STRATEGIC STUDIES OF PUBLIC POLICY (STRATEGIC STUDIES OF GLOBALIZATION JOURNAL)
Year:2020 | Volume:10 | Issue:34|Papers Count:13

Today, there is a consensus on the role of universities in innovation, so much so that even some, under the influence of the world’ s top universities, have considered universities as engines of innovation. This approach has also spread in Iran and has been able to influence the country’ s political discourse. The promotion regulation, as one of the most important and effective policy documents related to universities in the country, needs to be designed based on a correct understanding of the role of universities in innovation. The purpose of this study was to examine the default image and the underlying view of the promotion regulations on the role of universities in innovation. This research is a documentary research and its methodology consist of two parts: Meta-analysis of experimental researches on the role of universities in innovation during the last 40 years and then documentary analysis of promotion regulation approved in 2015. In the first part, the research results show that universities have a small share in direct participation in innovation through the of products, prototypes, and inventions. Instead, universities generally contribute to the development of innovation through indirect methods such as publishing articles and reports, informal industry contacts, joint conferences and meetings, recruiting industry graduates, providing consulting, research contracts, and collaborative research with industry. The second part of the research results shows that the promotion regulation pays only partial attention to a category of activities, including publishing articles and educational activities and neglects the importance of other activities, including research collaborations. Therefore, strengthening the comprehensiveness and balance in the regulations to cover more effectively the channels of participation of universities in the development of innovation, paying more attention to interactive and collaborative channels of knowledge, and technology exchange that require less absorption capacity by industry; and increasing the flexibility of the regulations in order to consider the factors affecting the importance and different application of each channel in various scientific fields and industrial sectors; and more policy makers’ focus on strengthening the demand for science and technology and the capacity to attract the de-mand side are among the policy suggestions resulting from this research.

The aim of this study was to identify the dysfunctions of research in the Iranian high-er education system, qualitatively and by content analysis method. Data were collected through in-depth and semi-structured interviews with 22 top researchers, experts, and policy makers in 2018-2019 using purposive sampling. The validity, portability, reliability, and verifiability of the data were confirmed for the acceptability of the study. Findings showed that the phenomenon of research dysfunctions in the Iranian higher education system take place in the per-research stage by lobbying in justification the project, disregarding the research’ s needs assessment and not considering the importance of research stakeholders; they take place in the stage of conducting research by disregarding the copyright. Also, lack of supervising the student’ s work by the professors, methodological inconsistency, reducing the amount of problem analysis, buying and selling articles and dissertations, plagiarism, data fabrication, and data falsification after the research process, take place through weakness in the application of research results, reviewing problems, publication overlap, and poor quality of some journals.

More than 8 years have passed since the agreement and announcement of the document on the Fundamental Reform Document of Education system and concerns have been raised about delays in the implementation of the document. The main issue of this article is the future analysis of this document as the most important policy document of the country in the field of education. Therefore, the main question of the article is that according to the role-playing of the relevant actors, how the document would be implemented? The theory of this research is pluralistic policy-making and its approach is actor-centered, which was done with exploratory and expert-oriented methods. The data collection tool was two questionnaires (matrices) of research. The data analysis technique was MACTOR as a policy, research, and futures study software. The subjects consisted of 35 managers, experts, and policy makers in the field of education. The results showed that out of the 58 initial actors involved in the document, 14 are key actors, among whom there is no total agreement on the provisions, goals, and implementation of the document. In other words, there is not enough institutional cohesion among the key actors to execute the document. In addition, there is no general agreement between the actors and institutions about the goals or issues or the main axes of the Fundamental Reform of the Document. In other words, although the institutions do not oppose the contents of the document, they do not have the insistence and seriousness that is necessary for the implementation of this national document in the future. Therefore, it is predicted that in the future, the implementation of the document will face major challenges from institutions and actors, and the responsible institution (Supreme Education Council) is required to create a policy agreement and institutional compatibility to provide more agree-ment and coordination.

The steps that universities can take to promote and improve entrepreneurial activities and communication with industry is one of the important topics that has attracted a lot of attention. This study investigated selected universities in the world in the field of entrepreneurship, through a survey study to prioritize options to support entrepreneurship in Iranian universities based on the opinions of experts. Data collected by using information available on official sites and related documents. In the second part, the hierarchy analysis process was used. The findings showed that the supporting activities of universities were as follows: science-educational, cultural-incentive, material support, and spiritual support. Hierarchical analysis showed that in supportive activities of universities, the criterion of achieving upstream goals with a relative weight of 0. 341 had higher priority than other criteria. Also, the material support was considered to be the best alternative with a relative weight of 0. 284. Other alternative supports were as follows: science-educational, spiritual support, and cultural-incentive, respectively.

