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A Methodological Framework to Analyze Stakeholder Preferences and Propose Strategic Pathways for a Sustainable University

Fikret Korhan Turan
Assist. Prof.

Fikret Korhan Turan is an assistant professor at the Industrial Engineering Department of Istanbul Kemerburgaz University. He received his B.S. degree in Industrial Engineering from Bogazici University, and had M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Industrial Engineering from the University of Pittsburgh. After his doctoral study, he worked as a researcher at the ESMT European School of Management and Technology in Berlin, Germany, and prior to academic life, he served as a service and product developer at Turkcell Communication Services Company in Istanbul, Turkey. His primary research interests include engineering and technology management, sustainable operations, and organizational sustainability with a focus on energy, automotive, construction and higher education industries, as well as public sector and non‐for‐profit organizations. He is a member of the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS), and the Alliance for Research on Corporate Sustainability (ARCS). In addition to his academic career, he is interested in visual arts and classical music.

Building sustainable universities calls for participative management and collaboration among stakeholders. Combining analytic hierarchy and network processes (AHP/ANP) with statistical analysis, this research proposes a framework that can be used in higher education institutions for integrating stakeholder preferences into strategic decisions. The proposed framework is applied to a private university in Turkey as a case study through a survey of 30 participants, representing key internal stakeholder groups. The present research extends the literature by adding a statistical analysis component involving a diverse sample of stakeholders, while previous applications of AHP/ANP in higher education involve a single or a few decision makers. The survey demonstrates stakeholder priorities with respect to sustainability performance indicators and a set of investment projects as well as how they change under low, medium and high financial constraints. The study finds that, while stakeholders have varying opinions regarding sustainable development, generally their highest priority is teaching, followed closely by research. Further, although stakeholders assign a high priority to environmental initiatives when the concern is service and social responsibility, they do not consider such investments profitable. Lastly, it appears that ‘‘high visibility’’ projects gain priority as the level of financial constraint increases.

EMBA 102
December 2, 2016 - 14:00