structural-interpretive modeling (ism)

As a key service sector, Iran's banking industry has encountered numerous challenges and difficulties in past years. One potential solution is embracing innovation, particularly ambidextrous innovation. Accordingly, this research aims to identify the factors influencing the development and implementation of ambidextrous innovation within Iran’s banking sector and to prioritize them using a structural-interpretive model (ISM).
 
This research adopts a pragmatist paradigm and utilizes a hybrid approach that integrates practical objectives with diverse data collection methods. It studies Iran's banking industry, focusing on a statistical population comprising experts, university professors, senior bank managers, and specialists in innovation, technology, digital transformation, and process re-engineering. These individuals possess significant knowledge, expertise, and responsibility in the domains of strategy, decision-making, and the implementation of innovation in banks. The research utilizes a judgmental sampling method. This study was conducted in two stages: qualitative and quantitative. In the qualitative stage, content analysis was employed. The study began with a review of the existing literature on ambidextrous innovation, followed by interviews with 24 experts from the banking sector. These interviews helped identify the key factors influencing the development and implementation of ambidextrous innovation in the industry. In the quantitative phase, a questionnaire was distributed among 13 experts. The data collected was used to develop a self-interaction matrix and to proceed through the stages of structural-interpretive modeling (ISM). Ultimately, the factors identified in the qualitative stage were prioritized and presented in a structured model.
 
Based on the findings of this research, the qualitative section identified 67 components, 15 concepts, and 6 main categories that influence the creation and implementation of ambidextrous innovation in the banking industry. The six main categories are the executive process mechanism, organizational learning, the role of leadership style in innovation, the development of technological infrastructure, organizational foundation, and understanding the turbulence of the competitive environment. In the quantitative section, these factors were classified into three levels. The first level included the executive process mechanism, organizational learning, and the creation of technological infrastructure. The second level embraced the role of leadership style in innovation, and the third level comprised the organizational foundation and understanding of the turbulence of the competitive environment. Ultimately, the final research model was developed based on these classifications.
 
Based on the findings, banking industry managers should prioritize strengthening the organizational foundation and enhancing their understanding of environmental turbulence, as these factors have the most significant influence and are least affected by other variables. In the next phase, they should focus on fostering innovative and collaborative leadership styles to facilitate the creation and implementation of ambidextrous innovation. Finally, managers need to develop technological infrastructures, emphasize organizational learning, and implement knowledge management practices within banks, ensuring that the execution of ambidextrous innovation becomes operational. The findings suggest that adopting ambidextrous innovation—balancing exploratory and exploitative approaches—can transform Iran's banking industry into a more dynamic sector. Ambidextrous innovation can enable banks to overcome organizational stagnation and employee disengagement, fostering the development of diverse financial products that effectively meet customer needs. Furthermore, the research indicates that the creation and implementation of ambidextrous innovation can enhance the performance of Iran’s banking and financial ecosystem. One potential outcome is the formation of networks and alliances among different elements of the banking ecosystem, facilitating financing for the value chains of businesses. This highlights the significant role of ambidextrous innovation in reshaping Iran's banking system.

Development and corruption are two related concepts; in fact, they are two sides of the same coin. This implies that achieving development is not possible without combating corruption. Given the crucial role of human resource management systems in preventing corruption, this study aims to model the optimal system for managing employee performance to prevent corruption in the public sector.

Design/ methodology/ approach: 

This research adopts an interpretive paradigm, applied for its purpose and descriptive in nature, employing interviews as the data collection method. The research method is based on interpretive-structural modeling. The statistical population comprises public sector managers, and snowball sampling is used for sampling.

The study identified ten components for designing an employee performance management model to prevent administrative corruption: transparency, accountability, procedural justice, interactional justice, justifiability, alignment, rule of law, continuous improvement, authenticity, and preventability. According to the results of the MICMAC analysis, none of the identified components are located in the autonomous region, indicating a strong interconnection among all model components. Nine components were identified in the linkage region: transparency, accountability, procedural justice, interactional justice, justifiability, alignment, rule of law, continuous improvement, and authenticity. These components are dynamic, meaning that changes in them can impact the entire system. Additionally, the preventability component is placed in the dependence region, indicating its high dependence on other components. Among other findings, the study delineated an interaction network of variables to determine the level and relationships of the identified components. According to this network, the rule of law and accountability dimensions are fundamental components of the model, as they influence all other components. These two components exhibit a two-way relationship with each other, implying mutual influence. Additionally, transparency and alignment rank next, also with a two-way relationship with the preceding components, indicating their significant influence on the model. Authenticity and justifiability are positioned in the third level of the model; authenticity affects continuous improvement and has an interactive relationship with justifiability. Continuous improvement, located in the fourth level, impacts two components in the fifth level: procedural justice and interactional justice. Procedural and interactional justice, besides influencing each other, affect the preventability component, the last level of the model. Preventability is the most dependent component, suggesting that procedural preventability in the employee performance management system relies on other model components.

Limitations & Consequences:

 Data collection through interviews introduces potential biases in the findings. Additionally, the scope of actors and the research problem prevented a comprehensive examination of the issue from all perspectives.

Practical Consequences:

 Public sector managers can use the findings of this applied research to design employee performance management systems that reduce corruption risk.

Innovation or value of the Article: 

Despite numerous efforts to combat corruption in Iran, effectiveness has been limited, as evidenced by Iran's low ranking in the Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI) in 2022. This study addresses the significant role of human resource systems in combating administrative corruption by identifying and modeling the components of an employee performance management system tailored for the public sector.

