In the first stage, to collect data, first, 68 references, including articles and books related to social innovation, were examined. For this purpose, to access the documents, researches entitled "Social Innovation" were first extracted from valid databases. They were then screened several times. Finally, the authors reached a theoretical consensus, and the final documents were selected. The indicators extracted from these documents are given in the literature review section and Table 1. In the second stage, to extract the indicators of the social innovation model based on the collaboration between government and NGOs in the crisis of Covid-19, the grounded theory and semi-structured interviews with 15 health experts, which were determined by the snowball method, were used. These experts had master's and higher education and had an average of 17 years of experience working in medical units under the supervision of the Ministry of Health and Medical Education, and had responsibility in the national program "Every Home Is a Health Base" to control and manage, the Covid-19 epidemic, in a neighborhood and family-centered manner. From the tenth person onwards, the data analysis did not lead to the discovery of new concepts and categories. However, to ensure theoretical saturation, five more interviews were conducted, and the data related to them were analyzed. The coding steps in grounded theory include three steps of open, axial, and selective coding [33]. Each of these steps is described below.
Step 1: Open Coding; This step of the grounded theory method is performed immediately after the first interview; In other words, after each interview, the researcher begins to find concepts and select appropriate labels for them and combine related concepts. According to Strauss and Corbin (1998), the steps of open coding are:
-
1. Analysis and coding: At this stage, the researcher must pay attention to coding and all events. Many codes may be extracted from an interview or text, but when the data is reviewed, new coding counts and final codes are identified.
-
2. Discover the categories: At this stage, the concepts themselves are classified based on similar topics, which is called categorization (theme building). The titles we assign to categories are more abstract than the concepts that make up that category. Classes have high conceptual power because they can gather concepts around their axis. Introductory titles were chosen mainly by the researcher himself and tried to have the most relevance and consistency with the data it represents. Another important source is the terms used by research participants and can be used by the researcher.
-
3. Description of categories according to their characteristics: To make the categories clearer, their properties are stated in the next step.
-
4. Open coding table: Includes a table of primary codes extracted from the interviews and a table of categories extracted from the concepts (Tables 3 to 8) along with their secondary codes.
Step 2: Axial coding; In the second stage of coding, which is called axial coding, the researcher selects one of the categories as the axial category and explores it as the axial phenomenon in the center of the process and determines the relationship of the other categories with it. The following five headings explain the connection between other categories and the axial category [34].
1. Axial phenomenon: which is also called the main category, is a phenomenon that is the main axis of research. In this research, social innovation based on the collaboration between government and NGOs in crises is the main category, and the effectiveness of NGOs collaboration in the implementation of the social innovation plan is the axial code that was extracted from open codes based on the inductive approach, is presented in Table 3.
Table 3
Coding based on Strauss and Corbin approach to the axial phenomenon (axial category)
Macro Category | Axis Code | Open Codes | Sample Interview Code |
Social innovation based on the collaboration between government and NGOs in a crisis | The effectiveness of NGOs collaboration in the implementation of the social innovation plan | The executive capacity of NGOs, motivation, and commitment of NGOs, education, and experience of NGOs’ members, ability to communicate effectively by NGOs, number of NGOs, having a spirit of sacrifice and self-dedication of NGOs’ members, developing and promoting a culture of participation in society | P1, P2, P3, P4, P5, P6, P7, P8, P9, P10, P11, P12, P13, P14, P15 |
2. Causal conditions: These conditions cause the formation of axial phenomenon or category. These conditions are a set of categories and their characteristics that affect the axial category. In this research, the micro category based on open codes of interviews and documents (in the form of Table 4) is including investment, to attract NGOs’ collaboration in the implementation of the social innovation plan.
Table 4
Coding based on the approach of Strauss and Corbin on causal conditions
Macro Category | Axis Code | Open Codes | Sample Interview Code |
Social innovation based on the collaboration between government and NGOs in a crisis | investment, to attract NGOs collaboration in the implementation of the social innovation plan | Government fiscal policies in support of NGOs collaboration, the amount of investment in the social innovation plan, the continuation of investment in the social innovation plan during the crisis, financial support in the form of incentive packages, educational support based on experts in the field, support for research projects on social innovation in the crisis | P2, P3, P4, P6, P8, P9, P10, P11, P12, P13, P14, P15 |
3. Strategies: 1. Express purposeful behaviors, realities, and interactions that are achieved under the influence of intervening conditions and the prevailing context. in this study, the ability to manage the implementation of the social innovation plan and the ability to network are two micro categories that were identified by decoding. The strategies are presented in Table 5.
