Optimizing the Competency Model of University Administrators with Delphi-Fuzzy Technique and Grounded Theory Approach

Effective and efficient management of universities and higher education systems, which today have a significant role in the sustainable and comprehensive development of countries and are considered as one of the pillars of global competitiveness and development of countries, is an important principle and subject to its alignment with the upstream documents. In this way, according to the strategy of the Islamic University document based on "Codification of Islamic indicators and criteria of meritocracy in university administrators", the selection of competent and efficient administrators for the Islamic University that is rooted in Islamic values ​​and some principles and beliefs of the Islamic Revolution Iran has and should simultaneously include the characteristics of "transcendental", "transformational" and "ethical" universities, it seemed necessary. Therefore, providing an optimized competency model based on the Islamic University document for university administrators was considered as the research goal. The present study is of development-applied type and is of mixed type due to the use of qualitative and quantitative methods. In the library studies section, after reading more than 100 valid and related articles, a list including 108 competencies related to university administrators was collected. In the field section, in the first round of the Delphi method, after receiving the opinions of 30 experts, the identified competencies were reduced to 75 competencies. In the second round, after assigning fuzzy triangular numbers, 54 competencies of definite numbers higher than 0.8 were obtained and selected as the optimal competencies. In the next step, 54 competencies selected by using grounded theory approach are divided into 6 categories, including competencies: 1) value and belief, 2) individual and personality, 3) scientific and innovative, 4) managerial and executive, 5) Communication and interpersonal and 6) analytical, intellectual and strategic, coding and finally the optimized competency model was presented.