Investigating the relationship between social capital and organizational excellence in Tarbiat Modares University

Dissertation for Master's degree (M.A)

Human resource management trend

Chapter one

Research plan overview

Introduction:

In today's fast-paced world, many organizations are trying to achieve organizational and economic goals and use different models and methods to continue their existence and gain a new competitive advantage in order to fall and overturn and the dangers caused by rapid environmental changes.

In the traditional views of development management, economic, physical, and human resources played the most important role; For development in this era, we need more social capital than economic, physical and human capital, because without this capital, optimal use of other capitals is not possible. In the past, social capital was not paid attention to explicitly, but currently, rapid environmental changes, information technology, growing needs for information and education, increasing needs for innovation and creativity, and the need for continuous improvement of the organization, require that leaders of organizations pay attention to social capital as a valuable organizational resource (Rahmanpour, 2012, 80).

Social capital in the opinion of "Putnam", various aspects of social organization such as trust, collective norms And it includes human networks that improve the efficiency of society by facilitating coordinated actions (Nahapit and Ghoshal, 1998). Also, according to "Coleman" (1999), social capital includes obligations and expectations, authority relations, information potential capacity, norms and executive guarantees. Meanwhile, both production and service organizations cannot be indifferent to the changes that happen in their environment, so that in the knowledge-based economy and the era of superior organizations, providing fast and quality services to citizens depends on how to manage and develop intangible factors. From this point of view, in the 1980s, management patterns related to the public and government sector have experienced many changes. These changes are part of the philosophy of new public administration in the public sector, which is called modern public administration. The study and implementation of new models of public administration is rooted in internal and external demands for better and superior management, which is the basis of a new insight in public administration. Under these conditions, public sector managers are looking for methods and tools that can provide better services and satisfy customers and citizens. In this international paradigm, intangible assets and resources, i.e. social capital, are considered as the main source for competitive advantage and excellence in the public sector. Therefore, social capital management in order to achieve organizational excellence is considered as a new management approach in public sector organizations. (Yalonda, 248: 2010)

Globalization of the market and rapid changes in government management and the needs of citizens have caused the competitiveness and competitive advantage of organizations to be more and more dependent on the estimation of the needs and demands of citizens and customers, employees and society, which are important results of organizational excellence, and companies are forced to create and create high value.

These factors cause government organizations such as universities to improve their ability and capacity to create and provide value Address the stakeholders of the organization, especially the citizens, and define more effective excellence models and implement a more valuable innovation process that will lead them to be leaders. Organizations and government institutions can discover new strategic resources to achieve organizational competence and excellent performance results (Park, 2009).

The resource-based approach emphasizes that in the era of turbulence and rapid changes in technology and the needs of customers and industries, sustainable competitive advantage and excellence are essential for organizations, and this advantage and excellence results from the organization's social capital. (Jose Maria, 2004)

Industrial and organizational sociologist theorists have argued that managerial and organizational activities are based on social networks of relationships. According to Luman and his colleagues, a social network can be connected as a set of nodes (for example, individuals, organizations) with a set of social relationships (for example, friends, money transfer, membership in multiple organizations).Based on this point of view, organizational and management researchers argue that social capital based on networks and links of organization members with external institutions (including suppliers, buyers and competitors) is manifested and affects the performance and competitive advantage of the organization at the micro level. (Beliveau, 1996)

Today, the economic enterprises of the country are facing countless challenges in the process of globalization and joining the world trade system. Being present in the global markets and even remaining in the domestic markets requires competition with powerful competitors, and due to the expansion and complexity of goals, processes and organizational structure in the competition scene, organizations can continue to survive if they are responsive to the demands and expectations of customers and beneficiaries, and also pay attention to profitability and wealth creation as key and superior organizational indicators. (Ashna, 1387)

organizational excellence or business excellence models are used as powerful tools to measure the level of establishment in different organizations. By using these models, organizations can, on the one hand, evaluate their success in implementing improvement programs at different time points, and on the other hand, compare their performance with other organizations, especially the best ones. Business excellence models are an answer to the question of what kind of organization is the best organization? What goals and concepts does it pursue and what criteria govern their competitors? (Alwandi, 2014)

Today, most of the countries of the world based on these models have created awards at the national and regional level that stimulate organizations and businesses in excellence, growth and wealth creation. Excellence models focusing on the quality of production (goods or services) and the participation of all members of the organization can attract customer satisfaction and provide the interests of the beneficiaries, and at the same time encourage and promote individual and organizational learning by relying on creativity and innovation. (Ashna, 1387)

1-1 Statement of the research problem:

In today's era, the public sector has the following characteristics: the ability to respond better to the needs of citizens, emphasis on managing performance and results, providing performance standards, greater commitment to results, lack of concentration and delegation of authority to lower levels of the organization, and the use of private sector management methods, including the organizational excellence model. These features generally justify the need to design a system that originates from intangible factors such as social capital, which leads to competitive advantage and organizational excellence that focuses mainly on citizens, social responsibility and professionalism of employees. (Garcia, 2009)

Government organizations are placed in an environment that changes rapidly and require innovative and superior capacities to be able to respond to the challenges of the dynamic environment. In general, it is stated that the public sector has experienced tremendous changes in the current decades, which are mainly caused by the following two factors:

Financial and tax limitations and as a result attention to the importance of efficiency management

New demands and demands of society in order to improve the quality of services (Koleman, 2017)

To face these conditions, the public sector has experienced many changes in order to achieve organizational excellence that From this process, there has been a change in the approach of modern public administration, including deregulation, decentralization, work stoppages and outsourcing, process-based management and the use of management systems different from the private sector. The ultimate goal of these developments and changes has been to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of public sector organizations, to overcome bureaucracy issues, transparency in the organization's functions and organization's accounts, and finally the excellence of these organizations. With this new public management approach, it means changing from simply following instructions to achieving results such as employee results, customer results, community results, and key results that are related to the dimension of organizational excellence results. (Taylor, 2009)

In short, management in public sector organizations is a result-oriented approach and focuses on the application and use of intangible capital, including social capital, through which quality, efficiency and economy can be achieved and, as a result, excellence. This challenge of the public sector leads to the search for new tools that enable the effective improvement of the performance of public organizations; Social capital management is one of those tools. (Bossi et al.: 2005)

In short, in this era, for development, managers need social capital more than they need physical and human capital. Managers and those who can develop the social capital of the organization pave the way to occupational and organizational success.