Document Type : Original Article

Authors

• Farajollah Rahnavard ¹
• Yahya Morattab ²
• Hosein Alipour ³

¹ Professor, Department Management, Institute for Management and Planning Studies (IMPS), Tehran, Iran.

² Ph.D Candidate, Department of Management, Institute for Management and Planning Studies (IMPS), Tehran, Iran.

³ Associate Professor, Department of Management, Institute for Management and Planning Studies (IMPS), Tehran, Iran.

Abstract

Managing conflicts of interest among parliamentarians has been one of the fundamental issues pursued and of concern to parliaments in various countries around the world. Ensuring that parliamentarians pursue the public interest and refrain from personal gain while performing their representative roles is a matter that has preoccupied the minds of many scholars for years. As the sole legislative body of the country, the Islamic Consultative Assembly (Majlis) holds a critical position in setting the course and overseeing the implementation of laws in the country. Consequently, ensuring the management of conflicts of interest among the representatives of the Islamic Consultative Assembly, as well as their conduct and behavior in line with national interests and welfare, like in other countries, requires its own specific rules and regulations. This research, conducted in two phases, seeks to develop a typology of conflict of interest management mechanisms for the representatives of the Islamic Consultative Assembly. In the first phase of the research, through a focus group, 12 policies and laws relevant to the representatives were reviewed and analyzed. In the second phase, 20 semi-structured in-depth interviews were conducted with experts and current as well as former representatives of the Islamic Consultative Assembly. All the obtained data were qualitatively coded using MAXQDA software, and finally, 31 organizing themes were categorized into three overarching themes. The mechanisms for managing conflicts of interest among representatives in their legislative role, supervisory role, and meta-role constitute the overarching themes of this research. Finally, these themes are discussed and analyzed.