RAHBORD
Year:2018 | Volume:27 | Issue:87 |Papers Count:9

Foresight is one of the most appropriate tools for moving on uncertainty waves. Choosing the suitable method is a key to lead successful foresight project. Having a clear picture of the various methods and awareness of their usage in previous projects is a way to achieve better results in foresight studies. Since the 1990s, several methods have been applied to carry out foresight projects. However, due to the complexity and multiplicity of methods and absence of any patterns for their proper application in different situations, a number of foresight projects have failed or suffered many problems and deficiencies. The main purpose of this article is to create a clear image of the use of foresight methods in practical projects. For this purpose, a systematic review methodology was conducted in three databases: Science Direct, Scopus and Emerald (maximum coverage and accessing more articles to produce more desirable and credible results is the reason of selecting theses databases) and after screening at different stages, 45 articles were analyzed. The results of the systematic review, show the diversity of using of prospective methods by 2017, countries‟ inclination in the application of the foresight methods and the fields and scope of these methods. Also, the factors affecting the selection of foresight methods were extracted and the degree of their importance was determined. Furthermore, we tried to identify the knowledge gap existing in the fields related to future study to be used by the futurists, through reviewing applied researches.

Change is an organizational fact and its management is considered one of the most important duties of manager. It is worth nothing that studies show that more than three fourth of organizational changes are doomed to failure or cannot realize the envisaged goals. Devising effective strategies and implementing them successfully in the organization requires providing infrastructures and having appropriate capabilities and enough maturity in various dimensions. Not paying enough attention to this has been responsible for the failure of implementing strategies in organizations. The subject of this research is strategic change in specialized organizations affiliated to the public sector. Due to the complexity of these organizations, strategic change and implementing strategic in them are challenging. This research has been conducted with the aim of devising and developing a model for evaluating the readiness of Affiliated to the public sector. In this section, The general attitude of this research is of qualitative nature and is in line with deepening the understanding of the issue of strategic change in a complex setting. In this way, in the first sechion, we directed our attention to research on the atmosphere governing strategic change in specialized organizations Of an organization for strategic changes and implementing a strategy effective fields in strategic change and implementing strategic were identified then an appropriate conceptual framework for ministry of energy was used. The method of research is case study approach and for data gathering and analysis and also drawing conclusion, we used systematic review method by drawing upon met-synthesis method and content analysis of scientific documents. Through evaluating relevant factors, we identified eight main codes including communications, creating an atmosphere encouraging participation and confidence in the organization, evaluating and monitoring change, educating human resources, and leading change and planning. These codes are result of reviewing more than one hundred selected articles on the basis of meta-synthesis about readiness for change which could be used as an efficient model for evaluating and assessment of the degree of readiness of organization to bring about strategic changes.

Research is the key to progress. Because it is one of the important foundations of any social and economic development in various fields, and the progressive quality of research management systems in some developed countries is indicative of this. Nowadays, many problems exist in the country's research system that cause paralysis and loss of vitality in the scientific community. Country's research system, especially in the field of human sciences is in certain confusion. There are duplications, waste of financial resources, human capital and time which originates from the lack of good governance in this field. Therefore, this article aims to identify and to diagnose the weaknesses of governance framework in humanities/ social science to provide the appropriate management of social science research and to take a step for devising an Islamic-Iranian model of governance research. This article uses a qualitative survey strategy. The researcher attended different organizations and institutions which are best known as the main areas of research governance. In addition to direct observation, a group of 16 experts were interviewed. After gathering data and analyzing them by using theme analysis method, the researcher formulated a conceptual framework of research governance and also analyzed its problems. The final framework has seven main parts: the whole system, inputs, governance box (as the process research system with three levels: macro, intermediate, micro), output, feedback, the research culture and environment, and research related systems. To ensure the validity of results, the researcher distributed a list of the most experts important weaknesses (with high degree of importance and frequency) in the form of a questionnaire, among 28 experts and finally they were verified by most ranked from least to the most by the experts.

Today, "good urban governance" as a useful phenomenon which, of course, is rooted in Western thinking has overshadowed the urban management which is looking for its lost identity. Whereas, not only it seems that the religion of Islam is able to present urban governance components, but also, it seems good Islamic urban governance enjoy greater comprehensiveness compared to the Western type for being the implemented in the cities of Iran. So, due to the importance of the issue, this article, uses a descriptive-analytical method. It is a applied research, based on library studies and content analysis aimed to deepening the Islamic Iranian Progress Model. Based on research findings, not only does Islam have the capacity to provide the components of good urban governance, but also is more is comprehensive than the Western type for being implemented in the cities of the country. Meanwhile, studying carefully on basic documents related to the progress model containing principles, ideals, prophecy, vision and policy, it was found that we can extract many components of good Islamic urban governance from these documents. But there has been no direct reference to good Islamic urban governance. Finally, based on research findings, some courses of action for deepening the Islamic model of Iran are proposed.

