Higher education plays a central role in the current digital revolution. This sector is experiencing a constant process of digital transformation (DT) that is expected to produce substantial instabilities in the currently used business tools. However, the literature still lacks research investigating how the business tools are innovated from the perspective of “higher education institutions (HEIs)” while considering the impact of DT on this process. To deal with the concern, this paper identifies the major impressions of DT on the business model provided by HEIs, using means of a fuzzy decision-making tool. To this end, the current paper integrated three previously-proposed methods, i.e., the “intuitionistic fuzzy sets (IFSs)”, the “method based on the removal effects of criteria (MEREC)”, the “rank sum (RS)”, and the “additive ratio assessment (ARAS)” into a new decision-making framework called IF-MEREC-RS-ARAS. In the proposed hybrid method, IF-MEREC-RS is responsible for computing the objective-subjective weighting of the key DT challenges that arise for “business model innovation (BMI)” in the perspective of HEIs. In addition, IF-ARAS evaluates the HEIs’ preferences over various DT challenges for BMI in the context of HEIs. This research also involves an empirical case study for the assessment of the major DT challenges that arise for BMI in HEIs. To end, a number of comparisons and sensitivity discussions were carried out to compare the performance of the introduced model with that of other models. The findings confirmed the higher effectiveness of the developed model in terms of the tasks defined.

中文翻译：

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使用决策支持方法评估高等教育机构中商业模式创新的数字化转型挑战


高等教育在当前的数字革命中发挥着核心作用。该行业正在经历持续的数字化转型 (DT) 过程，预计将给当前使用的业务工具带来严重的不稳定。然而，文献仍缺乏从“高等教育机构”的角度探讨商业工具如何创​​新，同时考虑DT对此过程的影响的研究。为了解决这个问题，本文利用模糊决策工具来确定DT对高等教育机构提供的商业模式的主要印象。为此，本文综合了之前提出的三种方法，即“直觉模糊集（IFS）”、“基于准则去除效果的方法（MEREC）”、“秩和（RS）”、以及“加性比率评估（ARAS）”纳入名为 IF-MEREC-RS-ARAS 的新决策框架。在所提出的混合方法中，IF-MEREC-RS 负责计算高等教育机构视角下“商业模式创新（BMI）”所出现的关键 DT 挑战的客观-主观权重。此外，IF-ARAS 还评估了高等教育机构在高等教育机构背景下对 BMI 的各种 DT 挑战的偏好。这项研究还涉及一个实证案例研究，用于评估高等教育机构中 BMI 带来的主要 DT 挑战。最后，进行了一些比较和敏感性讨论，以将所引入模型的性能与其他模型的性能进行比较。研究结果证实了所开发的模型在定义的任务方面具有更高的有效性。