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This paper aims to analyze the implications of orality for management practices in a developing country such as Iran.

This paper relies on the seminal theory of Walter Ong (1982) and a leading line of anthropological research to analyze the implications of orality/literacy for management practices in Iran. The authors first define orality and literacy as distinct modes of communication and examine their conceptual properties. Then, the authors draw on the existing literature to analyze the five main management functions impacted by orality.

The analyses suggest that the predominance of orality in Iran is associated with a wide range of management practices, including short-term or unstructured planning, spontaneous decision-making, fluid organizational structure, the prevalence of interpersonal relations, authoritarian and traditional leadership and behavior-based controlling mechanisms.

While most studies have focused on the impacts of cultural dimensions and economic variables, this paper offers a novel approach to analyzing management practices. More specifically, the paper suggests that in addition to the implications of cultural dimensions and economic variables, the mode of communication, namely, orality/literacy, could have significant implications for management practices.

This study attempts to answer the question: “how are the two drivers, accountability focus and organizational learning, independently and interactively associated with public agencies’ proactive policy orientation?” The first driver is the multiple accountabilities that public agencies pursue: (1) bureaucratic, (2) legal, (3) professional and (4) political. The second driver is the organizational learning activities of public agencies: (1) socialization, (2) externalization, (3) combination and (4) internalization.

For data, 800 respondents from the public agencies in South Korea were surveyed.

The analysis provided several findings: (1) the discretionary accountabilities (professional and political) have a greater positive influence on the proactive policy orientation; (2) the conventional accountabilities (legal and bureaucratic) tend to have negative impacts on the proactive policy orientation and (3) among the four types of accountability, legal accountability can be more significantly complemented by organizational learning activities, which can enable both visionary and realistic administration in a balanced manner.

This study provides a unique insight on how organizational proactivity can be ensured through the interactions of organizational accountabilities and organizational learning.