Barriers to Administrative Reforms in Iran: A Study on Organizational Culture

The favorable administrative culture is one of the basic requirements for the implementation of the administrative reform programs. Often, the public administration approaches in a certain cultural context have been fitted so that the path to change the programs smoothly. While most studies have a focus on structural changes on the administrative reform programs, this research focus on the administrative culture as a platform reforms. The main objective of this research identifying barriers to the administrative reform based on organizational culture. Statistical research community include a number of administrative and academic experts. The research method was exploratory – explanatory and in terms of audience research that’s fundamental. For data gathering was used semi-structural interviews and researcher made questionnaire. In order to analyze interviews data was used thematic analysis method and factor analysis for questionnaire data confirm with the software Smart PLS. According to findings 100 barriers identified in the form of eleven categories on the three levels of the individual, organizational and infra-organizational.
Introduction Developing plans in developed countries indicates that one of the primary actions in these countries has been their administrative system development. In many developed countries administrative reform is the process of change in official structure, in public service era, and its reason is the lack of removing social and political expectations(killian and Eklund, 2008).
Administrative system in Iran suffers many challenges and problems including more dependence on political system to reach the goals, low efficiency of personal and managers crisis of identity in public sector, disorientation of public organizations ,and paying little attention to values like meritocracy.
Despite of numerous planning and legal requirements to administrative reform in Iran, not significant action or change have been done in practice and because of numerous reasons, the expected success has not been achieved in reforming administrative system.
Therefore it seems that administrative system and public organizations in Iran needs a stimuli to accelerate the administrative reform and provide a suitable conditions for successfully implementing reform plans and revolutionize administrative system. Organization culture is a context in which any kind of reform plan is along whit it. A compatible culture for change can guarantee to some extent the successfully implementation of reform plans in administrative system. Organizational culture is the basic of any planned attempt to successfully reform the structures, systems , and bureaucratic processes.
Case study This research has been done in administrative system of Iran ,and includes all the public organizations and offices of the state that work under the supervision of government.
Materials and Methods In terms of goal research that's exploratory-explanatory ,and in terms of audience is fundamental research and also whit regard to the kind of data is mixed method. The statistical population of qualitative phase includes 14 expert and executive managers that completely familiar with administrative reform plans. Statistical population in quantitative phase includes a group of 30 university elites and executive expert managers. Sampling method in this phase is theoretical sampling and choosing sample has been snowball method. For data gathering was used semi-structural interviews and researcher made questionnaire. In order to analyze interviews data was used thematic analysis method and factor analysis for questionnaire data confirm with the software Smart PLS.
Discussion and Results In order to answer the main research question that is: what are the challenges and barriers of administrative reform in Iran at organizational perspective?, we used thematic analysis and based on this method identified 111 primary codes, 11 subtheme and 3 main theme that with regard to the factor analysis 11 primary codes was eliminated and finally, the model of research was designed with 100 primary codes. Identified main theme are: individual factors(micro level), organizational factors(meso level) and infra-organizational factors(macro level).Individual factors include 2 barriers category: attitudinal-motivational barriers and cognitive-perceptional barriers.
Organizational factors include 6 barriers category :barriers deal with learning culture, barriers related to flexibility culture, barriers related to participative culture, barriers related to mission-oriented culture, barriers related to bureaucratic culture and managerial barriers. Infra-organizational factors consist of 3 category barriers: barriers related to political culture, barriers related to public society culture and behavioral and contextual barriers of administrative system.
Conclusion This research was done in order to identify the administrative reform barriers in perspective of organizational culture. The little success of reform plans in administrative system in various governments at the past, made researcher to identify these barriers in Iran. According to the findings, attitudinal-motivational barriers in micro level, managerial barriers In meso level ,and behavioral and contextual barriers of administrative system in macro level are the most important and currently are considered serious barriers to the administrative reform. The results showed that there have not been a political willingness to the administrative reform and governments suffer formalism.
Generally, the success of administrative reform depends on the management and leadership who are open-minded enough about the future change and reform. Desirable administrative culture and structure provides suitable conditions for any kind of reform plan.