Pathology of Performance Management System of Iranian Public Sector Organizations

About a decade has passed since the establishment and implementation of the current performance management system of Iranian public sector organizations according to the criteria of the Civil Service Management Act. Nevertheless, this system has not been scientifically and comprehensively pathologized. Since the possible failures and shortcomings of the current system will cause deep performance gaps if they are placed together and continue, so the purpose of the present research is the pathology of the mentioned system. First, the literature on performance management (at the organizational level) was studied and the selected sources were reviewed, classified, and thematically analyzed. Then, semi-structured interviews with nineteen performance management experts in public sector organizations were conducted based on the extracted themes. Experts were identified by snowball technique considering scientific, experimental and perceptual conditions. Subsequently, inductive thematic analysis of the interviews data and pathology were performed. In this phase, 500 codes were assigned to the data. Findings of this research include a global theme (the failures of mentioned system), 6 organizing themes (major failures including planning problems, legal and contextual deficiencies, proficiency problems and poor insight, conflict of interest problems, executive and logistical deficiencies, theoretical problems in the current model) and 55 basic themes (minor failures). Considering the variety, multiplicity and scope of the mentioned failures, corrective measures should be taken with the participation of various specialties in the field of management knowledge. Some reforms are possible within this system, while others require improvements in other subsystems of the Iranian administrative system.