The Corona Crisis and Development of Teleworking Process in the Iranian Administrative System: Experiences of the National Library and Archives of the Islamic Republic of Iran

Teleworking was one of the main actions of organizations and companies around the world during the Covid 19 pandemic, which, of course, used to be done for various reasons, but not to the extent of the pandemic era.The National Library and Archives of the Islamic Republic of Iran, as one of the government agencies, has used telecommuting platform since the beginning of the signification of the telecommunications regulations in 2010 up tonow, due to the nature of its functional and quantitative nature of many of its specialized jobs. But the question is how this organization, despite having a decade of experience in implementing and managing the telecommuting process, has dealt with this issue during the Corona pandemic crisis, and in other words, what new lessons has it achieved from this emerging experience? The aim of this study was to answer this question with inductive approach and qualitative method. The target population of this study was employees and managers with a history of teleworking or decision makers in the teleworking process in the National Library and Archives of Iran. Sampling was unlike probability quota and continued until data saturation. The method of data collection was semi-structured interviews and the method of analysis was thematic analysis. Findings showed that the organization's experiences of telecommuting during the Corona pandemic are divided into five main themes and nineteen sub-themes resulting from them. In other words, to manage telecommuting in times of Corona crisis, proper confrontation was necessary in five main areas: 1. Organizational culture, 2. Organizational systems and infrastructure, 3. Perceptions, attitudes and skills of employees, 4. Adaptation of management styles and 5. Organizational strategies and functions. The requirements of each of these areas are presented in detail in the discussion and conclusion section and can add to the experience of organizations in dealing properly with the telecommuting phenomenon during the Corona pandemic.

Although interest in the idea of ​​telecommuting first emerged with the oil crisis and to avoid the costs imposed in the 1970s, presently in many industries and organizations, telecommuting is even considered a competitive advantage. On the other hand, the nature of work around the world has changed dramatically due to advanced communication tools. Organizations are increasingly turning from an absolute approacha to their physical locations. They are well aware of the importance of adapting to new changes and conditions in order to reduce costs and waste of time and on the other hand increase flexibility and efficiency. Researches related to telecommuting in the world have a history around its age and in Iran, researches on telecommuting has been conducted in the last decade. But in the current context of the world, given the pandamic of the Corona virus and its consequences for organizations, we are witnessing a change in the appearance and substance of telecommuting, both quantitatively and qualitatively. The tangible research gap in this area needs to be explored. The question is, from the point of view of the staff and executors of the telecommuting process in the National Archives and Library of Iran, what are the differences between this process and the telecommuting in the normal state of the organization and how was it? The present study was conducted to answer this question with an inductive approach and a qualitative method. The knowledge-enhancing contribution of the present study is the study of telework experience in one of the major government institutions in the field of culture in the country. Although the issue of telecommuting is not a new issue, so far this issue has been considered as option and has not been addressed in the current era due to the coercion of the Corona pandemic in the country.

The National Archives and Library of Iran was identified as suitable for this study; This is because the organization has a long history of telecommuting implementation, and its review of telecommuting management during the current Covid 19 pandemic crisis will bring valuable points.  Theoretical frameworkTelecommuting is used in many terms; these include: work from home, e-work, virtual work, telework, remote work, distance working, work shifting and flexible work. Of course, these different terms have many conceptual overlaps, and all of them refer in some way to the central nature of telecommuting. People use the concept in a variety of ways, extending it to a wide range of forms of work, including mobile work, work in any place other than the usual employer-accepted workplace, shared office centre or hub and home-based working. For example, Morganson, Major, Auburn, Verio, and Heelan (2010) have defined teleworking as working from anywhere, anytime. Also defined by Apgar (1998) telecommuting is doing work electronically wherever the employee chooses. This method of work is "moving the work towards the employee" instead of "moving the employee towards the work" (Ghanbari, 2011).Teleworking in Iran officially began in July 2010 with the announcement of telecommunications regulations by the government of the time to public agencies and has continued to this day. A decade after the official start of telecommuting in Iran, telecommuting is now practiced in many government ministries, organizations and departments.

The present study is an applied research with a qualitative approach that is applied in terms of purpose and exploratory-inductive in terms of data collection. The target population of the present study was three groups of employees. Staff managers who have telecommute employees. Managers who have experience in the life cycle of telecommunicating like office of planning and supervision and general directorate of human resource, and also employees who have at least one six-month period of experience as a telecommuter. Sampling of the mentioned population was done by unlikely quota method until theoretical saturation was reached. The data collection tool in this study was semi-structured interviews and the data analysis method was thematic analysis.

Brown and Clark (2006) stepwise method was used for analysis in this study. During this process, after implementing and getting acquainted with the data and studying the information several times, the initial codes were created. Codes such as "temporary internet outages" and "telecommuting as unemployment". In the third step, the codes were matched to form potential themes, and all data related to each theme was collected. Then, by reviewing the themes and the relationship between them and the relationship between the themes and the code, the categoris were modified. In the next step, the formed themes were defined and named; Topics such as "psychological health and safety" were listed as sub-themes. Finally, 19 sub-themes were enumerated, which led to the formation of five main themes by increasing the degree of abstraction.ConclusionIn the current situation where the Crona epidemic disease has caused organizations to show more reception in telecommuting, it is necessary for government organizations to be flexible in policy-making and take appropriate measures to the current situation, while maintaining and improving the level of telecommunications capacity provide for government employees.