The effects of strategic management experiences of universities on the performance: comparative analysis between state and foundation universities

In this study we discussed strategic management experiences in the current state and foundation (non-profit) universities in Turkey by addressing the effects of these experiences on the institutional performances of the universities and analyzing the managements of both universities in comparison. The hypotheses established on this ground were based on the presumption that strategic management processes, along with the internal and external environmental analyses, would affect the performances of the universities positively. In this research, we compared the state and foundation universities in order to see to what extent the strategic management processes at Turkish universities applied. The impacts of those processes on the performances of the state and foundation universities have been tested with a newly developed model. Moreover, the study involves the approaches of the state and foundation universities towards strategic management, the planning and implementation of the strategies, their monitoring and evaluation practices along with their ranges of adaptabilities (strategic flexibilities) to the changing environmental factors. We found out that in the state universities, healthy external environmental analyses, in terms of the implementation, control and strategic flexibility of the strategic planning, were not conducted while the external environmental analyses of the foundation universities were conducted better and the strategic plans affected them positively. Yet, the foundation universities did not show necessary sensibility in other strategic management stages. We also observed that especially in the environmental analyses of the state universities, the strategic factors specified within this framework were not found satisfactory in terms of opportunities and threats as well as the strengths and weaknesses of the universities; that is why they did not contributed to the performance. In addition, we saw that these universities lack the easy adaptation flexibility towards the new situations against the positive or negative developments that might be experienced in the external environments. In this research conducted in 130 universities (89 state and 41 foundation universities) with 890 teaching members, we found out that the internal environmental analyses were healthier than those of the state universities; besides, it is proved that the environmental analyses of the universities had positive impacts on their performances.