The National Innovation System is a systemic approach to innovation and includes elements and connections that interact with each other to produce, disseminate, and use new and useful economic knowledge and operate within the borders of a country. The approach of the National Innovation System, which includes various institutions and functions involved in the scientific and technological development of countries, is one of the appropriate approaches to analyze the state of science and technology and inno-vation to provide comprehensive policies and strategies to strengthen innovation. The purpose of this study is to extract the main features of the Iranian national innovation system, which is achieved by using the systematic combination of research approach. The results show that weaknesses in policy-making, monitoring and evaluation systems from policy-making to implementation, governance of the National Innovation System facilitate and direct research and innovative activities, research and development, entrepreneurship, manpower development, technology dissemination, facilitation, guidance, and financing activities research and development, and the gap between the actors of the National Innovation System are among the negative features of the Iranian National Innovation System. The positive features of this system also include quantitative development (academic development, human resource development, developmental and applied research, and young and talented researchers).

The purpose of the present research was to investigate the structural pathology of non-profit higher education institutes in Mazandaran Province emphasizing their formality, centralization, and their complex manners. In this qualitative and applied research, data were collected by survey and field methods. For this purpose, nine members of the founding board, board of trustees, and non-profit higher education experts were selected by purposive sampling method available to the point of theoretical saturation. A semi-structured interview was conducted with them. The data obtained from the interview were analyzed and coded using thematic analysis. The validity of the study was determined by adaptation by the interviewees and peer review. Reliability was also calculated by the test reliability method (fixed index). Finally, 263 specific items were presented by the participants, included in three main components, namely, formality, focus, and complexity. The interviewees in the formality component gave the most importance to the existence of laws and regulations in various fields in non-profit organizations. In the focus component, the most important, with 50 repetitions, was given to the privatization position of higher education in Iran. In the complexity component, the role and influence of the founding board and the board of trustees in the affairs of these institutions were given the most importance with 29 repetitions.

Energy consumption growth has recently increased significantly, especially in the residential sector of the country. In 2015, the residential sector consumption was 42% and 32/5% of the total country consumption of natural gas and electricity respectively. Considering the significant contribution of this sector to country’ s energy consumption, the purpose of this research is designing a conceptual model for explaining consumer behavior of electricity and gas in the residential sector. This research was conducted using a qualitative method of value-based thinking, which is applied in terms of purpose and analytical and descriptive in terms of results. To collect data, a review of documents, literature, and interviews with policymakers and Tehranian households were used. Factors affecting the reduction of household energy consumption were extracted in two categories of fundamental and mediating factors at both levels of consumer behavior and policy requirements for behavior change. The results showed that the reason for the increase in consumption by the consumer is due to three factors: lack of understanding of the effects of misuse, ignorance of effective management methods and lack of knowledge and access to consumption reduction equipment and optimal portfolio of different energies to reduce energy consumption. Policymakers have also been unable to control the consumption of the home sector due to insufficient knowledge of methods to reduce household energy consumption and lack of facilitation of the implementation of sound policies.

Clustering technology is an innovative approach to better environmental management and sustainable development. The purpose of this study is to investigate the effect of clustering technology on sustainable development by considering mediating and moderating variables. The present research is descriptive-survey in terms of purpose, application, nature, and descriptive-survey method. To test the hypotheses, a 35-item questionnaire according to the Likert five-choice spectrum was used. The statistical population of the study included 600 employees of more than 60 units of Negarkhatoon agricultural implements industrial cluster in Famenin City in Hamadan Province. The sample size was 234 people who were selected based on Krejcie and Morgan table by relative class method. Reliability was calculated using Cronbach’ s alpha coefficient. Confirmatory factor analysis was used to evaluate the validity of the structure using Lisrel software. In order to analyze the findings, the path analysis model was used, and to analyze the mediating variable, the Sobel test was used, and to analyze the moderator variable, the modified multiple regression test method was used. The results showed that clusters and personality, behavioral, individual, and organizational characteristics can have a direct and indirect positive and significant impact on environmental performance and sustainable development. The results of mediator and moderator variables showed that green human resource management, organizational commitment, environmentally friendly behavior, and environmental performance play the role of mediator variable and green modernity play the role of moderator variable in the relationship to other variables.

Following the expansion of the population and the inaccurate growing use of limited resources, environmental damage and hazards have become more complex and demand urgent consideration. Caspian, as the largest lake in the world, faces irreparable damage and dangers. Although over the past two decades, significant work has been carried out by international organizations and coastal states, it has not yielded a satisfactory result. In this context, the research question is “ how can the Caspian Sea environmental hazards lead to regional integration? ” In response to this central question, our research hypothesis is that attempts to prevent and control Caspian environmental risks through leading to environmental convergence lead to regional integration. The purpose of this research is to emphasize on the key role of the community in struggle against Caspian environmental risks and to create integration in this field. This research, thus, was done within the framework of the new functionalism theory and through the use of a descriptive-analytical method. Findings of the research confirmed that coping with the Caspian environmental risks, the environmental socialization, environmental convergency and then regional integration, Caspian can be realized through environmental public diplomacy and using effective elements such as the media, national and international NGOs and educational institutions, religious institutions, governmental institutions, and international organizations.

