Exploration of the Challenges of Human Resource Management in the Public Sector and Their Effects on Productivity

This study aims at identifying the challenges of human resource management in the public sector and its effects on productivity. According to the goals of the research, mixed and exploratory methods are used for conducting this research. In the qualitative section of the research, narrative method, a type of qualitative research method is employed, and semi-structured interviews are used for data collection. Interviews are done with 8 human resource managers and experts having at least three years of experience in the field of human resource in the Ministry of Jihad and Agriculture, the Administrative and Recruitment Affairs Organization (ARAO), the Welfare Organization, or the Ministry of Science, Research and Technology. The results revealed that there were 31 challenges in the field of human resource management on the basis of the triangular model in government organizations, the highest frequency of which is given to the challenges of “lack of an integrated human resource management system”, “upstream policies”, “the law”, and “lack of meritocracy”. For the statistical population of the quantitative phase of the research, the Ministry of Science, Research and Technology was designated with a population of 432 people, of whom 203 people were selected as the sample through Cochran's formula. Structural equation model test was employed for analyzing the quantitative data and testing the research model. The results revealed that all three variables of structural, behavioral and contextual challenges are more than 1.96, indicating that these factors inflict a negative and significant effect on productivity. This means that increase in structural, behavioral, and contextual challenges result in the decrease of productivity.