Measuring the efficiency, effectiveness and changeability of institutions for improving national innovation system

ABSTRACT

Institutions, as structural components of the National Innovation System (NIS) play an important role in NIS performance and many economists have proven it. In the NIS context, some researchers argued that institutions are X-efficient and X-effective but they didn’t open up that much about how to measure them. Therefore, in this study, an eightfold typology based on the three new performance elements, namely ‘efficiency’, ‘effectiveness’ and ‘changeability’ has been presented. Since institutions are investigated in the context of a system, inputs and outputs of each institution in its relationship with other institutions are selected as the base for measuring performance elements. Based on this new typology, the relational performance of eight institutions in Iran’s National Innovation System is measured. The results show that based on the eightfold typology, none of the studied institutions are in type 1 (appropriate efficiency, effectiveness and changeability at the same time) or type 2 (appropriate efficiency and effectiveness at the same time). Finally, in order to improve the relational performance of each type of institution and the overall function of NIS, eight strategies including ‘growth’, ‘status quo’, ‘conversion’, ‘operational efficiency’, ‘drift’, ‘layering’, ‘displacement’ and ‘exhaustion’ have been proposed based on the calculated performance.

KEYWORDS:

• Relational performance
• institutional performance typology
• institution performance
• Iran’s national innovation system
• Iran

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Masoud Afshari-Mofrad

Masoud Afshari-Mofrad is currently the director of Technology and Innovation Studies Group at Institute for Trade Studies and Research, Tehran, Iran. He has been working there since 2015 as an assistant professor and contributed to different technology-related projects. He has published in renowned journals such as Technological Forecasting & Social Change and Computers and Education.

Sepehr Ghazinoory

Sepehr Ghazinoory is a professor in the Department of Information Technology Management, Tarbiat Modares University, and Tehran, Iran. He received his BSc, MSc and PhD in Industrial Engineering from Iran University of Science and Technology (IUST). He was also policy making deputy of Iran's vice-president for S&T. He is currently consultant to different ministries and editor in cheif of journal of science and technology policy (JSTP) and Editorial board of the international journal Technological Forecasting & Social Change (TFSC).

Shohreh Nasri

Shohreh Nasri has a Ph.D. degree in science and technology policymaking. Her research interests center around the innovation systems, innovation policy, technology management, knowledge management, information technology policy-making and she has authored some papers and books in these areas.