فصلنامه مدیریت دولتی
پیاپی 36 (زمستان 1397)

Understanding the nature of "public policy" is not as straightforward as discerning its instances. The term "public policy" is utilized in an imprecise manner not only by public policy adopters but also by academic society. However, it is obvious that comprehending the essence of this concept is an inevitable prerequisite to various policy sciences, such as policy process, policy analysis, and policy evaluation. The present paper reports an analytical-interpretive research that aims to recognize and explain the essence of "public policy". In this research, the most significant definitions of "public policy" in the literature were to be analyzed applying thematic analysis. The conclusion puts those concepts existing in the definitions in the three branches: nature, traits, and ending of “public policy”; furthermore, based on this three-dimensional classification, two definitions of “public policy” according two perspectives, “policy audience” and “policy analyst”, are proposed, being comprehensive in representing commons and in distinguishing fundamental differences of definitions. The public policy from the perspective of policy audience could be defined as: “a relatively stable course of action that can be abstracted from a set of interrelated decisions, laws, positions, and actions of one or set of actors ascribing to administration, in dealing with a problem or a matter of concern”; while public policy from the perspective of policy analyst could be defined as: “a set of interrelated decisions, laws, positions, and actions adopted by a policy actor, in dealing with a problem or matter of concern to allocate values desirably in society”.

The purpose of this research is to understand the personal and social values of public administrators affecting on the implementation process of approved policies. How the administrators and public servants affect the policies and decisions of policy-makers is a critical issue in public administration; the issue that has attracted the attention of many researchers in the field of Public Administration. In this research, we conducted semi-structured interviews with twenty middle managers in five state organizations. The managers were selected through a purposive sampling method. The interview questions, which were extracted from reviewing the related literature, were divided into two groups of personal and social values. Finally, theme analysis was used to analyze the interviews. The research findings on the social values dimension are: Benevolence, Compassion, Commitment to the Public Interest, Sacrifice, Awakening, and Serving, and on the personal values dimension are: Need for Achievement, Deontology, Citizens' Dignity, Flexibility, Organizational Citizenship, Fair and Just Delivery of Public Service, Religious and training issues, Profitability, Lawfulness, and Professionalism. This research did not aim at proposing ethical and behavioral values or codes in the governmental section, yet its purpose was to study the reality of what the administrators and public servants actually do, and the ways they influence the policy makers policies and decisions. Finally, some recommendations

Humility is one of the fundamental virtues mentioned in most philosophical, religious, and, scientific texts. Recently, as the base of virtue, it has also gained a special place in organizational and management studies. The purpose of this research is to provide a comprehensive view of the concept of humility in the content of organization and management. In this exploratory mixed-method research, in order to understand the concept of humility, in the content of organization and management, the researchers used grounded theory strategy (GT) and to validate the indicators and concept, survey strategy was used. For this purpose, 12 human resources managers working in the banking industry in Iran were interviewed. Through coding techniques, the key concepts were identified and categorized. Data collection was done through distributing questionnaires to 200 employees and the collected data were analyzed using confirming factor analysis. Finally, the organizational humility was modeled within three areas: cognitive aspect related to knowledge and ontology, affective aspect related to attitude and epistemology, and behavioral aspect related to observing the pragmatism methodology. The results of the study, confirming the validity of the instrument, showed that the understanding of the bank's managers of humility is supported by espoused theories and theory in use, but the epistemic and content barriers prevented the maximum use of this competence.

Combating and reducing governmental corruption is a permanent concern of the rulers and a variety of approaches and instruments have been used to achieve this goal. While the majority of solutions are focused on the consequences and post-control, the new approaches emphasize the designing of pre-control and controlling systems and laws that are known as structural capital. This research studies the effect of structural capital on reducing corruption with the mediating role of individual motivations in governmental departments of Kerman province in Iran. The present descriptive-exploratory research is applied in terms of purpose and is based on the deductive research and positivism paradigm in term of philosophy. The statistical population of the study was 1817 employees of different governmental departments of Kerman province. Based on the Morgan table, a sample of 317 employees was selected based on stratified random sampling. In order to measure the variables of the research, Bechini’s structural capitalization questionnaire (2015), Afzali’s corruption (2011) and the individual motivations of Khotbe Sara's companion (2004) have been used. The reliability of the questionnaires was confirmed by Cronbach's alpha and for data analysis, structural equation modeling and PLS software were used. Findings of the research show that structural capital has a significantly positive effect on reducing corruption and personal incentives in committing corruption. The results showed that structural capital affects both directly and also through individual motivations on the reduction of administrative corruption in governmental agencies.

