Abstract
Purpose– The purpose of this paper is to study brain drain as a social problem and elaborate a five‐dimensional social justice model as the main cause of brain drain. The paper explores the effects of distributional justice, emotional justice, procedural justice, transactional justice, and informational justice on brain drain intention
Design/methodology/approach– The method of research is survey method. This research is functional in terms of target and is descriptive. Moreover, the research is a field study from the information gathering perspective; and from the aspect of relationship between variables, it has casual type
Findings– The results of this study demonstrate that justice is a critical issue among the scientific elites of Iranian society. This study demonstrates the existence of a negative relationship between social justice and intention to emigrate (brain drain) in Iran
Research limitations/implications– Despite the lack of precise statistical information in this area, the paper seeks to critically analyze the brain drain phenomenon in Iran. The use of questionnaire meant that more in‐depth analysis was not possible to obtain
Practical implications– It is important to prevent elite emigration, particularly since elites represent vital cultural, social, and economic capital. In relation to informational justice, which is not likely to act as a single cause of brain drain but acts in concert with other factors, it should be recalled that communication plays a vital role
Originality/value– Surprisingly, no empirical research has yet been done in Iran to examine possible relationship between occurrence and/or the rate of the talent flow and social justice