This paper explores the possibility of change in the future by changing the mind-set of its creators. For this purpose, the effect of stories on the attitude of children as one of the most important channels of content transfer (as one of the main creators of the future) has been studied. On this basis, considering the role of myth and metaphors in the formation of current society approaches, it can change attitude and vision in the next generation to have an alternative future. In this paper, using casual layered analysis method, the testing of two research hypotheses, different film versions of film and animation were analyzed by Walt Disney’ s “ Sleeping Beauty “ , which was built for 55 years by the Disney company. It seems that in the new narrative, key concepts or schemas requiring change, such as xenophobia, democracy, respect for nature, the concept of true love, absolutism, and ethnic, racial and gender attitudes, are presented in a different way from the original narrative for children. The results of the research were evaluated in the first step in the focal group and then by using a questionnaire. The results show that the key shortcomings have undergone a change in the more modern version. The change that is based on the casual layered analysis method can lead to a different future formation.

Iranian state cinema shows how the Islamic Republic deals with the medium of cinema, of which from the very beginning, the leaders of the revolution, emphasizing its importance, promised to “ change its form” in the Islamic government and demanded the intervention and monitoring of the government. By establishment of the Farabi Cinema Foundation in 1983, that demand was realized, and since then, the cinema that the government wished to promote and distribute has gradually found its formation through applying the policies, guidelines, and supporting of the Farabi Foundation. Four decades have passed since the establishment of the Farabi Cinema Foundation, during which its directors and managers, each based on the political culture of the government from which they were allowed to operate, as well as their own values and beliefs, have been the agents and implementers of cinematic policies. In this study, we tried to identify and analyze the policies of Farabi Cinema Foundation, the type of cinema they recommend and support, as well as their policymakers and managers views in five post-revolutionary States, in historical institutionalism and “ narrative analysis” approach, in three parts of “ production, releasing, and the Fajr Film Festival. The findings of this study showed that the policymakers and directors of the Farabi Cinema Foundation have been thinking of producing Iranian films and creating National Cinema since its establishment, but each with a specific and different perception of the medium of cinema, the concept of national cinema, and the audience. Therefore, they attempt to create a special order in the production and distribution of films in Iran. According to this study, Iranian cinema policymakers do not have the same understanding of what kind of cinema Iranian people and society deserve to have and promote. They also do not agree with their critics on a common definition of culture, value, people, national cinema, and national interests, so they are constantly arguing with each other to prove their legitimacy, and each witness the “ people” to prove the correctness of their policies.

Privatization in appearance is the process by which the tasks and facilities of the public sector at any level are transferred to the private sector. Privatization, as part of an economic restructuring policy, has been practiced by a small number of industrialized countries since the early 1980s and has spread to other countries. The common goal of privatization in different countries with different conditions and characteristics, including Iran, can be almost nothing but the improvement of economic conditions. Radio and television are among the major industries in Iran that are wholly owned and monopolized by the government. However, according to historical and scientific experiences in the world, the creation of monopolies and special opportunities and rents for real or legal persons in various economic, cultural, social, etc., often leads to negative consequences and huge losses. In this study, an attempt has been made to investigate the possibility of establishing private audio-visual media in line with the national media and in helping to implement the governance goals of the country alongside the national media, in order to clarify the need for the private sector to enter this sector. This research seeks to find the answer to the question of what laws have been enacted by the legal and governing institutions of the country to implement this goal and what are the obstacles and legal solutions regarding the feasibility of establishing private media. Findings of the research, using descriptive-analytical method and collection of library documents, show that the way to deal with the new wave of television aggression is to break the monopoly on television and open the way for private and public sector in this field to far greater potential of the current situation to break the limited capacity of radio and television in producing and broadcasting programs.

In this research we attempted to determine the important dimensions and areas of e-government, which unfortunately have been neglected in the country so far, despite their great importance, by citing the analysis of all national researches and comparing them with international researches. The present research is applied in terms of purpose and descriptive-analytical in terms of research method by citation analysis. Its statistical population includes 15 articles and 4 domestic dissertations and 737 international articles from 6 databases for domestic articles and Scopus database for international articles. This research lacks a sampling model because all articles without time and research limit have been reviewed by counting method. The tools are data collection, library study, and systematic search in databases and analysis of Scapus database results and implementation and analysis of data in Excel software in descriptive statistics. The results of this study show that although the importance of e-government at the national level is led to the preparation of a bill called e-government in the country, but the number of studies conducted is very small and this small amount are quite scattered and far from a systematic process.