The role of skill development in improving the performance of agricultural extension agents in Iran using structural equation modeling and grounded theory

Abstract Performance improvement is the main concept of development policy. Belief in strengthening and improving the performance of individuals and institutions in developing countries for success in development policy has gradually formed among development agents. Performance improvement at the individual level pays attention to individual needs in order to enhance performance. Development requires developed and trained people. Therefore, the better the human resources as wealth and national capital are cultivated, the smoother the development path will be. The dimensions of improving performance at the individual level include things such as abilities, needs, attitudes, psychology, motivations, talents and skills, which also raises the need for skill development. In this regard, the current research seeks to investigate the relationship between skill development and performance improvement in extension in Iranian agriculture. The statistical population includes agricultural jihad centers in five regions of the country (the division of the country's provinces according to the Ministry of Agricultural Jihad, where each region includes 6 provinces) which is 8142 people, and accordingly, Cochran's formula was used to determine the sample size and the number of sample size 366 people were obtained. A structured questionnaire was developed to collect data. Structural equation modeling was used to examine the skill development measurement model, the performance improvement measurement model, and the skill development model. The research results show the significant relationship of all the indicators extracted from the interview in the structural equations.

The role of skill development in improving the performance of agricultural extension agents in Iran using structural equation modeling and grounded theory improving the productivity of human resources is one of the intermediate results, and what is more important is the cultural and social improvement resulting from education (Dastfrosh et al., 2022).On the other hand, in the modern international system of division of labor, education has a central role in the division of the countries of the world, and the countries that have a better education system have been able to enjoy sustainable economic growth by using high-tech and knowledge-based products (Emamverdi and Bazdar Ardebil, 2023).Some shortcomings and shortcomings in the educational system, as well as the need for skilled and semi-skilled workers in industries, prompted the trustees of the educational system to make fundamental changes in the formal education structure of the society, to solve this basic need.The establishment and inclusion of skill training branches in the educational system is one of the results of this decision (Salehi-Sariqiyeh et al., 2022).These trainings are trainings that improve people's knowledge and skills and increase the possibility of actualizing people's latent talents.It should be mentioned that performance improvement is defined as creating a systematic and planned way and method to transform beliefs, attitudes, structure and training programs, which enables the organization to find a better compromise with the confusing pace of environmental changes.Based on this definition, performance improvement cannot be a temporary and short-term flow, but it should be considered a continuous program to improve the effectiveness of education, whose main task is to transform the behavior and organizational performance of people and skills (Hadavand, 2013).The emergence of performance improvement is related to development models that see improvement as the basis of sustainable development.The development of organizational performance is to improve the main tasks, achieve its mission and improve the overall performance and the ability to adapt to changing conditions (Simister and Smith, 2010).In today's era, with the introduction of the concept of human factor in development theories, one of the important indicators for measuring the development of any country is the status and level of empowerment.Empowerment is a dynamic and quantitative process that has been measured and described in various ways (Mahmud et al., 2012).With regard to the growth and development of human culture and the emergence of new ideas, attention is paid to the role of individuals in the continuation of the life of humanity in various political, social and economic fields.The reforms that have been made in the constitution and other codified laws of the territories and the renewal of opinions that exist in the amendment of the laws indicate the beginning of an intellectual revival, in this connection, empowerment is one of the dimensions of sustainable development (Khalvati, 2009).In order to achieve empowerment, various tools are used and several measures can be implemented.One of the things that affect empowerment is improving performance.A performance improvement plan is a document that helps employees understand their skills, identify training gaps, and set clear expectations for job roles.It is usually used when an employee fails to meet job expectations (Jamshidi et al., 2022).Among the positive effects of improving performance in empowerment, we can

