This research analyzes the effects of Information Technology (IT) on Supply Chain Integration (SCI) through ERP mediator by proposing a conceptual model among these components. We also hypothesize that three constructs of IT influence on enterprise resource planning (ERP) success and one construct of ERP success influences on SCI. To clarify the relationships among the constructs, structural equation model (SEM) is conducted to examine the model fit and seven hypotheses. The data was collected from three Iranian firms through questionnaire with 23 questions adopted by past researches. The results confirmed that top management support of IT and employees’ general IT skills factors of IT enhance ERP success, and ERP success positively influences on Supply Chain Integration, so these two IT factors influence Supply Chain Integration through ERP success. Our data unsupported negative impact of satisfaction with legacy IT system on ERP success.

Advancement of network technology, quick growth of Internet and Internet based solutions lead many firms to apply online processes as well as electronic businesses. Internet based B2B E-C requires applying Internet and affiliated technologies for exchanging products, services and information. Implementation of business to business (B2B) requires long-term commitment of organizations. Carrying out research in this field is regarded as very important issue for recognizing effective factors on successful implementation and execution of B2B and determining current status of organization. This research deals with studying effective critical factors on successful implementation and execution of B2B. Factors are recognized through studying literature review and IT experts. Then, through case study (studying a vehicle manufacturing firm) and by using analytical network process (ANP), the importance of factor and their rank are determined. The factors that are regarded at this research are including: culture, commitment and support of senior management, government support, purposes, organizational strategies, trust, partial advantage and technical infrastructure. Results of research show that support and commitment of senior management are the highest priority factors.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the dimensions of hotel service quality, to assess relative importance of them and to evaluate service quality of Tehran hotels in terms of guests’ perspectives. The paper examines the reliability and validity of the designed scale based on SERVQUAL model. A cross-sectional research based on SERVQUAL model conducted on nine hotels in Tehran (n=1080). Several statistical analyses such as EFA, CFA, Linear regression and t-test were applied to analyze the data. Five service quality dimensions were identified and named as “tangibles”, “problem solving”, “service supply”, “empathy” and “security”. Even though our findings confirmed five dimensional SERVQUAL constructs, some dimensions have been identified differing from SERVQUAL scale dimensions. Finding showed that the best overall service quality predictor is “tangibles” followed by “service supply”, “problem solving”, “assurance” and “empathy”.

This paper presents an empirical investigation to measure different dimensions of hospital service quality (HSQ) by gap analysis and patient satisfaction (PS). It also attempts to measure patients’ satisfaction with three dimensions extracted from exploratory factor analysis (EFA) by Principle component analysis method and conformity factor analysis (CFA). In addition, the study analyzes relationship between HSQ and PS in the context of Iranian hospital services, using structural equation modeling (SEM) from patients’ perspectives. The maximum gap observed in “responsiveness” and the minimum one in “assurance”. In addition, patients had the most satisfaction in “trust” with the mean of 3.83 followed by “General Satisfaction” with the mean of 3.68 and they had the least satisfaction in “Acceptance” with the mean of 3.53. Two measurement models were used for measuring hospital service quality and patient satisfaction and one structural model, which showed the relationship between them. The result of this study showed that there was a positive and significant impact from hospital service quality on patient satisfaction (0.463). In addition, there was a positive and significant relationship between hospital service quality and five dimensions. Furthermore, it was shown that patient satisfaction and three dimensions (General Satisfaction, Trust, and Acceptance) were associated with each other, significantly and positively. At last management strategies and practical suggestions were presented to hospital.

Human resources are considered as one of the key components of any organization to reach its objectives. Human resources help organization performance doing organizational duties and making employees’ improvement. Because of this, employee performance appraisal has changed to one of the most important issues for top managers. Performance appraisal is necessary to select useful strategies for increasing productivity of human resource management along with productivity of employee to get strategic targets. In this study, we extract effective factors on increasing of employee performance and subsequently, present some suggestions to managers of academic organizations. The study was performed on some employees who worked for Islamic Azad University in 2013. Cronbach alpha was equal to 99.4% for employee performance appraisal, which confirmed the overall survey. To recognize key factors we used path analysis technique too. The results of the study revealed that in this school, employee performance in practical field was higher than expected, but in terms of operational and behavioral fields, they were in the middle stage.


DOI: 10.5267/j.msl.2013.05.002
Keywords:

The purpose of conducting this research is to establish a conceptual model to improve the performance of new product development in organizations regarding variables of disruptive innovation, team vision, knowledge management, and fuzzy-front end. In this research, the structural equation modelling (SEM) is used to study the model. Also, the explanatory and confirmatory factor analysis are used to extract dimensions of fuzzy-front end and disruptive innovation variables. Research data have been gathered from 109 experts of development and research department of Iran Khodro manufacturing company. The results of research show that disruptive innovation may have very impressive effects on new product development performance. Also, team approach has direct effect on fuzzy-front end. On the other hand, knowledge management has a key role in new product development and organizations can increase the efficiency of new product development by managing their knowledge and sharing them and guarantee the organization success.

Service quality plays an important role in health care systems since hospitals are responsible for people & apos; s lives. This study presents an effective approach for evaluating and comparing service qualities of four hospitals. Service quality consists of different attributes and many of them are intangible and difficult to measure. Therefore, we propose a fuzzy method to resolve the ambiguity of the concepts, which are associated with human judgments. SERVQUAL model is used to evaluate the respondents & apos; judgments of service quality and multi attribute decision making approach is implemented for the comparison among hospitals. The paper use analytical hierarchy process (AHP) for obtaining criteria weight and TOPSIS for ranking the cases.

One of the primary concerns of many corporate organizations is to assess the weakness and strength of their future partners in an attempt to reduce all potential risks involved with them. In this paper, we present a BSC-DEA based model to indentify strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats of a firm. The proposed model of this paper assumes there are various uncertainties associated with all input/output parameters and uses fuzzy numbers to handle the uncertainties. We also consider a real-world case study of banking industry where four major banks are possible candidates of a partnership and implement the proposed model of this paper for this case study. The results of this study reveal some of the issues such as weakness of electronic banking, services and resource allocation as part of their infrastructure problems.