Popularization in the Management of Large Iranian Businesses: A Qualitative Study Based on Managers' Perspectives

In recent decades, many new economic approaches, emphasizing the role of social capital and public participation, have provided frameworks for redefining the place of people in the process of economic growth and development. In Iran, efforts have also been made to review economic policies and design mechanisms to increase people's economic participation. Despite the expansion of theoretical literature on public economics in recent years in Iran, there is still a serious gap in operational models that can fill the gap between theory and practice in the field of economic activity for companies and businesses. This research seeks to analyze the dimensions of public economics from the perspective of managers of large companies and explain how it is reflected in their policies and performance. Thus, after interviewing managers of large and successful companies in different fields and achieving theoretical saturation, relevant categories and subcategories were extracted using the directional qualitative content analysis method. The findings show that people can play five main roles at the company level: as a leader and intermediate regulator, as a main economic actor, that is, an entrepreneur, a provider of knowledge, ideas, and innovation for innovative companies, as an investor in the development of companies and economic projects, as employees in companies as a workforce, or as the general public as consumers and beneficiaries of companies' services and benefits. However, it seems that the managers' view of the role of companies in popularizing the economy is not comprehensive and hinders it, and it has neglected aspects that have been addressed in this research.