identifying and prioritizing performance management challenges in iran's agricultural extension and education

In tehran, surveys were used to identify and rank performance management challenges in agricultural extension and education. to identify and evaluate the challenges, semistructured interviews and focus group discussions were conducted. participants included 22 experts who had at least 10 years of management experience in extension activities. the number of study participants was determined based on theoretical saturation. this action was identified in the form of 3 steps of open coding, axial coding and selective coding using maxqda12 software. then, the identified challenges were prioritized through analytical hierarchy process (ahp) with expert choice software. after the pairwise comparison of all the challenges based on each of the sub-criteria, the pairwise comparisons were combined and the result and final weight and priority of each of the challenges was determined based on the set of criteria using the software. the first 3 priorities were: lack of development of knowledge about strategic and operational performance and performance advancement (w=0.176.), lack of knowledge of continuous monitoring of the performance and process of doing work (w=0.148.), unfavorable attitude towards continuous performance monitoring, feedback and performance evaluation (w=0.132). finally, applied recommendations to overcome challenges were expressed. creating a favorable attitude about monitoring performance in the organization and monitoring the process of doing things is the most important practical recommendation of this research.