Introduction
Currently, the most important program of the country is the implementation of the 20-year vision document, i.e.Iran Horizon 1404, according to which our country should have an excellent rank in the Middle East region in all fields.This will not be possible except by creating excellent and successful organizations and institutions that are a collection of successful people.The education of successful and capable people also requires a suitable educational program that is in line with the needs of the time strategy.Therefore, empowerment has its own definition in each specific situation.One of the most important characteristics of a capable person is having knowledge and skills.Skill includes all necessary primary abilities that make it practical to do the work in the determined conditions (Nasser et al., 2014).And mainly three areas of skills including technical skills, human skills and cognitive skills are considered for managers and employees.The benefit of key forces from skills and expertise in various fields is considered the most important need of organizations.Empowering employees basically means supporting employees, trusting their abilities, respecting their values, providing the necessary tools and resources, and creating suitable conditions to benefit from their greater participation.By delegating enough authority, organizations can simplify the decision-making process for employees and allow them to perform more effectively and quickly (Samakosh et al., 2022).In addition to increasing self-confidence, this process will also be effective in raising the success rate of employees (Kyani et al., 2023).
Knowledge-oriented employees play an important role in creating value for the organization.These forces try to solve their mental challenges and expand their technical knowledge.Developed human resources carefully examine the process of carrying out activities and try to make their knowledge and skills available to the organization in the best possible way (Atafar and Shari'atmanseh, 2006).A capable human force with its characteristics, expertise and ability can start its own business and manage it in the direction of development and progress.In this regard, education is an effort that is made to change people's behavior through the learning process and to increase their effectiveness, and in addition to bringing improvement and excellence, it promotes insight and insight and the necessary knowledge, skills and abilities to perform Gives assigned tasks to people.Economic growth and development of countries is significantly affected by educational growth and development, and one of the most important parts of the education system of any country is the skill education system.Education leads to the accumulation of human capital in the individual and the society through the improvement of individual skills, abilities and competencies and develops the scope of freedom of the individual by increasing his abilities (Iftikharnejad et al., 2023).To explain the effect of education on human capital, there are two main approaches: the productivity approach and the capability approach (Mehdi and Mousavi, 2021).In the productivity approach, the goal of education is only to increase the productivity of the labor force, but in the capability approach to education, Brazilian Journal of Biology, 2023, vol. 83, e275161   3/9 Improving the performance of agricultural extension agents increase income, improve consumption, improve property, improve agricultural income, improve non-agricultural income, improve industries, create direct and indirect employment (Eftekhari et al., 2018), He pointed out the expansion of education, empowerment of different sections of society, creation of social justice, equality of rights of minorities and integration in the whole society.The proper and effective performance of employees is one of the keys to the success of organizations.Good performance means productivity, quality, profitability and customer orientation (Akbari and Sarbandi, 2022).This is the reason why successful organizations in the world make a lot of effort to identify and manage the factors affecting the performance and behavior of employees and achieve the success of providing these factors on the performance of their employees (both in terms of amount and increase in terms of quality (Mohammadi et al., 2022).Also, improving performance in rural communities through empowering people increases empowerment and quality of life (Jovan Foruzandeh and Melabi (2012).Therefore, in today's world, empowerment has become more dependent on improving performance, especially improving rural performance.
In this regard, Salim et al. (2022).In a research, they improved the performance of employees and the effects of training and the workplace.The goal of this study is to investigate the impact of training and work environment on employee performance.This is an example of quantitative research.The total sampling technique was used to select 101 employees from the Bandung branch of the state savings bank.The data was examined using multiple regression analysis.According to the study's findings, training and work environment had no positive effect on employee performance at the state savings bank's Bandung branch, whereas physical evidence had a positive and significant impact on employee satisfaction at the state savings bank.Tampi et al. (2022).In a research, they discussed the effect of information technology users, employee empowerment and work culture on the performance of employees in the regional office of the Ministry of Law and Human Rights of Riau Islands.The results of this research examined the three independent variables of information technology, employee empowerment and culture, which relatively and simultaneously have a positive and significant effect on the performance of the employees of the Ministry of Law and the regional human rights office of the Riau Islands.Flegl et al (2022) In research, they looked at the effect of employee training on improving their performance.The results reveal that low number of training hours, together with excessive training of more than 166hours per year has limited or no impact on the performance.In fact, when employees had more than166 hours of training, the training was negatively related to their performance.Management of organizations should carefully plan the amount of provided training