Designing Structural Strategic Thinking Model for Higher Education Managers

This study aimed to develop a strategic thinking model of higher education managers based on structure. The structure of any organization plays an important role in maintaining order and achieving goals. The research method was exploratory and was conducted in the academic year 2019. First, the themes of strategic thinking of higher education managers based on structuring were identified using the inductive theme analysis method and based on the whole field of research, which included the categories contained in databases and books related to strategic thinking. Holsti method was used to obtain reliability. Then, using the range technique, the identified themes were juxtaposed and compared, and finally, the all-encompassing structural theme had organizing themes of 1- decision-making 2- prioritization 3- evaluation 4- process-oriented. Then, according to the identified themes, a questionnaire was designed to validate the model with 18 items, the final score of 0.952 was obtained using Cronbach's alpha. The research population in the quantitative section was higher education managers with 2816. The method was multi-stage random sampling in which 338 samples were determined. The confirmatory factor analysis method was used to validate the research model. All themes with high factor load were approved, which showed the high validity of the model.