فصلنامه مدیریت دولتی
پیاپی 56 (زمستان 1402)

The budget plays a crucial role in managing and administering the public sector, with revenue forecasting being an integral component. Essentially, forecasting is fundamental for management decisions; it is the process of estimating future events, aimed at minimizing risk in decision-making. Accurate revenue forecasting is vital as it establishes the parameters for the budget; however, its complexity arises from the influence of various external factors. Underestimating revenues can result in shortfalls, hindering the provision of essential services and potentially leading to an unexpected budget surplus at year-end. Conversely, overestimating revenues might necessitate cuts in critical services, possibly causing a budget deficit. This research explores the challenges and issues within Iran's government budgeting system's resource forecasting system. It seeks to bridge the gap between the approved and performance budgets, proposing improvements to resource forecasting in Iran's budgeting system.

A qualitative research approach was meticulously employed, involving in-depth, semi-structured interviews with 14 seasoned budgeting experts from Iran's renowned Program and Budget Organization. These experts were carefully selected through a comprehensive snowball sampling method. The research process was methodically structured and included several key steps: Firstly, with the explicit permission and consent of the interviewees, each interview was fully and accurately recorded. Subsequently, the entire content of each interview was diligently transcribed. Following this, the researchers engaged in a thorough re-reading and meticulous study of the data several times. This deep immersion and connection with the material enabled the researchers to begin taking detailed notes and to systematically extract common concepts and themes from the interviews. To ensure the highest level of research validity and reliability, the study's findings were rigorously assessed using the well-established Lincoln and Guba criteria.

The data gleaned from these comprehensive interviews were meticulously coded and analyzed through a thematic analysis approach. A total of 175 primary codes were extracted from the data, leading to the identification of 28 distinct sub-themes and two overarching main themes: the multifaceted challenges in resource forecasting and a range of potential solutions for substantial improvement.

The findings underscore challenges in resource forecasting, such as the gap between theoretical and practical applications, difficulties in converting capital into revenue, the proliferation of rent-seeking in government institutions, public distrust in government, the influence of external and internal conditions on government resources, and flaws in the monitoring system. Additional challenges include producing inaccurate budget reports, fictitious budget figures, a lack of unified planning and management, an absence of a structured resource collection framework, non-adoption of innovative forecasting methods, excessive dependence on oil revenues, budget politicization, and a deficit in transparency, accountability, and expert or tax collector involvement. Proposed effective solutions include depoliticizing the budget, establishing unified control over government revenues, reforming the tax system, implementing performance-based budgeting, enhancing financial transparency, reducing oil dependency, leveraging government capital assets for reinvestment, setting specific budgeting goals and plans, ensuring investment security through economic stability, improving forecasting accuracy with contemporary methods, and fostering public trust through transparent practices and technical budgeting tools involving experts.

Strategic thinking, long recognized as essential for organizational success, is increasingly vital across various levels of management. This cognitive skill enables organizations to adeptly navigate and manage changing environmental dynamics, thus sustaining competitive advantages. Traditionally viewed as a senior management prerequisite, the need for strategic thinking has expanded to lower organizational echelons in response to escalating environmental complexities. This capability equips managers with the foresight to comprehend, anticipate, and strategically respond to future events. Instead of merely reacting to changes, effective strategic thinking empowers managers to proactively shape and influence these dynamics. Research on the developmental trajectory of strategic thinking is notably limited. A comprehensive understanding of how managers evolve into skilled strategic thinkers is a multifaceted endeavor, warranting exploration from diverse viewpoints. This study is dedicated to examining the evolution of strategic thinking, particularly focusing on the experiential dimension. It seeks to identify and elucidate the specific experiences and their impactful attributes that contribute to the cultivation of strategic thinking among managers in Iran's burgeoning financial technology (Fintech) industry.

Adopting a qualitative methodology, this research is anchored in the descriptive phenomenological approach, with an emphasis on deeply understanding experiences as they naturally occur. To uncover the nuances of how managers in the Fintech industry develop strategic thinking skills, the study utilized semi-structured interviews. These interviews were meticulously designed to align with the research objectives, offering participants the opportunity to richly reconstruct and reflect upon their relevant experiences. Participant selection employed non-probability and purposive sampling methods, complemented by snowball sampling to ensure a comprehensive representation. The study engaged 14 senior managers in the financial technology sector, delving into their personal and professional journeys. Data analysis was conducted using the Colaizzi method, which involves a thorough process of transcribing interviews, detailed reading and re-reading of the transcripts, extracting significant statements, and formulating meaningful interpretations for each statement. This process also entailed organizing these interpretations into coherent thematic clusters, integrating these themes into a holistic description of the phenomenon, and delineating the fundamental structure of the experience. Crucially, the research findings were presented back to the participants for validation, allowing for any necessary refinements to ensure accuracy and authenticity.

