Evaluation of strategic thinking and its affecting factors among managers and personnel in a medical sciences university in Iran

Purpose Prediction of future changes and making appropriate strategic decisions require strategic thinking in any organization. It helps managers to create new opportunities. The purpose of this paper is to measure strategic thinking and its affecting factors at Kurdistan University of Medical Sciences. Design/methodology/approach This is a descriptive-analytic as well as a cross-sectional study which was conducted in 2016. Its statistical community included 300 managers and personnel of Kurdistan University of Medical Sciences. The sample size was equal to statistical community. Data were collected using a standard questionnaire. Data were then entered into SPSS20 and were analyzed using statistical tests such as Freedman, Whitney and Kruskal-Wallis. Findings Overall, strategic thinking was evaluated “good” and “somewhat good” among managers (5.0±72.28) and personnel (6.0±25.48), respectively. Moreover, among the elements of strategic thinking, conceptual thinking obtained the highest score among both managers (6.0±06.32) and personnel (5.0±53.52), which was evaluated in a “good” level. There was a significant difference between managers’ and personnel’s strategic thinking score (p=0.001). Different education groups of managers and personnel were different in terms of strategic thinking (p<0.05), but strategic thinking score of managers and personnel were not significant based on the work experience and type of employment. Originality/value Although both managers and personnel received a good score in terms of strategic thinking, improving the level of strategic thinking especially for future trends and opportunities can lead to enhanced strategic thinking among managers and personnel of Kurdistan University of Medical Sciences.