Manager value orientations in Iranian state-run and private sectors

The problem. Like many developing countries, the government of Iran plans to privatize a number of state-run enterprises. However, there has been limited interest in the study of the effects of privatization on Iranian state-run enterprises. The purpose of the study was to compare the value-orientations of Iranian managers in private and state-run enterprises at three dimensions: (1) dominance versus submissiveness, (2) friendliness versus unfriendliness, and (3) acceptance of versus opposition to the task-orientation of established authority by addressing current state, future state, rewarded state, and effective state.;Method. The Systematic Multiple Level Observation of Groups (SYMLOG) method was applied to measure value-orientations of Iranian managers in private and state-run enterprises on three dimensions: (1) dominance versus submissiveness, (2) friendliness versus unfriendliness, and (3) acceptance of, versus opposition to the task-orientation of established authority. Seventy-one managers in state-run enterprises and ninety-one managers in the private enterprise responded to demographic data sheets and the SYMLOG questionnaires asking the value-orientations of: (a) their current organizational culture, (b) the ways that organization could be most effective in the future, (c) the behavior for which individual managers are rewarded, and (d) the ways they personally could be most effective. Data obtained from the two samples were analyzed using SYMLOG displays and a one-tailed t-test at the statistical significance level of .05.;Results. The results of the research indicate that there is no significant differences between the two sectors in perceptions of values on dominance behavior, whether at the organizational or individual level, or for actual or optimal conditions for each of the four survey questions.;The current and future organizational Culture of Iranian state-run enterprises were found to display significantly more emphasis on values on friendly behavior than did the private sector. However, perceptions of reward systems and individual effectiveness were not found to vary significantly by sectors.;No significant differences were found between the two sectors regarding values on accepting the task-orientation of established authority on the organizational level (current, future), or the individual level (reward system, individual effectiveness).