نشریه مطالعات مدیریت دولتی ایران
سال دوم شماره 1 (پیاپی 3، بهار 1398)

Although Iran has been involved in several development programs before and after the revolution, the issue of development has never been a serious concern in Iranian scientific communities. Despite the fact that several academic fields such as economics, sociology, public administration, and political science have apparently been responsible for this subject, no significant progress has been made in practice. Conceivably one of the main reasons is the lack of a coherent move and synergetic interaction among all involved fields pertinent to the subject of development. In the meantime, some fields collect and facilitate the collective movement of all fields toward a system of development models, in which multi-model system is replaced with mono-model system and public minds are being prepared for this change. One of the most preeminent fields for this change is public policy. The mechanism of this change is discusses in this paper.

It has not been long since the public oversight system of the Tehran municipality has been established. Considering the great impact of this system on the satisfaction of citizens from the Tehran municipality, studying this system has become more and more interesting for the researchers in the field of public administration. Several factors contribute to improving public oversight, which have not been investigated so far. In addition, there are some factors that may undermine this system. Identifying such effective factors on improving public oversight can help to promote and maintain this system. The required information for this research has been collected through interviews with the managers of this system, and analyzed by Thematic Analysis Method. The final model has been designed by Structural-Interpretative Modeling Method. The identified effective factors are as follows: organizational position, strategic planning, technical infrastructure, citizen experience, senior managers, rules and regulations, elite culture, job description, public culture, public empowerment, human resources, organizational culture, and urban management.

Nowadays, management and organization is rife with various dichotomies which turn management to the easy but at the same time difficult action, especially in public organizations; dichotomies such as control vs. flexibility, centralization vs. decentralization, inside vs. outside view and so on. In fact, appropriate and optimal aggregation of these dichotomies is very effective in success of management and organization’s performance and it, at least theoretically, lies in system approach. The Viable Systems Model (VSM) is based on Organizational Cybernetics, as a main branch of system approach, which, through making use of the advantages of interdisciplinary approach, could largely solve and minimize the distance between these dichotomies. Although this systemic model is well-known in other countries and has been implemented in various projects from firm level to public administration level, it is not well-recognized in Iran. Therefore, it is necessary to present theoretical and practical concepts of this model to the Iranian scientific and managerial society. This article, with the aim of compensating for theoretical poverty in extant studies, by using documentary methods, reviews these main subjects: basic concepts of VSM such as cybernetics, variety engineering, recursivity and autopoiesis, the interdisciplinary aspects of model (at least in three subjects: its origin, the system of research problems and subjects, and solutions and modus operandi), methodology and five systems of VSM, VSM in action and some of its applications and also some advantages and critique of VSM, and finally, some implications of VSM in designing public organizations structures in Iran.

Knowledge production and knowledge sharing are among the major missions of universities and higher education institutions. Extant studies have shown that the existence of social capital in higher education can improve the quality of the knowledge production and sharing. The purpose of this paper is to present a conceptual model of how social capital influences the knowledge sharing in academic knowledge production teams. A survey-based methodology was used to collect data from 262 graduate students and 122 faculty of Shiraz University in the dissertation and theses writing teams. Accordingly, the simple stratified sampling method was used in this research, and the hypotheses are examined by the correlation and the structural equation modeling (SEM). The empirical results showed that, in academic knowledge production teams, the relationship between social capital and knowledge sharing is positive and significant.

Evaluation studies encompass wide scope of social studies and involve varied and indefinite methods. The method of program theory evaluation is one of these methods. In addition to mapping a way for research, the advantage of this method results in other various functions that provide more capacity for social studies. This method includes planning, control, documentation, making discourse and organizing as well as evaluation. Coherency of policies and programs is the key function of program theory evaluation method. This essay aims to examine the theoretical aspects of program theory evaluation method, and also to enrich literature in this field. Therefore, key concepts, history, approaches, models and major problems pertaining to this field are explored in this paper.

The present study seeks to design an organizational resilience model in SAPCO Company by using interpretative structural modeling. As a result, the final model of organizational resilience in Sapco is designed and the results of the data analysis are: crisis management at level 1, organizational flexibility at level 2, buffering capacity at level 3, available resources at level 4, support environment and interactions between organizations at level 5, education on resilience at level 6, information technology infrastructure and contingency and strategic plans at level 7, and the development of organizational resilience policies at Level 8. In other words, in order to increase the resilience in our economy that is under international sanctions, Sapco should adopt laws that uphold resilience. The adoption of such rules by Sapco is as commitment to resilience implementation programs. Hence, Sapco must be able to identify threats such as inflation and rising prices by analyzing the current economic situation and future market conditions. Also, the goals of resilience and its implementation mechanisms should be taught by senior executives, middle managers and key persons. Sapco has to collaborate with organizations and companies that work in the field of production and supply of parts. In other words, Sapco should attend domestic products and effective communication with them. Finally, it must be able to efficiently manage its funds and assets to protect itself from threats.