THE IMPLICATIONS OF HIGHER EDUCATION POLICIES AND STRATEGIES TO IMPROVE RESEARCH AND INNOVATION

Almost in all countries, particularly the OECD countries have been strategically involved in strengthening research and innovation policies in order to deal with the requirements of the knowledge economy; therefore, they have strongly integrated higher education systems, particularly their research and innovation systems into macroeconomic policies to accelerate technological and innovative outputs. Even though it is clearly accepted that the higher education systems stimulate research and innovation, there are few studies regarding to the applications of the higher education policies and strategies to improve research and innovation agenda, especially from organizational practices and conditions perspectives.

In this study, how the applications of the higher education policies and strategies improve research and innovation agenda, especially from organizational practices and conditions perspectives was analyzed. Hence, a well-rounded qualitative research was conducted in 5 research universities of Turkey. The active researchers (n=34) and administrators (n=12) were systematically interviewed in order to make depth analyses on the applications of the higher education policies and strategies to improve research and innovation agenda. This longitudinal qualitative research took into consideration the process to understand deeply the main reasons of the research question. After using the NVivo, the data were analyzed to understand deeply how the implications of the higher education policies and strategies which aimed to improve research and innovation.

According to the results of the depth analysis, as the most of the participants (91%) had clarified that although the higher education policies and strategies, which aimed to improve research and innovation in Turkey, they were not properly managed in the institutions - universities as well as other public institutions related to the research. For instance, as they pointed out that though there were different types of funding mechanisms, they took too much time and complications that they could not apply properly the research and innovation that they wanted. The most commonly seen complains (86%) about the implications of the higher education policies and strategies, which aimed to improve research and innovation was related to the administration processes and systems. The participants clearly showed that they need better administration and offices, which could took most of their complicated responsibilities for research and innovation. They (79%) needed also better advising, consulting, and controlling systems in order to stimulate the research and innovation.

As a result, as this study has showed that in order to see better development of research universities, the new models of leadership and management are needed in order to apply the research and innovation policies and to see better results and outputs, which could create economic benefits in the competitive global markets.