This research successfully identified seven distinct and impactful experiences contributing to the development of strategic thinking among managers in Iran's Fintech industry, alongside the defining characteristics of these experiences. These pivotal experiences encompassed a range of factors: openness to new experiences, mentorship support, leadership in critical and challenging situations, a strong emphasis on personal development, extensive networking and communication, encountering and overcoming critical challenges, and leveraging failure as a tool for growth and development.

This study contributes to the existing body of research underscoring the significance of experiential learning. Conducted within the specific context of Iran's financial technology industry, the findings corroborate the instrumental role of experiential learning in the evolution of strategic thinking capabilities. The validity and reliability of the research outcomes were further reinforced through participant validation, ensuring the findings authentically represent the experiences and perceptions of those involved

The capability approach, the result of the latest development theories, is a novel perspective that links development with the concepts of "functions" and "capabilities." This approach can be employed as a fundamental framework in the education system. The aim of this research is to design a policy-making model based on the development of human capabilities in the Kurdistan Region's Ministry of Education. In this regard, human capabilities in the field of education were identified in Kurdistan, and logical connections between influential components were established to formulate a policy for developing human capabilities.

This research was conducted using qualitative research methods and a grounded theory approach. In this context, research data were collected through purposive sampling. This sampling involved employing experts and professionals in the field of education in Kurdistan. Data were collected through conducting in-depth interviews. Initially, experts in education were carefully selected, and only those with sufficient capability and experience in this field were chosen for interviews. This purposive sampling was done by setting precise criteria for selecting individuals to gain the best perspectives and experiences. Then, through conducting in-depth interviews with selected individuals, the necessary data for the research were collected. These interviews were extensive and detailed, asking various questions related to the research topic. Simultaneously, data were collected and analyzed. According to the Glaserian approach, the data were coded and conceptualized. This stage was done carefully to clearly highlight patterns, concepts, and significant differences in the data. Precise coding of this information allowed for a comprehensive and in-depth analysis of the collected data.

The research findings show that in the Kurdistan Region's education system, there are two main levels of human capabilities: skill-based capabilities and opportunity-based capabilities. These two levels of capability are widely observed in the education structure, from different educational levels to informal and self-taught education sectors. Skill-based capabilities focus on individual skills, abilities, and competencies. Academic, specialized, and practical skills acquired in the field of education are part of these capabilities. Opportunity-based capabilities are related to individuals' ability to utilize opportunities and facilities in their environment. These capabilities include social, communicative, and entrepreneurial abilities. Furthermore, the results showed that if attention is given to contextual factors, transformative elements, and facilitating factors, these capabilities can be transformed into desirable functions. These transformations are observable not only at the level of formal education but also in informal education processes. These results indicate the comprehensive and extensive nature of human capability development in the Kurdistan Region's education system and emphasize the fundamental role of these capabilities in improving educational processes and enhancing individuals' proficiency.

If educational policymakers in the Kurdistan Region's education system have a comprehensive and interactive perspective towards various aspects of human capabilities, it can be expected that desirable functions such as enhancing welfare and happiness in the social and educational areas of this region will be formed. This matter is dependent on the strengthening of social institutions, respect for regional norms and laws, valuing ethnic characteristics, and successful management of geopolitical factors. In this way, the capability approach, as a conceptual framework, not only aligns with traditional development paradigms but also plays a key role in creating a dynamic and responsive structure for educational policy-making.

The primary focus of this research is to delve into the rich tapestry of mentors’ experiences at Iran Khordo Diesel Company to uncover common themes that illuminate the nature of effective feedback in mentoring relationships. This exploration aims to provide a deeper understanding of the dynamics and nuances inherent in the feedback process within a corporate setting, thereby contributing to the broader discourse on mentorship effectiveness.

Grounded in Van Menen's hermeneutic phenomenological approach, this study employs semi-structured interviews as its primary research tool. The participants comprise a group of 15 mentors, identified for their expertise and proficiency in providing effective feedback within the mentoring relationships at Iran-Khodro Company. These mentors were chosen through a purposeful sampling method that is criterion-oriented, ensuring that each participant's experiences significantly contribute to the comprehensive understanding of effective feedback in mentorship.

The study involved conducting in-depth interviews with mentors acknowledged for their effective feedback capabilities in mentoring relationships. A thorough analysis of the interview texts revealed a rich array of concepts, main themes, and sub-themes that align with the research's fundamental questions: "what" constitutes effective feedback and "how" it is experienced by mentors in mentoring relationships. The findings are categorized into 8 general clusters: core categories, facilitators, requirements, moderators, context, limitations, strategies, and consequences. Each cluster encapsulates specific main themes—18 in total—including Core Category: Knowledge sharing; Facilitators: Mentor competencies, mentee competencies, and interpersonal sensitivities; Requirements: Mentor's individual and technical competencies; Moderators: Mentee characteristics and feedback content; Context: Organizational support and culture; Limitations: Mentee characteristics, mentor characteristics, and methods of feedback provision; Strategies: Technical feedback method, developmental feedback method, and social feedback method; and Consequences: Individual and organizational impacts. Additionally, 84 sub-themes were identified, providing a granular understanding of the mentors' lived experiences regarding effective feedback.