Islamophobia is said to be an 'unfounded hostility towards Islam and Muslims'. It is ourcontention that we need to rethink this definition, and see Islamophobia not as an 'unfounded hostility', but a hostility for which some reasons may exist. It is important to acknowledge that Islamophobia attitudes are rooted in a complex socio-political ideology. In order to understand Islamophobia, one should be familiar with classical texts and contemporary works related to explanatory frameworks such as Clash of Civilizations and Orientalism. In this article, Orientalism (especially Edward Said's critical approach) as one of the most important conceptual frameworks will be discussed in detail. First, we review the history and definitions of Orientalism, its political functions and interaction between Islam and Orientalists during the past three centuries. After that, the main hypothesis of this article is examined: the concept of Islamophobia draws extensively on Orientalist cultural stereotypes; stereotypes that depict the Orient as "backward, crude, aberrant, irrational, invariable, fanatic, evil, militant, extremist, terrorist, feminine and sexually corrupt". Overall, this article claims that Orientalism provides a classical framework in understanding relationships between the 'West' (and the „Rest') and Muslims in particular.

Today, urban economy has gained a high importance, so that city geographical area should have a strategic plan on the basis of their opportunities and strengths to proceed on the path of urban restructuring in terms of their advantages. In this article, good governance along with resistance economy are considered as strategic plans for urban development. Therefore, this research with an attitude based on descriptive analysis, first, uses quantitative techniques and according to theoretical foundations and previous studies, proposes a model based on the effect of good governance on relationship between social capital and resistance economy on the one hand, and urban management and development, on the other hand, and then studies relations between variables with the help of structural equations method and SmartPLS software. To collect necessary data, the author used questionnaire and to determine their reliability and validity, pre-tests were used. To evaluate validity, convergent validity method with the application of average variance extracted was used and to determine reliability, composite reliability method was used. Findings show that social capital has a positive and significant effect on resistance economy with 0.579 coefficient, on urban management with 0.440 coefficient. Also, resistance economy has a positive and significant effect on urban management with 0.546 coefficient. Also, the results of the analysis by considering good governances moderating variable show the value of the effect of social on urban management equals 0.631and urban development, 0.629 and the value of the effect of resistance economy on urban management equals 0.645 and on urban development, 0.649.

Are there significant variations in the ways planners in different planning systems have influenced urban and regional development? By perception of planning culture as a cultural system, decisions and judgements of planners are affected by both individual and collectively shared cognitive frames, represent ing the 'cultural DNA' through which planners perceive the planning context. This article with such a premise seeks to recommand the planning culture concept as a suitable and usable approach for investigating and decoding the cultural DNA and the role of culture in planning culture. Discovering the casual relations of research issue and application of planning culture for analyzing constitute the basic framework of this article which is indicative of its explanatory as well as exploratory nature because it alsoexplores the unknown areas playing a significant role in the planners' behavior. The goal of such investigation is to avoid such a reductionist conceptualization of spatial planning and consider the planners too passive to interpret and re-interpret rules and norms in the framework of their individual and collective motivations. The main objective of this article is not to develop a prescriptive method for spatial planning itself, but rather to gain a social scientific understanding of the structure and the dynamics of the 'cognitive frames', which could then serve as an inspirational basis for developing theoretical approaches of spatial planning. In order to know how the planning practices and decisions have constructed in interplay of individual and collective frames of planners in a culturised context, the article gives a general overview of the development of different forms of cognitive frames in spatial planning.

Peace is the modern world product of management and coordination based on the consequences of using military force. This simple and extended theory has been the main assumption of peace studies in law and internation relations in the twentieth century. But, this article argues that modern peace theory establishing order based on coercion and out of fear) is not related to historical experiences and real peace, but what is more relevant to real peace is classical peace theory which contrary to modern perception of peace suggests that peace is not characteristic of states, rather it is characteristic of collectivities. Against today's perception of peace, a hypothesis that we try to make it rational and inter subjective, is that peace is the function of a historical community (or civilization) for making its surrounding regions more moderate through unconscious cultural expansion. The findings of research show that Iran is one of the few historical collectivities having functions compatible with those of classical peace theory throughout its history. Therefore, it would be appropriate if this principle that is the classical or pre-modern peace theory becomes the guiding idea of Iran's foreign policy. A central idea suggesting that Iran, throughout its history, has been more characterized by the expansion of its community and culture rather than by the preoccupation of its government. In Iran government has been always strong. In other words, the expansion unconscious understandings, has been the historical function of Iranian community in its surrounding region. This should become the basis of Iran's foreign policy. This policy should reflect this historical inclination of Iranian community and its unconscious expansion and does not suppose itself to be the architecture of lofty plans. Iranian state succeeds best in its foreign policy when its neighbors do not pay much attention to it.