The selection system involves the ways in which decision makers try to select those whose characteristics are more likely to be successful in the job. The purpose of this qualitative research is to provide a model for selection of prestigious staff in governmental organizations (universities and higher education institutions) in Tehran. In order to extract the main components of the selection of prone employees, a semi-structured interview was conducted. To do so, 18 recruiting and recruiting experts in the field of higher education were interviewed. The subjects studied in this study were experts in recruiting and recruiting in the field of higher education who were selected through a theoretical purposeful sampling method. In this study, using Corbin and Strauss grounded theory methods in open coding, 15 categories and 47 concepts were extracted. In the axial coding stage, based on the issue-oriented concepts, the causal circumstances, the strategy, the context, the interventional conditions and the consequences, a paradigm model was presented. In the selective coding stage, the choice of the theoretical model derived from the research findings was introduced. In order to select prudent employees, it is suggested to pay attention to the recruiting needs of an organization of decent quality at an appropriate time and at a reasonable cost. We can also conclude that choosing a person should lead to a win-win relationship, which means both the needs of the organization as well as the needs of the staff are met and the best possible harmony should be applied between the person and the job.

The de-concentrated organizing of provinces along with the expanse of country, ethnic and religious diversity and the massive volume of public services, have confronted Islamic Republic of Iran with various problemssuch as reducing productivity, undermining of local sovereignty and promoting ethnic and religious nationalism. The purpose of this research is to identify indicators of local self-government as an example of decentralized local government. The model in this research was designed using mixed–method approach. In the first phase, due to the lack of ample previous researches on indicators of local self-government evaluation, and also due to the consideration of ethnic and climatic stresses and geographical-political situations of Iran, the initial evaluation pattern of local self-government was designed through the Directed Content Analysis method. In this section, 16 experts were interviewed. Finally, the initial evaluation pattern was tested using Structural Modeling Equation. Analyzing the results of the interviews, in the qualitative section, legal identity, democracy, government duties, decision-making powers, and public organizations elements were extracted from 567 indications, 150 concepts and 22 categories. The results of the quantitative test indicated the confirmation of all categories and concepts, except for the partisanship concept. Finally, the self-government conditions of the provinces have been evaluated using proposed local self-government evaluation model. Since no evaluative model for self-government conditions of the provinces has not been designed so far, the results of this research can be used to decentralize the provinces. The provinces of Tehran, Khorasan-e-Razavi and Isfahan showed better status in all of the self-government indicators. In contrast, the provinces of Sistan-o-Balochestan, Kordestan, Ilam and northern and southern Khorasan showed lower status in self-government, which can lead to an increase in the developmental gap between these provinces.

To achieve an organization with the least error, one can reduce the organizational error and improve the efficiency of learning behavior and performance by employing error management theory and creating an error management climate. For this reason, the main objective of the present study is to examine such effects in healthcare organizations. The present study is practical in nature and is a survey in terms of methodology. The statistical population under study includes 1800 nurses from Qaem and Imam Reza (PBUH) hospitals of Mashhad. The minimum sample size was 467 people; therefore, about 500 questionnaires were distributed to these organizations, which, in the end, 474 questionnaires were collected. In order to analyze the data, the structural equation modeling was used to investigate the appropriateness of structural modeling pattern. The results of the study showed that error management atmosphere has positive effects on learning behavior and individual performance whereas MUM avoidance has a significantly negative impact. In addition, we can conclude that MUM avoidance has negative effects on learning behavior and individual performance. Also, the findings assert the mediating role of MUM avoidance. managers and supervisors of various departments of health organizations, first of all, should accept that errors in organizations are inevitable and we should focus on minimizing errors by relying on knowledge sharing and learning from past errors. They can provide a ground for discovering various errors and preventing MUM avoidance among employees by creating error management climate through material and non-promotional incentives, timely monitoring, deep analysis, open communication, and asking for feedback.