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Multi-criteria university selection: Formulation and implementation using a fuzzy AHP

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Abstract

Collaboration with universities as ‘knowledge factories’ is increasingly perceived to be an effective and viable solution for firms to gain competitive advantage. One of the main challenges firms face in this area is how to select the best university for collaboration. This selection undoubtedly affects some other strategic activities of firms, such as managing and governing the relationship with the selected university and, most importantly, firm performance. As such, the selection becomes an important strategic decision that deserves a great deal of attention. Thus far, no systematic attempt has been made to investigate this significant area of research. The main purpose of this study is to formulate a decision-making model for university selection. Reviewing existing literature of university-industry relationship yields a list of relevant criteria for this problem. The problem is then formulated as a multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM) model, and a fuzzy AHP is used to provide the solution. To illustrate the model, three Dutch universities are ranked based on the importance of the selected criteria.

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  1. Faculty of Technology, Policy and Management, Delft University of Technology, Jaffalaan 5, 2628 BX, Delft, The Netherlands

    Negin Salimi & Jafar Rezaei

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  1. Negin Salimi
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Correspondence to Negin Salimi.

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Negin Salimi is a post-doc researcher at Delft University of Technology, The Netherlands. She holds a PhD from faculty of Industrial Engineering & Innovation Sciences, Eindhoven University of Technology, the Netherlands. Her research interests include university-industry relationships, knowledge management, innovation management, responsible innovation, and multi-criteria decision-making. She has published in highly ranked journals including the International Journal of Production Economics, the International Journal of Systems Science, and The Journal of Technology Transfer.

Jafar Rezaei is an assistant professor of operations and supply chain management at Delft University of Technology, the Netherlands, where he obtained his Ph.D. in 2012. His main research interests are in the areas of logistics and supply chain management, and multi-criteria decision-making. He has presented his works in several international conferences, and has published in various academic journals, including the International Journal of Production Economics, the International Journal of Production Research, Industrial Marketing Management, Expert Systems with Applications, Applied Soft Computing, the IEEE Transactions on Engineering Management, and the European Journal of Operational Research.

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Salimi, N., Rezaei, J. Multi-criteria university selection: Formulation and implementation using a fuzzy AHP. J. Syst. Sci. Syst. Eng. 24, 293–315 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11518-015-5271-3

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