A Descriptive Analytic Comparison of Governance and Education & Business Management in Iran

Abstract

We have personally developed a useful and detailed conception of governance which can be used as a starting point and framework for understanding the complex sets of debates which comprise the relationships between management and governance in education and business. We argue that the concept of governance is an umbrella concept which is able to define an approach to comparative politics. In particular, I am concerned to draw attention not to the performance of government per se, but to the social and relational nature of legitimate authority. Governance is a useful concept because it does not prejudge the locus or character of public decision making. For example, it does not imply, as government does, that real political authority is vested somewhere within the formal-legal institutions of the state. Nor does it imply, as the term leadership does, that political control necessarily rests with the head of state or official political elites. It enables us to suspend judgment about the exact relationship between political authority and formal institutions in society.In my view then, governance is about the normative "rules of the game" which govern state-civil society interactions in the public realm. I can define the public realm as comprising both the state and civil society, but excludes the private realm. Defining the line between public and private is of course difficult to do and has been the subject of debate over many years. Feminists, in particular, challenge this conceptualization by arguing that the definition of the public realm in most political theory excludes historical female experience, relegating it to the private sphere of domestic duty. The limits of public action would not only apply to women, but arguably to excluded groups whose voices are not recognized as part of the "game" of political exchange. This has implications for development also, because it is often disempowered groups, who lack voice, that are excluded from state-initiated development activities.

Keywords: governance, management, analytic, education, business