A Typology of the Mental Priorities of Governmental and Non-governmental Charity Managers in the Issue of Charity Management in Iran based on Q Methodology

Voluntary organizations play an important role in today's society (Alfes, 2018:1-2). In Iran, an important part of the economy is dedicated to the non-profit sector (Ayodo, 2021). In all organizations, weakness in management weakens non-profit organizations (Pyanov et al., 2021). Accordingly, it is very important to better understand the factors that influence the decision-making of organization managers (Cyr et al., 2022:1-2). Charitable organizations should strive to demonstrate the highest level of performance; Because a well-managed charity organization will ensure a higher reputation and more donations (Crettez et al., 2021:26). Charitable organizations, as spontaneous support institutions, have a significant impact on the process of poverty alleviation and social harm (Nayeri et al., 2021:2). Part of the challenges of charities, at the micro level, include people's lack of trust in how to spend donations and poor communication between charities and donors (Ayodo, 2021) and limited resources (Alfes, 2018:1-2). Considering the diversity of charitable organizations, the necessity of designing a large system of charity is felt twice. The design of this system should be based on the opinions of actors and activists in the field of charity affairs. Therefore, improving and reforming the governance system of charity affairs should be based on the views and experiences of non-governmental and governmental charities, which requires a general understanding of their approaches and mindsets. In the theoretical literature, topics such as charity in the economy, the definition of charity, the ratio of government and non-government sectors in charity affairs, and issues and problems of governance of charity affairs in the country are discussed.

In the current research, Q methodology was used, which is included in the category of applied research. This method is mixed and exploratory and has no hypothesis. For the current research, in the stage of gathering the discourse space and cue cards, the interview tool was used, and in the quantitative stage, the cue table was used, and for the quantitative data analysis, exploratory factor analysis was used. To understand the discourse environment, due to the limited number of interviews and reports published on the Internet, and also for further accreditation, interviews were conducted with 23 managers of governmental and non-governmental charities and several expert professors in this field.

In this research, in the first stage of selecting the Q sample phrase, 87 selected phrases were obtained. Finally,
31 terms have been selected. In the next step, 23 experts were studied and were given Q statements and tables to complete, and finally, 18 Q answers were used for analysis. In the mentioned research, face validity was used and Cronbach's alpha method was used to measure the reliability of the study, and the present value was 0.96. In the current study, the value of the KMO index is equal to 546. In Q methodology, the pebble diagram is used to show the most important factors in terms of the determined amount of variance. From the first factor onwards, the explanatory variance suddenly drops sharply. Therefore, the previous six factors will be used for factor analysis. In general, for the current research, the rotated matrix has been applied using the Varimax method. Participants No. 6, 9, and 11 form the first mental model, participants No. 1, 2, 5, 15, and 18 form the second mental model, participants No. 7, 10, and 12 form the third mental model, participants No. 4 and 14 form the fourth mental model, participants Number 3 and 17 form the fifth mental model and participants number 8, 10, 13, and 16 form the sixth mental model jointly. Six types of mentality were obtained, which include, 1) those who support popularization with a focus on government regulation, 2) those who support the performance of charities, 3) those who support the transparent presence of the people, 4) opponents of government administration, 5) the sovereigntists, and 6) propagandists.

Based on the results obtained in the current research, six types of thinking and mentality were obtained. The first group believes in the principle of popularization of charity affairs and considers it an important issue, but they think that this popularization should be under the supervision and guidance of the government as the supervising, controlling, and guiding authority. The second group pays more attention to issues that lead to the improvement of the performance and effectiveness of charities, and they believe that the solution to poverty is to promote and solve these problems within charities. The third group, believing in the weakness of the government and the lack of public trust in it, emphasizes mechanisms to attract the attention of the people, and unlike the first group, they do not believe much in government intervention in the regulatory debate. The fourth group's mindset is based on strong opposition to the entry of the government and its administration, and they introduce the best work of the government to collect taxes from the rich to allocate to the deprived. The sovereigntists and those who say full government ownership form the fifth mentality, who are very cautious about people's participation and consider a minor role for them. According to them, the performance of non-governmental charities should be under the supervision and full control of the government. Finally, the sixth mentality emphasizes the element of advertising and promotion of the good deed, as well as efforts to attract people's participation. According to the results of the present research, the common element that exists among all mentalities, although with intensity and weakness, is the need for better and more involvement of the non-governmental sector and public charities. This issue can be taken into consideration as a common axis for discussion to reach a favorable governance structure. Other issues such as the level of government influence and tenure, how to design the propaganda system, etc. are among the issues about which there are differences of opinion.