Measuring Inter-Organizational Interactions of Scientific Articles in the Electrical and Electronic Engineering Field in Iran through a Triple Helix Model Approach

Purpose: The triple helix model measures the interactions between university, industry, and government and is used by researchers as a normative framework to understand the interactions between the main actors in innovation systems. The main goal of the current research is to analyze the dynamics of organizational interactions in the production of scientific articles in the field of electrical and electronic engineering in Iran. Therefore, this research tries to quantitatively assess the status of inter-organizational cooperation in scientific articles in the field of electrical and electronic engineering in Iran with the approach of the triple helix model.
Method: The current research is of an applied type, which was conducted using the Triple Helix Model and based on the T(UIG) indicator for University-Industry-Government interactions. The statistical population of the research includes 19,802 scientific articles indexed in the Web of Science database, from Iran in the field of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, during 2010-2019. TH software was used to convert data that was extracted from the Web of Science database into Excel format and to calculate the uncertainty of the interactions of the elements. In order to make a proper analysis in this regard, first, based on the usual and common research process of this field, the university was considered with code U, the industry with code I, and the government with code G.
Findings: The findings of the research showed that the number of articles has grown in the studied period and reached 3216 articles in 2019 from 1019 articles in 2010. The findings show that the production of articles in all three pillars has an upward growth and the growth rate of articles from 2010 to 2019 is 0.63 for university, 2.5 for industry and 1.8 for government; On the other hand, the highest level of cooperation between the university and the industry has taken place, and the lowest level of cooperation has been between the government and the industry. The findings showed that the highest level of university-government interactions was in 2010 and the lowest level of government-industry interactions, which was close to zero in most years, indicating the independence and lack of connection between the mentioned elements. One of the remarkable results is that in the years 2010-2019, the interaction between the university and the industry was in contrast with the dual interaction between the university and the government. University-industry interaction has been aligned with industry-government interaction during the years under review. In 2014, the interaction between the dual and triple pillars was zero, while the university-industry interaction reached its highest level this year. Also, in 2014, the highest level of interaction between university-industry dual pillars has taken place, and the opposite is true for tripartite relationships, and in 2010, the highest degree of triple interaction between university-industry-government pillars is observed. Based on the values of T index, the highest amount of double and triple interactions between university-government, university-industry-government, university-industry, and industry-government have been seen, respectively. In 2014, the interaction of the dual and triple pillars was close to zero, but this year, the interaction between the university and the industry has increased a lot, which indicates that the government does not invest in the industry, and in other words, wherever the role of the government becomes weaker, The role of industry is more prominent.
Conclusion: The findings showed that the number of articles has grown in the studied period, reaching 3216 articles in 2019 from 1019 articles in 2010. The results also show that the production of articles in all three pillars has an upward growth which the growth rate of articles from 2010 to 2019 is 0.63 for universities, 2.5 for industry, and 1.8 for government; On the other hand, the highest level of cooperation between the university and the industry has taken place, and the lowest level of cooperation has been between the government and the industry. The findings showed that the highest level of university-government interactions was in 2010, and the lowest level of government-industry interactions was close to zero in most years, indicating the independence and lack of connection between the mentioned elements. One of the remarkable results is that in the years 2010-2019, the interaction between the university and the industry was in contrast with the dual interaction between the university and the government. University-industry interaction has been aligned with industry-government interaction during the years under review. In 2014, the interaction between the dual and triple pillars was zero, while the university-industry interaction reached its highest level this year. Also, in 2014, the highest level of interaction between university-industry dual pillars has been taken place, and the opposite is true for tripartite relationships. In 2010, the highest degree of triple interaction between university-industry-government pillars is observed. Based on the values of the T index, the highest amount of double and triple interactions between university-government, university-industry-government, university-industry, and industry-government have been seen, respectively. In 2014, the interaction of the dual and triple pillars was close to zero, but this year, the interaction between the university and the industry has increased a lot, which indicates that the government does not invest in the industry, and in other words, wherever the role of the government becomes weaker, The role of industry is more prominent.