System Dynamics Model of Research Performance Among Academic Staff

Abstract

The link of research and innovation in higher education are continually receiving worldwide priority attention. Hence, Malaysia has taken its move to enhance public universities as a centre of excellence by introducing the status of Research University (RU). To inspire all universities towards becoming a research university, The Ministry of Higher Education (MoHE) had revised an assessment called Malaysian Research Assessment Instrument (MyRA) to evaluate the performance of existence RUs and other potential higher education institutions. The available spreadsheet tool to access MyRA performance is inadequate to support strategic planning. Since, higher education management is a complex system, in which components and their interactions are ever changing over time, there is a need to for an efficient approach to investigate system behaviour and devise research management policies for the benefit of the institution itself and the higher education system. In this paper, we proposed a system dynamics simulation model to evaluate the impact of research policies for obtaining the highest performance in MyRA assessment. Causal loop diagram and stock and flow diagram are developed to investigate the relationship of various elements in the research management, their inter-relationship that link together and their evolution of behaviour over time is presented. Finding from this research will be helpful to assist the university management to better understand the cause and effect of research activity on the MyRA performance.