The coronavirus pandemis caused many operational challenges for hotel management. In this situation, it became clear that many hotels and accommodation centers do not use performance management systems. On the contrary, they have performance evaluation systems that usually include annual evaluation and review, and there is little alignment between the hotel's performance and its strategic goals. It only focuses on the past performance of the hotel. Therefore, the necessity of identifying suitable criteria for performance management rather than its evaluation is felt in hotels. For this purpose, in this article, criteria for designing the performance management model in hotels with the meta-synthesis method were collected and leveled using the structural-interpretive modeling approach according to the opinion of experts. In this article, 14 criteria have been identified that will help to improve the management of hotel performance in the critical conditions of the corona outbreak and are in line with the essential administrative, strategic, and communication goals, development, and maintenance of hotels. Therefore, they can help address performance management challenges. In the classification of identified criteria, "government policies and leadership skills" were the most effective criteria, and "customer loyalty and reduction of hotel costs" were among the most effective criteria. IntroductionIn recent years, globalization has made the spread of viruses more effective and has created significant challenges for manufacturing and service industries. In 2019, the high infection rate of the coronavirus (COVID-19) and the death rate created a new fear in society as people worried about the negative consequences of this pandemic. Life in the 21st century has become challenging due to the dramatic changes caused by the recent pandemic. The severity of the effects of Covid-19 has caused all industries to face unprecedented economic crises. The hotel and tourism industry has faced many problems due to a sharp reduction in the workforce and tourists, and financial issues arising from it. (Gosling et al., 2020). The problem that exists in this regard is the problems of the hotel industry in the field of performance management and that the expected improvements in performance, responsiveness, transparency, and service quality have not yet occurred as desired; On the other hand, the spread of the coronavirus has fueled the problems in this area. Due to the lack of research, the need for more research in this field is felt.Therefore, the design and expression of a new and innovative model of performance management in such organizations are necessary and undeniable, and the lack of a model for managing the performance of hotels, especially in Yazd, whose historical context has also reached the world record. It is the basis for the formation of this research.

The main goal of this research is to design a performance management framework for hotels in the context of the outbreak of the coronavirus, which can be used to obtain real results from the relationships between performance management criteria. Considering this goal and the research questions mentioned in the problem statement, the current research is exploratory-survey and practical in terms of its purpose. The field of research is organizational performance management in hotels in Yazd province. This research data has been collected in two ways: documentary and survey.This article consists of two parts: first, stating the problem, necessity, and background of the research and identifying performance management criteria in the hotel industry, various sources including books, articles, and other resources available in the field of the research problem have been studied and analyzed by meta-synthesis. Various methods have been presented to perform meta-synthesis, and the seven-stage model of Sandelowski and Barroso has been used in this article.In the second part, the structural-interpretive modeling method is used to design the model of relationships between criteria.

The first part: determining and finalizing the criteria: to extract the criteria systematically, the meta-synthesis method was used.All the criteria in the table above were categorized and provided to research experts. During various meetings, experts reviewed, evaluated, and sometimes combined the criteria. Finally, 14 criteria were agreed upon and entered the next research stage as the final criteria. The final criteria are:Financial ability and hotel facilities (hotel resources); 2. Health and medical preparation in the hotel; 3. Government policies; 4. Leadership and management skills; 5. Hotel marketing actions and strategies; 6. Crisis management; 7. Innovation in providing hotel services and activities; 8. Flexibility in providing new services in the hotel; 9. Identify key performance areas; 10. Transparency in the current affairs of the hotel (creating trust and confidence); 11. Reducing hotel costs; 12. Improving the quality of services provided to hotel guests; 13. Customer loyalty to the hotel; 14. Increase in hotel staff empowerment.The second part: designing a structural-interpretive model of hotel performance management during the corona outbreak; to draw the structural-interpretive model based on the levels of the variables and the final access matrix, a preliminary model was drawn, and the final model was obtained by removing transferability."Decreasing hotel costs" is the highest-level of goal. The goals at a higher level have less influence and are more influenced by the criteria of lower levels. At the lowest level of the model, there are "government policies" and "leadership and management skills." These two criteria act as basic criteria, and the hotel performance management process during corona's outbreak should be one of these criteria. Start and spread to other criteria. 

The results of this research determined that performance management criteria in the hotel industry with the ISM approach are placed at six levels. Whereas the criteria of "government policies and leadership and management skills" were at the lowest level. This means that the factors mentioned above are the basis of hotel performance management during the corona outbreak, and attention to these factors is prioritized for hotel management in critical and special conditions. Therefore, it is recommended to improve hotel management skills and make decisions and plans based on government policies.Also, based on the findings of the Mic-Mac framework, it was determined that the criteria of hotel resources, health and medical preparation in the hotel, marketing measures and strategies, and innovation in the provision of hotel services and activities; have a significant influence on other factors. So hotel managers should pay more attention to them because changes in these criteria affect other performance criteria.

Extensive literature on strategic agility in organizations has been presented. Each of the thinkers in this field has pointed to one of the dimensions and aspects of strategic agility, but so far a comprehensive framework of strategic agility anabler factors and the relationship between them in the businesses of information technology knowledge based firms has not been provided. In this research, first, based on the content analysis approach through semi-structured interviews with managers of knowledge-based companies in the field of information and communication technology and computer software, basic and organizer themes identified and in the next step with Using structural-interpretive modeling methodology, the levels of enablers were extracted in a framework consisting of seven factors and five levels, and finally the type of variables was determined according to the effectiveness of other variables in MICMAC analysis. The results show that the effective leadership factor with the degree of influence of seven is the most important enabler of strategic agility of knowledge-based IT businesses. The variables of effective leadership, strategic foresight and resources in accordance with the VRIN framework were included in the cluster of key/independent variables. Clusters of linked variables include; Absorption capacity, technological capability and organizational ambidexterity are that have high impact power and effectiveness. The team entrepreneurship orientation variable was included in the cluster of dependent variables with the least impact on other variables.