Performance evaluation of scientific research system in Chinese universities: A view of goal congruence

The performance of scientific research system is a key element in the assessment of higher education institutions (HEIs). The scientific research system mainly be constructed by two sub-systems: scientific research achievements production and the transformation of these achievements. Different from prior literature, this paper attempts to evaluate the performance of scientific research system of HEIs from a view of goal congruence. Specifically, it examines how and to what extent such two sub-systems are consistent with the goal of overall scientific research system. To this end, this study employs data envelopment analysis (DEA), a non-parametric frontier analysis approach, to present a goal congruence model which is used to measure the degree of both the overall goal congruence and the internal goal congruence. Then, the proposed model is applied to evaluate the performance of scientific research systems of 40 “first-class” universities and 62 “first-class disciplines” universities in China. Results show that only the scientific research systems of Tsinghua University and Central China Normal University achieve the goal congruence. Finally, both higher education policy recommendations and implications are discussed. •This study examines how to evaluate the performance of Higher Education Institutions (HEIs)based on goal congruence theory.•A two-stage network framework for HEIs is built in the context of high education transformation of research achievements.•A new DEA-based model is proposed to measure the degree of goal congruence between sub-systems and overall system for HEIs.•The real data from 40 “first-class” universities and 62 “first-class disciplines” universities in China are used to empirically validate the proposed model.•Both theoretical implications for performance evaluation and practical implications for HEIs development are discussed.