Given the pivotal role of mentoring programs in cultivating human capital, the insights gleaned from mentors’ experiences in providing effective feedback are invaluable for organizational leaders and practitioners. These findings offer practical guidelines for enhancing performance and achieving desired outcomes in the context of mentorship. The results serve as a robust framework for evaluating feedback effectiveness, facilitating task completion, and overall mentorship success. The research model developed in this study advocates for integrating effective feedback processes into the cultural fabric of organizational mentoring programs at a macro level. This integration not only simplifies operationalization at the organizational level but also contributes to theoretical advancements at an international scale. The added value of this study lies in its capacity to raise awareness and streamline the effective feedback process in mentoring relationships within organizational contexts, guided by the detailed modeling of the concepts and themes presented. Furthermore, the establishment of a specialized working group to monitor the efficiency and effectiveness of feedback in mentoring relationships is paramount. Considering the research topic's significance, further investigations in specific geographical regions are suggested to provide comprehensive policy guidelines for educators and mentors. These additional studies aim for a deeper exploration and richer empirical findings, thereby enriching the global understanding of effective mentorship practices.

Startups around the world boast diverse workforces, and forecasts suggest that future workforces will predominantly comprise minorities, including women, immigrants, and individuals from varied ethnic and racial backgrounds. Iranian startups are similarly diverse, featuring people from an array of ethnic and cultural backgrounds. Raising capital is crucial for the growth and development of innovative startups, and the abilities of startup founders are believed to significantly influence this process. This study aims to examine the impact of ethnic diversity among Iranian startup founders on the amount of investment capital raised, specifically at the Gitex exhibition in Dubai.

This research adopts a quantitative approach, is applied in nature, and employs descriptive data collection methods. It focuses on founders of 20 startups who participated in the Innovation and Prosperity Fund call by the Presidential Scientific Institution from 2020 to 2022, examined in a census format. To categorize ethnic diversity, we utilized Shannon's index. The study then explored the impact of ethnic diversity on capital raised using the Pearson correlation method, regression analysis, and SPSS software. Control variables included the size of the startup teams at the exhibition (at Series A funding level), the age of the startup (considered from the year of establishment to up to 10 years), and the founders’ experience in startups (average years of experience before and after joining the startup, within a 0 to 15 years range).

The results reveal that the ethnic diversity of Iranian startup founders significantly influences the amount of investment capital raised, considering control variables such as the startups' age, team size, and founders' full-time experience. The regression coefficient of 0.892 between ethnic diversity and capital raised underscores the positive and significant effect of diversity. Furthermore, we found a positive and statistically significant correlation between ethnic diversity and capital raised, indicating that a one-unit increase in ethnic diversity correlates with a 14% increase in total attracted capital.

This study contributes to management and entrepreneurship literature by supporting the "diversity as an advantage" theory and challenging the "diversity as a disadvantage" perspective in the context of raising startup capital. It suggests that investors should view diversity as a beneficial factor in startups, leading to more effective investment decisions. The findings align with cognitive theory and information processing, indicating that a diverse team, with varied cognitive models, may enhance innovation and problem-solving capabilities. Additionally, the results resonate with the theory of social networks and social capital, emphasizing the resources available through a network of diverse relationships. However, the findings contradict social identity theory and its related social classification theory, which argue that ethnic diversity can heighten conflict and reduce the efficiency of information exchange, cohesion, and trust, thereby negatively impacting performance. These contradictions offer intriguing avenues for future research.

Transparency is an interdisciplinary concept that has emerged in multiple management fields such as governance, economy, health, law, media and even religious institutions. Examining the structure of knowledge, developments and current trends in the field of transparency indicates the change of informational approaches (focused on accessibility and disclosure of information) to emerging social approaches. The aim of this study is to identify key references and international trends of the transparency phenomenon at the international level. Accordingly, trends in publication and citation, main actors at the country and organizational levels, leading media outlets including publishers and journals, and established and emerging research fronts based on topics and key terms in the field of transparency have been identified.

To extract related scientific productions, the Web of Science Core Collection was utilized, encompassing databases and citation indexes of social and human sciences in journals, conferences, and books. Queries were formulated based on a combination of Title, Author Keywords, and Keyword Plus, refined by the research area of economics, spanning the years 2013 to 2022. Data processing, analysis, and visualization followed scientometric principles, techniques, and concepts. The Clarivate database was consulted for bibliographic data, content, and citation data of scientific productions, while the JCR database was used for data related to scientific journals. Network and overlay maps for citations, co-occurrence of keywords, and their clustering were conducted using the VOS Viewer software. For co-occurrence calculations, a full counting method was applied with threshold.
 