Table 5
Coding based on Strauss and Corbin approach to strategies
Macro Category | Axis Code | Open Codes | Sample Interview Code |
Social innovation based on the collaboration between government and NGOs in a crisis | Ability to manage the implementation of the social innovation plan | Ability to plan project implementation, ability to budget and allocate project funding, ability to evaluate project effectiveness, ability to control and monitor project implementation, identify corrective actions, ability to act quickly and promptly when risks and opportunities arise | P1, P2, P3, P4, P5, P6, P7, P9, P10, P11, P12, P13, P14 |
Ability to network | Attract involvement of organizations effective in project implementation, knowledge transfer and sharing, knowledge networking, support management, and project implementation | P1, P2, P4, P5, P6, P8, P9, P10, P11, P12, P13, P15 |
4. Ruling context or contextual conditions: The specific conditions that affect strategies are called contexts, and it is difficult to distinguish them from causal conditions. These conditions include a set of concepts, categories, or contextual variables; in contrast, causal conditions are a set of active variables. Sometimes highly related variables are classified under causal conditions and less relevant variables are classified under the prevailing context. In this research, contextual factors include two micro categories of ability to policymaking overall social innovation plan and providing the necessary cultural and educational infrastructure.
Table 6
Coding based on the approach of Strauss and Corbin on contextual conditions
Macro Category | Axis Code | Open Codes | Sample Interview Code |
Social innovation based on the collaboration between government and NGOs in a crisis | Ability to policymaking overall social innovation plan | Ability to identify crisis features and characteristics, Ability to identify possible solutions to crisis management, Ability to select optimal solutions, Ability to organize for implementation, identify risks and opportunities for project implementation, Ability to define project performance evaluation indicators | P1, P2, P3, P4, P5, P6, P7, P8, P9, P10, P11, P12, P13, P14, P15 |
Providing the necessary cultural and educational infrastructure | Public awareness (media infrastructure including mass media and cyberspace, educational packages, local advertising), development of educational topics in the curriculum of primary and secondary schools, using the public acceptance of influential people in different strata and regions to spread the culture of participation in the community | P1, P2, P3, P4, P5, P7, P8, P9, P10, P11, P12, P13, P14, P15 |
5. Intervening conditions: There are situations in which strategies are affected. These conditions constitute a set of mediating variables. Intervening conditions are structural conditions that facilitate or limit the intervention of other factors and have a causal and general nature. Based on the open codes, the micro category in this step includes the existence of capable legal organizations to solve the executive problems of the plan and facilitate coordination. The coding for the intervention conditions is given in Table 7.
Table 7
Coding based on Strauss and Corbin's approach to intervening conditions
Macro Category | Axis Code | Open Codes | Sample Interview Code |
Social innovation based on the collaboration between government and NGOs in a crisis | Existence of capable legal organizations to solve the executive problems of the plan and facilitate coordination | Facilitating the provision of necessary budget and financial resources, involving other organizations and institutions to solve unforeseen problems of the project, facilitating access to support resources | P2, P3, P4, P6, P7, P8, P9, P10, P11, P12, P13, P14 |
6. Consequences: Some categories represent the results and consequences that result from the adoption of strategies. This coding method, which is called the "paradigm model" of axial coding, has been proposed by Strauss and Corbin, and is called axial because the coding is done around the "axis" of a category. The micro category in this section obtained from open coding includes controlling, containing, and reducing the effects of the crisis. The coding of the consequences is given in Table 8.
Table 8
Coding based on Strauss and Corbin's approach to consequences
Macro Category | Axis Code | Open Codes | Sample Interview Code |
Social innovation based on the collaboration between government and NGOs in a crisis | Controlling, containing, and reducing the effects of the crisis | Measuring the level of acceptance and public cooperation with the implementers of the project during the implementation, measuring the statistics of infected patients during the implementation, reducing the death rate by informing the necessary measures in case of infection | P1, P2, P3, P4, P5, P6, P7, P8, P9, P10, P11, P12, P13, P14, P15 |
Finally, at this stage of the qualitative data results, the axial coding paradigm is developed. Figure 2 shows the extracted axial coding paradigm.
