Research Competitiveness among Higher Education Institutions in South East Asia: A Complex Adaptive System

Research competitiveness among higher education institutions is vital for knowledgegeneration and innovation. It leads to international recognition and tertiary educationquality that promotes the nation’s sustainable growth and development. This has led theresearchers to study the emergent behaviors of 63 higher education institutions in SoutheastAsia through the data sets provided by the University Ranking of Academic Performance(URAP) in 2018. Data taken from URAP were on articles, citation and total documents,article impact total, citation impact total, and international collaborations that werecategorized into three major dimensions through factor analysis of research productivity,research impact, and international collaboration. Cluster analysis was used to describe theASEAN universities by cluster based on their characteristics. These features were then usedas inputs to calculate the synergies. The study found that the research competitiveness ofhigher education institutions in Southeast Asia is high when there is an increase in researchimpact, research productivity, and international collaboration. As research productivityincreases, HEIs can establish more research collaboration. The researches made have tomake an impact in the fields of specialization to create more collaboration. The variationsof research competitiveness in HEIs from progressive countries in Southeast Asia are lessthan the variations in the HEIs of developing countries.