hours per each employee.The impact of training varies based on seniority and number of hours spent on training, but there are no significant differences between employees' gender.Scandurra and Alberio (2021) pointed out the relationship between education attainment and skills and indicated that other factors are likely to affect skill acquisition.It is important to declare that skill formation is a dynamic process that involves the interaction among different components.In their research, Elliot et al. (2018) referred to a trend, indicating that there is a need for adapting and upgrading the skills of workers to improve the national economy in the United States Fathali et al. (2018) in a research related to the presentation of a skill-oriented program to optimize the presence of institutions and organizations in the process of skill training and employment stated that skill training is one of the basic elements in development programs due to the empowerment of human resources and especially Development is considered in the economic dimension, which can play an important role in achieving development goals, and in today's world, skill training, skill enhancement, and skill empowerment are used to create jobs, accelerate the process, and stabilize employment.Pedram (2011) in an article titled "Upgrading the productivity of human resources through skill improvement" points out that, in fact, human power is considered the most important infrastructure of any group or organization and country because it is the basis of moving towards development and excellence, and if the necessary skills In the field of his job, he will be able to get things under his control and it will be a promise of organizational excellence and productivity.Alam Beigi et al. (2009) in a research related to the improvement of elemental knowledge performance for the formation of entrepreneurial outcomes in the research results of Iranian agricultural research institutes stated that the improvement of knowledge performance consists of the components of knowledge creation, knowledge interpretation, and knowledge publication and distribution.and the dimension of knowledge creation and interpretation showed a significant effect on the formation of entrepreneurial research and development dimensions.
In a research, Lopez and Pastor (2015) investigated the effects of the implementation of the entrepreneurship program and the plan to improve the performance of education and business for the promotion and development of rural areas.The results of their research showed that in order to ensure the sustainability and application of future entrepreneurial plans, it is necessary to support and strengthen potential entrepreneurs through educational activities and performance improvement.Zasada et al. (2015) in a research using cluster analysis have investigated investment in performance improvement and provided a conceptual framework to achieve rural development policies and have come to the conclusion that investment in development performance improvement is one of the factors It is important in rural development and empowerment of villagers.In a study, Mohamad et al. (2013) investigated the improvement of performance, increasing education in rural society through participation in Malaysia.The results of their research showed that the readiness of the local community to accept changes and the effectiveness of participation are the key factors of performance improvement.Merino and Carmenado (2012) in research entitled Performance improvement in development projects provide a framework that is the basis for analyzing the important elements of capacity at each level (individual and social) and that promotes success over time and makes them It divides into three dimensions: technical, behavioral and contextual.The results of this research showed that development plans in recent decades have been formed from focusing on providing physical and financial infrastructure to approaches focusing on training and improving performance to reduce poverty and improve the livelihood of local people.In a study conducted by Okada (2012) on skill development for Indian youth, challenges and opportunities, it is pointed out that the development of employability skills for Indian youth is necessary, that Indian youth who are employed as part of the Ministry of Agriculture have no capacity.They have nothing to do and they are more concerned about receiving salaries than fulfilling their duties.In a study using participatory evaluation method, Lennie (2005) investigated the role of improving the performance of rural areas to achieve sustainable development of rural society in Australia, their results showed that the practical participation of people in this project in increasing skills and Knowledge and facilitation of different forms of empowerment were effective and improving community performance is the most important strategy to achieve sustainable development in rural areas.
According to the conducted research, it was found that today the role of training specialized, skilled and efficient human resources in accordance with the needs of the labor market and improving the entrepreneurial power in the productivity of economic enterprises is undeniable.In this regard, economic development depends on increasing employment, without skills and skill training, it is not possible for human resources to enter the labor market.The relationship between skill training and the attitude of job creation and entrepreneurship to the development of sustainable employment in the agricultural promotion sector, the need for skills also increases.Skill training plays an important role in the development of employment and entrepreneurship, and this is very effective in achieving sustainable development in a society.Therefore, in order to have the effect of skill training as one of the important ways to solve the problem of unemployment, entrepreneurship and increasing the skill level, detailed and expert planning is needed.In this regard, the nature of skill development has been studied in some dimensions but not in relation to each other, but such a study has not been done so far, it is evident that some of the mentioned activities have been studied in related studies and the subject of the present study It has not been investigated before, therefore, the aforementioned areas are investigated with a holistic view.