Step 3: Selective coding; Strauss and Corbin (1998) describe selective coding with open and axial coding as follows: In open coding, the analyst creates categories and their properties and then tries to determine how categories change during specified dimensions. In axial coding, categories are systematically improved and linked to subcategories. They are not yet the main categories that will eventually be integrated to form a larger theoretical arrangement so that the research results take the form of a theory. Selective coding is the process of integrating and improving categories [38]. At this stage of coding, the grounded theorist writes a theory of the relationships between the categories in the axial coding model. At a basic level, this theory provides an abstract description of the process being studied in research. The process of integrating and improving is theory into selective coding [38], through techniques such as storyline writing that connects categories, and the process of classifying is through personal notes on theoretical ideas. In one storyline, the researcher examines how specific factors affect the phenomenon and lead to the use of specific strategies with specific outputs [39]. In other words, selective coding takes the findings of previous coding steps, selects the axial category, systematically relates it to other categories, proves those relationships, and Completes categories that need further improvement and development; Therefore, the central category is a very important part of integrating and improving categories [40]. In this research, for the dimension of integration and improvement of categories, we achieved one selected code of the effectiveness of NGOs’ collaboration in the implementation of the social innovation plan. Table 9 shows the identified codes and Fig. 3 shows the frequency of categories.
Table 9
Identified codes related to social innovation based on the collaboration between government and NGOs in a crisis
Selective code | Axis Code | Open Codes |
Social innovation based on the collaboration between government and NGOs in a crisis | The effectiveness of NGOs collaboration in the implementation of the social innovation plan (C1) | The executive capacity of NGOs (C11), motivation and commitment of NGOs (C12), education and experience of NGOs’ members (C13), ability to communicate effectively by NGOs (C14), number of NGOs (C15), having a spirit of sacrifice and self-dedication of NGOs’ members (C16), developing and promoting a culture of participation in society (C17) |
investment, to attract NGOs collaboration in the implementation of the social innovation plan (C2) | Government fiscal policies in support of NGOs collaboration (C21), the amount of investment in the social innovation plan (C22), the continuation of investment in the social innovation plan during the crisis (C23), financial support in the form of incentive packages (C24), educational support based on experts in the field (C25), support for research projects on social innovation in the crisis (C26) |
Ability to manage the implementation of the social innovation plan (C3) | Ability to plan project implementation (C31), ability to budget and allocate project funding, ability to evaluate project effectiveness (C32), ability to control and monitor project implementation (C33), identify corrective actions (C34), ability to act quickly and promptly when risks and opportunities arise (C35) |
Ability to network (C4) | Attract involvement of organizations effective in project implementation (C41), knowledge transfer and sharing (C42), knowledge networking (C43), support management, and project implementation (C44) |
Ability to policymaking overall social innovation plan (C5) | Ability to identify crisis features and characteristics (C51), Ability to identify possible solutions to crisis management (C52), Ability to select optimal solutions (C53), Ability to organize for implementation (C54), identify risks and opportunities for project implementation (C55), Ability to define project performance evaluation indicators (C56) |
Providing the necessary cultural and educational infrastructure (C6) | Public awareness (media infrastructure including mass media and cyberspace (C61), educational packages (C62), local advertising (C63), development of educational topics in the curriculum of primary and secondary schools (C64), using the public acceptance of influential people in different strata and regions to spread the culture of participation in the community (C65) |
Existence of capable legal organizations to solve the executive problems of the plan and facilitate coordination (C7) | Facilitating the provision of necessary budget and financial resources(C71), involving other organizations and institutions to solve unforeseen problems of the project (C72), facilitating access to support resources (C73) |
Controlling, containing, and reducing the effects of the crisis (C8) | Measuring the level of acceptance and public cooperation with the implementers of the project during the implementation (C81), measuring the statistics of infected patients during the implementation (C82), reducing the death rate by informing the necessary measures in case of infection (C83) |