of this study also show that there isn't any meaningful relationship between the "Type of University (Technical/ General)", "Field of Study", "Degree", "Years of Experience" of managers and their management competencies. But there is a meaningful relationship between managers' gender and position and their "Universal Awareness" and "Self Management" competencies. A deep analysis indicates that in "Universal Awareness" and "Self Management" competencies, women are more competent than men and Line managers are more competent than Staff managers.

Information and communication technology is increasingly important to the science development, because the application and development of different tools of information and communication technology helps the accumulation, recombination, and innovation of knowledge capital. The findings of this research show that there are significant correlations between the information and communication technology and science development indicators in the countries. Also the correlations between information and communication technology and science development indicators are shown by a cognitive map. Cognitive maps can be used as useful tools for recognition, description and modeling of the complex systems. There are positive high significant correlations between internet users, international internet bandwidth and information and communication technology expenditures with journal articles and patents. In the other hand, there are inadequate information and communication technology indicators in Iran. These issues can bring about problems in achieving the goals of the science and technology expressed in Iran’s twenty-year vision plan. Hence, to achieve the first rank in the science and technology in the region, we need to provide and develop the required infrastructures as one of the important infrastructures is information and communication technology which is necessary to be paid more attention.

This paper considers innovation search strategy as problem-solving activities by firms that involve the screening, creation and re-use of ideas, modification, and intelligent rejection of new and old know-how. Its aim is to investigate existing innovation search strategies of Iranian industrial firms and analyze the affecting factors on decision of firms to select scientific institutions in particular universities to acquisition of new economic knowledge on a theoretical framework based. In our empirical study of 39 Iranian industrial firms based on a survey performed by IROST, found that there are weak linkage between firms and scientific institutions. The results suggest that firms with higher basic research capabilities have likely better linkage with the scientific institutions.

Generally education and specially higher education is one of the main development bases of each country. So, evaluation and continuous quality improvement of education and learning in higher education during in recent decades has been considered by the universities of the world. This study applies Quality Function Deployment (QFD) technique to evaluate and improve the quality of educational programs. The target population consists of PhD students who study in the management course in public universities in Iran (Tehran, Beheshti, Allame Tabatabaee, Tarbiat Modarres and Esfahan), during the second semester of 2007-08. 80 members out of 328 members of statistical population were selected. A questionnaire was used for data collection the selected sample. According to the results of this study, the most important quality requirements, as perceived by students are: Acquiring the latest organizational experiences / Proficiency in analytical skills / Stimulate students’ thinking / Proposing useful and sufficient references, examples and assignments / the Professors’ scientific ability and their criticism morale. Moreover, regarding the results, there is significant difference between requirements importance level and access of students in their requirements. Thus, it would be necessary to change from existing situation to desired situation in which the mentioned indices are categorized from low to high.

Achievement motivation is one of the most important factors in occupations and there have been different researches in this regard. It has been recognized that achievement motivation is also another construct in the tendency of people to self employment. The major question in this study was to find out if there was a recognizable difference in job satisfaction and achievement motivation between self employed and non self employed people. Therefore the goal of this study was to compare achievement motivation and job satisfaction between self employed and non self employed graduates of agriculture. The sample of this research was 148 agriculture graduates, 78 of them were self employed and the rest were non self employed. For gathering data questionnaires of job satisfaction (Alfa=0.84) and achievement motivation (Hermens questionnaire with Alfa=0.73) was used and were sent by post to the samples. Results showed that achievement motivation and job satisfaction in self employed graduates were much more significant with compare to non self employed graduates (P<0.01).