Material and Methods
The current research was conducted using a combination of quantitative and qualitative approaches in order to investigate the role of skill development in improving the performance of agricultural extension agents in Iran using structural equation modeling and grounded theory.Qualitative research can be used in a wide range of settings and includes multiple methodologies based on phenomena and issues with limited literature.The present study analyzed data collected through individual interviews using a grounded theory (GT) research design.The GT method was used to assess respondents' perceptions of the relationship between skill development and performance.This method is used to describe the structure and process of phenomena.The participants in the research were agricultural extension and the purposeful sampling method was used to select the respondents.The snowball sampling method was used to select the sample.Also, sampling continued until data saturation.Interview data were saturated through in-depth individual interviews with 18 participants.
According to the quantitative approach, the survey method has been used to collect data.The statistical population consists of the agricultural sector (N=8142) who are employed by agricultural centers in the five main regions of the country as determined by the Ministry of Agriculture.To determine the sample size, using Cochran's formula, 366 promotion agents were selected as the research sample population (Table 1).
A structured self-determined questionnaire was developed, and data were collected by interviewing the respondents.This research used descriptive methods to provide information about the opinion of respondents.Table 1 presents calculated information about the mean, mode, median, and standard deviation for each question.The model of measuring the performance of agents was analyzed using Structural Equation Modeling (SEM).The collected data were analyzed by using AMOS software to use the SEM method to identify the relationship between variables.The structural model is employed to determine the model's predictive capabilities and the association between dependent and independent variables.
Combined reliability (CR), convergent validity, divergent validity, R 2 criterion, Q 2 criterion, Redundancy criterion, and goodness of fit criterion were measured to determine the reliability of the model.The conceptual model includes (Table 2; Figure 1):

