Management and Development Process

The existence of ghosts in government organizations is very important because it may have harmful or beneficial consequences. Its negative effects sometimes have dangerous and irreparable consequences for the individual and the organization, and on the other hand, the positive effects of this phenomenon lead to progress and improvement of organizational conditions. The purpose of this research is to know and understand the phenomenon of organizational ghosts and also to investigate the influencing factors and consequences of this phenomenon in government organizations. The current research is descriptive-exploratory in terms of its practical purpose and in terms of information gathering, and it is of a qualitative research type, using the phenomenology method (that is, the lived experience of people involved in the phenomenon) and Dickelman's approach. Since the current research is qualitative, the method of collecting information in it is in-depth interviews with the participants. Based on this, using the purposeful sampling method and based on the principle of theoretical adequacy, 20 government managers and management professors were selected as sample members. In this research, qualitative content analysis method with inductive approach and Maxqda software were used in order to analyze the data obtained from the interview. In addition to recognizing and understanding the mentioned phenomenon, the research findings identified the influencing factors and consequences that included 3 main themes, which include: the origin of the effect, positive consequences, and negative consequences.