تمرین دموکراسی در دانشگاه: روایت‌های اپیزودیک اعضای هیأت‌علمی از رقابت برای رهبری آکادمیک

The main goal of the present research was to understand how faculty members make sense of the experience of democracy practice at the university (elections for determining academic managers) and how they express it in the form of sub-stories (description of events according to chronological sequence). The present research employed a qualitative approach with an interpretive paradigm, and the research strategy used was narrative research. The research field was the University of Kurdistan, with 12 participants invited through purposive and criterion-based sampling. Participants who entered narrative research interviews were those who had stories to tell about the phenomenon of senior university management elections. An episodic narrative interview protocol was used to generate data. The data were analyzed using the three-stage thematic analysis method of King, Horrocks, and Brooks (2019), resulting in the identification of 236 descriptive themes, 35 interpretive themes, and 9 overarching themes. In the form of a developmental discussion, while categorizing the identified overarching themes in a three-dimensional personal, interactive, and social framework from the perspective of Clandinin and Connelly (2000), the research questions were answered. The results indicated that, firstly, the specific nature of the University of Kurdistan differentiates it from many academic environments within Iran, and the implementation of any program will be intertwined with the specific situation of the university, which makes the application of many political and managerial theories exceptional. Secondly, democracy was sometimes equated with the executives who claimed to implement it, and the undesirable implementation of it by the executives was considered synonymous with the undesirability of democracy or a clear example of it, namely elections. Despite the shortcomings that the narrators enumerated, the positive consequences of it, such as satisfaction, commitment, morale, and organizational citizenship, should not be ignored. In such activities, university managers should consider the participation of all stakeholders in the university community. Politics is pervasive in higher education institutions. Therefore, understanding how to navigate these political environments is important for managers.