Analyzing 1,163 scientific outputs indexed in the field of transparency revealed a dynamic trend with an average annual growth rate of 9.38% in publications and 40.27% in citations. In the last year, the rate of publications in this field surpassed double the average. The standings of participating countries, based on their production share, the volume, and age of received citations, were evaluated to monitor their competitive behavior. Institutions such as the University of London, National Bureau of Economic Research, University of California, European Central Bank, and Udice French Research Universities emerged as the most active in the transparency domain. In this collection, 30% of the works were published in 5% of the journals, as well as top publishers being introduced. The analysis identified key thematic axes at three levels: Research Areas, Citation Topics Meso, and Citation Topics Micro. The top ten Citation Topics Micro, in order, are: Monetary Policy, Corporate Governance, Economic Growth, Option Pricing, Cooperation, Elections, Public Administration, Health Technology Assessment, Antitrust, and Corporate Social Responsibility. Finally, a total of 145 co-occurring keywords were categorized into five clusters, and the trends of leading countries (USA, UK, Germany, China, France, Netherlands, and Canada) in these concepts were compared.

Examining the production status of countries, the dynamic rankings of participation in outputs, the volume and age of received citations, and the unique thematic trends of each country, underscores the importance of national planning for success in transparency management. On the scientific development path, identifying key references in transparency paves the way for productive research advancements and interaction with transparency leaders, and familiarity with current trends in this domain facilitates efforts towards promising directions. The composition of the top identified organizations, encompassing academic, non-profit, and supranational entities, suggests that success in the transparency realm necessitates regulatory measures for a balanced growth of academia, market, and industry. The knowledge structure of the transparency field highlights the necessity to consider a broad spectrum of stakeholders, both legal and natural individuals, in roles such as policymakers, business managers, and researchers within the transparency ecosystem. Universal thematic axes and country-specific indigenous axes provide insights for devising research agendas, enabling us to align with global understanding in addressing our top-priority issues.

In today's dynamic societal structure, the active participation and involvement of people in decision-making, implementation, and monitoring processes are indispensable for the successful realization of any plan. The concept of participatory governance, central to the success of political and administrative systems, necessitates a comprehensive review of scientific publications in this domain. Experts in participatory governance face the daunting task of navigating through an extensive array of research documents to analyze the field's various strengths and weaknesses. This task, though crucial, is arduous and time-consuming given the sheer volume of literature available. Therefore, the utilization of scientific support tools to unearth and understand the conceptual framework of this area is both invaluable and necessary. The primary aim of this article is to address fundamental questions pertaining to scientific productions in participatory governance, a field increasingly recognized as vital in diverse scientific disciplines, particularly in political and governmental management. This evaluation is conducted using Co-word Analysis, a method that reveals the conceptual dynamics within the field.

The study embarks on an analytical journey through scientific productions in the domain of participatory governance spanning from 1999 to 2023, utilizing the Web of Science database as a reference point. To process and analyze the data, the study employs VOSviewer and Excel software, tools adept at illustrating the distribution of publications across different countries and their prevalence in various journals. This extensive examination encompasses 35,800 scientific documents, leading to the extraction of 70,771 keywords, each offering insight into the evolving landscape of participatory governance research.

The upward trajectory in the number of publications over the years underscores the growing significance attributed to participatory governance among researchers. A geographical analysis of these publications reveals that the United States leads with 8,862 documents, followed by England with 5,547, China with 3,833, Australia with 3,132, and the Netherlands with 2,799. A deeper dive into the subject matter of these documents indicates a predominant focus on environmental sciences, natural resources, ecosystems, and corporate governance. The Co-word Analysis further elucidates that "management", "network", and "policy" are the concepts most intricately intertwined with participatory governance.

The conceptual architecture of participatory governance, as delineated by this study, indicates that policymaking forms its core essence. The structural and operational coordination among various components, elements, institutions, and organizations predominantly hinges on network-based strategies, with governance being operationalized through management mechanisms. A temporal analysis of keyword co-occurrence patterns reveals a paradigm shift: from micro-level discussions centered around entities like companies and organizations in the years preceding 2010, to macro-level discourse focusing on broader themes like governance and politics as we approach 2022. These findings make a substantial contribution to advancing the literature in this field and provide a valuable resource for researchers aspiring to explore participatory governance. They offer insights into the current knowledge landscape and assist in steering future scientific inquiries. In alignment with these research trends, the article concludes by proposing avenues for further research to deepen the understanding of participatory governance.