STRATEGIC MANAGEMENT THOUGHT (MANAGEMENT THOUGHT)
Year:2016 | Volume:9 | Issue:2 (18) |Papers Count:8

Gaining maximum benefits from limited resources including physical, intellectual and financial is one of the main objectives of the researchers and managers. Most of the research done in this area has overlooked metaphysics and has exclusively studied organizational issues in terms of material factors. However, both religious instructions and practical evidence show that human will is not the only factor that affects his efforts and non-material factors and God's will par excellence are at work. Based on descriptive analysis and library studies this paper is seeking to explain the impact of God's will on the organization. For this purpose, the degree and type of God's will, which arises from human God-seeking nature and Divine Providence, is explained within a conceptual pattern, and other peripheral factors or the ones outside the realm of human will act as intermediaries in the hand of Divine Providence. Thus it is claimed that God will bestow His assistance upon the organization based on the extent of the latter's willingness to serve Him; a condition which is referred to as organizational blessing. Finally, the conditions leading to receive those blessings have been extracted from the Quran and Hadiths.

An organization is to serve the community. Thus, an explanation of its duties and responsibilities towards the community is essential. Opening up a field called corporate social responsibility and explaining its different dimensions is an attempt to this end. This concept has developed in the West following transformations of philosophical and intellectual approach to organization and its environment. The concept which was actually derived from western thought and their societies' needs and has become an issue of debate among management thinkers has not much been considered by Islamic management scholars. This paper seeks to answer the fundamental question whether there is any such thing as corporate social responsibility in the Islamic doctrine. To answer this question, we have sought some intellectual proof as one of the epistemological sources of Islam. This paper, after explaining organization's origin, has considered rights and their accompanied responsibilities, with a concluding statement about organization's responsibilities, both affirmative and negative, towards the society.

One of the theoretical and practical challenges confronted by public bureaucracies is the union or dichotomy between Politics and Administration. Undoubtedly, a degree of interference of politics in administration is not only harmful but it is a manifestation of democracy. Meanwhile, a drastic infusion of politics in administration leads to negative politicization. The object of this research is extracting negative consequences of this kind of politicization in public bureaucracy of Iran. The research has been done in both qualitative and quantitative phases. The findings show that there are two important dimensions of politicization of bureaucracy in Iran: administrative and political. Administrative dimension is classified into three components; learning crisis, bureaucratic dissension and efficiency crisis, and the political dimension includes public justice crisis, participation crisis and acceptability crisis.

Strategic decisions can be studied in three dimensions; these dimensions include context, process, and content. This qualitative research was done with the ultimate goal of defining the strategizing process of successful Iranian companies in complex environments, using a systematic pattern of grounded theory. To this end, through interviews with knowledgeable individuals, close observation (with more than three months of close relationship with at least two successful companies in the food and drink industry and attending their top-level managerial decisions) of six successful companies and organizations operating in complex environments, and reviewing scientific literature, a set of initial themes were collected during the open coding process. By placing these categories and sorting them, the main steps of desirable process was designed. However, this process does not suggest a causal relationship between phenomena but defines steps of strategic decisions to obtain organizational goals (most of which is short term) through vision. The major components of this model are: vision statement and overall goals, search for opportunities, environmental changes detection, identification of top management mental models, communication and social interaction, strategic improvisation, negotiation for implementing strategies, operation and experience-based learning and stabilization of strategy.

Employment is one of the main subcategories of human resource management. Upon a close scrutiny, one can understand that management in general and employment in particular are organizational acts; therefore, an organizational action is considered as an obligatory act that is related to jurisprudence. As the mandate of an obligatory act can be inferred through diligent ways, the preliminary juridical issues about the permissibility of employment can be inferred by the same ways. One problem that is experienced in any organization is the matter of losing some experienced work force due to their resignation. Based on this, the question is whether employment contract is permissible, or it is considered as a necessary contract like hiring, or it is an independent contract like appointment that does not have authenticity in nature, with resignation and deposition in it. In this study, we try to apply an analytic-descriptive approach to explain its similarity to and difference from appointment and hiring.  By aiming at explaining the legal- juridical nature of employment, we concluded that employment in the sense of inviting to work is not a one-way contract; but it is a necessary legal contract which is consistent with the contract of hiring. We also found that employment is different from appointment in the sense of appointing someone to work. Therefore, any organization has the right to stop its honest and reliable employees from resignation by applying strict conditions for their employment.

Universities are relevant institutions in promoting economic growth and civil society participation. One of the key elements that have been the recent focus of these trends in tertiary education reform worldwide is university governance.  This research aims to explain and measure university governance indicators. University of Tehran is taken as a case. The survey sample population consisted of 110 randomly taken faculties of University of Tehran. Accountability, management, structure, autonomy and participation were evaluated as university governance dimensions by semi-structured interviews with experts. A fuzzy-AHP was used to assess their adequate relative importance .The results revealed that University of Tehran has suitable level of university governance.

The main purpose of this article was to design a model of activities and processes of turnaround leadership in Iranian higher education system. Therefore, the study was to survey the current experiences and viewpoints of managers of Ferdowsi University of Mashhad about the activities and processes of turnaround leadership with both qualitative and quantitative approaches. The sample research population was the managers of Ferdowsi University of Mashhad, and the method used was mixed.  The semi-structured interview was used to collect data which were later analyzed using qualitative content analysis. The result is a model of activities and processes of turnaround leadership at Ferdowsi University of Mashhad. In order to identify activities and processes, the questionnaires developed from the analysis of the qualitative interviews, were distributed among 226 managers of Ferdowsi University of Mashhad. The research model was provided by exploratory factor analysis of the data of 209 usable questionnaires. The results provide a model consisting of eight targeted skill development activities, evolution based on commitment, meritorious selection of activities, development of organizational learning culture, development of partnership culture, focus on rapid and continuous improvement, balance in leadership and shared vision and aspirations.