The strategic assessment of networking of a higher education institution

The development of economy in the region is highly dependent on the effective management of higher education institutions (HEIs). The effective incorporation of networking in the strategies of HEIs is one of the core issues in the development of current HEIs. This incorporation raises two major issues: the lack of tools to monitor the progress of networking and the lack of ability to generate needed and network-related insights for strategy. The aim of this article is to suggest a networking assessment tool and to apply it empirically. This tool consists of multi-criteria evaluation and evaluation with network pictures. It adapts simple additive weighting (SAW) - data normalisation and Social Network Analysis methods (SNA). The empirical application of the tool showed the possibility to assess and monitor the institution's networking performance and support strategising in the fields of research and studies.