Achievements and functions of participatory governance approach in higher education system

Effective management in higher education must be done with the participation and cooperation of all stakeholders. Participatory governance is one of the approaches that has been presented to the management of academic institutions by focusing on the participation and involvement of its all stakeholders. This article seeks to provide a comprehensive classification of the components of the achievements and functions of participatory governance in the higher education system by using the meta-synthesis method. The present study is qualitative and has been conducted in the paradigm of interpretiveness with the aim of exploring the components of the functions and achievements of participatory governance in higher education. Also, data collection is cross-sectional in terms of research time. In the current research, by collecting information from reliable scientific databases and refining it, 100 articles were selected as the main articles for extracting findings. By analyzing the findings, it has been obtained that the functions and achievements of participatory governance in higher education can be divided into 6 categories: 1- promoting coordination, cohesion and integration 2- strengthening communication, building trust and increasing participation and decentralization in decision making 3- increasing efficiency and effectiveness (through cooperation) 4- increasing learning and free access to information to help facilitating the implementation of the policies 5- increasing accountability and transparency and reducing the differences and 6- increasing commitment and sense of responsibility.