Results
According to the information in Table 3, it was found that about 40% of the respondents with the highest frequency are in the age range of 31-40 years, the lowest frequency is related to the respondents of 20-30 years.Also, based on the collected information, it was found that 79% of the respondents are male and 21% are female.Most of the respondents have 11 to 20 years of work experience, which accounts for about 39% of all respondents, and Also, the results of the table indicated that the majority of the respondents have a bachelor's level of education, which accounts for 59.29% of all respondents, and 5.74% of the respondents have a doctorate education, which is naturally the least frequent.

Examining the fit of the research model
In this research, several criteria were used to check the fit of the structural model of the research, the first and most basic criterion being the significance coefficients of t.The fit of the structural model using t coefficients is such that these coefficients must be greater than 1.96 in  order to confirm their significance at the 95% confidence level; The significant results of the coefficients based on the t-statistic value are reported in the graphs below.Standard numbers above 0.4 are acceptable.

Validation of the model with partial least squares method
Before testing the research hypotheses, the fit of the conceptual model was examined.Structural equation models are typically a combination of measurement models (representing sub-components of latent variables) and structural models (representing relationships between independent and dependent variables).The strength of the relationship between the factor (latent variable) and the observable variable is shown by the factor loading.Factor load is a value between zero and one.If the factor load is less than 0.3, the relationship is considered weak and it is ignored.A factor between 0.3 and 0.6 is acceptable, and if it is greater than 0.6, it is very desirable.SmartPLS software calculates composite reliability and average contribution (AVE) for fitting measurement models and provides an R2 value for fitting structural models.Values greater than 0.5 for average sharing, greater than 0.7 for composite reliability, and greater than 0.3 for R2 indicate appropriate model fit.The results of the validity of the research variables are presented in Table 4.
As can be seen in the table above, the average extracted variance (AVE) is greater than 0.5, so there is convergent validity.Also, Cronbach's alpha of all variables is greater than 0.7, so the reliability is confirmed.On the other hand, the composite reliability value (CR) is also greater than AVE and in all cases it is greater than the threshold of 0.7, so the third condition is also met.The coefficient of determination (R^2) of the endogenous structures of the research model is desirable because this criterion varies between 0 and 1, the closer it is to 1, the more suitable it is.Also, in this research, the GOF criterion for the overall model fit was found to be 0.515, which is smaller than 0.1, which indicates a strong fit of the model (Figure 2).
To check the significance of the relationships of the variables of the model, the bootstrap method has been used, which gives the t statistic.At the 5% error level, if the value of the bootstrapping statistic is greater than 1.96, the observed correlations are significant.The t statistic and bootstrapping value to measure the significance of relationships are also shown in the Figure 3 below.
As it can be seen that the rate is significant for all observed variables.So, in general, it can be said that all the considered factors have been confirmed.

Discussion
Continuous performance improvement creates synergies for organizations that can drive growth and development.Governments and organizations make a lot of effort in this matter without examining and gaining awareness of the progress and achievement of goals and identifying the challenges of the organization's progress and getting feedback and information about the implementation of formulated policies and identifying things that need improvement.Continuous operation will not be possible.All things are not possible without measurement and evaluation.The present study was conducted in order to investigate the relationship between skill development and performance improvement in agricultural promotion in Iran using structural equation modeling and grounded theory.After the interview, indicators for skill development (training, strengthening the spirit of learning, acquiring individual skills, policy factors, educational factors, participatory factors, monitoring the educational process, evaluating the educational process, monitoring the individual development process, infrastructure factors, information factors, educational achievements, attention to individual skills, attention to individual creativity, senior managers' support for skill development, creating a spirit of participation in strategic planning, interaction and organizational communication, increasing human resource productivity) were extracted.The research was used that the first and most basic criterion is the significance coefficients of t.The fitting of the structural model using t coefficients is such that these coefficients must be greater than 1.96 to confirm their significance at the 95% confidence level.To check the significance of the relationships between the variables of the model, the bootstrap method has been used, which gives the t-statistics.At the 5% error level, if the value of the bootstrapping statistic is greater than 1.96, the observed correlations are significant.So, in general, it can be said that all the considered factors have been confirmed and have significant relationships with each other.
-Continuous revision and modification of programs based on environmental requirements.-Accurate needs assessment should be done in order to identify obstacles and limitations.-It seems necessary to hold in-service training courses for promoters.
and long-term policy making to use the high potential of human resources Necessary policymaking for the interaction of effective groups in order to solve the existing challenges Educational factors The effectiveness of the ruling educational system in the Ministry of Agricultural Jihad The institutionalization of skill as an intangible strategic asset in planning Collaborative factors Accurate definition and proper implementation of support mechanisms The existence of a suitable platform for monitoring, refining and an environment for training and acquiring new skills by providing learning opportunities Direct interaction to improve educational performance Evaluation of the educational process Adopting appropriate assessment methods and establishing a connection between assessment results and skill development programs Measuring the effectiveness of training creating a sense of competition between them The flourishing of talents and movement in the path of growth Supporting senior managers in skill development Implementing the process and monitoring the progress of the process Attention to the needs of employees in order to develop skills Consequences Creating a spirit of participation in strategic planning Attention to the dimensions of teamwork Existence of free and active media covering the field of skill development Interaction and organizational communication Respect for freedom of speech and free expression of opinion Having a proper understanding of the feeling of doing work and

Table 2 .
Indicators extracted from the interview.

Table 3 .
Frequency distribution of demographic characteristics.
Figure 1.The pattern of the paradigm.

Table 4 .
External validity of structures.
Figure 2. Model validation output with partial least squares method.