Strategies to manage conflicts between smart city governance actors

The multiplicity of actors in the area of smart city governance and the lack of proper communication between them causes various conflicts between actors. The solutions offered to solve inter-organizational conflicts are not effective mainly due to the lack of proper communication between organizations, and there is a need for local solutions from a set of experts from this context. The aim of the present study is to providing solutions to manage conflicts between smart city governance actors in Tehran. The research method of this study is exploratory mixed method, which is the combination of two methods of thematic analysis (TA) based on interviews with experts and interpretive structural modeling (ISM). The statistical population of this research consists of the managers and experts of the urban area in Tehran, which is eight people in the TA and 13 people in the ISM through the purposeful sampling method. The data collection tool is a semi-structured interview, which is analyzed through interpretive coding in the qualitative part and a researcher‑made questionnaire in the quantitative part. The findings of the study suggest a four-level model. The first level includes the themes of “transparency of financial relations between actors”, “consider sustainable income for the city administration”, “define system outputs” and “adopt a sustainable urban policy”, the second level includes the theme of “designing mediating institutions” and “leveling and managing conflicts”, and the third level includes the themes of “use informal communication” and “use of advisory councils”. Finally, the fourth level contains a theme that is the “creation of a national committee and state committees”.