مطالعات مدیریت راهبردی (Jun 2024)
Energy in Iranian development programs: content analysis from the perspective of sustainable development and innovation strategy
Abstract
The basic and key point in the realization of sustainable development is to obtain affordable, reliable, and clean sources of energy. In other words, energy has a fundamental importance in the realization of a sustainable economy, so researchers consider energy as the blood flowing in the veins of modern society. Despite this fundamental importance, the sustainable supply of energy in the world is still facing wide challenges. In recent years, despite the many capacities of fossil and renewable energy, Iran has faced many fundamental challenges in the field of energy. According to what has been said, the realization of sustainable development without overcoming the challenges of sustainable energy supply is out of mind. On the other hand, it is not possible to overcome the challenges of the energy field without innovation and continuous improvements as drivers of change. It is noteworthy that innovation without using an innovation strategy will be fruitless. The reason for this is that the process of innovation is risky and requires difficult decisions. Therefore, the use of an innovation strategy is necessary to create improvements and changes in the system. Therefore, the proposed research is focused on the concept of innovation strategy. The current research was conducted to analyze the content of the documents of the laws of the development program of Iran from the perspective of exploring sustainable development and innovation strategy in the energy industry. This issue is important because the formulation and support of sustainable development policies can be an important issue in achieving sustainable development. On the other hand, the formulation of innovation policies can be the basis for its realization. This research has used the qualitative method to create a deep understanding of the research concepts. This happens while previous researchers have mostly benefited little from qualitative methods in studying the concept of innovation strategy. On the other hand, the current research has studied the innovation strategy with the goal of sustainable development. The alignment of innovation with sustainable development is an important matter that has been less considered in previous studies. Thus, by examining these deficiencies, the proposed research can complement the gaps of previous research in this field in several ways. The importance of this research is in understanding the background conditions of Iran's energy industry. This can facilitate the paths of achieving sustainable development in the energy industry, improving efficiency and economic stability, improving justice and social inclusiveness, and preserving biodiversity and natural resources. Also, the proposed research through the policy recommendations provided can provide an important tool for company managers, policymakers, or in general decision makers of the energy industry in Iran. The current research is applied in terms of purpose and descriptive-analytical in terms of nature. In terms of strategy, this research has used the library strategy. The current research has used the summary content analysis method to analyze the collected data and the inductive-deductive coding approach to reduce and categorize the data. The content analysis in this research was of a quantitative relationship with neighborhood analysis. To perform the coding process, MaxQDA version 20 software was used. The statistical population of the research was the documents of the laws of the development program of Iran. The current research has studied the entire statistical population. Therefore, sampling was not required. The implementation process of the current research started with theoretical studies and analysis of previous research related to the strategy of innovation and sustainable development. This was done to deepen the theoretical knowledge about the studied concepts and also to identify and define the research concepts and categories. In the next step, the research questions were formulated. The next stage of the current research is devoted to the review of the documents and documents of the development program laws. After this, the collected qualitative data was analyzed. In the last stage, summarization and conclusions were made and research proposals were presented. In this research, to ensure the validity and reliability of the research findings, the validity and reliability of the data were examined. For this purpose, data coding was done carefully and in several stages with time intervals. Also, some experts with experience and expertise in the field of energy and sustainable development re-examined the research results. To be more sure of the reliability of the research findings, the calculation of agreement between two coders or reliability between two coders has also been used. The findings of the research show that the writing and formulation of development plans in Iran have been mainly centered around economic growth. In other words, concepts related to social inclusiveness and environmental protection have been neglected in Iran's development plans. The evidence shows that Iran's development plans have paid significant attention to fossil energies as opposed to renewable energies. In addition to environmental hazards, this can be a serious threat to energy security in Iran. The findings show that despite the relatively high attention of Iran's development plans to the concept of technology, the concept of innovation has not been given much attention. In addition, the emphasis on technological innovation can cause neglect the benefits of non-technological innovations. Following the path of the current research, it is suggested that future researchers use quantitative methods to investigate the impact of innovation strategies on sustainable development in the energy industry. In addition, the realization of the country's development plans can be examined with quantitative methods.
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